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Bill Clinton, a War criminal, the founder of neoliberal "Vichy left"

The man who sold Democratic Party to Wall Street and helped FIRE sector to convert the country into casino

News Casino Capitalism Recommended Links Clinton Cash scandal Corporatist Corruption: Systemic Fraud under Clinton-Bush-Obama Regime Epstein as the symbol of moral degradation of the US elite  Hillary "Warmonger" Clinton Bill Clinton sexcapades and Hillary
War is Racket Yugoslav wars Harvard Mafia, Andrei Shleifer and the economic rape of Russia New American Militarism Madeleine Albright   Jeffrey Sachs and "shock therapy" racket Criminal negligence in financial regulation Financial Sector Induced Systemic Instability
Neoliberalism as a New Form of Corporatism Casino Capitalism Hillary Clinton email scandal Hillary role in cover up of Bill Clinton sexapades Neoliberal corruption Corporatist Corruption: Systemic Fraud under Clinton-Bush-Obama Regime Neoliberal Kleptocracy Neoconservatism
Predator state Bush  Corruption of Regulators Trickle down economics Mayberry Machiavellians Milton Friedman Phil Gramm Greenspan: Grey Cardinal of Washington
Ronald Reagan: modern prophet of profligacy Twelve apostles of deregulation Rubinism Lawrence Summers Sandy Weill Clinton Foundation - Wikipedia Financial Humor Etc

Some people referring to Bill Clinton sexcapades say "Bill Clinton gave us Bush the Younger thanks to having the self control of an adolescent chimpanzee." (   But this is wrong. Bill Clinton was much more dangerous then that.

We can consider Bill Clinton to be the founder of "Vichy left". He was instrumental in looting Russia after dissolution of the USSR which eventually created for the USA anb adversary they really fear. With full spectrum of offensive weapons which can annihilate the USA more effectively then the USSR ever could.

He also sold Democratic Party to the Wall Street, creating first neoliberal "Vichy left" party. The trick that was later replicated by Tony Blair in the UK -- another war criminal of the epoch of triumphal ascendance of neoliberalism.

US Democrats were once the party that was for slavery as well, so this is not the first time they defense reactionary, harmful for the nation,  political course. So in way Bill Clinton returned the Party to its historic roots, not it stands for neoliberal ("debt-based") slavery.

Contrary to what US media say, Bill and Hillary Clinton are certainly not liberals or "progressives" (strange US term which means "normal in European sense social democrats), but typical run-of-the-mill neoliberals (with Hillary beings a neocon, an unrepentant warmonger hell bent on inciting the war with Russia via "no fly zone" in Syria).

As such they are Republicans of DINO ("Democrats only in name").

Bill Clinton gave us NAFTA, repeal of Glass Steagill, deregulation of media, etc. Bill Clinton switched Democrats from the policy of Americanism (or "America first" in Trump terms) – focusing on what’s good for America’s middle class – to a policy of globalism, focusing on how to make money for large corporations who can move their wealth and workers to foreign countries all to the detriment of the American worker and the American economy.

Speaking of "Clinton family" Hillary is a war hawk and supported TPP, who during her tenure as the Secretary of State turned "Public Service" into shady, lucrative business.  In a nutshell, they got rich by making super big $$$ speeches to shady groups and persons who wanted to influence in the US government. Bill's speech fees skyrocketed when she became Secretary of State.  See  Clinton Cash

Bill Clinton was a staunch neoliberal, one of 12  apostils of deregulation. He also is a kind of Judas Iscariot of Democratic Party  who helped to sell Democratic Party to Wall Street for an annual "pension" about 20 silver coins (sorry million of USD), delivered via speakers fees.  He can  can be viewed as a Godfather of  kleptocratic neocons called  Mayberry Machiavellians. He also was the first  the neoconservative president, completely in bed with Likud lobby.

The President which destroyed the USA relations with post-Soviet Russia by attack on Serbia (On 24 March 1999, Primakov was heading to Washington, D.C. for an official visit. Flying over the Atlantic Ocean, he learned that NATO had started to bomb Yugoslavia. Primakov cancelled the visit, ordered the plane to turn around over the ocean and returned to Moscow in a maneuver dubbed "Primakov's Loop". Yevgeny Primakov  ). His main achievements were:

The collapse and subsequent economic rape of the USSR region in 1991-1998 was a huge stimulus for the US economy. Something like 300 millions of new customers overnight for many products and huge expansion of the dollar zone, which partially compensates for the loss of EU to euro.

Even if we count just the cash absorbed by the region, it will be a major economic stimulus. All-it-all it was Bernanke size if we add buying assets for pennies on the dollar.

Actually, Bill Clinton put a solid fundament for subsequent deterioration relations with Russia. His semi-successful attempt to colonize Russia (under Yeltsin Russia was a semi-colony and definitely a vassal state of the USA) backfired.

Now the teeth of dragon planted by Slick Bill (of Kosovo war fame) are visible in full glory. Russian elite no longer trusts the US elite and feels threatened.

Series of female sociopath (or borderline personalities) in the role of Secretaries of State did not help either. The last one, "We came, we saw, he died" Hillary and her protégé Victoria Nuland (which actually was a close associate of Dick Cheney http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2005/11/president_cheney.html ) are actually replay of unforgettable Madeleine Albright with her famous a 60 Minutes segment in which Lesley Stahl asked her "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" and Albright replied "we think the price is worth it."

Selling neoliberalism under the disguise of triangulation

The term was first used by President of the United States Bill Clinton's chief political advisor Dick Morris as a way to describe his strategy for getting Clinton reelected in the 1996 presidential election. In Dick Morris' words, triangulation meant "the president needed to take a position that not only blended the best of each party's views but also transcended them to constitute a third force in the debate." In news articles and books, it is sometimes referred to as "Clintonian triangulation". Morris advocated a set of policies that were different from the traditional policies of the Democratic Party. These policies included deregulation and balanced budgets.

One of the most widely cited capstones of Clinton's triangulation strategy was when, in his 1996 State of the Union Address, Clinton declared that the "era of big government is over."[5]
 
Politicians alleged to have used triangulation more recently include US President Barack Obama,[6][7] former Senator Hillary Clinton, Tony Blair with "New Labour" in the United Kingdom, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin with the Liberal Party of Canada, Fredrik Reinfeldt with "The New Moderates" in Sweden, and Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, and Kevin Rudd of the Australian Labor Party. In France, the Socialist candidate in the 2007 presidential election, Ségolène Royal, advocated “military supervision” (encadrement militaire) for first offenders.

During the 2010 State of the Union Address, President Obama insisted that he would remain with his agenda in the face of criticism, rather than resort to triangulation.[5]

The Third Way  actually means neoliberalism

The term "Third Way" was picked up  in the 1950s by German ordoliberal economists such as Wilhelm Röpke, resulting in the development of the concept of the social market economy -- an early attempt to justify neoliberalism. Later Röpke distanced himself from the term and located the social market economy as "first way" in the sense of an advancement of the free market economy.  Most significantly, Harold Macmillan, British Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, based his philosophy of government on what he entitled in a book, The Middle Way

In politics, the Third Way is a set of neoliberal policies that on the surface tries to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by selling trade union interests to the higher bidder under the smokescreen of adopting synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies.  The Third Way was by proponents of neoliberalism as an attempt to weaken power of the state to regulated transnational corporations and discredit  economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularized by Keynesianism. It rise corresponds to the rise of popularity for neoliberalism and the New Right. The Third Way managed completely co-opt and destroy some Democratic Parties (in the USA, GB and Germany).

Major Third Way social democratic proponent Tony Blair claimed that the socialism he advocated was different from traditional conceptions of socialism. Blair said "My kind of socialism is a set of values based around notions of social justice ... Socialism as a rigid form of economic determinism has ended, and rightly". Blair referred to it as "social-ism" that involves politics that recognized individuals as socially interdependent, and advocated social justice, social cohesion, equal worth of each citizen, and equal opportunity.

Third Way social democratic theorist Anthony Giddens has said that the Third Way rejects the traditional conception of socialism, and instead accepts the conception of socialism as conceived of by Anthony Crosland as an ethical doctrine that views social democratic governments as having achieved a viable ethical socialism by removing the unjust elements of capitalism by providing social welfare and other policies, and that contemporary socialism has outgrown the Marxian claim for the need of the abolition of capitalism.

Blair in 2009 publicly declared support for a "new capitalism" -- neoliberalism.

It supports the pursuit of greater egalitarianism in society through action to increase the distribution of skills, capacities, and productive endowments, while rejecting income redistribution as the means to achieve this. Like neoliberalism in general it emphasizes commitment to balanced budgets, an emphasis on personal responsibility, decentralization of government power to the lowest level possible to restore the power of financial oligarchy), encouragement of public-private partnerships, improving labor supply (with Wal-Mart and McDonalds as two examples what they can do for impoverishing labor class), privatizing of education, protection of transnational corporations, which are above the law.

It been heavily criticized by many social democrats, democratic socialists and communists in particular as a betrayal of left-wing values.
 


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[May 03, 2021] Why George W. Bush Was a Horrible President

Notable quotes:
"... By Lambert Strether of Corrente. ..."
"... Don't deny W his agency. As I followed the horrors, from Vietnam to Iraq to Syria to Central America and elsewhere, the full list that was visible anyway, of the W regime, it sure seemed clear to me that W played the bumbling yuk very well. ..."
"... the dumb cluck thing was mostly an act. he was deliberately talking that way not only to paint himself as stupid, but also because those in power assume we must be spoken to as children (they've studied president speeches since JFK have decreased from high school level to 6th grade in complexity, word usage etc). ..."
"... In our kayfabe duoparty system, it also gave the "opposing" side the "W is a Chimp" talking point to harp on (dress rehearsal for the same stuff against tRUMP). ..."
"... Abu Ghraib was not an anomaly, Con Son Island served the same purpose during the Vietnam War. When I was young I was proud to be an American Citizen, we had the Bill of Rights, the Military was controlled by Civilians and their oath was to defend the Constitution from "All Enemies Foreign and Domestic.". I have been horrified, ashamed and deeply saddened by what has happened in the US over the last half Century or so. ..."
"... I view the 2008 election as the major failing-to-turn-back-when-we-had-the-chance point. Obama could have undone Bush's worst policies, but instead he cemented them into place forever. ..."
"... Our elites are both stupid and evil, but Bush is more stupid and Obama is more evil ..."
"... you are 40 years off the mark-It was Reagan who's brand of avuncular fascism, celebrating stupidity as a virtue who paved the way. ..."
"... albrt: I agree with your take. Obama campaigned as an anti-war candidate (at least wrt Iraq). He then proceeded to "˜surge' into Afghanistan and added Libya, Syria, and Yemen, to the regime change mix. Never a thought given to prosecuting the war criminals: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Tenet, Feith, Wolfowitz, Powell, et al; much less even consider a truth and reconciliation commission. ..."
"... Obama was equally complicit in this never ending horror show and, I am hopeful, history will hold him equally accountable. ..."
"... Is it not written that Margaret Thatcher's true legacy was Tony Blair? If that is true, then the true legacy of Dubya is Obama. ..."
"... As far as harm that George W. Bush did and launched (illegal/immoral wars, domestic surveillance, tax cuts for the wealthy"¦.) Bush should take the award. ..."
"... When Obama deliberately and with malice aforethought turned all the admitted (and in fact proudly self-avowed) war-criminals and criminals-against humanity loose, free and clear under "look forward not back", he routinised and permanentized the up-to-that-very-minute irregular and extra-constitutional novel methods of governance and practice which the Cheney-Bush Administration had pioneered. Obama deliberately made torture, aggressive war, etc. "legal" when America does it and "permanent" as long as America is strong enough to keep doing it. ..."
"... The Greatest Disappointment in History. No-one else comes close, in terms of the sheer numbers of people globally who he let down. The Bait and Switch King, The Great Betrayer. After the nightmare of Bush we got him and his "˜eloquence', pulling the wool over the dazzled sheeple's eyes while he entrenched the 1% and the neocon MI complex, his paymasters, and sponsors for his entry into the overclass. ..."
"... Lambert, you forgot this one" Biden presents Liberty Medal to George and Laura Bush Instead of a war crimes trial at the Hague, Biden gave him a (family bloging) medal! ..."
"... A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing the Realm ..."
"... It's really sickening to see George W being "rehabilitated" and made to look like some kind of a senior statesman, when he should be hauled off to the Hague to spend the rest of his life in prison for war crimes. For me, his election in 2000 was mostly the beginning of the end of the rule of law in this country. As a result, the U.S. has Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, in addition to all the other events mentioned, and don't forget he tried to privatize Social Security. ..."
"... and welfare "reform", the crime bill. Talk of privatizing SSI made commonplace acceptable. Repeal of Glass Steagall. They were going to do to healthcare what oBLAM succeeded at, 20 years before him but got sidelined by Lewinsky's blue dress stains. Clintoon is a criminal and so is his spouse, and he did his share of damage everywhere. people who think otherwise might be looking back with nostalgia on a simpler (pre 9.11) time. ..."
"... Jeff Wells wrote some interesting essays in the Bush years, though many of his connections were a bit too far out, even for me. He had some striking collateral evidence for his concept of High Weirdness in high places "" sex abuse, torture and magick figuring prominently, juxtaposed with political skulduggery, and financial crimes and misdemeanours. The Gannon/Guckert affair, the Franklin ring and Gary Caradori were the sort of thing that laced his quite penetrating analyses of events. Facts were jumping off points for speculations, but given our lack of facts his imaginings were a nourishment of sorts, though often very troubling indeed. ..."
"... People have been brain washed by the glossed over history of the US they are taught. It gives people a false belief of our past. The phrase American Exceptionalism comes to mind. It is a myth. The real history is out there but you have to search it out. From it's beginning continuing to today our government is responsible for bad behavior. ..."
"... We Americans have this thing called exceptionalism which among other things creates the idea that our government is more virtuous than others. ..."
"... We are not at Hitler/Stalin/Mao standards ""yet"" but who's to say that could never happen here? One of the bafflements of the 20th century was how a civilized people descended into the dark barbarism of Nazi Germany. ..."
"... Noam Chomsky observed some thirty years ago that if the Nuremberg standards were applied to all the post-war American Presidents, then all of them would hang. ..."
"... We have such a dismal record. Little George was the most audacious of all our criminal presidents, but he has plenty of company. My question is now, looking back, why was the USA incapable of organizing a peaceful world after WW2? I start there. 1945. ..."
May 03, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Posted on April 25, 2021 by Lambert Strether

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Recently, the political class has been working hard to rehabilitate George W. Bush into an elder statesman, no doubt to continue the liberal Democrat conversion of suburban Republicans, with headlines like " George Bush reborn as the nation's grandfather " (the London Sunday Times, but you know it will migrate over here), " George W Bush is back "" but not all appreciate his new progressive image " (Guardian), " Bush calls on Congress to tone down "˜harsh rhetoric' about immigration " (CNN), and "George W Bush reveals who he voted for in 2020 election "" and it wasn't Biden or Trump " (the Independent. Bush wrote in Condaleeza Rice, who Exxon once named a tanker for). I could go on. But I won't. These stories from major outlets seem to be erasing early coverage like " The 7 worst moments of George W. Bush's presidency " (WaPo, 2013), " The blood on George W Bush's hands will never dry. Don't glorify this man " (The Guardian, 2017), " Reminder: George W. Bush Is Still Very, Very Bad " (Vice, 2018), " Seth Meyers: Don't Let Trump Make You Forget How Awful George W. Bush Was " (Vanity Fair, 2020), and " We Shouldn't Have to Remind People George W. Bush Was a Terrible President : (Jacobin, 2020). That's unfortunate, because George W. Bush (hereafter "Bush"; the "W" distinguishes him from his spook Yankee patrician Dad, oil bidnessman George H.W. Bush). As with so much else that is fetid in the miasmic air of our current liberal Democrat dispensation, Bush's rehabilitation begins with the Obamas, in this case Michelle Obama, in this iconic photo:

(The backstory: " Michelle Obama Reveals What Really Happened During Her Sweet Exchange With George W. Bush ," and "Michelle Obama: George W. Bush is "˜my partner in crime'[1] and "˜I love him to death' ").

Bush became President in the year 2000. That was "" let me break out my calculator "" 2021 "" 2000 = 21 years ago. It occurs to me that our younger readers, born in 2000, or even 1990, may not know how genuinely horrid Bush was, as President.

I was blogging even back then, and I remember how horrid Bush was; certainly worse than Trump, at least for Trump's first three years in office, until the Covid pandemic. To convey the full horror of the Bush years would not a series of posts, but a book. The entire experience was wretched and shameful.

Of the many horrors of the Bush years, I will pick three. (I am omitting many, many others, including Hurricane Katrina , the Plame Affair , Medicare Part D, the Cheney Energy Task Force , that time Dick Cheney shot an old man in the face , Bush's missing Texas Air National Guard records , Bush gaslighting the 2004 Republican National Convention with terror alerts, and on and on and on. And I didn't even get to 9/11, " You've covered your ass ," WMDs, and the AUMF. Sorry. It's exhausting.) I'm afraid my recounting of these incidents will be sketchy: I lived and blogged in them, and the memories of the horror well up in such volume and detail that I lose control of the material. Not only that, there was an actual, functioning blogosphere at that time, which did great work, but unfortunately most of that work has succumbed to link rot. And my memory of events two decades ago is not as strong as it could be.

The White House Iraq Group

Here I will rely on excerpts from Colonel Sam Gardiner's (PDF) "Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II" (2003), whose introduction has been saved from link rot by the National Security Archive and a full version by the University of Leeds . I would bet, long forgotten even by many of those who blogged through those times. ("Gulf II" is what we refer to as the "War in Iraq.") Quoting from the full version:

You will see in my analysis and comments that I do not accept the notion that the first casualty of war is truth. I think we have to have a higher standard. In the most basic sense, Washington and London did not trust the peoples of their democracies to come to right decisions. Truth became a casualty. When truth is a casualty, democracy receives collateral damage.

Seems familiar. (Gardiner's report can be read as a brilliant media critique; it's really worth sitting down with a cup of coffee and reading it all.)[2] More:

My research suggests there were over 50 stories manufactured or at least engineered that distorted the picture of Gulf II for the American and British people . I'll cover most in this report. At the end, I will also describe some stories that seem as if they were part of the strategic influence campaign although the evidence is only circumstantial.

What becomes important is not each story taken individually. If that were the case, it would probably seem only more of the same. If you were to look at them one at a time, you could conclude, "Okay we sort of knew that was happening." It is the pattern that becomes important. It's the summary of everything. To use a phrase often heard during the war, it's the mosaic. Recognizing I said I wouldn't exaggerate, it would not be an exaggeration to say the people of the United States and UK can find out more about the contents of a can of soup they buy than the contents of the can of worms they bought with the 2003 war in the Gulf.

The White House was, naturally, at the center of the operation:

One way to view how the US Government was organized to do the strategic communications effort before, during and after the war is to use the chart that was used by the Assistant Deputy Director for Information Operations. The center is the White House Office of Global Communications, the organization originally created by Karen Hughes as the Coalition Information Office. The White House is at the center of the strategic communications process"¦.

Handy chart:

And:

Inside the White House there was an Iraq Group that did policy direction and then the Office of Global Communications itself.

Membership of the White House Iraq Group:

So, in 2020 Bush's write-in vote for President was Condi Rice, the [x] Black [x] woman who helped run a domestic disinformation campaign for him in 2003, to sell the Iraq War to the American people. Isn't that"¦. sweet?

Of course, I was very naive at that point. I had come up as a Democrat, and my first real political engagement was the Clinton impeachment. Back in 2003, I was amazed to discover that there was a White House operation that was planting fake stories in the press "" and that I had been playing whackamole on them. At a higher level, I was disturbed that "Washington and London did not trust the peoples of their democracies to come to right decisions." Now it all seems perfectly normal, which is sad.

Torture at Abu Ghraib

There are a lot of images of our torture prison in Iraq, Abu Ghraib. This one ( via ) is not the most famous , but to me it is the most shocking:

What kind of country sets dogs on a naked prisoner? Well, my kind of country, apparently. (Later, I remember discussing politics with somebody who came from a country that might be considered less governed by the rule of law than my own, and they said: "Abu Ghraib. You have nothing to say." And they were right.)

For those who came in late, here's a snapshot (the detail of the story is in fact overwhelming, and I also have pity for the poor shlubs the brass tossed into that hellhole[3].) From the Los Angeles Times, " Few have faced consequences for abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq " (2015):

[A] 44-year-old Al Jazeera reporter named Salah Ejaili, said in a phone interview from Qatar that he was arrested in 2003 while covering an explosion in the Iraqi province of Diyala. He was held at Abu Ghraib for 48 days after six days in another facility, he said.

"Most of the pictures that came out in 2004, I saw that firsthand "" the human pyramid where men were stacked up naked on top of each other, people pulled around on leashes," he said in the interview, with one of his attorneys translating. "I used to hear loud screams during the torture sessions."

Ejaili says he was beaten, left naked and exposed to the elements for long periods, and left in solitary confinement, among other acts.

"When people look at others who are naked, they feel like they're animals in a zoo, in addition to being termed as criminals and as terrorists," he said. "That had a very strong psychological impact."

The plaintiffs also say they suffered electric shocks; deprivation of food, water and oxygen; sexual abuse; threats from dogs; beatings; and sensory deprivation.

Taha Yaseen Arraq Rashid, a laborer, says he was sexually abused by a woman while he was cuffed and shackled, and also that he was forced to watch a female prisoner's rape.

Ejaili said that his face was often covered during interrogations, making it difficult for him to identify those involved, but that he was able to notice that many of the interrogators who entered the facility wore civilian clothing.

His attorneys, citing military investigations into abuses at Abu Ghraib and other evidence, say the contractors took control of the prison and issued orders to uniformed military.

"Abu Ghraib was pretty chaotic," said Baher Azmy, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought suits against CACI and L-3 Services. "They were involved in a conspiracy with the military police to abuse our clients.""¦. Eleven U.S. soldiers were convicted in military trials of crimes related to the humiliation and abuse of the prisoners.

(So Abu Ghraib is a privatization story, too. Oddly, whoever signed the contract never ended up in court.) All this seemed pretty shocking then. But now we know that the Chicago Police Department ran a torture site at Homan Square while Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, was Mayor , so perhaps this is all perfectly normal too.

Warrantless Surveillance and the Destruction of the Fourth Amendment

Here is the wording of the Fourth Amendment :

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers , and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

If our legal system had the slightest shred of integrity, it would be obvious to the Courts, as it is to a six-old-child, that what we laughingly call our "personal" computers and cellphones contain "paper," not in the tediously literal sense of a physical material made from wood fibre, but in the sense of content . Bits and bytes are 20th Century paper, stored on silicon and hard disk platters. Of course a warrant should be needed to read what's on my phone, ffs.

That Fourth Amendment common sense did not prevail is IMNSHO due in large part to Bush's program of warrantless surveillance, put in place as part of the Global War on Terror. Here again, the complexity is overwhelming and took several years to unravel. I'm afraid I have to quote Wikipedia on this one :

A week after the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF), which inaugurated the "War on Terror". It later featured heavily in arguments over the NSA program.

Soon after the 9/11 attacks President Bush established the President's Surveillance Program. As part of the program, the Terrorist Surveillance Program was established pursuant to an executive order that authorized the NSA to surveil certain telephone calls without obtaining a warrant (see 50 U.S.C. § 1802 50 U.S.C. § 1809). The complete details of the executive order are not public, but according to administration statements, the authorization covers communication originating overseas from or to a person suspected of having links to terrorist organizations or their affiliates even when the other party to the call is within the US.

In October 2001, Congress passed the Patriot Act, which granted the administration broad powers to fight terrorism. The Bush administration used these powers to bypass the FISC and directed the NSA to spy directly on al-Qaeda via a new NSA electronic surveillance program. Reports at the time indicate that an "apparently accidental" "glitch" resulted in the interception of communications that were between two U.S. parties. This act was challenged by multiple groups, including Congress, as unconstitutional.

The precise scope of the program remains secret, but the NSA was provided total, unsupervised access to all fiber-optic communications between the nation's largest telecommunication companies' major interconnected locations, encompassing phone conversations, email, Internet activity, text messages and corporate private network traffic .

Of course, all this is perfectly normal today. So much for the Fourth Amendment, good job. (You will note that the telcos had to be in on it; amusingly, the CEO of Qwest, the only telco that refused to participate, was charged and convicted of insider trading, good job again.) The legal aspects of all this are insanely complex, but as you see from my introduction, they should be simple.

Conclusion

Here's a video of the Iraqi (now in Parliament) who threw shoes at Bush (who got off lightly, all things considered):

https://www.youtube.com/embed/OM3Z_Kskl_U

We should all be throwing shoes at Bush, seriously if not literally. We should not be accepting candy from him. We should not be treating him as an elder statesman. Or a "partner in crime." We should not be admiring his paintings. Bush ran a bad, bad, bad administration and we are living with the consequences of his badness today. Bush is a bad man. We are ruled by bad people. Tomorrow, Obama!

NOTES

[1] Indeed.

[2] For example, I vividly remember playing whack-a-mole as a blogger with the following WMD stories: Drones, weapons labs, WMD cluster bombs, Scuds, nuclear materials from Niger, aluminum tubes, and dirty bombs. They one and all fell apart on close inspection. And they were only a small part of the operation, as Gardiner shows in detail.

[3] My personal speculation is that Dick Cheney had a direct feed from the Abu Ghraib torture chambers to the White House, and watched the proceedings live. Some of the soldiers burned images of torture onto CDs as trophies, and the prison also had a server, whose connectivity was very conveniently not revealed by the judge in a lawsuit I dimly remember being brought in Germany. So it goes.


flora , April 25, 2021 at 6:46 pm

Does anyone believe that W, son of H. W. Bush, H. W. son of Senator Prescott Bush, would have been been pres without that familial lineage and its important govt connections? The pity is W wasn't smart enough to grasp world politics and the US's importance as an accepted fulcrum in same beyond his momentary wants. imo. Brent Scowcroft and others warned him off his vain pursuits. The word "squander" come to mind, though I wish it did not.

flora , April 25, 2021 at 7:43 pm

See for example Kevin Phillips' book American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush . ( Kevin Phillips is a great modernist American historian, imo, who saw the rise of Nixon before anyone else.)

Teejay , April 27, 2021 at 10:16 am

" saw the rise of Nixon"? Phillips worked on the '68 campaign.

JTMcPhee , April 25, 2021 at 8:12 pm

Don't deny W his agency. As I followed the horrors, from Vietnam to Iraq to Syria to Central America and elsewhere, the full list that was visible anyway, of the W regime, it sure seemed clear to me that W played the bumbling yuk very well.

He did what he set out to do, no doubt with careful guidance from that sh!t of a father (magically turned into a laid-in-state "statesman") and mother-of-string-of-pearls, and of course Cheney and the rest of the corpo-gov policy gang.

The Consent Manufacturers are whitewashing an evil man and his slicker but equally evil successor and his glamorous spouse.

Helluva job, Georgie! Full marks for kicking the world a long way down a dark road.

anon y'mouse , April 26, 2021 at 12:24 pm

the dumb cluck thing was mostly an act. he was deliberately talking that way not only to paint himself as stupid, but also because those in power assume we must be spoken to as children (they've studied president speeches since JFK have decreased from high school level to 6th grade in complexity, word usage etc).

see Pelosi's daughter's film of his campaign trail. He's no Angel Merkel, but sly enough for politics in this country and most third world corruptocracies.

In our kayfabe duoparty system, it also gave the "opposing" side the "W is a Chimp" talking point to harp on (dress rehearsal for the same stuff against tRUMP).

Tom Stone , April 25, 2021 at 6:49 pm

Abu Ghraib was not an anomaly, Con Son Island served the same purpose during the Vietnam War. When I was young I was proud to be an American Citizen, we had the Bill of Rights, the Military was controlled by Civilians and their oath was to defend the Constitution from "All Enemies Foreign and Domestic.". I have been horrified, ashamed and deeply saddened by what has happened in the US over the last half Century or so.
And it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

ambrit , April 25, 2021 at 7:00 pm

You actually "˜blogged' back when we had to use punch cards to program our PCs? How oh how did you clamber on up out of "the Well" so many times a week? I am somewhat convinced that the Hollerith Cards Protocol was the origin of the Twitter 140 character limit.

I also "lived through" the "˜Reign of "W""˜ and see it as a Time of Prophecy. Most of the things we are now staring down the barrel of were effectuated then.

I may be foilly, (may be? who am I kidding,) but I view the 2000 election as a major turning point of American history.

albrt , April 25, 2021 at 7:20 pm

I view the 2008 election as the major failing-to-turn-back-when-we-had-the-chance point. Obama could have undone Bush's worst policies, but instead he cemented them into place forever.

Our elites are both stupid and evil, but Bush is more stupid and Obama is more evil.

drumlin woodchuckles , April 26, 2021 at 12:08 am

So was the 1963 " election at Dealey Plaza". Very pivotal.

Susan the other , April 26, 2021 at 1:56 pm

I go with JFK's assassination too. But little George is a close second.

Paul Whalen , April 26, 2021 at 6:42 am

you are 40 years off the mark-It was Reagan who's brand of avuncular fascism, celebrating stupidity as a virtue who paved the way.

Jason , April 26, 2021 at 6:59 am

All the pomp and circumstance surrounding the personage of the President serves to conceal the people behind the scenes who vetted and groomed said president, and actively advise him while in office. It's in this way that a Jimmy Carter may be viewed as a gentle soul so far as presidents go, but he was actually vetted by Brzezinski on behalf of the CFR goons. Once in office he was then advised by Brzezinski and Volcker, among other assorted lunatics. And he gladly took their advice the entire time. That's how he came to be president in the first place. And so it goes.

Ashburn , April 26, 2021 at 4:29 pm

albrt: I agree with your take. Obama campaigned as an anti-war candidate (at least wrt Iraq). He then proceeded to "˜surge' into Afghanistan and added Libya, Syria, and Yemen, to the regime change mix. Never a thought given to prosecuting the war criminals: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Tenet, Feith, Wolfowitz, Powell, et al; much less even consider a truth and reconciliation commission.

Obama was equally complicit in this never ending horror show and, I am hopeful, history will hold him equally accountable.

km , April 25, 2021 at 7:19 pm

Is it not written that Margaret Thatcher's true legacy was Tony Blair? If that is true, then the true legacy of Dubya is Obama.

Tom Doak , April 25, 2021 at 7:43 pm

That gives W too much credit. Obama continued the legacy of Cheney.

John Wright , April 25, 2021 at 9:58 pm

Could you explain your view that Obama and Trump are "worse than that" (Bush-Cheney).?

As far as harm that George W. Bush did and launched (illegal/immoral wars, domestic surveillance, tax cuts for the wealthy"¦.) Bush should take the award.

Obama did push for military action in Libya, but at least held back from Syria.

The administrations after Bush "kicked the can down the road" but he initiated the events they simply continued. And Trump did attempt to pull troops back from Bush initiated wars. How is Trump worse than Bush? What are your metrics?

drumlin woodchuckles , April 25, 2021 at 10:04 pm

I am just a commenter here, but I would say that . . .

When Obama deliberately and with malice aforethought turned all the admitted (and in fact proudly self-avowed) war-criminals and criminals-against humanity loose, free and clear under "look forward not back", he routinised and permanentized the up-to-that-very-minute irregular and extra-constitutional novel methods of governance and practice which the Cheney-Bush Administration had pioneered. Obama deliberately made torture, aggressive war, etc. "legal" when America does it and "permanent" as long as America is strong enough to keep doing it.

He did some other things like that which I don't have time to mention right now. Maybe others will beat me to it.

Most of all, by slickly conning or permitting to self-con numbers of people about "hope and change" to come from an Obama Administration, he destroyed all hope of hope. He destroyed hope itself. Hope is not a "thing" any more in this country, thanks to Obama.

He may also have destroyed black politicians' dreams of becoming America's " Second Black President" for several decades to come. Been there, done that. Never Again. But since I am not Black, that is not my problem. That is something Black America can thank Obama for, if they decide to wake up to the fact of that reality.

Of course , if the Evil Countess Draculamala becomes President after Biden, then I guess I will be proven wrong about that particular observation.

tegnost , April 25, 2021 at 10:47 pm

Bush was the set up guy, Obama was the closer

norm de plume , April 26, 2021 at 6:51 am

The Greatest Disappointment in History. No-one else comes close, in terms of the sheer numbers of people globally who he let down. The Bait and Switch King, The Great Betrayer. After the nightmare of Bush we got him and his "˜eloquence', pulling the wool over the dazzled sheeple's eyes while he entrenched the 1% and the neocon MI complex, his paymasters, and sponsors for his entry into the overclass.

Last, does any single person with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton, bear so much responsibility for the election of Trump?

quackery , April 26, 2021 at 7:57 am

When Obama campaigned for president he claimed he wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons. Instead, he upgraded the nuclear arsenal.

Mr Grumpy , April 26, 2021 at 10:28 am

It is ironic that the far right views Obama as the antichrist but they benefited from all of his policies.

Cat Burglar , April 26, 2021 at 11:19 am

Remember that Obama voted in favor of FISAA, the bill that immunized Bush and his flunkies from prosecution for their felony FISA violations, as a senator, not long before the presidential election. It was impossible to make myself vote for him after that.

Hotei , April 25, 2021 at 11:53 pm

Excellent documentation of that lineage here: http://www.obamatheconservative.com/

Norm Norton , April 26, 2021 at 11:14 am

"Is it not written that Margaret Thatcher's true legacy was Tony Blair?" If that is true, then the true legacy of Dubya is Obama."

And for Obama, Trump!

upstater , April 25, 2021 at 7:42 pm

Lambert, you forgot this one" Biden presents Liberty Medal to George and Laura Bush Instead of a war crimes trial at the Hague, Biden gave him a (family bloging) medal!

Jason , April 25, 2021 at 7:51 pm

Thanks Lambert. I'd add that the intelligence being sent to the "White House Iraq Group" was being manufactured by the Office of Special Plans (OSP) which was set up and run by Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz. Following Feith's history and connections alone is a fruitful endeavor for those so inclined.

Among other things, Feith co-authored, along with Richard Perle and David Wurmser, the A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing the Realm paper prepared for the prime minister of a certain foreign country. This is back in 1996. Around the same time the PNAC boys were formed by Kagan and Kristol and started selling the same policy prescriptions vis a vis Iraq to the pols and public here.

Feith was also fired from the NSC back in the early 80's for passing classified information to some little country. Fast forward to his OSP days and, lo and behold, his employee Larry Franklin is convicted of the same thing, along with Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman of AIPAC.

That's just a taste of the malfeasance.

John , April 25, 2021 at 8:26 pm

I guess sometimes people need to be reminded that water is wet. The Buddhists say that ignorance is the root poison. True dat. Especially in Amrika.

JTMcPhee , April 25, 2021 at 8:56 pm

This stuff has gone on forever. What amount of ventilation is needed to blow this kind of dung out of the Augean stables of geopolitics? Not much chance of that anyway, given all the incentives and and interests"

Is it luck that Putin and Xi might be a little less monstrous?

Elizabeth , April 25, 2021 at 10:20 pm

It's really sickening to see George W being "rehabilitated" and made to look like some kind of a senior statesman, when he should be hauled off to the Hague to spend the rest of his life in prison for war crimes. For me, his election in 2000 was mostly the beginning of the end of the rule of law in this country. As a result, the U.S. has Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, in addition to all the other events mentioned, and don't forget he tried to privatize Social Security.

His eight years as president, for me, was a horror show. What really bothers me is that he got away with all of it "" and now he's hailed as an eminence gris. I can't help but think that his rehabilitation is to remind us all of how bad Orange Man was "" Obama was just as bad because he cemented everything W did "" and more.

Thanks for the horrible memories.

Joe Hill , April 25, 2021 at 11:02 pm

I understand you disagree with the policies of Mr Bush, but war crimes?

Please describe what charges would be brought against him if you were to prosecute at a war crimes tribunal.

Yves Smith , April 26, 2021 at 3:23 am

That is an assignment, which is a violation of our written site Policies. This applies to reader comments when you could easily find the answer in less than 30 seconds on Google rather than being a jerk and challenging a reader (or even worse, me derivatively) on bogus grounds.

https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/28000/amr510972011en.pdf

Robert Gray , April 26, 2021 at 1:57 am

> For me, [W's] election in 2000 was mostly the beginning of the end of the rule of law in this country.

At this moment I'm writing it is still early days for this thread: there are only 24 comments. In these comments are named many bad people. However, one name that does not (yet) appear is "˜Clinton'. W was a monster as president (and likely remains a monster as a human being) but surely Billy Jeff needn't yield to him in his contempt for the rule of law.

Yves Smith , April 26, 2021 at 2:29 am

I loathe Bill Clinton but nothing he did approaches the Iraq War in the level of damage to the US and many foreign countries"¦.starting with Iraq.

Robert Gray , April 26, 2021 at 3:52 am

Quite right, of course. My comment was specifically in regard to his disdain for and abuse of the rule, and rôle, of law in the American polity, e.g., his perjury > disbarment. Sort of like the famous photograph of Nelson Rockefeller who, while serving as VP, was captured giving the finger to a group of protestors; Clinton also oozed that kind of hubristic impunity.

Alex Cox , April 26, 2021 at 12:01 pm

Regarding Clinton, the damage he caused to his own country and the world was substantial. The destruction of Yugoslavia caused considerable mayhem "" in addition to bombing and breaking apart a sovereign nation, it enabled "liberals" to feel good about war again, and paved the way for the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc.

And the damage done by NAFTA was enormous "" in terms of leading to deaths of despair in both the US and Mexico I suspect NAFTA has a higher domestic "body count" than any of the subsequent forever wars.

anon y'mouse , April 26, 2021 at 12:33 pm

and welfare "reform", the crime bill. Talk of privatizing SSI made commonplace acceptable. Repeal of Glass Steagall. They were going to do to healthcare what oBLAM succeeded at, 20 years before him but got sidelined by Lewinsky's blue dress stains. Clintoon is a criminal and so is his spouse, and he did his share of damage everywhere. people who think otherwise might be looking back with nostalgia on a simpler (pre 9.11) time.

little known covered up crime from his ARK days is the selling of HIV tainted blood (taken from prisoners) to Canada, among other things.

yet another who had credible rape allegations. which damages our image at home and abroad.

tegnost , April 25, 2021 at 10:36 pm

Total Information Awareness https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/preemption/tia.html

Adm. John Poindexter"¦ https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/08/us/poindexter-is-found-guilty-of-all-5-criminal-charges-for-iran-contra-cover-up.html
yep, that one"¦

drumlin woodchuckles , April 26, 2021 at 12:14 am

I read that for the very briefest time, somebody or other was selling Total Information Awareness memorabilia with the Total Information Awareness symbol on it. I wish I had thought to buy a Total Information Awareness mug.

I imagine knockoffs and parodies exist, but I am not sure the real thing is findable any more.

Darius , April 25, 2021 at 10:43 pm

After Dennis Rader, the Wichita serial killer, murdered someone, the cops always found his semen on the floor next to the mutilated victim. He got sexual pleasure out of gruesome murder. This is how I always pictured Cheney's attitude toward torture. Well. I tried not to actually picture it.

Kevin Carhart , April 26, 2021 at 12:06 am

Bush also whipped votes for Kavanaugh, during the cuddly years.

https://theweek.com/speedreads/798796/george-w-bush-reportedly-working-phones-kavanaugh

Colonel Smithers , April 26, 2021 at 4:26 am

Thank you, KC.

Kavanaugh accompanied Bush fils on his state visit to the UK. Even then, Kavanaugh was being touted as a future Supreme Court judge.

The Rev Kev , April 26, 2021 at 3:48 am

Talk about your target rich environment. Where do you even start? Where do you begin? A serial business failure, draft dodger, military deserter, drunk driver "" and all that was before he became President. A man so incurious about the world "" just like Trump "" that he never even owned a passport until he actually became President and who never knew that Islam (prior to the Iraq invasion) , for example, was just not one religion but was divided into Sunni and Shia in the same way Christianity is divided into "" mostly "" Protestant and Catholics. But to me he was always the "Frat Boy President". His family always protected him from his many flaws and he never had to grow up like his father had to in WW2. Even as President he never grew into the job, again, just like Trump.

Lambert gives a few good reminders but there were many others and these are just the top of my head. He cared little for the US Constitution and called it nothing more than a goddamn scrap of paper. He officially made the US a torture nation, not only by pretending that US laws did not apply in Guantanamo bay but also aboard US Navy ships for which laws definitely did apply. As part of a movement to make America an oil-fueled hegemony for the 21st century, he invaded Iraq with the firm intention on invading Iran next so that Washington would have a firm grip on the fuel pump of the world. As he said "" "America is addicted to oil." He dropped the ball on 9/11 through over-obsessing on Iraq and in the immediate aftermath sent jets around the country "" when all jets were grounded "" to fly Saudi royalty back to Saudi Arabia before the FBI could interrogate them about all their knowledge of the attack. All this to hide his very deep connections with the Saudis.

I could go on for several more paragraphs but what would be the point? For the neocons he was a great fronts-man to be followed by a even greater one. I sometimes think that if Biden was a "˜real' Republican, then he would have been a great vice-president for Bush. And now the establishment and their trained seals in the media are trying to make him out as "America's Favourite Uncle" or something so that when he dies, he will have the same sort of funeral as John McCain did. And I predict that tens of thousands of veterans around the country will then raise their glasses to him "" and then pour the contents on the ground.

Colonel Smithers , April 26, 2021 at 4:22 am

Thank you, Lambert.

W's rehab continues in the UK MSM, not just the Independent. The worst offenders are probably the Grauniad and Channel 4, both Blairite.

The rehab mirrored the rise of Trump. His lack of interest in war upset these preachy imperialists.

Using Michelle Obama to facilitate the rehab brought id pol into the equation and made it easier. It was remarkable how often the above photo is used in the neo liberal and neo con media.

The Rev Kev , April 26, 2021 at 5:43 am

Thank you, Colonel. That foto is remarkable and I suspect that the origins for the idea for it may lay on the other side of the pond as it seemed so familiar-

https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/celebrity/article/3110070/netflixs-crown-shows-how-princess-diana-chose-her-own

drumlin woodchuckles , April 26, 2021 at 5:36 am

There is a blog called Rigorous Intuition 2.0. Many of its blogposts are about the Bush period and Bush related subjects and events. ( Many others are not). The sections on 9/11, Iraq, and Katrina probably have the highest percent of Bush-related blogposts, in case one is interested.

norm de plume , April 26, 2021 at 7:26 am

Jeff Wells wrote some interesting essays in the Bush years, though many of his connections were a bit too far out, even for me. He had some striking collateral evidence for his concept of High Weirdness in high places "" sex abuse, torture and magick figuring prominently, juxtaposed with political skulduggery, and financial crimes and misdemeanours. The Gannon/Guckert affair, the Franklin ring and Gary Caradori were the sort of thing that laced his quite penetrating analyses of events. Facts were jumping off points for speculations, but given our lack of facts his imaginings were a nourishment of sorts, though often very troubling indeed.

Tony massey , April 26, 2021 at 1:58 pm

Who needs to make shit up during those years?
The facts"¦the shit he actually did, was glossed over or simply forgotten.
If shit was made up about his sorry ass i didn't bother checking, Sir.
I just assumed it was true.
Bushies destroyed the country. If there's a country in 100 years they'll be paying for those years.
And then came obama and big Mike

jackiebass63 , April 26, 2021 at 6:14 am

People have been brain washed by the glossed over history of the US they are taught. It gives people a false belief of our past. The phrase American Exceptionalism comes to mind. It is a myth. The real history is out there but you have to search it out. From it's beginning continuing to today our government is responsible for bad behavior.

Some scholars like Noam Chomsky write about our real history. Unfortunately most people don't read this material. They are content with our glossed over shining star version of US history that unfortunately continues to be taught in our educational system , starting in elementary school continuing through a 4 year college education. Our system of government is so corrupted , I don't believe it can be fixed.

Jason , April 26, 2021 at 7:17 am

Arguing over degrees of presidential evil. Perfect.

farmboy , April 26, 2021 at 8:03 am

Nixon was rehabbed so he could open China, Kissinger got to keep his mantle. W portrayed by Josh Brolin pretty good take. Nice to see dunking on GW, but the cycle of rehabilitation is due. The question is can he do some good or is there too much mud on his boots. Can't see W as a new Jimmy Carter. Glossing over history begins the moment it's made. Makes me miss LBJ

Carlos Stoll , April 26, 2021 at 9:23 am

Between 1998 and 2000, under the rule of Saddam Hussein, about 1000 prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison were executed and buried in mass graves. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_prison How many Abu Ghraib prisoners did the US army execute?

The Rev Kev , April 26, 2021 at 9:48 am

Tell me again how many Iraqis were killed by the US Army because they were doing their own version of "Red Dawn"? And that tens if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would still be alive if Saddam was simply left in place. Here is a video to watch while you have a little think about it-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfvFpT-iypw (17:46 mins)

Phil in KC , April 27, 2021 at 8:02 am

We Americans have this thing called exceptionalism which among other things creates the idea that our government is more virtuous than others. It's a useful idea in that it calls us to be different and better than the average nation, and certainly different and better than a cruel dictatorship. But it's also a dangerous idea because too many of us actually believe it to be true. Our atrocities are different in kind, but the scale is the same.

We are not at Hitler/Stalin/Mao standards ""yet"" but who's to say that could never happen here? One of the bafflements of the 20th century was how a civilized people descended into the dark barbarism of Nazi Germany.

Deschain , April 26, 2021 at 10:55 am

"(I am omitting many, many others, including Hurricane Katrina, the Plame Affair, Medicare Part D, the Cheney Energy Task Force, that time Dick Cheney shot an old man in the face, Bush's missing Texas Air National Guard records, Bush gaslighting the 2004 Republican National Convention with terror alerts, and on and on and on. An I didn't even get to 9/11, "You've covered your ass," WMDs, and the AUMF. Sorry. It's exhausting.)"

You left out the housing bubble and the GFC!

Mr Grumpy , April 26, 2021 at 10:58 am

Agree with all the criticism of Bush, Cheney, Obama. On a lighter note, my father-in-law is a high tech oil prospector in W Texas, much of it in Midland, overlapping in time with W. Both members of the Petroleum Club (been there once, very stuffy) and worked out at the same gym. Naturally, my wife asked if he had ever seen W naked. Her dad wouldn't answer, but did turn beet red. We take this as confirmation.

Phil in KC , April 26, 2021 at 12:24 pm

Noam Chomsky observed some thirty years ago that if the Nuremberg standards were applied to all the post-war American Presidents, then all of them would hang. Chomsky could not have imagined the future sequence of presidents from that point forward, but certainly they did not break the chain of criminality. My point is that Bush is not unique in the type of crimes, just the enormity of them. But I also believe he set new standards (lower) for shamelessness. Remember his smirk?

But also remember Obama joking about killing people.

John Wright , April 26, 2021 at 3:25 pm

Remember the comedy skit in which GWB "looked" for Iraq WMD's in the Oval office as part of the White House Correspondent's dinner?

Anyone with any sense of decency would have refused to do this skit, but Bush apparently followed his handlers' advice to get some laughs. That the USA was led by someone of such limited talent for 8 years speaks volumes. Years ago, a New York Times reader wrote that Hillary Clinton is a "well-connected mediocrity".

That comment may be true for ALL of the recent political candidates, from both parties, for a great many years.

LBJ was definitely not mediocre (civil rights/war on poverty), and would be viewed far more favorably, maybe as great, if he had pulled out of Vietnam rather than escalating. Carter in his post presidency has much to recommend. Post presidency Bush is painting his portraits rather than having any retrospective regrets for the harm he did.

Susan the other , April 26, 2021 at 2:27 pm

We have such a dismal record. Little George was the most audacious of all our criminal presidents, but he has plenty of company. My question is now, looking back, why was the USA incapable of organizing a peaceful world after WW2? I start there. 1945. How did our ideology become so inept? And everything I have read about our failures over the years is contrasted with what might have been. We have operated under a system that could not function without extraction. There was always a sell-by date on the cover; one that we tried to ignore. There's no doubt in my mind that it has finally failed completely. Ignominiously. But we have also learned and come to admit certain realities. The most important one is that there can be no more war; civilization cannot survive a modern war. So, ironically, our advanced warfare might well bring a peaceful world without world war. And our advances in science (mostly militarily inspired) will help us now survive.

Sue inSoCal , April 26, 2021 at 4:56 pm

Lambert, thank you for this piece. I won't repeat what others have opined. I've had a real problem with Michelle Obama being the rehabilitation cheerleader leader for Dubya. Imho, we lost all of our rights under the odious Patriot Act, which was pre-written. Russ Feingold was the lone Senate holdout. And I recall Byrd's ire and rant at the tome they had no time to read, but he caved. It went downhill from there. The links below, (apologies, I don't know how to fashion a hot link..) are about Bush's crimes and Amnesty International's exhaustive investigation of them.

I don't have the citation anymore, and I've knocked myself out trying to find it. But there exists a UN human rights commission memo suggesting (?) Obama to do a number of things: hold Bushco accountable for war crimes etc, as well as address what is termed as "systematic racism" in incarceration (and more). I had printed it out a number of years ago and can't find it.)
I'm not buying that Bush fils is any elder statesman. He and his cronies used torture, extreme rendition, hired mercenaries and completely destabilized the Middle East. We still don't have our rights back, and I'm betting the Patriot Act will never go away. (Nor will data mining under the guise of "targeted advertising" and sold to..the military.) The NYT's link is how Obama elected to rug sweep and just move ahead! I look forward to Lambert's take on the Obama administration..

https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/28000/amr510972011en.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/us/politics/12inquire.html

techpioneer , April 26, 2021 at 4:56 pm

Finally, someone has the courage to point out the obvious. An excellent article, well researched and nicely nuanced.

I'm disappointed with the remedy proposed, however. Throwing shoes is not enough; it's merely symbolic. The potential crimes committed here, including lying us into war, the extent of torture committed, and practices that violate international military norms and intelligence require a transparent and impartial investigation. One possible venue is the International Criminal Courts in the Hague.

I've been told many times that sunlight can be an effective deterrent against disease.

[Mar 04, 2021] Not only is America's crisis systemic, but its elites are uncultured , badly educated and mesmerized by decades of their own propaganda, which in the end, they accept as a reality

Mar 04, 2021 | www.unz.com

Franz , says: March 2, 2021 at 5:35 am GMT • 2.8 days ago

I ordered this book when Paul Craig Roberts mentioned, and quoted from it, on February 14, 2021. I especially liked PCRs quote halfway through the essay:

The United States isn't a nation any longer . It is a collection of peoples without a country. A nation requires a unifying spirit of the people, and the United States has no such unifying spirit. Martyanov observes that there is nothing in common between a white WASP farm worker from Iowa, a Jewish lawyer from Manhattan, and a black rapper from the Bronx. They view the world, America and their place in it differently, and those visions are irreconcilable.

This has been obvious to some of us for decades. Worse yet, there is no mechanism or movement anyone can imagine that will keep the disintegration process in check. If anything, the elites are finding new and exciting ways to divide Americans further, and nobody is happier about it than the social media addicts who enjoy bigger and better rotten egg memes they can toss at the enemy de jour.

This is interesting too:

Not only is America's crisis systemic, but its elites are uncultured , badly educated and mesmerized by decades of their own propaganda, which in the end, they accept as a reality

I do hope the author means "uncultured" in the pejorative, insulting, Russian sense of the word. They are the "elites" who are revolting, and they are too dumb to know they are kicking the floorboards out from under their feet.

RichardTaylor , says: March 2, 2021 at 5:52 am GMT • 2.8 days ago

"People of the United States, your ruling elites are lying to you just like the chamber orchestra on the Titanic that was playing music while the supposedly "unsinkable" Titanic was sinking!".

The difference is, the actual American ship was just fine and hadn't hit an iceberg. Rather, we were being deliberately sunk by a bunch of loons who were punching holes in the hull of the ship!

But don't go thinking the whole shebang is about to go under. This has been the dream of preppers on the right, and various anti-American groups on the other side, for generations. The Big Collapse, in which the whole North American continent, with all its power and wealth, just vanishes, is a pipe dream.

Mulga Mumblebrain , says: March 2, 2021 at 6:10 am GMT • 2.8 days ago

The most immediate causes of US collapse are, in my opinion, the rise of the predator, parasite, class to a position of total dominance while the proles have sunk into the shite, and the rise of China...

[Jan 11, 2021] Clinton broke Reagan's promise and expanded NATO eastwards, he dismantled the Glass Steagall act which led to a malignant hypergrowth of the banking sector, and he was the who introduced the telecommunications act in 1996 which allowed for the concentration of corporate media in the hands of the few.

Notable quotes:
"... Clinton hollowed out his own country in order to completely remove all constraints (financial, mediatic, military). He doesn't get called out for it nearly enough in my opinion. ..."
"... Clinton was a particular type of low-class, sybaritic evil but he didn't have a strong USSR to contend with. Instead he had the drunken traitor Yeltsin dance for him like a bedraggled starving bear. ..."
Jan 11, 2021 | thesaker.is

Serbian girl on January 08, 2021 , · at 7:42 am EST/EDT

"So when was this golden age? Under Reagan? Well, this is when the dismantling of the inner core of the empire began."

Beg to differ. Reagan understood how to administer the US empire. He knew the risks of overstretching it. He made the promise to the Soviets not to encroach on their sphere of influence. He defended the high interest rates which strengthened the USD and which kept the banking sector in check.

All of that went to hell with Bill Clinton:
He broke Reagan's promise and expanded NATO eastwards, he dismantled the Glass Steagall act which led to a malignant hypergrowth of the banking sector, and he was the who introduced the telecommunications act in 1996 which allowed for the concentration of corporate media in the hands of the few.

Bill Clinton basically turned the empire into a rapacious and uncontrollable animal. (Funny how noone here is talking about imprisoning him )

There is a silver lining to Bill C's blood-soaked administration. It was while he was in power, that the Russians finally awoke from their 1990s stupor. They began to understand the mortal danger they were facing, and they patriotically chose Putin to lead them in 1999.

Ken Leslie on January 08, 2021 , · at 8:05 am EST/EDT

– Reagan was a disgusting Russophobe and Serbophobe who proclaimed 10th April (the founding of the Independent State of Croatia) a national holiday in California as governor. Not surprising given that his was the most RC government ever – he also colluded with the Polish anti-Christ to destroy the USSR. In the process he encouraged the German Nazis (see visit to Bitburg) who then destroyed Yugoslavia.

– He brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust that was prevented by a vigilant Russian officer (in 1983?).

– He turbo-charged the power of corporations and decimated social structures and the rights of the working class (the Americans are paying for this now).

This is not to say that the scumbag Clinton was good – after all he was trained at Georgetown – that seminary for American murderers.

Serbian girl on January 08, 2021 , · at 9:33 am EST/EDT

Thanks for this Ken. Good to know who Reagan really was!

To get back to your point about the "dismantling of the empire" Reagan, for all his personal awfulness and recklessness (and subversiveness) was still more restrained than Clinton. Clinton hollowed out his own country in order to completely remove all constraints (financial, mediatic, military). He doesn't get called out for it nearly enough in my opinion. I guess it's personal, after what he did to us.

Ken Leslie on January 08, 2021 , · at 11:07 am EST/EDT

Oh, I have nothing but hatred and contempt for that criminal, trust me.

Ken Leslie on January 08, 2021 , · at 11:49 am EST/EDT

Clinton was a particular type of low-class, sybaritic evil but he didn't have a strong USSR to contend with. Instead he had the drunken traitor Yeltsin dance for him like a bedraggled starving bear. Never again!

[Jan 02, 2021] Increasing Exposure of Color Revolution Against Trump

Sep 16, 2020 | larouchepub.com

On Sept. 15, Tucker Carlson brought onto his show Darren Beattie, a former Trump speechwriter. Beattie explained to viewers that the same networks promoting color revolutions overseas are now training their sights on President Donald Trump: "What's unfolding before our eyes is a very specific type of coup called the 'color revolution.' "

Similarly, Revolver website posted a multi-part series on the color revolution against Trump, with its Sept. 9 installment taking up Norm Eisen, one of the participants in the Transition Integrity Project's war gaming of the 2020 election. Eisen was Obama's White House ethics czar and was hired by the Democratic leadership of the House Judiciary Committee in 2019, where he prepared ten articles of impeachment against Trump a month before Pelosi announced an official impeachment inquiry. He himself took part in the impeachment proceedings.

But his involvement in ousting Trump began even before the nomination. Eisen ran Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), financed amongst others by George Soros's Open Society, which partnered with David Brock to put forward a blueprint -- issued before the inauguration -- for attacking Trump through such means as policing social media, getting tech companies to censor content (media platforms ... will no longer uncritically and without consequence host and enrich fake news), impeachment itself, fake news (a steady flow of damaging information, new revelations), and other techniques.

Eisen co-authored "The Democracy Playbook: Preventing and Reversing Democratic Backsliding," a Brookings guide to the perplexed seeking to institute policies through frankly undemocratic means. Eisen named Gene Sharp's From Dictatorship to Democracy as an inspiration for his document.

Consider another color revolutionary. Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia and a supporter of the Ukraine color revolution, realized that "color revolution" was taking on a negative connotation. In August he tweeted a revised nomenclature: "Autocrats have demonized the phrase, 'color revolutions.' (& revolution generally has a negative connotation for many.) Instead, I use the term 'democratic breakthroughs.' "

What kind of democratic breakthrough? Consider McFaul's Sept. 4 tweet:

"Trump has lost the Intelligence Community. He has lost the State Department. He has lost the military. How can he continue to serve as our Commander in Chief?"

Astute readers will note that neither the IC, State Department, or military appoint the President, who takes that office by means that are actually democratic -- an election!

Eisen also heads the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group, whose website announces that it is "a bipartisan and transatlantic platform for discourse and coordination to address democratic backsliding in Europe." What is "democratic backsliding"? Naturally, it's when the plebes get uppity and vote for their favored candidates, as in, you know, elections.

[Jan 02, 2021] Russiagate has dual purpose: depose Trumpvia color revolution and to initiate a new McCarthyism. Both goals were evnetually achieved

So neoliberals managed to take revenge for their 2016 fiasco...
May 10, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jackrabbit , May 10 2020 16:52 utc | 14

Norwegian @ May10 14:22
Russiagate has been an obvious coup attempt from the beginning

jinn @ May 10 15:20

That is not at all obvious... you have to be extremely gullible to believe any of it is real.

IMO Russiagate was about initiating a new McCarthyism.

And Trump's Deep State selection was about re-igniting nationalism in response to the Russia-China alliance which was recognized as a threat to the Empire in 2013-2014 with Russia's blocking of US action in Syria and Ukraine.

I've been saying this for years.

!!

jinn , May 10 2020 16:54 utc | 15
There was nothing mysterious about "Russiagate." It was a transparently false narrative designed, by the most incompetent election campaign team in history, to excuse their shocking inability to defeat one of the weakest and most discredited Presidential candidates there has ever been.
_________________________________________________

Yeah that is what we are asked to believe, but the problem is how did this incompetent election campaign keep the ball in the air for more than 2 years?

They did not invent the Flynn lied to FBI story and they did not invent the Trump obstructed justice stories. And they did not create any of the silly stories about contacts with Russians. There is no doubt the Hillary supporters sat on the sidelines and cheered all the nonsense that was unfolding in the Russiagate narrative but the storyline that they were cheering for was all created by Trump and his lackeys.


[Dec 29, 2020] Surprising uniformity of opinions about Steele dossier following by surprising uniformity of actions

Highly recommended!
Nov 28, 2020 | twitter.com

Commodore Allen Retweeted

C3
@C_3C_3
FBI knew the Dossier was FAKE
CIA knew the Dossier was FAKE
DOJ knew the Dossier was FAKE
ODNI knew the Dossier was FAKE
Media knew the Dossier was FAKE
Mueller knew the Dossier was FAKE
Congress knew the Dossier was FAKE
BO Admin knew the Dossier was FAKE

They were all in on it

[Dec 20, 2020] The American ruling class has failed on pretty much every issue of significance for the past several decades

Neoliberals as an occupying force for the country
Notable quotes:
"... The bottom line is the true enemies of the American people are no foreign nation or adversary---the true enemy of the American people are the people who control America. ..."
"... This way of thinking points to a dilemma for the American ruling class. Contrary to a lot of the rhetoric you hear, much of the American ruling class, including the "deep state" is actually quite anti-China. To fully account for this would take longer than I have here. But the nutshell intuitive explanation is that the ruling class, particularly Wall Street, was happy for the past several decades to enrich both themselves and China by destroying the American working class with policies such as "free-trade" and outsourcing. But in many ways the milk from that teat is no more, and now you have an American ruling class much more concerned about protecting their loot from a serious geopolitical competitor (China) than squeezing out the last few drops of milk from the "free trade." ..."
Dec 20, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Bemildred , Dec 19 2020 2:00 utc | 124

This is awesome, he nails the dilemma which our owners are confronted with;

I'll put it this way: It is not as though the American ruling class is intelligent, competent, and patriotic on most important matters and happens to have a glaring blind spot when it comes to appreciating the threat of China. If this were the case, it would make sense to emphasize the threat of China above all else.

But this is not the case. The American ruling class has failed on pretty much every issue of significance for the past several decades. If China were to disappear, they would simply be selling out the country to India, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, or some other country (in fact they are doing this just to a lesser extent).

Our ruling class has failed us on China because they have failed us on everything. For this reason I believe that there will be no serious, sound policy on China that benefits Americans until there is a legitimate ruling class in the United States. For this reason pointing fingers at the wickedness and danger of China is less useful than emphasizing the failure of the American ruling class. The bottom line is the true enemies of the American people are no foreign nation or adversary---the true enemy of the American people are the people who control America.

This way of thinking points to a dilemma for the American ruling class. Contrary to a lot of the rhetoric you hear, much of the American ruling class, including the "deep state" is actually quite anti-China. To fully account for this would take longer than I have here. But the nutshell intuitive explanation is that the ruling class, particularly Wall Street, was happy for the past several decades to enrich both themselves and China by destroying the American working class with policies such as "free-trade" and outsourcing. But in many ways the milk from that teat is no more, and now you have an American ruling class much more concerned about protecting their loot from a serious geopolitical competitor (China) than squeezing out the last few drops of milk from the "free trade."

The Zürich Interviews - Darren J. Beattie: If Only You Knew How Bad Things Really Are


Grieved , Dec 19 2020 3:12 utc | 129

@102 karlof1 - "By deliberately setting policy to inflate asset prices, the Fed has priced US labor out of a job, while as you report employers sought labor costs that allowed them to remain competitive."

I never heard it said so succinctly and truly as this before. That is what happened isn't it? The worker can't afford life anymore, in this country.

And if the worker can't afford the cost of living - who bears the cause of this, how follows the remedy of this, and what then comes next?

I really appreciate your point of view, which is the only point of view, which is that the designers of the economy, the governors of the economy, have placed the workers of the economy in a position that is simply just not tenable.

No wonder they strive to divide in order to rule - because they have over-reached through greed and killed the worker, who holds up the society.

How long can the worker flounder around blaming others before the spotlight must turn on the employer?

uncle tungsten , Dec 19 2020 3:12 utc | 130

Bemildred #115

You have to remember these people really do think they are better. They do think in class terms even if they avoid that rhetoric in public. The problem is they thought they could control China like they did Japan. That was dumb then and it looks even dumber now. You can see similar dumbness in their lack of grip on any realisitic view of Russia. Provincials really. Rich peasants.

Thank you, they certainly DO think in class terms ALWAYS. + Rich peasants is perfect :))

Thankfully they are blinded by hubris at the same time. The USA destroyed the Allende government in Chile in 1973. After the Nixon Kissinger visit to China in 1979 they assumed they could just pull a color revolution stunt when they deemed it to be the right time. Perhaps in their hubris they thought every Chinese worker would be infatuated with capitalism and growth.

They tested that out in the People Power colour (yellow) revolt in the Filipines in 1986 following a rigged election by Marcos. In 1989 only 16 years after China had been buoyed up with growth and development following the opening to USA capitalism, they tried out the same trick in Tienanmen square in China but those students were up against the ruling party of the entire nation - not the ruling class. BIG MISTAKE. The ruling party of China was solidly backed by the peasant and working class that was finally enjoying some meager prosperity and reward a mere 40 years after the Chinese Communist Party and their parents and grandparents had liberated China from 100 years of occupation, plunder, human and cultural rapine and colonial insult. Then in 2020 it was tried on again in Hong Kong. FAIL.

The hubris of the ruling class and its running dogs is pathetic.

We see the same with Pelosi and the ruling class in the Dimoratss today. They push Biden Harris to the fore, piss on the left and refuse to even hold a vote on Medicare for All in the middle of a pandemic. Meanwhile the USAi ruling class has its running dogs and hangers on bleating that "its wrong tactic, its premature, its whatever craven excuse to avoid exposing the ruling class for what they are - thieves, bereft of compassion, absent any sense of social justice, fakes lurking behind their class supposition.

They come here to the bar with their arrogant hubris, brimming with pointless information some even with emoji glitter stuck on their noses. Not a marxist or even a leftie among them. Still its class that matters and its the ruling class that we must break.

chu teh , Dec 19 2020 4:00 utc | 131

@102 karlof1 and Grieved | Dec 19 2020 3:12 utc | 129

I did not understand inflate-assets/suppress-workers and forgot to return to it to clear it up. Grieved sent me back to Karlof1. I just got it.

That viewpoint indeed explains method of operation to accomplish the results I observed. When Nixon was forced to default on Bretton Woods use of Gold Exchange Standard* [the USD is as good as gold], then printing fiat solved the problem [threat to US inventory of gold]....but printing fiat [no longer redeemable as a promise convert to gold] became the new problem [no way to extinguish the promises to redeem/pay].

So how to proceed? Aha! Steal from the workers; squeeze 'em, entertain and dazzle 'em!.. Such an elegant solution...slow, certain and hardly noticeable...like slow-boiling frogs...an on-going project as we blog.

Now I'll read Karlof1's link.

[Dec 06, 2020] Bill Clinton Couldn t Stay Away From Jeffrey Epstein, Visited Pedo Island According To Former Chief Aide

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Band said he had no idea about Epstein's sex crimes back then but got enough bad vibes that he advised Clinton to end the relationship. But Clinton continued to socialize with Epstein and take his money. In 2006 Epstein donated $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton made more than two dozen trips on Epstein's jet around this time, Epstein's flight logs show. In January 2003, according to Band, Clinton visited Epstein's private Caribbean island, Little St. James. Band said it was one of the few trips he declined to go on in his time with Clinton. - Vanity Fair ..."
"... Chelsea Clinton had a relationship with Epstein and his alleged co-conspirator in an underage sex trafficking ring, Ghislaine Maxwell. ..."
"... Chelsea had ties to Epstein and Maxwell, Band said; he showed me a photo of Bill and Chelsea posing with Epstein and Maxwell at the King of Morocco's wedding. Chelsea remained friends with Maxwell for years after the press revealed Maxwell was a close associate of Epstein's. For instance, Chelsea invited Maxwell to her 2010 wedding at the Brooke Astor estate in Rhinebeck, New York, after Epstein had pleaded guilty in Florida to procuring sex from a minor. - Vanity Fair ..."
"... "Ghislaine had access to yachts and nice homes. Chelsea needed that ," said Band. ..."
"... Thanks again to WikiLeaks, we also know that Band was soliciting donations for Clinton through his PR and investment firm, Teneo in an sordid example of "pay for play" which most of the mainstream media refused to cover - which he worried about in an email to John Podesta, saying: " If this story gets out, we are screwed ." ..."
"... In 2011, Band says he instructed Bill Clinton's staffers to ban Maxwell 'from all Clintonworld events' to try and drive a wedge between Chelsea and Ghislaine . ..."
Dec 04, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Bill Clinton's former top aide and Chelsea Clinton nemesis Doug Band has told Vanity Fair that former President Bill Clinton did visit Jeffrey Epstein's infamous "pedo island" in January 2003, and that he was unable to push Epstein out of Clinton's orbit since they flew to Africa together in 2002 aboard the the pedophile's (Epstein's) private 727, dubbed the "Lolita Express."

Band said he had no idea about Epstein's sex crimes back then but got enough bad vibes that he advised Clinton to end the relationship. But Clinton continued to socialize with Epstein and take his money. In 2006 Epstein donated $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton made more than two dozen trips on Epstein's jet around this time, Epstein's flight logs show. In January 2003, according to Band, Clinton visited Epstein's private Caribbean island, Little St. James. Band said it was one of the few trips he declined to go on in his time with Clinton. - Vanity Fair

Band - who revealed the Clinton Foundation's 'for-profit' activity and accused Chelsea Clinton of tapping Foundation funds to pay for her wedding (known only because of WikiLeaks) - also says Chelsea Clinton had a relationship with Epstein and his alleged co-conspirator in an underage sex trafficking ring, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Chelsea had ties to Epstein and Maxwell, Band said; he showed me a photo of Bill and Chelsea posing with Epstein and Maxwell at the King of Morocco's wedding. Chelsea remained friends with Maxwell for years after the press revealed Maxwell was a close associate of Epstein's. For instance, Chelsea invited Maxwell to her 2010 wedding at the Brooke Astor estate in Rhinebeck, New York, after Epstein had pleaded guilty in Florida to procuring sex from a minor. - Vanity Fair

"Ghislaine had access to yachts and nice homes. Chelsea needed that ," said Band.

Bill Clinton walks with Doug Band

Band notably created the now-defunct Clinton Global Initiative, which has helped to raise $74 billion for Clinton global charities, according to Newsmax . Thanks again to WikiLeaks, we also know that Band was soliciting donations for Clinton through his PR and investment firm, Teneo in an sordid example of "pay for play" which most of the mainstream media refused to cover - which he worried about in an email to John Podesta, saying: " If this story gets out, we are screwed ."

In response to Band's claims about Chelsea, a family spokesperson said that " Chelsea was on friendly terms with Maxwell because of a mutual friend (Gateway computer founder Ted Waitt) and only took one yacht trip with Maxwell in 2009: "It wasn't until 2015 that Chelsea became aware of the horrific allegations against Ghislaine Maxwell and she hopes that all the victims find justice."

In 2011, Band says he instructed Bill Clinton's staffers to ban Maxwell 'from all Clintonworld events' to try and drive a wedge between Chelsea and Ghislaine .

"I knew in telling everyone to stop including Ghislaine that Chelsea and her father would be very angry. It made it harder for them to justify being close to her," said Band.

[Nov 26, 2020] Big Lie that Won't Die- Russiagate Still Around by Stephen Lendman

Notable quotes:
"... If Trump's legal action against brazen election fraud to deny him a second term succeeds -- what's highly unlikely but possible -- will a phony DJT/Russia connection again make headline news? ..."
Nov 24, 2020 | www.globalresearch.ca

The scheme was cooked up by Obama/Biden regime Russophobes John Brennan, Hillary and the DNC -- to smear Russia and discredit Trump at the same time.

It aimed to maintain and escalate US hostility toward the Russian Federation – for its sovereign independence, advocacy for world peace, opposition to Washington's imperial agenda, and having foiled its aim to transform Syria into another US vassal state.

It also relates to Sino/Russian unity – representing the only obstacle to Washington's aim for unchallenged global dominance.

Probes by special counsel Robert Mueller, as well as House and Senate committees found no evidence of Russian US meddling.

Nor did the US intelligence community. Claims otherwise without corroborating evidence were and remain baseless.

In US criminal judicial proceedings, evidence beyond a reasonable doubt is required for convictions.

Without it, fairly and impartially adjudicated cases would be dismissed.

Time and again, Russia was falsely accused of US election meddling, notably in the run-up to Trump v. Hillary in 2016.

To this day, no credible evidence ever proved accusations because none exists.

The Russiagate hoax remains one of the most shameful political chapters in US history, exceeding the worst of McCarthyism because despite its exposed Big Lies, it's still around.

Yet in 2018 testimony before House Intelligence Committee members, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (2010 – 2017) said the following:

"I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting (or) conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election."

"I do not recall any instance when I had direct evidence of the content of" alleged Trump team-Russia collusion.

Remarks like the above, along with failure of probes by Mueller, House and Senate members to present evidence of Russian US election meddling should have ended the Russiagate witch-hunt once and for all.

While largely dormant in the run-up to and aftermath of US Election 2020, it could resurface any time in old or new form.

In following NYT reports on other issues, most recently with regard to Trump v. Biden/Harris, I haven't seen a Russiagate report in its online editions for some time.

Belatedly I discovered an August 2020 mini-book-length article in the NYT Magazine (online), a publication I don't follow.

It discusses a classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of various geopolitical issues, this one prepared in July 2019.

The Times: "According to multiple officials who saw it, the document discussed Russia's ongoing efforts to influence US elections: the 2020 presidential contest and 2024's as well (sic)."

Its so-called "interest" is much the same as in other nations.

"Interest" has nothing to do with meddling. No credible evidence ever surfaced to show US election interference by any nations.

It's in sharp contrast to credible evidence of US meddling in scores of elections abroad throughout the post-WW II period and earlier.

According to "key judgments" of US intelligence officials, "Russia favored the current president: Donald Trump," adding:

Ahead of the summer 2020 party national conventions, "Russia worked in support of the (Dem) presidential candidate Bernie Sanders," said the Times, based on the NIE report.

It wasn't "genuine" support for Sanders, just an effort "to weaken that party and ultimately help the current US president (sic)."

The Times: "Just as this article was going to press," the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) claimed the following:

Moscow "is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former (Joe) Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia 'establishment (sic).' "

The ODNI accused Moscow of "sophisticated election-disrupting capabilities (sic)."

An unnamed intelligence community source familiar with the NIE was quoted, saying it's "100 percent reliable (sic)."

Left unexplained by the Times was that from inception to the present day, Russiagate was and remains a colossal hoax.

No evidence ever surfaced to suggest Kremlin US election meddling, nor by any other foreign country.

What the NIE allegedly called "100 percent reliable" defied reality. It's part of longstanding Russia bashing.

In January 2017, a US intelligence community report titled "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution" -- claiming Trump v. Hillary election meddling -- included no evidence proving it.

None existed then or now to present day.

When Vladimir Putin was asked if he wanted Trump to win in 2016 -- at a joint Helsinki, Finland news conference with DJT in July 2018 -- he replied: "Yes, I did."

His preference for Trump over Hillary was unrelated to election meddling.

If other foreign leaders expressed a preference for one US presidential candidate over another, the same logic holds.

One thing has nothing to do with the other. Implying otherwise is an act of deception, a longstanding US intelligence community and Times specialty.

Trump was justifiably skeptical about accusations of Russian US election meddling that favored him over Hillary in 2016 or over Biden/Harris this month.

According to the Times, Trump's objections to claims about alleged Russia US election meddling "alarm(ed) the intelligence community."

Former acting CIA director/Hillary campaign advisor Michael Morell was quoted calling Trump "an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

He's a political novice, geopolitical know-nothing, first ever US reality TV president.

He's no witting or unwitting Russian agent.

Separately, Morell defied reality, claiming:

Election 2016 was "the only time in American history when we've been attacked by a foreign country and not come together as a nation," adding:

"In fact, it split us further apart."

"It was an inexpensive, relatively easy to carry out covert mission." It deepened our divisions."

"I'm absolutely convinced that those Russian intelligence officers who put together and managed the attack on our democracy (sic) in 2016 all received medals personally from Vladimir Putin (sic)."

The above claims and others about a DJT/Russia connection et al are pure rubbish.

The lengthy Times magazine piece was all about smearing Russia, falsely claiming Kremlin US election meddling, and demeaning Trump for defeating media darling Hillary.

No evidence was included to back any of the above claims. None exists.

In the run-up to and aftermath of US election 2020, Russiagate simmers largely below the surface.

If Trump's legal action against brazen election fraud to deny him a second term succeeds -- what's highly unlikely but possible -- will a phony DJT/Russia connection again make headline news?

Will there be claims of Kremlin involvement in backing litigation to discredit Biden/Harris?

No matter how often the Russiagate Big Lie was debunked before, it may never die.

It may be around as long as the Russian Federation and China remain Washington's favorite national security threats.

Real ones don't exist so they're invented as pretexts to advance US imperial interests.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected] . He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

[Nov 05, 2020] Trump Goes on Offense Against Obama -- Strategic Culture

Nov 05, 2020 | www.strategic-culture.org

If Donald Trump wants to get re-elected as President of the U.S. he's going to have to take out former President Barack Obama. At this point Obama is the person who most stands in his path for a second term.

Former Vice President Joe Biden may well wind up being the nominee but that's only because he is Obama's stand in since Obama can't run for a third term thanks to the only part of the U.S. Constitution anyone seems to give a damn about anymore.

But, make no mistake, the current flap about the unmasking of Trump's first (and short-lived) National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn is all about Trump finally going on the offensive after more than three years of fighting rear-guard actions just to stay in power.

Obama was the ring leader in the operation to spy on Trump and anyone with half a brain knows it. The unmasking of the unmaskers in the Obama administration is to tarnish his legacy and dishearten any centrist voters who may be tiring of Trump's mistakes and the worsening economic collapse engineered by the shutdown of the economy during the peak of the COVID-19 hysteria.

This is why it is imperative for Trump to take Obama out of this election cycle as quickly as possible.

With Hillary finally bending the knee to Obama when she publicly endorsed Biden that was the signal that she's acknowledging she's lost the fight for control over the Democratic Party, which she and her husband have ruled with a closed fist for decades.

Now Obama is free and clear to begin campaigning openly on Biden's behalf. And don't for a second think that the trial balloons of his wife Michelle being Biden's running mate are the fanciful wishes of hopeless Democrats. Michelle is absolutely one of the top candidates for that job.

Because with Trump surviving everything thrown at him to this point the only chance Biden has this fall is his second coming as the Left's political messiah. Take nothing away from Obama, he is an excellent campaigner.

With Michelle as his running mate that puts Obama right where he needs to be, hounding Trump on all the issues that are supposed to be weaknesses for him – the economy, COVID-19 deaths, unemployment, etc.

So, the timing of Trump having his acting ODNI Director Richard Grenell pick a public spat with the hapless Head of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff and get the transcripts of the impeachment interviews released to the public isn't coincidence, folks. These transcripts confirm that Obama's inner circle all lied through their teeth in the media for years about the RussiaGate collusion story.

This comes on the heels of Trump's somewhat cleaned up Dept. of Justice dropping the case against Flynn which then opens up the opportunity to resurrect the timeline of events which led up to his firing and indictment by the very people now revealed as bald-faced liars and conspirators.

Trump then goes directly to the people and coins the term of the year, "Obamagate."

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=Strateg_Culture&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1260735992727769096&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.strategic-culture.org%2Fnews%2F2020%2F05%2F17%2Ftrump-goes-on-offense-against-obama%2F&siteScreenName=Strateg_Culture&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

He's telling the entire world who his target is. He knows that if he loses this election any chance of reforming any part of the D.C. swamp vanishes as Biden steps aside for health reasons after sweeping everything under the rug and Obama rules the White House from the shadows as First Lady.

And it's clear that this is the real reason behind the Democratic governors defying their people and Trump on opening up their cities and states. They are purposefully trying to destroy the country to regain control over it.

These people are vandals.

But Trump's biggest obstacle at this point isn't the Democrat-controlled House or the Media, it is the Republicans in the Senate who have proven repeatedly to be spineless when it comes to anything substantive.

You can see the maneuvering and horse trading already. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is already trying to downplay the magnitude of this scandal, which makes Watergate look like the raid on the dean's office in Animal House .

Obama is guilty of the highest crimes a President can be guilty of, utilizing Federal law enforcement and intelligence services to spy on a political opponent during an election. This is after eight years of ruinous wars, coups both successful and not, drone-striking U.S. citizens and generally carrying on like the vandal he is.

Thankfully Rand Paul (R-Ky) has been activated by Trump to go after Graham directly and force him to back peddle. Paul is already calling for hearings in the Senate, using his Chairmanship of the Government Oversight Committee to end run around Light in the Loafers Lindsey.

The FBI is now going after people like Richard Burr (R-NC), head of the Senate Intelligence Committee for potential insider trading violations. This is a pure power play to make sure Burr doesn't let this die in committee.

If this tweet isn't clear enough that Trump wants Obama's head on a platter and he's now willing to go scorched earth on him and anyone trying to protect Obama to get it I don't know what is.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=Strateg_Culture&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1260938381254701060&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.strategic-culture.org%2Fnews%2F2020%2F05%2F17%2Ftrump-goes-on-offense-against-obama%2F&siteScreenName=Strateg_Culture&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

Things are spiraling out of control in D.C. quickly. A reader noted to me recently that one of Trump's strengths is that he thrives in chaos, that he's most comfortable stirring the pot and getting everyone around him 'on tilt' as the poker players say.

That's what he's doing now with #Obamagate. He's doing what he does best, forcing his opponents to ab react to him and leaving them vulnerable to his next attack. He's in pure campaign mode now, which we haven't seen in four years.

But this time he's campaigning with a lot more resources at his disposal especially if he has them all nailed. Trump wouldn't be going after Obama if he didn't have proof of Obama's guilt. He's a limbic creature but he's not random.

Obama's people will spin this as desperation over the mishandling of COVID-19, but it won't matter. With a Justice Dept. that looks ready to get to work for the first time in decades, Trump just well be ready to finally do something right.

[Nov 03, 2020] How DHS and FBI Officials Spun a Dubious Russian Election Threat Days Before Voting

National security parasites want taxpayers money. Badly.
Notable quotes:
"... Just days before the 2020 election the bureaucratic forces behind the original claim of Russian hacking of state election-related websites in 2016 launched a new drive to spawn fears of Moscow-made political chaos in the wake of the voting. ..."
"... The new narrative was not consistent with information previously published by the the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security's new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), however. It was so incoherent, in fact, that it suggested a state of panic on the part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials worried about a possible transition to a Joe Biden administration. ..."
"... Krebs' warning of a possible Russian announcement that hackers had succeeded in disrupting the result of the U.S. election was so removed from reality that it suggested internal panic DHS over the failure of Russian hackers to do anything that could be cited as interfering the election. ..."
"... Two days after Krebs' dubious warning, the FBI and the DHS's new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an "alert" reporting that "a Russian state-sponsored APT [Advanced Persistent Threat] actor" known as "Berserk Bear" had "conducted a campaign against a wide variety of US targets." ..."
"... On October 28, Krebs elaborated on the latter theme in an interview with the PBS NewsHour . Referring inaccurately to government warnings about "Russian interference, some of which targeted voter registration," which the FBI-CISA alert had never mentioned, PBS interviewer William Brangham asked, "Do you worry at all that there might be infiltration that we are not aware of?" ..."
"... Instead of correcting Brangham's inaccurate suggestion, Krebs responded that "infiltration" into voter registration files was "certainly possible," but that "[W]e have improved the ability to detect compromises or anomalous activity." ..."
Nov 03, 2020 | original.antiwar.com

How DHS and FBI Officials Spun a Dubious Russian Election Threat Days Before Voting

by Gareth Porter Posted on November 03, 2020

Reprinted from The Grayzone with the author's permission.

A Department of Homeland Security election alert spawning new Russia fears was so incoherent and inconsistent with previous findings, it suggested a state of political panic inside the agency.

Just days before the 2020 election the bureaucratic forces behind the original claim of Russian hacking of state election-related websites in 2016 launched a new drive to spawn fears of Moscow-made political chaos in the wake of the voting.

The new narrative was not consistent with information previously published by the the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security's new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), however. It was so incoherent, in fact, that it suggested a state of panic on the part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials worried about a possible transition to a Joe Biden administration.

On October 20, Christopher Krebs, the head of CISA, issued a video statement expressing confidence that "it would be incredibly difficult for them to change the outcome of an election at the national level." Then he abruptly changed his tone, adding, "But that doesn't mean various actors won't try to introduce chaos in our elections and make sensational claims that overstate their capabilities. In fact, the days and weeks just before and after Election Day is the perfect time for our adversaries to launch efforts intended to undermine your confidence in the integrity of the electoral process."

Krebs' warning of a possible Russian announcement that hackers had succeeded in disrupting the result of the U.S. election was so removed from reality that it suggested internal panic DHS over the failure of Russian hackers to do anything that could be cited as interfering the election.

Two days after Krebs' dubious warning, the FBI and the DHS's new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an "alert" reporting that "a Russian state-sponsored APT [Advanced Persistent Threat] actor" known as "Berserk Bear" had "conducted a campaign against a wide variety of US targets."

Since "at least September," according to the DHS alert, the DHS warning claimed that it had targeted "dozens" of "US state, local, territorial and tribal government networks." It even claimed that the supposed Russian campaign had compromised the network infrastructure of several official organizations and "exfiltrated data from at least two victims servers". At the same time, it acknowledged there was "no indication" that any government operations had been "intentionally disrupted."

The report went on to suggest, "[T]here may be some risk to elections information housed on SLTT [state, local territorial and tribal] government networks." And then it abruptly shifted tone and level of analysis to offer the speculation that the Russian government "may be seeking access to obtain future disruption options, to influence US policies or actions", or to "delegitimize" the "government entities".

On October 28, Krebs elaborated on the latter theme in an interview with the PBS NewsHour . Referring inaccurately to government warnings about "Russian interference, some of which targeted voter registration," which the FBI-CISA alert had never mentioned, PBS interviewer William Brangham asked, "Do you worry at all that there might be infiltration that we are not aware of?"

Instead of correcting Brangham's inaccurate suggestion, Krebs responded that "infiltration" into voter registration files was "certainly possible," but that "[W]e have improved the ability to detect compromises or anomalous activity."

Krebs then homed in on a scenario he obviously wanted the public to focus on: "[Y]ou might see various actors, foreign powers, claim that they were able to accomplish something, [that] they were able to hack a database or hack the vote count. And it's simply not true."

Although the October 22 alert did not assert any deliberate Russian government hack of election-related sites, Krebs sought to keep speculation about both Russian capabilities and intent alive.

The buried alert that undermined the frightening official assessment

Eleven days before Krebs debuted his speculation about Russia claiming to have hacked US elections, the FBI and CISA issued a separate alert that seriously undercut his questionable claims.

The earlier document was clearly referring to the very same efforts by hackers to break into various websites address in the October 22 alert. It not only referred to the same state and local government networks and to the wider range of targets affect but also mentioned precisely the same technical vulnerabilities that were targeted in the series of hacks.

The alert further stated that, "[I]t does not appear these targets are being selected because of their proximity to elections information ." In other words, the two US agencies conceded they had no basis for attributing to any of the hacks in question to any election interference plot.

The most striking difference between the two alerts, however, was that the October 9 alert did not refer to any "Russian state-sponsored APT actor" as the October 22 one did. Instead, it simply pointed to "APT actors" in the plural, indicating that the US intelligence community had no evidence indicating a single actor was at work, let alone one that was "Russian-state sponsored."

Contrary to the impression that US officials may have conveyed in referencing an "Advance Persistent Threat," or APT, it is now widely understood by cybersecurity specialists that this term no longer refers to a state-sponsored actor. That is because the sophisticated tools and techniques once associated with state-sponsored hacking have now become available to a much wider range of cyber actors. Indeed, the codes for such high-end tools have been identified in the Shadow Brokers and Vault 7 leaks, and the tools have been marketed widely at affordable prices on the dark web.

The October 9 alert firmly established the dearth of evidence on the part of CISA and FBI about a Russian state-sponsored hacking team planning elections-related operations in the US The sudden pivot days later to an unqualified claim that a single state-sponsored APT had been responsible for the same very large range of operations should have been accompanied by claims of substantial new intelligence, or at least a reference to the evidence underlying the dramatic new reversal. But no such proof ever arrived.

Scott McConnell, the spokesman for CISA, promised the Grazyzone on October 29 that he would provide someone to answer questions about the October 22 alert by the close of business Friday. In the end, however, no one from CISA responded, and there was no answer on McConnell's line.

The peculiar reversal by the DHS and CISA on the hacking claims raise questions about the institutional considerations taken by these agencies. Did indications that President Donald Trump's campaign was faltering inform their decision to issue a more stridently anti-Russian assessment in hopes of surviving a political transition?

The US officials who drew up the initial pre-election alert seemed keenly aware that despite that drumbeat of over the past two years, no state-sponsored Russian hacking of election institutions was underway. But as the Trump campaign sputtered, they had their own careers to consider. Days later, DHS and CISA declared the wily Russians guilty of yet another malign operations – albeit one that would not require the slightest evidence to provide, and which proved impossible to explain.

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His new book is Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare . He can be contacted at [email protected] .

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[Oct 30, 2020] Vindman No.2 -- Trump Assails White House Mole- -They Should Fire, Shame Punish Everybody Associated With This Fraud

Pecunia non olet -- "money does not stink" in a new interpretation "Profits for the book do not stink"
It is possible that F. Scott Fitzgerald alludes to Vespasian's jest in The Great Gatsby with the phrase "non-olfactory money"
Oct 30, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Update (1745ET): President Trump just took a minute away from the campaign trail to weigh in on the 'coming out' of Miles Taylor, the formerly "anonymous" op-ed writer and self-proclaimed leader of the internal White House #resistance,

"Who is Miles Taylor?" President Trump wrote, before recounting Taylor's association with various adversaries of the administration. He added that "they should fire, shame, and punish everybody associated with this FRAUD on the American people" - a group that would presumably include some members or former members of his own inner circle, as well as the editors of the NYT.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1321568122017517568&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

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A photo of Taylor and Trump has been circulating on Twitter since before Trump published his tweet, and we imagine Trump's response to the inevitable reporter question will be his usual "so what?".

Meanwhile, CNN has reportedly decided not to fire Taylor, even though he lied on air to one of the network's anchors (anderson cooper, clip below) despite being a paid employee of the company.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-2&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1321565816811331584&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890

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It's still unclear what Google's response will be.

* * *

Roughly two years have passed since an anonymous Trump Administration insider published an op-ed - then later, a whole book - warning Americans how President Trump was a danger to the nation, primarily due to his "lack of character".

Well, on Wednesday afternoon, with six days left until the big day, the MSM and their political operative allies, orchestrated the public coming-out of Miles Taylor, a former senior official within Trump's Homeland Security Department who, before today, was best known as the first former senior administration official to endorse Joe Biden for president.

In the year since Taylor has left the White House, he has parlayed his national security bona fides (which were burnished during a stint working for Dick Cheney in the Bush White House) into a top job working for Google, as well as a lucrative contract to appear as a talking head on CNN and...did we mention the book deal?

Shortly following a teaser from George Conway, who called his fellow conservative Republican a "true patriot"....

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-4&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1321481912049979392&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

...Buzzfeed Ben - excuse us, Ben Smith - the former top man at Buzzfeed who left that struggling media company to take the coveted job as the NYT's media columnist (a position formerly held by both Brian Stelter and, before him, the legendary American media reporter David Carr), was the first to confirm Taylor's identity, followed by a tweet from Taylor acknowledging that it was all true.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-5&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1321534426287886338&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

Taylor published a statement on his reasoning for "why I'm no longer 'anonymous'" via his new Medium page, which is strange, considering he now works for CNN, technically. In the statement, Taylor wrote that Trump "sees personal criticism as subversive" followed by a Teddy Roosevelt quote condemning those who say the president must not be criticized as "not only unpatriotic and servile, but...morally treasonable to the American public." Later in the piece, he quoted Abraham Lincoln.

Though Taylor acknowledged that he has been a life-long Republican, and that he "wanted this president to succeed", he said Trump is "a man without character", and "his personal defects have resulted in leadership failures so significant that they can be measured in lost American lives."

Read the full statement below:

More than two years ago, I published an anonymous opinion piece in The New York Times about Donald Trump's perilous presidency, while I was serving under him. He responded with a short but telling tweet: "TREASON?" Trump sees personal criticism as subversive. I take a different view.

As Theodore Roosevelt wrote, "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about anyone else." We do not owe the President our silence. We owe him and the American people the truth. Make no mistake: I am a Republican, and I wanted this President to succeed. That's why I came into the Administration with John Kelly, and it's why I stayed on as Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security. But too often in times of crisis, I saw Donald Trump prove he is a man without character, and his personal defects have resulted in leadership failures so significant that they can be measured in lost American lives.

I witnessed Trump's inability to do his job over the course of two-and-a-half years. Everyone saw it, though most were hesitant to speak up for fear of reprisals. So when I left the Administration I wrote A Warning, a character study of the current Commander in Chief and a caution to voters that it wasn't as bad as it looked inside the Trump Administration -- it was worse. While I claim sole authorship of the work, the sentiments expressed within it were widely held among officials at the highest levels of the federal government. In other words, Trump's own lieutenants were alarmed by his instability.

Much has been made of the fact that these writings were published anonymously. The decision wasn't easy, I wrestled with it, and I understand why some people consider it questionable to levy such serious charges against a sitting President under the cover of anonymity. But my reasoning was straightforward, and I stand by it. Issuing my critiques without attribution forced the President to answer them directly on their merits or not at all, rather than creating distractions through petty insults and name-calling. I wanted the attention to be on the arguments themselves. At the time I asked, "What will he do when there is no person to attack, only an idea?" We got the answer. He became unhinged. And the ideas stood on their own two feet. To be clear, writing those works was not about eminence (they were published without attribution), not about money (I declined a hefty monetary advance and pledged to donate the bulk of the proceeds), and not about crafting a score-settling "tell all" (my focus was on the President himself and his character, not denigrating former colleagues). Nevertheless, I made clear I wasn't afraid to criticize the President under my name. In fact, I pledged to do so. That is why I've already been vocal throughout the general election. I've tried to convey as best I can -- based on my own experience -- how Donald Trump has made America less safe, less certain of its identity and destiny, and less united. He has responded predictably, with personal attacks meant to obscure the underlying message that he is unfit for the office he holds. Yet Trump has failed to bury the truth.

Why? Because since the op-ed was published, I've been joined by an unprecedented number of former colleagues who've chosen to speak out against the man they once served. Donald Trump's character and record have now been challenged in myriad ways by his own former Chief of Staff, National Security Advisor, Communications Director, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and others he personally appointed. History will also record the names of those souls who had everything to lose but stood up anyway, including Trump officials Fiona Hill, Michael McKinley, John Mitnick, Elizabeth Neumann, Bob Shanks, Olivia Troye, Josh Venable, Alexander Vindman, and many more. I applaud their courage. These are not "Deep Staters" who conspired to thwart their boss. Many of them were Trump supporters, and all of them are patriots who accepted great personal risks to speak candidly about a man they've seen retaliate and even incite violence against his opponents. (I've likewise experienced the cost of condemning the President, as doing so has taken a considerable toll on my job, daily life, marriage, finances, and personal safety.) These public servants were not intimidated. And you shouldn't be either. As descendants of revolutionaries, honest dissent is part of our American character, and we must reject the culture of political intimidation that's been cultivated by this President. That's why I'm writing this note -- to urge you to speak out if you haven't.

While I hope a few more Trump officials will quickly find their consciences, your words are now more important than theirs. It's time to come forward and shine a light on the discord that's infected our public discourse. You can speak loudest with your vote and persuade others with your voice. Don't be afraid of open debate. As I've said before, there is no better screen test for truth than to see it audition next to delusion. This election is a two-part referendum: first, on the character of a man, and second, on the character of our nation. That's why I'm also urging fellow Republicans to put country over party, even if that means supporting Trump's Democratic opponent. Although former Vice President Joe Biden is likely to pursue progressive reforms that conservatives oppose (and rest assured, we will challenge them in the loyal opposition), his policy agenda cannot equal the damage done by the current President to the fabric of our Republic. I believe Joe Biden's decency will bring us back together where Donald Trump's dishonesty has torn us apart.

Trump has been exactly what we conservatives always said government should NOT be: expansive, wasteful, arbitrary, unpredictable, and prone to abuses of power. Worse still, as I've noted previously, he's waged an all-out assault on reason, preferring to enthrone emotion and impulse in the seat of government. The consequences have been calamitous, and if given four more years, he will push the limits of his power further than the "high crimes and misdemeanors" for which he was already impeached.

Trust me. We spent years trying to ameliorate Trump's poor decisions (often unsuccessfully), many of which will be back with a vengeance in a second term. Recall, this is the man who told us, "When somebody's president of the United States, the authority is total." I believe more than ever that Trump unbound will mean a nation undone -- a continued downward slide into social acrimony, with the United States fading into the background of a world stage it once commanded, to say nothing of the damage to our democratic institutions.

I was wrong, however, about one major assertion in my original op-ed. The country cannot rely on well-intentioned, unelected bureaucrats around the President to steer him toward what's right. He has purged most of them anyway. Nor can they rely on Congress to deliver us from Trump's wayward whims. The people themselves are the ultimate check on the nation's chief executive. We alone must determine whether his behavior warrants continuance in office, and we face a momentous decision, as our choice about Trump's future will affect our future for years to come. With that in mind, he doesn't deserve a second term in office, and we don't deserve to live through it.

Removing Trump will not be the end of our woes, unfortunately. While on the road visiting swing states for the past month, it's become clear to me how far apart Americans have grown from one another. We've perpetuated the seemingly endless hostility stoked by this divisive President, so if we really want to restore vibrance to our civic life, the change must begin with each of us, not just with the occupant of the Oval Office. Fortunately, past generations have lit the way toward national reconciliation in even harder times.

On the brink of a civil war that literally split our nation in two, Abraham Lincoln called on the people not to lose sight of one other. He said in his Inaugural Address:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Heed Lincoln's words. We must return to our founding principles. We must rediscover our better angels. And we must reconcile with each other, repairing the bonds of affection that make us fellow Americans.

Mere minutes after Taylor's big coming-out, the online backlash began. Even members of the '#resistance' slammed Taylor for his involvement in executing Trump's child-separation policy, and for waiting this long to speak up.

As it turns out, Google execs reportedly misled their own employees when they insisted that Taylor wasn't involved with the child-separation policy, an issue that ranks as Trump's paramount sin among denizens of Silicon Valley.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-6&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1321544515233210370&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

Many also complained about the NYT hyping up the identity of the "anonymous" insider to try and suggest that he was a top-level staffer, prompting speculation about Rex Tillerson, John Kelly or even James Mattis. Trump's current chief of staff Mark Meadows,

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-7&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1321543822699073545&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

For those hard-core Dems who can't understand why people are so mad at the Patriotic whistleblower, well here's @Yashar with an explanation.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-8&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1321543822699073545&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

Kayleigh McEnany made a similar point.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-9&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1321548602305441792&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

And journalist Judd Legum with the extended version of that explanation, in which he denounces "Anonymous" as little more than a grifter, who played a "critical role" in the family separation policy, now working to parlay his brief time in the Trump Administration into a quick buck.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-10&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1321536581040295944&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-11&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1321538376923754499&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-12&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1321538690791940097&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

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Not only did he help carry it out, but Taylor "actively helped sell" the Trump Administration zero tolerance policy for immigrants.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-14&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1321539331891363842&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-15&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1321541970834194434&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-16&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1321542301903212544&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

Taylor wasn't the only one to face criticism: some slammed the NYT for distorting "Anonymous's" role in the administration.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-17&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1321547894642614273&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

Some were incredulous that Taylor left the administration and now works for Google and CNN.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-18&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1321546046363721728&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fanonymous-author-outs-himself-liberal-media-immediately-slams-him-child-separating&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST

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With Taylor now outed as a child prison guard, as we have no doubt he will be branded by the left, we imagine Google will need to make a statement at some point about whether Taylor will continue on in his role, or be...fired.



play_arrow Unknown User , 58 minutes ago

A typical Neoliberal incapable of comprehending loyalty and ready to sellout anyone for a dollar.

Everybodys All American , 1 hour ago

This little man operates like a CIA agent. I'd be shocked if that's not the case. He actually said he believes in Joe Biden's' decency. No one in their right mind is saying that ...

gmrpeabody , 50 minutes ago

Biden's decency..? Now THAT'S funny...

JLee2027 , 1 hour ago

Just another one who betrayed his country for bucks and fame. Hope it was worth it.

Perseus-Reflected , 1 hour ago

Looks like a latte-drinking little b!tch to me.

aspen1880 , 58 minutes ago

he "identifies" with bish

chelydra , 4 minutes ago

The epitome of an effete, preening dandy.

hot sauce technician , 1 hour ago

Everything the biden campaign is doing seems to backfire on it.

LVrunner , 58 minutes ago

Should be giving away puppies soon like Hilary did at this point.

Redhotfill , 1 hour ago

Working for Google, CNN, Book deal yeah Pay Offs! Surprised no Netflx stock options.

44magnum , 1 hour ago

Or a seat on the board

mrslippryFIST , 1 hour ago

The year isnt over yet.

OGAorSAD , 1 hour ago

And we care why? Should be a headline with Section 230 being repealed, and multiple indictments of Biden's, Clinton's, and Obama's

nope-1004 , 54 minutes ago

Never heard of him.

The fact that he's a documented public liar and democrat makes complete sense though.

mrslippryFIST , 1 hour ago

Hah, little beta cuck didn't get his 15mins so he outs himself to get his 15 mins of fame.

This is what participation ribbons gives you.

Willie the Pimp , 1 hour ago

What else would you expect from an obvious jizz guzzler? The LGBT have destroyed the USSA.

pictur3plane , 1 hour ago

SOY BOY NOTHING BURGER.

JRobby , 52 minutes ago

Oh! Look! He shops at Amazon!!!

Pop this prick and dump him in a landfill

Friedrich not Salma , 54 minutes ago

DNC probably asked him to reveal himself to eat up Teevee time and distract from Hunter's story.

Md4 , 53 minutes ago

Zactly.

Where's Hunter?

Boxed Merlot , 31 minutes ago

...Where's Hunter?...

Chillin with Mr. Corzine? You remember that guy don't you? He's another GS Vice President and Mr. Obama's prized confidant in his financial wizardry that ripped off his "investors" to the tune of frn1B and slunk out of the public eye.

Mr. Biden looks at him with envy. https://www.gloucestercitynews.net/clearysnotebook/2013/08/sound-off-a-beach-bum.html

enjoy

silent one , 1 minute ago

Hunt Hunter

fxrxexexdxoxmx2 , 1 hour ago

Now there is man who really loves men.

whether underground , 1 hour ago

+1 for making me laugh

freedommusic , 52 minutes ago

Who are these people? Look at the way they dress. Look at the smug arrogant look on their faces.

They are caught in a bubble and are totally divorced from reality.

It should be requirement of every individual who enters government to spend at least one year unclogging apartment building sewer stoppages.

Having a basic grasp of reality and a first hand look at where sewage actually goes is vital to a healthy reality based outlook on life.

Peace

Salsa Verde , 1 hour ago

Scumbags gonna scum.

EnoughBS21 , 56 minutes ago

How's it feel, little traitor? You threw Trump under the bus and now your "new friends" are tossing you away.

A Mister nobody!

Md4 , 54 minutes ago

And was " anonymous".

Credible?

44magnum , 1 hour ago

Trump has no character and Biden is senile.

So he picks Biden and the whore? She is definitely a character.

I am more equal than others , 1 hour ago

Judging character from afar. It is an amazing skill that has never existed.

novictim , 46 minutes ago

On the scales of justice, Trump is light as a feather while these Leftist infiltrator-traitors and grifters, China-stooges and bribe takers, are lead weights on the American Republic. There is no parallel to the corruption that has been revealed about the Russia-Collusion hoax and now the truth about Biden's sale of US' China-policy in return for the CCP padding the Biden family nest egg.

Watergate has nothing on these latest scandals. And Trump comes away from all of this like a shining star.

JmanSilver.Gold , 44 minutes ago

Just another leftwing swamprat.

Floki_Ragnarsson , 46 minutes ago

So this weasel turd creates the problem, whines about it, and then makes a book deal, bags a CNN job, etc?

Obviously a slimy Democrud.

Teamtc321 , 51 minutes ago

***** shadow man talks about character? Typical Demshelvic POS.

Joe Biden is burning down.

zerozerosevenhedgeBow1 , 1 hour ago

Ahh... Wallet before country, honor and integrity. I see a trend of "Public Service". Delete his security clearance before he tries to change genders, because politically then you probably couldn't afterwards.

Hipneck911 , 45 minutes ago

So a minor level DHS obama holdover who is a lifelong democrat-donated to Obamas campaign-and probably had all of maybe ONE meeting where the President was present. AKA typical leftist LOSER.

Imagine That , 1 hour ago

Big fuss about a chicken-sh*t nobody, who the world will forget before he changes his silk panties.

Pvt Joker , 45 minutes ago

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies"

Yeah, Imma say this guy and any one who thinks like him is my enemy.

Occams_Razor_Trader_Part_Deux , 47 minutes ago

You had me till Vindman.................... you're an operative .....................

Blaster09 , 55 minutes ago

Another POS!!!

lwilland1012 , 1 hour ago

Give people enough time, and they will always show you their true colors. Just watch and listen.

novictim , 42 minutes ago

But the election is on Tuesday. Millions have already voted.

The MSM has betrayed every American in ways unthinkable just a decade ago.

Dindu Nuffins , 45 minutes ago

Not worth changing the news cycle from the laptop. No one cares who this rat is, undifferentiated as he is from the many others.

[Oct 26, 2020] Politicians books as a subtle form of corruption

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Same principle with speaking engagements. Nobody in the corporate world seriously believed that listening to a speech from Hillary Clinton was worth $200,000 - especially when she sometimes kept getting these gigs at the same company every few months: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-03/every-hillary-and-bill-clinton-speech-2013-fees ..."
"... Furthermore, the book sales conduit adds an extra degree of separation between the ultimate source of the money and the recipient of the money. Somebody who wants to buy a politician could for example donate money to an NGO that does "political education" and buys political books to distribute to people, and that NGO buys the copies of the corrupt politician's book in bulk. ..."
Oct 26, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Learned here on SST that a lot of the huge book contracts given to swampies are a form of money laundering. I have long tried to figure out how the publishing companies could afford to pay yuudge advances for ghost written books in a country where so few people read much of anything any longer. Simple answer! Big money people order yuudge numbers of books in advance so that the publisher is assured a profit.


BillWade , 25 October 2020 at 12:32 PM

I think it was the previous mayor of Baltimore who got a multi-million dollar windfall from her best-selling children's book. I wonder how many kids actually read it.

Lots of trucks out with their flags here, people are becoming optimistic here in South Florida, feels almost normal here.

Trump taking New York would be the ultimate, lets hope. I'm looking forward to watching CNN's Wolf Blitzer on election night, it's been 4 years for me and CNN. I just want to see him squirm.

rgspenser , 25 October 2020 at 02:05 PM

Thanks for posting how money is routed through publishers.
This was right in front of me the whole time.

rho , 25 October 2020 at 05:08 PM

Colonel,

it looks a lot less like corruption when a politician receives money because he wrote an "inspiring book" that seemingly sells lots of copies than when he receives money outright for political favors.

Same principle with speaking engagements. Nobody in the corporate world seriously believed that listening to a speech from Hillary Clinton was worth $200,000 - especially when she sometimes kept getting these gigs at the same company every few months: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-03/every-hillary-and-bill-clinton-speech-2013-fees

Furthermore, the book sales conduit adds an extra degree of separation between the ultimate source of the money and the recipient of the money. Somebody who wants to buy a politician could for example donate money to an NGO that does "political education" and buys political books to distribute to people, and that NGO buys the copies of the corrupt politician's book in bulk.

Mark Logan , 25 October 2020 at 06:42 PM

Interesting question about book deals. Certainly it could be a channel to hide the names of donors, which would seem the only rational reason to do so. I would guess the lecture circuit a more appropriate way to do that. If I'm going to part with that much I'd at least want a song for their dinner out of it.

The 10 biggest book deals have a mixture of celebrities, I can't imagine anyone wanting to slip Bruce Springsteen $10 million under the table so it appears the publishers do make money on these deals, counter-intuitive though it be.

https://bookriot.com/biggest-book-deals/

The Twisted Genius , 25 October 2020 at 07:03 PM

Book writing can be far more lucrative than I ever thought possible. James Patterson got 150 million for a 17 book series. I would say he earned it although I've never read any of his stuff. Michelle Obama's first book sold over 10 million copies and netted her at least 65 million in a deal for both her and Barrack's memoirs.

Ken Follett got 50 million for his trilogy.

Bill Clinton got 15 million for his book while George W. Bush only got 7 million for his.

Hillary got 14 million for hers. Springsteen got 10 million for his autobiography.

Even Pope Jan Pavel II made a cool 8.5 million for his memoirs back in 1994. There are an awful lot of 7 figure book advances out there.

Another phenomenon in the book world is the mass purchase of books by organizations. For example the RNC bought $100K worth of Don Trump Jr's book and more than $400K worth of Sean Hannity's latest. I'm sure the RNC is not alone in this practice.

[Oct 24, 2020] John Brennan's CIA Trump Task Force The Mad Truther

Oct 24, 2020 | themadtruther.com

There is considerable evidence that the American system of government may have been victimized by an illegal covert operation organized and executed by the U.S. intelligence and national security community. Former Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director Jim Comey appear to have played critical leadership roles in carrying out this conspiracy and they may not have operated on their own. Almost certainly what they may have done would have been explicitly authorized by the former President of the United States, Barack Obama, and his national security team.

It must have seemed a simple operation for the experienced CIA covert action operatives. To prevent the unreliable and unpredictable political upstart Donald Trump from being nominated as the GOP presidential candidate or even elected it would be necessary to create suspicion that he was the tool of a resurgent Russia, acting under direct orders from Vladimir Putin to empower Trump and damage the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Even though none of the alleged Kremlin plotters would have expected Trump to actually beat Hillary, it was plausible to maintain that they would have hoped that a weakened Clinton would be less able to implement the anti-Russian agenda that she had been promoting. Many observers in both Russia and the U.S. believed that if she had been elected armed conflict with Moscow would have been inevitable, particularly if she moved to follow her husband's example and push to have both Georgia and Ukraine join NATO, which Russia would have regarded as an existential threat.

Trump's surprising victory forced a pivot, with Clapper, Brennan and Comey adjusting the narrative to make it appear that Trump the traitor may have captured the White House due to help from the Kremlin, making him a latter-day Manchurian Candidate. The lesser allegations of Russian meddling were quickly elevated to devastating assertions that the Republican had only won with Putin's assistance.

No substantive evidence for the claim of serious Russian meddling has ever been produced in spite of years of investigation, but the real objective was to plant the story that would plausibly convince a majority of Americans that the election of Donald Trump was somehow illegitimate.

The national security team acted to protect their candidate Hillary Clinton, who represented America's Deep State. In spite of considerable naysaying, the Deep State is real, not just a wild conspiracy theory. Many Americans nevertheless do not believe that the Deep State exists, that it is a politically driven media creation much like Russiagate itself was, but if one changes the wording a bit and describes the Deep State as the Establishment, with its political power focused in Washington and its financial center in New York City, the argument that there exists a cohesive group of power brokers who really run the country becomes much more plausible.

The danger posed by the Deep State, or, if you choose, the Establishment, is that it wields immense power but is unelected and unaccountable. It also operates through relationships that are not transparent and as the media is part of it, there is little chance that its activity will be exposed.

Nevertheless, some might even argue that having a Deep State is a healthy part of American democracy, that it serves as a check or corrective element on a political system that has largely been corrupted and which no longer serves national interests. But that assessment surely might have been made before it became clear that many of the leaders of the nation's intelligence and security agencies are no longer the people's honorable servants they pretend to be. They have been heavily politicized since at least the time of Ronald Reagan and have frequently succumbed to the lure of wealth and power while identifying with and promoting the interests of the Deep State.

Indeed, a number of former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Directors have implicitly or even directly admitted to the existence of a Deep State that has as one of its roles keeping presidents like Donald Trump in check. Most recently, John McLaughlin, responding to a question about Donald Trump's concern over Deep State involvement in the ongoing impeachment process, said unambiguously "Well, you know, thank God for the 'deep state' With all of the people who knew what was going on here, it took an intelligence officer to step forward and say something about it, which was the trigger that then unleashed everything else. This is the institution within the U.S. government is institutionally committed to objectivity and telling the truth. It is one of the few institutions in Washington that is not in a chain of command that makes or implements policy. Its whole job is to speak the truth -- it's engraved in marble in the lobby."

Well, John's dedication to truth is exemplary but how does he explain his own role in support of the lies being promoted by his boss George "slam dunk" Tenet that led to the war against Iraq, the greatest foreign policy disaster ever experienced by the United States? Or Tenet's sitting in the U.N. directly behind Secretary of State Colin Powell in the debate over Iraq, providing cover and credibility for what everyone inside the system knew to be a bundle of lies? Or his close friend and colleague Michael Morell's description of Trump as a Russian agent , a claim that was supported by zero evidence and which was given credibility only by Morell's boast that "I ran the CIA."

Beyond that, more details have been revealed demonstrating exactly how Deep State associates have attempted, with considerable success, to subvert the actual functioning of American democracy. Words are one thing, but acting to interfere in an electoral process or to undermine a serving president is a rather more serious matter.

It is now known that President Barack Obama's CIA Director John Brennan created a Trump Task Force in early 2016. Rather than working against genuine foreign threats, this Task Force played a critical role in creating and feeding the meme that Donald Trump was a tool of the Russians and a puppet of President Vladimir Putin, a claim that still surfaces regularly to this day. Working with James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, Brennan fabricated the narrative that "Russia had interfered in the 2016 election." Brennan and Clapper promoted that tale even though they knew very well that Russia and the United States have carried out a broad array of covert actions against each other, including information operations, for the past seventy years, but they pretended that what happened in 2016 was qualitatively and substantively different even though the "evidence" produced to support that claim was and still is weak to nonexistent.

The Russian "election interference" narrative went on steroids on January 6, 2017, shortly before Trump was inaugurated, when an "Intelligence Community Assessment" (ICA) orchestrated by Clapper and Brennan was published. The banner headline atop The New York Times, itself an integral part of the Deep State, on the following day set the tone for what was to follow: "Putin Led Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Says."

With the help of the Establishment media, Clapper and Brennan were able to pretend that the ICA had been approved by "all 17 intelligence agencies" (as first claimed by Hillary Clinton). After several months, however Clapper revealed that the preparers of the ICA were "handpicked analysts" from only the FBI, CIA, and NSA. He explained rather unconvincingly during an interview on May 28, 2017, that "the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique," adding later that "It's in their DNA."

Task Force Trump was kept secret within the Agency itself because the CIA is not supposed to spy on Americans. Its staff was pulled together by invitation-only. Specific case officers (i.e., men and women who recruit and handle spies overseas), analysts and administrative personnel were recruited, presumably based on their political reliability. Not everyone invited accepted the offer. But many did because it came with promises of promotion and other rewards.

And this was not a CIA-only operation. Personnel from the FBI also were assigned to the Task Force with the approval of then Director James Comey. Former MI-6 agent Christopher Steele's FBI handler, Michael Gaeta, may have been one of those detailed to the Trump Task Force. Steele, of course, prepared the notorious dossier that was surfaced shortly before Donald Trump took office. It included considerable material intended to tie Trump to Russia, information that was in many cases fabricated or unsourced.

So, what kind of things would this Task Force do? The case officers would work with foreign intelligence services such as MI-6, the Italians, the Ukrainians and the Australians on identifying intelligence collection priorities that would implicate Trump and his associates in illegal activity. And there is evidence that John Brennan himself would contact his counterparts in allied intelligence services to obtain their discreet cooperation, something they would be inclined to do in collegial fashion, ignoring whatever reservations they might have about spying on a possible American presidential candidate.

Trump Task Force members could have also tasked the National Security Agency (NSA) to do targeted collection. They also would have the ability to engage in complicated covert actions that would further set up and entrap Trump and his staff in questionable activity, such as the targeting of associate George Papadopoulos. If he is ever properly interviewed, Maltese citizen Joseph Mifsud may be able to shed light on the CIA officers who met with him, briefed him on operational objectives regarding Papadopoulos and helped arrange monitored meetings. It is highly likely that Azra Turk, the woman who met with George Papadopoulos, was part of the CIA Trump Task Force.

The Task Force also could carry out other covert actions, sometimes using press or social media placements to disseminate fabrications about Trump and his associates. Information operations is a benign-sounding euphemism for propaganda fed through the Agency's friends in the media, and computer network operations can be used to create false linkages and misdirect inquiries. There has been some informed speculation that Guccifer 2.0 may have been a creation of this Task Force.

In light of what has been learned about the alleged CIA whistleblower there should be a serious investigation to determine if he was a part of this Task Force or, at minimum, reporting to them secretly after he was seconded to the National Security Council. All the CIA and FBI officers involved in the Task Force had sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, but nevertheless were involved in a conspiracy to first denigrate and then possibly bring down a legally elected president. That effort continues with repeated assertions regarding Moscow's malevolent intentions for the 2020 national elections. Some might reasonably regard the whole Brennan affair, to include its spear carriers among the current and retired national security state leadership, as a case of institutionalized treason, and it inevitably leads to the question "What did Obama know?"

[Oct 23, 2020] Russia are mixed with Iran in a new wave of election hacking hysteria

Notable quotes:
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... The sustained tosh from the good old boys at state, cia, fbi & nsa isn't worthy of comment, given that it is 100% evidence-free accusations which surprise surprise 'just happens' to align with these provenly corrupt organisations' most prioritsed foreign policy goals. ..."
Oct 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Silly Season

Washington Post , November 19, 2017

Justice Department pushing Iran-connected charges in HBO hack, other cases

Last month, national security prosecutors at the Justice Department were told to look at any ongoing investigations involving Iran or Iranian nationals with an eye toward making them public.

The push to announce Iran-related cases has caused internal alarm, these people said, with some law enforcement officials fearing that senior Justice Department officials want to reveal the cases because the Trump administration would like Congress to impose new sanctions on Iran.

Washington Post , October 22, 2020

U.S. government concludes Iran was behind threatening emails sent to Democrats

U.S. officials on Wednesday night accused Iran of targeting American voters with faked but menacing emails and warned that both Iran and Russia had obtained voter data that could be used to endanger the upcoming election.

The disclosure by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe at a hastily called news conference marked the first time this election cycle that a foreign adversary has been accused of targeting specific voters in a bid to undermine democratic confidence -- just four years after Russian online operations marred the 2016 presidential vote.

The claim that Iran was behind the email operation, which came into view on Tuesday as Democrats in several states reported receiving emails demanding they vote for President Trump, was leveled without specific evidence .
...
Metadata gathered from dozens of the emails pointed to the use of servers in Saudi Arabia, Estonia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, according to numerous analysts.

Reuters , October 22, 2020

U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran, Russia have tried to interfere in 2020 election

The emails are under investigation, and one intelligence source said it was still unclear who was behind them.
...
... the evidence remains inconclusive.

The claims that Iran is behind this are as stupid as the people who believe them.

I for one trust (not) those 50 former intelligence officials who say that all emails are Russian disinformation. They are intended to 'sow discord' which is something the U.S. has otherwise never ever had throughout its history.

Politico , October 19, 2020

Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say

More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails ... "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."
...
While the letter's signatories presented no new evidence, they said their national security experience had made them "deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case" and cited several elements of the story that suggested the Kremlin's hand at work.

"If we are right," they added, "this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this."

No, this doesn't make any sense. It is not supposed to do that.

Posted by b on October 22, 2020 at 7:21 UTC | Permalink


Debsisdead , Oct 22 2020 8:11 utc | 1


The sustained tosh from the good old boys at state, cia, fbi & nsa isn't worthy of comment, given that it is 100% evidence-free accusations which surprise surprise 'just happens' to align with these provenly corrupt organisations' most prioritsed foreign policy goals.

We know that these yarns align in syncopation with what the amerikan empire most wants to promulgate, yet bereft of even a a cunt hair's worth of evidence, the only truth which can be inferred from this foggy bottom tosh is the obvious one - that is that the empire is becoming so desperate they will happily toss their credibility with the many to the winds if they can, please sir, just convince a few of the few.

Tuyzentfloot , Oct 22 2020 8:14 utc | 3
Stuff like this is a suitable test of how the media are supposed to represent our interests and help us in not getting fooled. You report, and afterwards you test what your readers believe.

Independently of questionable bias issues serious newspapers will defend news like this with formal justifications of journalistic code
- neutrality and objectivity: we just report but don't judge.
- null hypothesis of trustworthiness: official sources are to be trusted unless proven otherwise. At least, proven otherwise by someone we consider trustworthy.
The propaganda is already embedded in the lofty ethics codes journalists will proudly adhere to.

Antonym , Oct 22 2020 8:42 utc | 4
"Other documents that have emerged include FBI paper work that reveals the bureau's interactions with the shop's owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, who reported the laptop's contents to authorities. The document shows that Isaac received a subpoena to testify before the U.S. District Court in Delaware on Dec. 9, 2019 . One page appears to show the serial number for a MacBook Pro laptop and a hard drive that were seized by the agency." https://www.ibtimes.sg/signed-receipt-hunter-bidens-name-delaware-laptop-repair-store-surfaces-52672

So the FBI kept Hunter Biden's bomb shell HDDs under wraps for almost a year. Enough time to figure out they where not filled with Russian kompromat.

Down South , Oct 22 2020 8:46 utc | 5
hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo

Hunter's attorneys emailed the repair shop owner asking for the hard drives back.

Giuliani has handed over pictures of underage girls found in the laptop to Delaware police so we will know soon enough if they are fake.

Rutherford82 , Oct 22 2020 8:46 utc | 6
If you needed a leaked email to understand why it was corrupt for Hunter Biden to be getting 50k a month to be on the board of a Ukranian energy company, then you are likely already so propagandized that you will vote for Joe Biden no matter what gets printed.

Really this propaganda is a brilliant move for those who control what is in print. They have a clear circle of blame in Russia, Iran, or China, who are to blame for everything, and this allows the media to limit the scope of discussion greatly by suppressing real criticisms towards actual problems (the Bidens being corrupt across multiple generations) and deflecting that energy into hating Russia, China, and Iran, which are the main targets for imperialism. It is also a crude and vague lie to use anonymous sources to blame foreign entities for these types of things, which actually makes it an elegant argument for a simpleton as it is difficult if not impossible to disprove.

Because the media is really owned and operated by so few people who all have a hive-mind about money and power, the messages are consistent, even though ridiculous, and they resonate with many of the readers who really ought to know better, but have become inured to the damaging effects of the lies they have consumed for decades. Stories like these will keep working for a long time. If one of the sources in the article reported 'Up is Down, Left is Right!', there would be a wave of car accidents until they issued a retraction.

kiwiklown , Oct 22 2020 9:05 utc | 7
The Russians ( Putin / Lavrov) say ever so politely that the US is not agreement-capable.

I add that the US ( politicians, Wall Streeters, MSM, think tanks ) are:
-- not truth-capable;
-- not ethics-capable;
-- not shame-capable;
-- not honour-capable.

What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?
He turns into a ghoul without a soul, says I, a devil without human-ness!
How dare they call us deplorables when they are the despicables?

Et Tu , Oct 22 2020 9:35 utc | 10
In America, Truth is a Foreign Agent and World Peace is a threat to National Security.
Miranda , Oct 22 2020 10:21 utc | 12
More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails ... "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."

Do American journalists actually believe it's still in Russia interest to re-elect Trump? Washington-Kremlin relations have deteriorated rapidly under Trump.

S.O. , Oct 22 2020 10:32 utc | 13
@11 Miranda

It's quite doubtful many of them ever did. It's simply a useful control function.

kiwiklown , Oct 22 2020 10:49 utc | 14
Posted by: Et Tu | Oct 22 2020 9:35 utc | 9 -- "In America, Truth is a Foreign Agent and World Peace is a threat to National Security."

Nice one... Meet Mr Truth, un-registered foreign agent !!! and Mr World Peace, national security threat !!!

American leadership would not be so despicable IF they do not pretend to be "spreading freedom / democracy" when they wreak their global malice.

They do not even care for their own people (covid19 fiasco, anyone?), but pretend to care for the Chinese people so much they would regime-change the CCP; they pretend to care for the Russian people so much they would sooner shoot Putin's plane from the sky; they pretend to care for the Iranian people so much they block their access to covid19 medicines.

Circe , Oct 22 2020 10:50 utc | 15
To address the 2nd part of your post:

Here's a part of a comment I posted back in February 2020 that none of you took seriously.

Posted by: Circe | Feb 28 2020 20:29 utc | 124:

The planet of extremely bad karma SATURN is moving into Bloomberg's sign, Aquarius, right after mid-March and forming a square to Biden's sign, Scorpio. This is a very malefic aspect.

People under these two signs, Aquarius and Scorpio ie Bloomberg and Biden will experience obstacles, setbacks and challenges, create hidden enemies , and aging will be accelerated and serious health issues could emerge.

So I was criticized for injecting astrology into that election thread, mostly by AntiSpin.

Turns out as usual I hit the mark.

Bloomberg lost close to a BILLION dollars and failed badly in the primaries. That's what I call a major setback. However, as of December after a 6-month retrograde into Capricorn, Saturn is returning to Aquarius, so it ain't over for Bloomberg and things will get complicated for Biden , for the U.S. and the rest of the world.

I also stated back then that nominating Joe Biden would be a greater risk for Dems than nominating Bernie Sanders because Joe Biden was heading for serious astrological head winds relating to something unseen at the time involving a serious family issue.

While I was certain that whatever the issue was would come to light and could affect him in the Presidential campaign, I couldn't figure out the family aspect at the time, since he appears to have a solid marriage and tragedy is in the rear view now.

Last night however it all suddenly became clear and I've come to the realization that I was 100% right when I wrote that comment back in February 2020. Tonight I realized that the family issue...is Hunter Biden!

I was sounding the alarm that something bad would come to light because Saturn was headed into Aquarius, Biden's Home and Family sector squaring Biden's sign.

However, to make matters worse, it turns out that Hunter Biden is an Aquarian and Saturn the karmic taskmaster is headed on a collision course to upend his life.

At the time I wrote the comment I obviously couldn't predict exactly what would unfold, how or the precise timing, only that it would be bad and that's why I warned back then that Democrats should have chosen Bernie. I believed Bernie could beat Trump and I was right, because Trump is in total mental meltdown and self-destructing with his handling of the pandemic.

Now even if Saturn will square Biden's Scorpio that's not to say that Biden won't still win, but we are approaching a very bad full moon on October 31st. There is massive tension building, subterfuge lurking and the situation is going to get ugly. A battle royal is brewing. This is a powder keg moment.

Trump will not behave at the debate today. Must see t.v. With Obama's scorching speech yesterday seething in Trump's brain, and his Iran stunt unravelling and ineffective at distracting from the spotlight from Obama and the laptop bone clenched between his teeth; he's a rabid dog fit to be tied. Give him a padded cell, already.

As for the U.S. and the world: The pandemic started with Saturn crossing Pluto's path in Capricorn and entering full force into Aquarius in March when the world shut down.

So what will happen when karmic Saturn crosses Pluto again on it's way out of Capricorn and enters Aquarius for the next 3 years?

Fasten your seat belts everyone...we're heading into major turbulence. There's so much karmic tension gathering steam; it's very scary.

How much does it cost to get a trip to the moon?

I'll get back to sleazy Giuliani and his Pandora's box. There's too much to unpack there than meets the eye. Just know that when circumstances appear too convenient-it's because they are.

Trump's dirty play is a day late and a dollar short plus he's not playing with a full deck. Must be one of those Covid long-term effects.

It's time...to get these scum-sucking, misery mongers out of the damn White House already!

Jen , Oct 22 2020 10:56 utc | 16
You know the US government is suffering from severe Alzheimer's disease when it claims that Iran (of all nations) sent threatening emails to Democrat voters demanding that they vote for a President who authorised the murder of a popular Iranian military general back in early January this year.
Christian J. Chuba , Oct 22 2020 11:11 utc | 17
Kabuki theater on FOX

Brian Kilmeade and morning crew run the fake Iranian emails story by former CIA station Chief Daniel Hoffman.

Kabuki Actor Hoffman:
'[Uses opportunity to say Iranian Mantra] Iran has been attacking us for years, they have attacked our shipping in the Gulf (???, that's a new one) blah-blah-blah.
'Iran and Russia are attacking our democracy because that is what they fear most about America. Democracy would be the end of both regimes (Iran has no other motive to dislike the U.S. such as us killing their top General, the Stuxnet virus, murderous sanctions, ...)'
So they hate us because of our freedoms, a classic.

Kabuki Actor Kilmeade:
'Can't we do something about this?' [note, the U.S. is the perpetual victim, never the bully]
'Can't we pushback?' [The aggrieved victim, the U.S. is defending itself]
'Iran is doing this, Russia is sending bombers, can't we blow up an oil well?'

Kabuki Actor Kilmeade represents the entire degenerate U.S. public, unable to process information that views another country as having rational motives or our Intel agencies of being deceptive.

God, if you exist, You must hate this more than I do. How long?

Abe , Oct 22 2020 11:14 utc | 18
Guys.

All that rubbish is distraction. Discussing it is just playing to Borg's music.

They come up with so outlandish and jaw dropping crap that half he people thinks "it is so outlandish it gotta be true, who would lie so much?" and other half that knows better is in such a shock and disbelief that it needs some time to come to its senses and start tearing apart the lie piece by piece BUT.... Time is lost, distraction worked and MSM/Borg come up with next outrageous lie for next round. Russia, China, Navalny etc. etc.

And while marry go round Borg is doing it's deeds in dark while people is obsessing with Trump's knickers.

Debsisdead , Oct 22 2020 11:21 utc | 19
Barack oblamblam held off until as long as he possibly could, a move most likely connected to two realities, (1) not wanting to contradict what he, oblamblam said back in march "do not underestimate Joe's ability to screw anything up" and (2) Oblamblam's desire not to be found to be associated with sleepy joe's blatant corruption. Mud sticks n all that. Oblamblam was much more subtle in lining up wedges to be trousered. eg. Try as people might they have yet to uncover how a community worker turned prez found the dough to purchase a 45 acre Martha's vineyard estate off a notorious billionaire and Oblambam is reluctant to do anything which could prompt those questions,

Hence it wasn't until the 2020 election was mostly over that some DNC extortionists managed to convince oblam to say a few words, or else, to the Philadelphia african american males who chose to stay home on election day 2016.

Barack can claim 'he paid his dues' whilst keeping as much space as he can organise between himself and crooked joe, who has already brought oblamblam's prezdency into disrepute with the shameless & ugly ukraine rort that he and his bagman hunter had concocted.

There we mentioned the philly speech oh rabid, irrationally superstitious dembot.

Mark2 , Oct 22 2020 12:28 utc | 20
Here's my prediction
Trump re-elected I fortell will mean more racist murdering thugs on the street. an guess what they'l be In uniform and directly or indirectly trained by Israel.
And then there's the military presence on your streets -- you ain't seen nothing yet.
Wake the f up your gunna be massively oppressed by a fascist govenment ya skin couloir won't matter, nore who you voted for. You already live in a one party dictatorship.
ie the elite. Face it your redundant as a human being replaced by a micro-chip.
Revolt I tell you revolt !!
Mark2 , Oct 22 2020 12:37 utc | 21
The greater American public are about to become the next oppressed Palistinians ! oppressed devalued and slowly distroyed. Like a frog in a heated pan.
You won't notice till it's to late will you ?
No really, will you ?
librul , Oct 22 2020 12:52 utc | 22
Everything use to be blamed on witches. If your cow died - witches! If a tree fell on your fence - witches! If the reverend's wife died - witches!

Now it is, I lost the election - Russians, some ducks died in a park in Salisbury - Russians, someone fell sick - Russians.

When you hear, "Russians", just substitute in your mind "witches", the weight of evidence is the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rMsgmaBV8g

Witches must feel left out these days.

oldhippie , Oct 22 2020 13:14 utc | 23
So far Circe has Obama's speech described as fiery, blistering, and scorching.

Everyone else on this planet listens to Obama and falls asleep.

Jpc , Oct 22 2020 13:25 utc | 24
@ Tuyzentfloot 3

Journalism love's that high minded nonsense.
They write what they are paid to write.
Looking at the guardian wrt Assange
these clowns are beneath contempt.
Don't know if you are familiar with the box populi blog.
There a very good set of chapters from a book about journalist ethics.

pretzelattack , Oct 22 2020 13:29 utc | 25
i'm just surprised they haven't brought in venezuela and bolivia yet. that's supposed to be sarcasm, but reality keeps outstripping sarcasm. i am actually worried they are ramping up for a war in biden's first 100 days, either against iran or some serious provocation of russia like provoking some incident in azerbaijan and blaming armenia. they're f/n batshit.
pretzelattack , Oct 22 2020 13:32 utc | 26
mark2 i think you're correct about more jackbooted government thugs on the street, but that's gonna happen under either trump or crime bill joe/copmala. you're right about the israeli training too, they trained cops in that kneeling on the throat technique. field tested on palestinians.
pretzelattack , Oct 22 2020 13:42 utc | 27
iirc no ducks died, it's a miracle, the deadliest nerve poison ever invented is helpless against ducks. and house pets.
augusto , Oct 22 2020 13:45 utc | 28
Idiotic.
The united States was once a nest of excellence in nearly everything. Now it s a hub of naked idiocy.
The Russians have nothing to fear from the US or Nato, except in the economy but they can fix it. The Iranians have enough of what it takes to keep the Zio anglos away and at bay: thousands of missiles to target Israel, Saudiland, a 25 year economic alliance program with Beijing.
And clearly the time and opportunity where it was possible to still erase in a single coup the Iranian military might is over.
Josh , Oct 22 2020 13:46 utc | 29
Looks like they are imagineering again...
arby , Oct 22 2020 14:01 utc | 30
"Breaking WaPo: The U.S. government has concluded that Iran is behind a series of threatening emails arriving this week in the inboxes of Democratic voters, according to two U.S. officials. https://washingtonpost.com/technology/202"
Richard Steven Hack , Oct 22 2020 14:08 utc | 31
Posted by: librul | Oct 22 2020 12:52 utc | 22 When you hear, "Russians", just substitute in your mind "witches", the weight of evidence is the same.

Absolutely correct. You win the thread.

Neither Iran nor Russia nor China give a rat's ass about the US election. There may be literally thousands of private enterprise hackers who want to breach US election servers precisely to get the Personal Identifying Information which is coin of the realm on the Dark Web, but they couldn't care less about the election itself. It's physically impossible for any country outside of the US to significantly influence the election in a country of 300 million people - and every country knows that. The only country that *doesn't* know that is the US, which is why it spends scores and hundreds of millions of dollars - up to five billion in Ukraine, allegedly - to influence foreign elections. That's the level of effort needed to influence a foreign election more than the influence of the actual inhabitants of that nation. But every time some private group in Russia launches an ad campaign for a couple hundred thousand bucks tops, with zero effect on the US election, Putin gets blamed for some plan to mastermind the overthrow of "democracy."

It's a crock.

Christian J. Chuba , Oct 22 2020 14:21 utc | 32
I rather liked Obama's speech If for no other reason than the tone was completely different from the two candidates.

1. I'm tired of Trump's narcissism .

2. Can't stand Biden's fake 'I'm one of you'. He is corrupt, feels guilty about it, and has to reassure us that he's Lunch Box Joe .

I've noticed this about Biden for a while, he conjures up these fake memories ...

'You know what I'm talking about because I've been on that park bench at noon when you only have 20 minutes to eat your lunch because that whistle going to blow and you have to run back to your Tuna canning station or lose your job and with that your health insurance, car, and home.'

Okay this is not a literal quotation but it is a pattern and you know what I'm talking about :-)

Mark2 , Oct 22 2020 14:45 utc | 33
Pretzelatack @ 26
Yes to all you say their.
Re-reading my above comments they sound pretty harsh !
I am sorry, and do apologise !
It was part desperation and part morbid humour in the spirit of b's post.
Comparing Americans to a frog in pan may be a bit much !
I am in the U.K. we had a gen election one year ago !
I WAS THAT FROG IN A PAN.
Now I live in a pox ridden bankrupt banana republic run by a bunch of Israel bootlickers.
I don't go down well at party's.
Circe , Oct 22 2020 15:01 utc | 34
@19 Debsisdead

Barack can claim 'he paid his dues'

Hate to break it to ya all-knowing one...

obama-to-visit-miami-on-saturday-to-campaign-for-biden

And it's not superstition when the facts start to align with planetary motion.

How do you explain the Moon's effect on nature?

You think it's the only celestial body in the Solar System that influences life on Earth? That cosmic order is inescapable. Astrology is thousands of years old dating back to the Babylonians and has evolved through centuries of study and cannot, should not be dismissed as mere superstition.

I'm not an expert at all, but I recognize order and higher authority when I see it and believe me those planets are there for a reason and they rule everything. They're like carrots and sticks (IMHO mostly sticks). Now who put them there and to what ultimate purpose besides order and evolution is another matter.

I don't often bring it into a discussion, especially not to throw a discussion off topic, except when I intuitively feel fate present in important events both personally and on a universal scale.

This is a time of fated/karmic events, the pandemic being the most important (lesson) of these.

Paco , Oct 22 2020 15:05 utc | 35
Two hours delay and counting, Valday Club waiting for Vlad, something hearty must be getting cooked back stage...
Paul , Oct 22 2020 15:09 utc | 36
It's time for Grunter Biden to discover his inner Khazar and convert to judaism, why not it worked for both the Clintons and the Trumps.
Perimetr , Oct 22 2020 15:14 utc | 37
I think a more appropriate title would be "Fascist Season" . . . Fascism has come of age here in the land of the fee. The "intelligence agencies" create disinformation campaigns to overthrow the elected President while the "justice department" et al withhold evidence and fail to prosecute all the oligarchs and crooks who are busy censoring information and preparing to rig and disrupt the impending presidential election.

There are No Consequences for Anything when the Deep State and Central Banks run the show.

Of course, US corporate fascism has been developing for a very long time (see The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It ) . . . maybe more accurate to go back to the takeover of the US currency by the Federal Reserve in 1913 and the first Banker World War (see All Wars are Bankers' Wars! )

But technology and the "progressive" (pun intended) destruction of the US Constitution has led the dumbed-down US masses (don't forget Canada and Australia lol) into a whole new world of Orwellian lock-downs and wholesale economic destruction aimed at finishing off what was left of the US middle class. Soon we will have our cash taken away and replaced with a digital currency that can always be taken away or tailored for limited use, subject to negative interest rates that it cannot escape, etc. And all this is ushered in via hyperinflation leading to a collapse of the bond and equities markets, and finally the collapse of the US dollar (and all other Western fiat currencies).

Nothing like freedumb and democracy

Virgile , Oct 22 2020 15:27 utc | 38
The USA is so naive. They have been interfering in so many elections using money, blackmail,CIA operations. There was no way for other countries with less means to do the same to the USA. Now with social media they can, and they are absolutely right to take their revenge for all the troubles they got into with the USA plotting to promote a pro-US leader.
Now the battle is equal and the USA does not have the monopoly of interfering in other countries election!
Tit for tat...
Noirette , Oct 22 2020 15:32 utc | 39
All these stories are risible. Note the struggle to clarify who these 'malign' Régimes are attacking the US, and why.

Russia-R-R for Trump, but Iran-Ir-Ir for Trump doesn't quite hit the spot so now Iran is trying to damage Pres. Trump (from one of the articles..) .. is Iran trying to promote the election of Kamala Harris? What? Russia is for Trump and Iran against ?

The fall-back is a blanket, these evil leaders are trying to 'undermine democracy', influence 'US voters', meddle in 'our freedom-loving' politics, etc.

The attempt to stir up the spectre of threatening enemies far off is a hackneyed ploy. In the case of the USA, it is now melded with the promotion and control of planned internal strife, with internal enemies being natives (not islamist terrorists who sneak in and are under cover before erupting in murderous madness..) - Color Revolution Style.

-- BLM + Antifa haven't been active recently (or not in MSM top stories) as the election is approaching. Such would be upping the Trump vote for "law-and-order."

(imho from far off..) Many in the US don't take any of this seriously, it is just game-playing, false alarm, pretend concern.

"Oh wow, Iran is targetting Trump, did you know, real serious, did you hear, tell me is Zoe-chick divorcing that creep Edmond, I want to know, did you have that interview with Gov. X for the job? Is she hot? How much "

The credentialised class and the movers and shakers just roll their eyeballs, and the poor are in any case stuck in a desperado cycle of struggle against misery, what is going on with Putin / Iran / Xi is off the radar.

observer today , Oct 22 2020 15:39 utc | 40
Look! Look! A Squirrel!

Vilification of China (hate hate hate); claimed by the media and the pundits and our "Fearless Covid Conquering Leader" and all the good little parrots, to be the source of evil itself... Scapegoat extraordinaire... Hacking and Cheating and Aggressing and exercising Brutality towards its own citizens... The worst of the worst per our "intelligence" apparatus (and blind ideologues). Existential threat numero uno.

But wait!

The US is being attacked! Attacked they say; by all of the "bad" guys simultaneously.

The forces of evil out there are broad and out to get us. They hate our (imagined) freedoms.


Evidence (not):


Justice Department pushing Iran-connected charges in HBO hack, other cases

U.S. government concludes Iran was behind threatening emails sent to Democrats

U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran, Russia have tried to interfere in 2020 election

Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say


Invariably in all cases, The Voice of "Intelligence" (not bloody likely from ANY of this crew) deeply intoned to impart the "certainty", neatly encapsulated in the words "highly likely", delivered without a scrap of proof but loud, prominent, regular, mind numbing pontification.

Trust me! We lie, We cheat, We steal; and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

The US, all on its own, engenders distrust within the population because the US and all its political and Executive, and Legislative and Judicial and "intelligence" bureaucracies are corrupt to the core... Worse, they make no bones about it if you pay attention. And Partisanship is nothing but distraction because they are ALL corrupt and morally bankrupt; without empathy, remorse, sense of guilt or shame.

It was the US itself that thought it could subjugate the world through its faux "democratic" business practices and its claim of natural superiority... Its self declared Rules of Order instead of adhering to and supporting consensus established International LAW... Hegemon pompously declaring it has a RIGHT to Full Spectrum Dominance and slavish obedience.

Not the Iranians, not the Russians, not the Chinese, not the CCP, not the North Koreans, not the Venezuelans; none of them are disrupting, threatening or meddling in the US elections.

If you believe what the morons are smearing across the public consciousness through every communication medium possible you are a sucker... Totally disconnected any critical thinking faculties that may have been present. The very definition of sheeple... baaaa! (the sound drowns out reason and thought).

The rest of the World beyond NATO and Five Eyes isn't attacking the US or its institutions. They have all been attacked every which way from Sunday BY the US and its Satraps (targets of, victims of, and willing accomplices to our sophisticated excessively funded and supported global protection racquet).

The US, our Government, always blames our designated and non-compliant, non-obeisant existential threats for all the things we do to them.


And all this cacophony of alleged evil "attacks" from outside right now?

Look!!! Look!!! Over here!

Don't pay any attention to who and what decided to put us in the position we find ourselves in and what we have done to vast swaths of the world's populations "over there".

Now go vote for one of two degenerate teams, both of which are headed by supremely unqualified psychopaths.

Dissonance of cognition anyone? Orwell???

gottlieb , Oct 22 2020 15:43 utc | 41

The CIA really needs a new playbook. The Russia/Iran thing is laughable to the rest of the world, and to many 'Americans' as well. Unfortunately Partisans run the country, and those folks are addicted to the Kool Aid of MAGA – just different versions.

This October is like an Advent Calendar of October Surprises with plenty of time still on the clock for some great Golden Shower or Democratic child orgy deep fakes. Who the hell knows at this point – the acceleration of events this year makes Future Shock look like an Ambien commercial.

Trump is toast and good riddance. And sure Biden et al are war criminals and corrupt creatures of the Swamp. The Establishment is a much easier target to resist vis a vis policy than a crazy cretin without any policy but his own self-aggrandizement.

Lawrence Miller , Oct 22 2020 15:44 utc | 42
@15

[***]

"Astrology believers tend to selectively remember predictions that turn out to be true, and do not remember those that turn out false. Astrology has not demonstrated its effectiveness in controlled studies and has no scientific validity.[6]:85;[11] The study, published in Nature in 1985, found that predictions based on natal astrology were no better than chance, and that the testing "...clearly refutes the astrological hypothesis."[10] " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology

Erelis , Oct 22 2020 15:50 utc | 43
As for getting voter US state voter databases, most states allow people to purchase part of a voter's information. Other parts like birth dates remain private. But the publicly available list is probably enough as it identifies party affiliation, voting history as when dates they voted (not how they voted). All the other private information is more useful to identity thieves and Indian scam centers. And as one poster noted, those databases like gold on dark web.

As for email addresses that implies those must be acquired through party officials and candidates off donor lists. Off hand I do not know that an email address is required to register to vote--I seriously doubt it. I know that Bernie famously refused to give his donor database to Hillary. The emails imply some sort of inside job or some false flag.

james , Oct 22 2020 15:54 utc | 44
@ librul | Oct 22 2020 12:52 utc | 22 When you hear, "Russians", just substitute in your mind "witches", the weight of evidence is the same.

ditto that...

vinnieoh , Oct 22 2020 16:04 utc | 45
Just read the story on Truthout of voters in Alaska & Florida, and possibly Pennsylvania and Arizona receiving threatening messages if they should vote against Trump. "We know you're a Democrat and we have access to your voting records..." Metadata indicates servers located in the kingdoms of Israel's new friends...

Well, I just went to the Board of Elections website for my county here in Ohio and I can, with a few clicks, generate a report from their site of a county listing of voters filtered in over a half-dozen ways - i.e. by Party affiliation and including addresses. Comes under the heading of "Voter and Candidate Tools."

So some concoct a tale which blames Iran, Russia, etc. for information freely available from your State's BOE? This information has always been available, but not exploited before in this way by US neo Nazis.

So, even though your ballot is secret, intimidation is easy to engage in based solely on Party affiliation of record. If Trump loses, should some people expect bricks through their windows, or perhaps fire-bombings? Trump and his supporters are certainly ratcheting up the apocalyptic messaging, working themselves into a frenzy - that is obvious and not even debatable.

I never read Dante; which circle of hell are we entering now?

Circe , Oct 22 2020 16:05 utc | 46
Everyone here knows I was 100% behind Bernie Sanders for the Presidency because I felt he was the right person for these times, but the mass is dumb and blind. I agree with the comment I read on the previous thread I think by someone called Horseman that portrays Bernie's goal as moving the Dem Party to the Left and not sheepdogging, but recognizing the stakes involved superceded Left purity.

At the same time I was totally against Biden because he is much more Zionist than Bernie, therefore more corrupt, as Zionism is counter-evolutionary being inherently supremacist, entitled, and undemocratic.

However, Trump is exponentially worse! He is a fascist Zionist and totally depraved. There is a choice here of monumental significance. Short term loss for greater future gain.

Biden is very flawed, but I'm inclined to view a man who suffered multiple life-altering tragedies to reach this point and who is grappling with embracing a son, Hunter, who probably was destroying his life, than a narcissistic less than evolved baby-man pig with a god complex who squandered life and daddy's money on material and artificial pursuit and has no notion of humanity, as the only sane choice.

Yes, Joe Biden should face his flaws and answer for whatever corruption exists in him, but that laptop issue should not be a reason to stop people from getting Trump, the most corrupt President in my lifetime next to Bush OUT. That goal is paramount. This is 2nd to the pandemic in fated events. If people do not make the right choices and learn something from these events then let this planet devolve into hell because that will be what is deserved! The stakes right now are astronomical and super-fated!

Don't blow a singular opportunity to get rid of that Fascist pig Trump over a laptop that's really a Pandora's box being used by Shmeagol Gollum Giuliani as a trap to unleash misery for years to come.

William Gruff , Oct 22 2020 16:08 utc | 47
This is clearly the Deep State and imperial establishment spouting obvious nonsense in order to discredit themselves and therefore to help in Trump's reelection bid! Henry Kissinger told me so! What incredibly subtle and intricate plans they have!

Or... maybe it is just a bunch of incompetent baboons in the Deep State control room randomly flipping switches and pulling levers in the desperate hopes that something, anything, works.

Nah! This is all part of the Great Plan! It just seems like abject stupidity because we cannot grasp its intricate complexities.

NemesisCalling , Oct 22 2020 16:20 utc | 48
All these new threads are defaulting to election threads. Sorry, b.

But I'll bite.

In the case of a Biden victory, which do you think will happen first?:

1) Renewed hostilities w/ Assad in Syria leading to his violent ousting and thrusting the west into violent confrontation w/ Russia...

Or...

2) Forcible entry into the Armenian/Azerbaijan conflict and establishing a no-fly zone...

Or...

3) a combination of both and would throw us into a direct confrontation with either Russia or Iran or both?

It looks like the demonizing of Iran is ramping up with the mail-threats telling dims to vote Trump or else. Dims don't like hostile, foreign powers helping the Don and swaying elections. It's a nice tip-off as to what Biden and the dim establishment might consent to once Obama-era sycophants and technocrats move back in to the White House.

karlof1 , Oct 22 2020 16:30 utc | 49
Seems to be the year of anniversaries; another's being celebrated today but not by the Outlaw US Empire. China & North Korea Celebrate 70th Anniversary of China's intervention in Outlaw US Empire's invasion of Korea , which is how it's being portrayed, "China, N. Korea stand together 'for self-protection against US hegemony' like 70 years ago" reads the headline at the link. To mark the anniversary, China has published an official history , explaining its decision "To resist US aggression and aid Korea, China had no choice but to fight a war;" the 3-volume work is The War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea . From China's perspective, it defeated Outlaw US Empire forces; so, it's not "forgotten" at all. Xi's using the occasion to give a major speech, the subject of which hasn't been disclosed.

Just 12 days to go until the refusals to abide by the outcome day arrives. If one wants to look, there's lots of illegal foreign influence happening but from sources that go unmentioned: Corporations that have foreign owners, which most do, who provided campaign contributions in any form to any entity associated with the election.

arby , Oct 22 2020 16:31 utc | 50
Gruffy said

"Nah! This is all part of the Great Plan! It just seems like abject stupidity because we cannot grasp its intricate complexities."

Perfect,))

karlof1 , Oct 22 2020 16:38 utc | 51
HeHeHe!!! The first bits of Putin's appearance at the Valdai Club today are being published . In a jab back at those accusing Russia of interfering in elections and such Putin said:

"Strengthening our country and looking at what is happening in the world, in other countries, I want to say to those who are still waiting for the gradual demise of Russia: in this case, we are only worried about one thing -- how not to catch a cold at your funeral."

There's more, although a transcript has yet to be published.

Circe , Oct 22 2020 16:47 utc | 52
@48NemesisCalling

There's a thread right before this one on International Events. Why don't you go spew your poisonous Trump Kool-Aid there instead of polluting with Trumpian-laced propaganda here?

I know-I know, Election threads raise the common sense factor further and that leads to Trump's demise, so you can't help but rush in to correct that dangerous shift. Why don't you do something equally meaningless like pounding sand down a rat hole?

vk , Oct 22 2020 16:53 utc | 53
After the Russiagate fiasco I thought the Americans had learned their lesson, but it seems I was wrong.

Honestly, this may be the beginning of an irreversible process of ideological polarization of the American Empire.

The thing is it's one thing to wage propaganda warfare against a foreign enemy to your domestic audience: the foreign enemy will be destroyed either way, so they will never be able to tell their version of the story, plus the domestic audience can give itself the luxury of living the lie indefinitely as it doesn't affect their daily lives. Plus they'll directly benefit from the conquest of a foreign enemy, e.g. cheaper gas to your car after the destruction and conquest of Iraq; the abundance in the shelves of Walmarts after the subjugation of China, and so on.

It's a completely different story when you wage propaganda warfare against yourself: the Trump voter knows he/she didn't vote for Trump because of Russian influence, while the Hilary Clinton/Joe Biden voter knows he/she didn't vote in either of them because of Chinese influence. But each part will believe the half of the lie that benefits them against the other, creating a vicious cycle of mistrust between the two halves.

Meanwhile, the American economy (capitalism) continues to decline. Time is running up:

US economy looks to be on indefinite life support from government, Professor Wolff tells Boom Bust

At the same time, there's excess money in the USA:

The Fed's $4 Trillion Lifeline Never Materialized: The Fed was meant to take $454 billion and drastically expand it. So far, it has lent $20 billion.

It was a shock-and-awe moment when lawmakers gave the package a thumbs up. Yet in the months since, the planned punch has not materialized.

The Treasury has allocated $195 billion to back Fed lending programs, less than half of the allotted sum. The programs supported by that insurance have made just $20 billion in loans, far less than the suggested trillions.

The programs have partly fallen victim to their own success: Markets calmed as the Fed vowed to intervene, making the facilities less necessary as credit began to flow again.

So, the very announcement of the Fed it would lend indefinitely and unconditionally made such loans unnecessary!

I didn't like it at the beginning, but the term "Late Capitalism" is growing on me.

mk , Oct 22 2020 17:16 utc | 54
This "Circe" chick is mentally retarded and should not be allowed to roam free outside a looney bin.

Oh boy is she not deranged.

elkern , Oct 22 2020 17:16 utc | 55
MSM pushing the the Iran angle shows that they are more anti-Iran than anti-Trump.

What effect would Iran intend by sending fake threatening emails from right-wing guns nuts to Democrats? I doubt it would discourage those Democrats from voting (for Biden), and I doubt Iran would think it would. The only effect it would have is to increase the fear, distrust, and disgust Democrats already have for those groups - which is "sowing discord", not "meddling with elections".

The Trump regime pushes this because it makes Trump look good & makes Iran look bad (at least the way it's been framed). MSM generally doesn't like Trump, but prints this because hyping fear & loathing toward Iran matters more to them than dumping Trump.

Paco , Oct 22 2020 17:17 utc | 56
Posted by: karlof1 | Oct 22 2020 16:38 utc | 51

Great that they are working on it, I was taking notes but kind of lousy its not easy to listen and write at the same time. Started kind of nervous, but right now it is Putin at his most relaxed and eloquent.

Paco , Oct 22 2020 17:22 utc | 57
Posted by: karlof1 | Oct 22 2020 16:38 utc | 51

It is interesting to see how Putin is way more at ease when answering journalist's questions than when exposing his part of the event. Right now they asked him about his image, punk, criminal etc etc. Answer: my function is the main thing, and I do not take it personally, now the chinese will ask.

Circe , Oct 22 2020 17:36 utc | 58
@47 William Gruff

In case the truth gets lost in your purposely misleading translation. This hare-brained scheme was cooked up by Trump and his newly-appointed right-hand bootlicker RATcliffe, at DNI and delivered to the American people by the latter as a desperate distraction minutes after Obama smacked down Trump on every air wave.

It immediately gave off an offensive odor, as I stated previously, of Trump turd floating in golden toilet.

And that's why Chris Wray looked so awkward and uneasy behind that RAT.

Tuyzentfloot , Oct 22 2020 17:45 utc | 59
@
Paco , Oct 22 2020 17:53 utc | 60
Three hours of serious talking about any and all world problems. I wonder how long Lunch Box Joe could hold on his own. The orange man probably could do it, but just talking about himself. The US need someone like VVP.
Circe , Oct 22 2020 17:53 utc | 61
@54 mk

Projecting much?

@57 Paco

I knew Paco was a strange name for a Russiabot!

Russia is now averaging 13,000 to 15,000 infections and close to 300 hundred deaths daily. I wouldn't laugh first if I were Putin.

karlof1 , Oct 22 2020 17:53 utc | 62
Paco @56&57--

I ought to listen while also reading the Russian close-captioning so I can rebuild my Russian language facility and catch the body language messages, but I still need to read/hear it all in English. As for his response to questions, IMO Putin knows what to expect from media reporters but not from other experts in the audience whose questions are usually more complex. Then there's the need to remain tactful, although there are times when he does need to get indignant, as with the issue of illegal sanctions that harm nations's abilities to deal with the pandemic--the utter immorality and inhumanity of the Outlaw US Empire that never gets the attention it deserves.

Haven't seen this nickname for Biden--Lieden.

Christian J. Chuba , Oct 22 2020 17:56 utc | 63
Fake emails: cui bono

What would Iran gain by scaring lower end of the spectrum Democrats into voting for Trump, is that desirable for Iran?

Ah ... but it was a pump fake, Iran thought that people would think that the emails were genuine, arrest a few of the Proud Boys and this would hurt Trump by associating him with a domestic terror group. Not only is this scenario convoluted but it is extremely risky because it might scare a handful of impressionable Democrats into voting for Trump and any investigation would uncover hacking of some kind.

Most likely suspect, Israel. They have the means to hack and the contacts in the U.S. to suggest Iranian origin.

karlof1 , Oct 22 2020 17:58 utc | 64
As Putin said, Russia was able to find "balance" in its reaction to COVID; and as with China but unlike the Outlaw US Empire, it put the safety of the Russian people first and foremost. The Empire is experiencing yet another big outbreak nationwide and has yet to put the interests of its citizenry first.
Mark2 , Oct 22 2020 17:59 utc | 65
Is Circe deranged?
I don't know but I doubt if she spends trillions of dollars each year on murdering inocent men women and children.
Mmmmm
Perhaps to people living in a ''loony bin'' (America) people outside must seem quite strange !
I live near Glastonbury finest bunch of people you'd ever meet. Not known for genocidel tendency's.
Any ways Iran, Russia interfering in America's elections -- -- - pure paranoid delusion (weaponised)
William Gruff , Oct 22 2020 17:59 utc | 66
The Mighty Wurlitzer has begun to sound more like the New York Philharmonic tuning up while riding the Empire State Express as it crashes endlessly into Grand Central Station.

Symbolism not unintentional.

Paco , Oct 22 2020 18:06 utc | 67
Posted by: Circe | Oct 22 2020 17:53 utc | 61

Dear Circe, each language is a world view, I wish I had the resources available today when I was younger, I would speak as many as possible, I consider that with the means available today speaking half a dozen would be no problem at all. You have the blessing and the curse of speaking english, so no need for anything else, but that is your problem, you are so relaxed about it that you're not able to spell correctly the name of one of your best known cities, San Francisco, with a c before the s.
Again, come up with something else, the bot label is as primitive as your knowledge of your own language and geography.

William Gruff , Oct 22 2020 18:06 utc | 68
"I doubt if she spends trillions of dollars each year on murdering inocent men women and children."

She votes for it, though.

Oriental Voice , Oct 22 2020 18:19 utc | 69
kiwiklown@14:
They do not even care for their own people (covid19 fiasco, anyone?), but pretend to care for the Chinese people so much they would regime-change the CCP; they pretend to care for the Russian people so much they would sooner shoot Putin's plane from the sky; they pretend to care for the Iranian people so much they block their access to covid19 medicines.

Well said, although rather sad! The last pretension reveals exactly the mentality that was behind the genocide upon the Native American centuries ago, resorting to tactics such as passing out smallpox infected blankets, dispensation of whisky, as well as outright slaughters of course.

Mark2 , Oct 22 2020 18:22 utc | 70
Gruffy @ 68
Maybe but she martches to a different drum beat. Not the trump drum beat of war that you follow, and will lead you all over the cliff.
Don't get me wrong ! You'd have to squeeze my nuts pretty dam hard (tears in my eyes) before I'd vote for Biden.
But you must know two things -- -
A. Trump is bat shit crazy and has his finger on the button whilst the Dems are money mad and there is know profit in Armageddon.
And
B. I'm antifa my hobby is smashing the filthy fascists !!
Who's streets ? Our streets !!
karlof1 , Oct 22 2020 18:43 utc | 71
Without mentioning its name, Putin in his speech pinned the tail on the donkey regarding TrumpCo's pandemic failure:

"The values of mutual assistance, service and self-sacrifice proved to be most important. This also applies to the responsibility, composure and honesty of the authorities, their readiness to meet the demand of society and at the same time provide a clear-cut and well-substantiated explanation of the logic and consistency of the adopted measures so as not to allow fear to subdue and divide society but, on the contrary, to imbue it with confidence that together we will overcome all trials no matter how difficult they may be.

"The struggle against the coronavirus threat has shown that only a viable state can act effectively in a crisis ..." [My Emphasis]

Yes, it didn't begin with Trump, but he sure did accelerate the process of making the domestic part of the Outlaw US Empire dysfunctional, which for me makes this "silly season" even worse than usual.

Sakineh Bagoom , Oct 22 2020 18:47 utc | 72
I view this as shit-against-the-wall policy. You throw it up there. Sometimes it sticks, sometimes it doesn't.
This is how lowly vermin do foreign policy nowadays.
Remember the story -- first reported as Russians, then Iranians -- paying bounty to the Talibs to kill (as if they needed motivation) American soldiers?
Well, in that case, I guess neither story really stuck, but you see where I'm going with this. It's all shite
William Gruff , Oct 22 2020 18:53 utc | 73
And silly season continues with self-proclaimed anti-fascists who don't know what fascists are.

Fascism doesn't necessarily have anything to do with race or religion. Is there any racial difference between Ukropians and Russians? Fascism is simply a tool that capitalists use to smash class consciousness. Literally any differences can be used by the capitalists to direct the violent mobs at their victims, even differences that are completely imaginary and don't really exist except in the group mind of the mob.

Now I wonder... who is it that will attack someone for saying "But ALL lives matter!" ? Who is smashing class consciousness?

karlof1 , Oct 22 2020 18:59 utc | 74
71 Cont'd--

And this is why the USA is turning into a failed state and Russia isn't:

"Nevertheless, I am confident that what makes a state strong, primarily, is the confidence its citizens have in it . That is the strength of a state. People are the source of power , we all know that. And this recipe doesn't just involve going to the polling station and voting, it implies people's willingness to delegate broad authority to their elected government, to see the state, its bodies, civil servants, as their representatives – those who are entrusted to make decisions, but who also bear full responsibility for the performance of their duties .

"This kind of state can be set up any way you like. When I say 'any way,' I mean that what you call your political system is immaterial. Each country has its own political culture, traditions, and its own vision of their development. Trying to blindly imitate someone else's agenda is pointless and harmful. The main thing is for the state and society to be in harmony .

"And of course, confidence is the most solid foundation for the creative work of the state and society. Only together will they be able to find an optimal balance of freedom and security guarantees ." [My Emphasis]

What a brilliant collection of words emphasizing the absolute requirement for the state to do its utmost to support and develop its human capital--its citizens--while also saying citizens have their own duty to ensure the quality of the state, which means installing representatives that will work for them and promote their interests first and foremost since they are the backbone of the state. Don't feed and care for the citizenry as in the USA and you'll have a corrupt, feeble state when it comes to keeping itself strong. And IMO the primary difference that's making Russia stronger while the USA atrophies is that Russia listens to its people and genuinely cares for and acts in their interests while in the USA the demands of the citizenry have fallen on deaf ears for decades, regardless the political party running the government.

Mark2 , Oct 22 2020 19:14 utc | 75
Gruffy is trying to conflate perpetrator as opposed to the victim/ victems !
Classic -- -
US geo-politics.
Blame shifting fascist tactic.
Learned far right tactic.
Or
Psychopathic projection.
Example -- --
US attacks Iran &Russia but blames them for attacking The US.
Also Gruffy I note how you side step a point well made by
Asking a deliberately distracting question. Yawn
William Gruff , Oct 22 2020 19:23 utc | 76
"Blame shifting" absolutely is part of smashing class consciousness. Shift the blame for people's difficulties from capitalism to various parts of the working class. Those who participate violently in this process are fascists and perpetrators. Of course, they are also victims because they are destroying their own class consciousness. Class consciousness is necessary if they are ever to be able to address the real issues causing them hardship.
Paco , Oct 22 2020 19:26 utc | 77
Posted by: karlof1 | Oct 22 2020 18:59 utc | 74

When the question and answers segment comes online it is worth reading his opinion about the Karabakh conflict and how it is a very difficult situation for Russia since both countries involved, Armenia and Azerbaijan are part of a common family. The question implied that Russia would unequivocally side with Armenia based on religion, to which Putin answered that 15% of Russia population professes the islamic faith and that he considers Azerbaijan a country as close to Russia as Armenia, with over two million nationals from each of the warring countries living in Russia and as part of a very influential and productive community.

Interesting too his take on Turkey, admitting that there are a lot of disagreements Putin had good words for Erdogan admitting that he is independent and that he is someone able to uphold his word, the Turk Stream project, it was agreed upon and completed, compared to the europeans to whom he did not spare in his almost contemptuous words insinuating their lack of sovereignty.

Mark2 , Oct 22 2020 19:38 utc | 78
Gruffy error !!
In this context the 'mob'
Is trump followers.
The thugs in uniform.
The proud boys.
The US forces abroad and at home.
Gruffy 'you' ARE the mob.
I feel you watched to many cowboy films portraying native Americans as the bad guys! It shows.
I won't be replying more. as I see your very shabby diversionary tactic. Nice try though. We see you !! What you are and what you do.
karlof1 , Oct 22 2020 19:46 utc | 79
Paco @77--

Thanks for your reply! Even before the Q&A Putin skewers both the Empire and EU in this paragraph:

"Genuine democracy and civil society cannot be imported.' I have said so many times. They cannot be a product of the activities of foreign 'well-wishers,' even if they 'want the best for us.' In theory, this is probably possible. But, frankly, I have not yet seen such a thing and do not believe much in it. We see how such imported democracy models function. They are nothing more than a shell or a front with nothing behind them, even a semblance of sovereignty. People in the countries where such schemes have been implemented were never asked for their opinion, and their respective leaders are mere vassals. As is known, the overlord decides everything for the vassal . To reiterate, only the citizens of a particular country can determine their public interest." [My Emphasis]

And that "particular country" is one where both the citizens and the government share "confidence" in each other such that they work in "harmony." Thus the #1 goal of the Outlaw US Empire to sow chaos within nations so such confidence and harmony can't be established; and if they are, then destroyed.

Kooshy , Oct 22 2020 19:50 utc | 80
No one has ever lied to American people more than the American regime and her terrorizing intelligence community organization, Snowden is the living proof of this . Anyone still alive and living on this planet if it ever believed a word on anything coming out of the USG not only is a fool and a total idiot but his/her head must be seriously checked. Regardless of their party affiliations they have no shame of lying cheating steeling those United oligarchy' Secretary of State is the proof that.
William Gruff , Oct 22 2020 19:58 utc | 81
This poster is on neither "side" . More like Putin looking in pain over Azerbaijan and Armenia killing each other at the prompting of some third party that doesn't care about either of them. This poster is neither faux left nor right wing; however, this poster's grandmother was Cherokee. There is no anger directed your way for your failure to understand, though.
Mark2 , Oct 22 2020 20:11 utc | 82
If Americans had any backbone they would be on the streets protesting about this sham election prior to the election, of false choice no choice.
You earn your democracy or you loose your democracy.
Iran, Russia bashing ! Just how low have you people sunk.
No hind sight, no insight and no foresight !
No hope. Spineless.
Jams O'Donnell , Oct 22 2020 20:36 utc | 83
Totally weird! You all, please get behind re-electing Trump. He is doing such a good job of destroying the US empire and its pretensions. If you are really a leftist, this is a GOO:-D thing!

The alternative is to vote Independent or Green but they don't have a chance right now.

Tom , Oct 22 2020 20:41 utc | 84
Posted by: Circe | Oct 22 2020 10:50 utc | 15

My horrorscope has Biden circling Uranus.

Kooshy , Oct 22 2020 20:42 utc | 85
Walking only 3 miles on Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles , going west I have counted 47 homeless (male,females,wht,black,Asian)asking for handouts. These lost soles are the ones who have paid the price for the for ever wars to secure the Israel' realm,
The propose of yesterday's security show at FBI was to convince the public that all negative comments and cretics coming their way by internet blogs, email , media etc. is not really from disfranchised Americans public, but rather foreign countries operation that they do not like our democracy and way of life, It was solely meant to make people not to subscribe and believe what negativity they hear or read on US( non existing)democracy ,
This is a cheap standard operation by totalitarian regimes.


Mark2 , Oct 22 2020 21:07 utc | 86
Thanks kooshy for that and all your comments !
A true voice of sanity with heart and soul.
I hear you.
winston2 , Oct 22 2020 21:24 utc | 87
53
That money went to the ESF,what else do you think is levitating stocks and bonds ?
You assumed wrongly, but Kudlow let slip they(ESF) were broke and actually stated the money was going to them in a presser.
Debsisdead , Oct 22 2020 21:29 utc | 88
I dunno why I'm bothering to do this because astrology is such a lame easily disproven superstition that gets by because there are just so many con artists making predictions that occasionally some must be correct - the stopped clock effect, but here goes.
The moon's effect on our planet's oceans is proven to be caused by a known phenomenon, gravity. These stars whose positions we are told influence our human lives (just another anthrocentric load of bulldust what about beings on other planets?) are thousands of light years away from earth, meaning when the con-artists draw up their star charts or WTF they call 'em, they are looking at formations that happened thousands of years ago - all different depending on a particular star's distance from earth.
Claiming to be able to predict anything rational from such a mish mash of incorrect data is risible, sad really and goes much to explain the house dembot's mania.

As for oblammer in Miami? I guess the dnc know where quite a few oblammer bodies are buried.
My view is changing, Biden is so crooked that even though if he wins, the corporate media will try hard to leave him alone, but he's just too clumsy, so that some dems are going to side with the rethugs to impeach him and fast, however that may be what the oligarchy is counting on, as that brings bad karmala harris to the fore, a women so unpopular with dem rank and file she withdrew from the primary before any votes were cast, how's that for 'democracy'.

This is the real issue, both dem & rethug prez candidates are crooks through and through, if the dems win, then the spotlight the corporate media shone on orangeutan will be turned off. At least some of trump's worst rorts were stopped by a fear of being found out, but if the dems win dopey joe will have no such constraint - until he does something so over the top eg kick off nuclear war, that the media finally wakes up. too late but at least now they're awake.

Richard Steven Hack , Oct 22 2020 21:39 utc | 89
Posted by: vinnieoh | Oct 22 2020 16:04 utc | 45 If Trump loses, should some people expect bricks through their windows, or perhaps fire-bombings?

That is the threat. If either side loses, there will be massive civil unrest - at least it's very likely that is (part of) "the plan" - whatever the plan actually is. In any event, plan or not, it's predictable. Most of the preppers I follow on Youtube are urging everyone to stock up on food and water because there's a good chance that everyone will be back on movement restrictions of some sort, if not full-on martial law, within the next couple months. As I said before, this country is going to start looking like Turkey or Italy in the 70's when the Grey Wolves and the Red Brigades were terrorizing those countries. It may not be "civil war", but it's likely to be uglier than what happened this summer.

NemesisCalling , Oct 22 2020 23:01 utc | 90
@89 rsh

Massive civil unrest if Trump loses?

Wtf? You...smoking? Man!

Lol.

There will be cries of joy in the streets and maybe some celebratory looting, all from the urban left.

Trump's supporters might assemble peacefully in a very sparse manner, but I would bet most would simply take the newly alotted time from the Biden-victory to prep and ready a little more before the real fireworks begin. Violence would only erupt from the urban left attacking those demonstrations.

Real men are lying in wait. The city is not their playground any longer.

kiwiklown , Oct 23 2020 0:23 utc | 91
Posted by: Debsisdead | Oct 22 2020 11:21 utc | 19 -- "Barack can claim 'he paid his dues' whilst keeping as much space as he can organise between himself and crooked joe, who has already brought oblamblam's prezdency into disrepute with the shameless & ugly ukraine rort that he and his bagman hunter had concocted."

Thanks for your astute observations. Am learning much.

A compromised man never escapes blackmail: he is but a tool in the hands of his owners. It is not IF, but WHEN he will be used / abused. Over and over again, like a banker's boot stomping on his arrogant face.

But then, who is to say that Obanger Obummer was unaware of his VP, that Basement-Biding Bidet Biden's 'arrangements' for wealth accretion? And more (there is always more), who is to say that Obanging Ohumming gets NO share therefrom at some 'convenient' time?

Evil thinks himself clever to hide in the dark, yet lives in daily fear of the light. Thusly Obanging Ohummer's calculations that you noted above, and his dark demeanour these days. He knows he is walking on a knife edge, with a sword hanging over his head, and a safety net (those 17 intelligence agencies?) that can turn into a fowler's snare (sorry, mixed metaphors!)

Yet, looking at the happier demeanour (she used to scowl all through 2017/2018) on that shallow face called Michelle Ohummer, we can guess that she thinks they have escaped clean with their 'rewards of office'.

Christian J. Chuba @17 asked, "How long?" I ask, how does an immoral leadership ever going to turn moral? When does America get the leadership that she deserves?

Smith , Oct 23 2020 0:39 utc | 92
I doubt there will be much protests if Biden wins, the "right" in America is basically toothless.

There will be much violence when Trump wins though, much money will be spent to rile things up, just like when he won the first time.

Grieved , Oct 23 2020 1:00 utc | 93
@71 karlof1 - "only a viable state can act effectively in a crisis" - Putin

What a brilliant equation from Putin. Even more penetrating and useful than the formerly existing observation that socialist-style societies have performed best in response to the virus. Putin's criterion cuts exactly to the essence of the thing.

What the US has demonstrated from the virus response is that it is not a viable state. The benchmark now exists. Thanks for bringing it over.

Grieved , Oct 23 2020 1:03 utc | 94
@81 William Gruff

I have a friend of Cherokee ancestry. She told me how once she was speaking with an elder woman of the tribe, and described herself as "one-eighth Cherokee".

The old woman shook her head and said, "The Cherokee spirit cannot be diluted."

Yeah, Right , Oct 23 2020 1:18 utc | 95
Reuters: "The emails are under investigation, and one intelligence source said it was still unclear who was behind them."

No, it's perfectly clear who was behind them: Hunter Biden.

Honestly, the lies are now so brazen that they are no longer credible, they are just insulting.

Those are Biden Hunter's emails. QED the person "behind them" is Hunter Biden

Q: How do you know?
A: F**k me, dumbass: he wrote them, ergo, he is responsible for them.

Rob , Oct 23 2020 3:26 utc | 96
This comments thread reads like a collection of D-minus essays from a creative writing class.
Formerly T-Bear , Oct 23 2020 10:15 utc | 97
Should any here be interested, Wikipedia has aa extensive listing of governmental scandals for the 20th and 21st century administrations. Note the number of executive, legislative and judicial scandals for each administration. Note also the volume of scandals as administrations go from Franklin D. Roosevelt through to D.J. Trump for both executive and legislative branches. The political parties of the malfeasant are of interest as well - trending can be discerned, maybe, for the observant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College

Formerly T-Bear , Oct 23 2020 10:25 utc | 98
@ 97

That link should be:

List_of_federal_political_scandals_in_the_United_States

[Oct 21, 2020] Like rise of the Praetorian Guard in Rome, the rise of political role of US intelligence agencies and an ominous sign by cynthia chung

Notable quotes:
"... When the matter of truth is depicted as a possible threat to those that govern a country, you no longer have a democratic state. True, not everything can be disclosed to the public in real time, but we are sitting on a mountain of classified intelligence material that goes back more than 60 years. ..."
"... From this recognition, the whole matter of declassifying material around the Russigate scandal in real time, and not highly redacted 50 years from now, is essential to addressing this festering putrefaction that has been bubbling over since the heinous assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22nd, 1963 and to which we are still waiting for full disclosure of classified papers 57 years later. ..."
"... These intelligence bureaus need to be reviewed for what kind of method and standard they are upholding in collecting their "intelligence," that has supposedly justified the Mueller investigation and the never-ending Flynn investigation which have provided zero conclusive evidence to back up their allegations and which have massively infringed on the elected government's ability to make the changes that they had committed to the American people. ..."
"... Just like the Iraq and Libya war that was based off of cooked British intelligence (refer here and here ), Russiagate appears to have also had its impetus from our friends over at MI6 as well. It is no surprise that Sir Richard Dearlove, who was then MI6 chief (1999-2004) and who oversaw and stood by the fraudulent intelligence on Iraq stating they bought uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapon, is the very same Sir Richard Dearlove who promoted the Christopher Steele dossier as something "credible" to American intelligence. ..."
"... In other words, the same man who is largely responsible for encouraging the illegal invasion of Iraq, which set off the never-ending wars on "terror," that was justified with cooked British intelligence is also responsible for encouraging the Russian spook witch-hunt that has been occurring within the US for the last four years over more cooked British intelligence, and the FBI and CIA are knowingly complicit in this. ..."
"... "The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s." [emphasis added] ..."
"... On Dec. 22, 1974, The New York Times published an article by Seymour Hersh exposing illegal operations conducted by the CIA, dubbed the "family jewels". This included, covert action programs involving assassination attempts on foreign leaders and covert attempts to subvert foreign governments, which were reported for the first time. In addition, the article discussed efforts by intelligence agencies to collect information on the political activities of US citizens. ..."
"... Largely as a reaction to Hersh's findings, the creation of the Church Committee was approved on January 27, 1975, by a vote of 82 to 4 in the Senate. ..."
"... In addition, the Church Committee produced seven case studies on covert operations, but only the one on Chile was released, titled " Covert Action in Chile: 1963–1973 ". The rest were kept secret at the CIA's request. ..."
"... Among the most shocking revelation of the Church Committee was the discovery of Operation SHAMROCK , in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA from 1945 to the early 1970s. The information gathered in this operation fed directly into the NSA Watch List. It was found out during the committee investigations that Senator Frank Church, who was overseeing the committee, was among the prominent names under surveillance on this NSA Watch List. ..."
"... According to Garrison's team findings, there was reason to believe that the CIA was involved in the orchestrations of President Kennedy's assassination but access to classified material (which was nearly everything concerning the case) was necessary to continue such an investigation. ..."
"... Though Garrison's team lacked direct evidence, they were able to collect an immense amount of circumstantial evidence, which should have given the justification for access to classified material for further investigation. Instead the case was thrown out of court prematurely and is now treated as if it were a circus. [Refer to Garrison's book for further details and Oliver Stone's excellently researched movie JFK ] ..."
"... On Oct. 6th, 2020, President Trump ordered the declassification of the Russia Probe documents along with the classified documents on the findings concerning the Hillary Clinton emails. The release of these documents threatens to expose the entrapment of the Trump campaign by the Clinton campaign with help of the US intelligence agencies. ..."
"... Trey Gowdy, who was Chair of the House Oversight Committee from June 13th, 2017 – Jan. 3rd, 2019, has stated in an interview on Oct. 7th, 2020 that he has never seen these documents. Devin Nunes, who was Chair of the House Intelligence Committee from Jan. 3rd, 2015 – Jan. 3rd, 2019, has also said in a recent interview that he has never seen these documents. ..."
"... Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation . ..."
Oct 20, 2020 | ronpaulinstitute.org

"Treason doth never prosper; what is the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason." – Sir John Harrington.

As Shakespeare would state in his play Hamlet, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark," like a fish that rots from head to tail, so do corrupt government systems rot from top to bottom.

This is a reference to the ruling system of Denmark and not just the foul murder that King Claudius has committed against his brother, Hamlet's father. This is showcased in the play by reference to the economy of Denmark being in a state of shambles and that the Danish people are ready to revolt since they are on the verge of starving. King Claudius has only been king for a couple of months, and thus this state of affairs, though he inflames, did not originate with him.

Thus, during our time of great upheaval we should ask ourselves; what constitutes the persisting "ruling system," of the United States, and where do the injustices in its state of affairs truly originate from?

The tragedy of Hamlet does not just lie in the action (or lack of action) of one man, but rather, it is contained in the choices and actions of all its main characters. Each character fails to see the longer term consequences of their own actions, which leads not only to their ruin but towards the ultimate collapse of Denmark. The characters are so caught up in their antagonism against one another that they fail to foresee that their very own destruction is intertwined with the other.

This is a reflection of a failing system.

A system that, though it believes itself to be fighting tooth and nail for its very survival, is only digging a deeper grave. A system that is incapable of generating any real solutions to the problems it faces.

The only way out of this is to address that very fact. The most important issue that will decide the fate of the country is what sort of changes are going to occur in the political and intelligence apparatus, such that a continuation of this tyrannical treason is finally stopped in its tracks and unable to sow further discord and chaos.

When the Matter of "Truth" Becomes a Threat to "National Security"

When the matter of truth is depicted as a possible threat to those that govern a country, you no longer have a democratic state. True, not everything can be disclosed to the public in real time, but we are sitting on a mountain of classified intelligence material that goes back more than 60 years.

How much time needs to elapse before the American people have the right to know the truth behind what their government agencies have been doing within their own country and abroad in the name of the "free" world?

From this recognition, the whole matter of declassifying material around the Russigate scandal in real time, and not highly redacted 50 years from now, is essential to addressing this festering putrefaction that has been bubbling over since the heinous assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22nd, 1963 and to which we are still waiting for full disclosure of classified papers 57 years later.

If the American people really want to finally see who is standing behind that curtain in Oz, now is the time.

These intelligence bureaus need to be reviewed for what kind of method and standard they are upholding in collecting their "intelligence," that has supposedly justified the Mueller investigation and the never-ending Flynn investigation which have provided zero conclusive evidence to back up their allegations and which have massively infringed on the elected government's ability to make the changes that they had committed to the American people.

Just like the Iraq and Libya war that was based off of cooked British intelligence (refer here and here ), Russiagate appears to have also had its impetus from our friends over at MI6 as well. It is no surprise that Sir Richard Dearlove, who was then MI6 chief (1999-2004) and who oversaw and stood by the fraudulent intelligence on Iraq stating they bought uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapon, is the very same Sir Richard Dearlove who promoted the Christopher Steele dossier as something "credible" to American intelligence.

In other words, the same man who is largely responsible for encouraging the illegal invasion of Iraq, which set off the never-ending wars on "terror," that was justified with cooked British intelligence is also responsible for encouraging the Russian spook witch-hunt that has been occurring within the US for the last four years over more cooked British intelligence, and the FBI and CIA are knowingly complicit in this.

Neither the American people, nor the world as a whole, can afford to suffer any more of the so-called "mistaken" intelligence bumblings. It is time that these intelligence bureaus are held accountable for at best criminal negligence, at worst, treason against their own country.

When Great Figures of Hope Are Targeted as Threats to "National Security"

The Family Jewels report , which was an investigation conducted by the CIA to investigate itself, was spurred by the Watergate Scandal and the CIA's unconstitutional role in the whole affair. This investigation by the CIA reviewed its own conduct from the 1950s to mid-1970s.

The Family Jewels report was only partially declassified in June 25, 2007 (30 years later). Along with the release of the redacted report included a six-page summary with the following introduction:

"The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s." [emphasis added]

Despite this acknowledged violation of its charter for 25 years, which is pretty much since its inception, the details of this information were kept classified for 30 years from not just the public but major governmental bodies and it was left to the agency itself to judge how best to "reform" its ways.

On Dec. 22, 1974, The New York Times published an article by Seymour Hersh exposing illegal operations conducted by the CIA, dubbed the "family jewels". This included, covert action programs involving assassination attempts on foreign leaders and covert attempts to subvert foreign governments, which were reported for the first time. In addition, the article discussed efforts by intelligence agencies to collect information on the political activities of US citizens.

Largely as a reaction to Hersh's findings, the creation of the Church Committee was approved on January 27, 1975, by a vote of 82 to 4 in the Senate.

The Church Committee's final report was published in April 1976, including seven volumes of Church Committee hearings in the Senate.

The Church Committee also published an interim report titled "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders", which investigated alleged attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of Zaire, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile and Fidel Castro of Cuba. President Ford attempted to withhold the report from the public, but failed and reluctantly issued Executive Order 11905 after pressure from the public and the Church Committee.

Executive Order 11905 is a United States Presidential Executive Order signed on February 18, 1976, by a very reluctant President Ford in an attempt to reform the United States Intelligence Community, improve oversight on foreign intelligence activities, and ban political assassination.

The attempt is now regarded as a failure and was largely undone by President Reagan who issued Executive Order 12333 , which extended the powers and responsibilities of US intelligence agencies and directed leaders of the US federal agencies to co-operate fully with the CIA, which was the original arrangement that CIA have full authority over clandestine operations (for more information on this refer to my papers here and here ).

In addition, the Church Committee produced seven case studies on covert operations, but only the one on Chile was released, titled " Covert Action in Chile: 1963–1973 ". The rest were kept secret at the CIA's request.

Among the most shocking revelation of the Church Committee was the discovery of Operation SHAMROCK , in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA from 1945 to the early 1970s. The information gathered in this operation fed directly into the NSA Watch List. It was found out during the committee investigations that Senator Frank Church, who was overseeing the committee, was among the prominent names under surveillance on this NSA Watch List.

In 1975, the Church Committee decided to unilaterally declassify the particulars of this operation, against the objections of President Ford's administration (refer here and here for more information).

The Church Committee's reports constitute the most extensive review of intelligence activities ever made available to the public. Much of the contents were classified, but over 50,000 pages were declassified under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22nd, 1963. Two days before his assassination a hate-Kennedy handbill (see picture) was circulated in Dallas accusing the president of treasonous activities including being a communist sympathizer.

On March 1st, 1967 New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested and charged Clay Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy, with the help of David Ferrie and others. After a little over a one month long trial, Shaw was found not guilty on March 1st, 1969.

David Ferrie, a controller of Lee Harvey Oswald, was going to be a key witness and would have provided the "smoking gun" evidence linking himself to Clay Shaw, was likely murdered on Feb. 22nd, 1967, less than a week after news of Garrison's investigation broke in the media.

According to Garrison's team findings, there was reason to believe that the CIA was involved in the orchestrations of President Kennedy's assassination but access to classified material (which was nearly everything concerning the case) was necessary to continue such an investigation.

Though Garrison's team lacked direct evidence, they were able to collect an immense amount of circumstantial evidence, which should have given the justification for access to classified material for further investigation. Instead the case was thrown out of court prematurely and is now treated as if it were a circus. [Refer to Garrison's book for further details and Oliver Stone's excellently researched movie JFK ]

To date, it is the only trial to be brought forward concerning the assassination of President Kennedy.

The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was created in 1994 by the Congress enacted President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which mandated that all assassination-related material be housed in a single collection within the National Archives and Records Administration. In July 1998, a staff report released by the ARRB emphasized shortcomings in the original autopsy.

The ARRB wrote , "One of the many tragedies of the assassination of President Kennedy has been the incompleteness of the autopsy record and the suspicion caused by the shroud of secrecy that has surrounded the records that do exist." [emphasis added]

The staff report for the Assassinations Records Review Board contended that brain photographs in the Kennedy records are not of Kennedy's brain and show much less damage than Kennedy sustained.

The Washington Post reported :

Asked about the lunchroom episode [where he was overheard stating his notes of the autopsy went missing] in a May 1996 deposition, Finck said he did not remember it. He was also vague about how many notes he took during the autopsy but confirmed that 'after the autopsy I also wrote notes' and that he turned over whatever notes he had to the chief autopsy physician, James J. Humes.

It has long been known that Humes destroyed some original autopsy papers in a fireplace at his home on Nov. 24, 1963. He told the Warren Commission that what he burned was an original draft of his autopsy report. Under persistent questioning at a February 1996 deposition by the Review Board, Humes said he destroyed the draft and his 'original notes.'

Shown official autopsy photographs of Kennedy from the National Archives, [Saundra K.] Spencer [who worked in 'the White House lab'] said they were not the ones she helped process and were printed on different paper. She said 'there was no blood or opening cavities' and the wounds were much smaller in the pictures [than what she had] worked on

John T. Stringer, who said he was the only one to take photos during the autopsy itself, said some of those were missing as well. He said that pictures he took of Kennedy's brain at a 'supplementary autopsy' were different from the official set that was shown to him. [emphasis added]

This not only shows that evidence tampering did indeed occur, as even the Warren Commission acknowledges, but this puts into question the reliability of the entire assassination record of John F. Kennedy and to what degree evidence tampering and forgery have occurred in these records.

We would also do well to remember the numerous crimes that the FBI and CIA have been guilty of committing upon the American people such as during the period of McCarthyism. That the FBI's COINTELPRO has been implicated in covert operations against members of the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1960s. That FBI director J. Edgar Hoover made no secret of his hostility towards Dr. King and his ludicrous belief that King was influenced by communists, despite having no evidence to that effect.

King was assassinated on April 4th, 1968 and the civil rights movement took a major blow.

In November 1975, as the Church Committee was completing its investigation, the Department of Justice formed a Task Force to examine the FBI's program of harassment directed at Dr. King, including the FBI's security investigations of him, his assassination and the FBI conducted criminal investigation that followed. One aspect of the Task force study was to determine "whether any action taken in relation to Dr. King by the FBI before the assassination had, or might have had, an effect, direct or indirect, on that event."

In its report , the Task Force criticized the FBI not for the opening, but for the protracted continuation of, its security investigation of Dr. King:

"We think the security investigation which included both physical and technical surveillance, should have been terminated in 1963. That it was intensified and augmented by a COINTELPRO type campaign against Dr. King was unwarranted; the COINTELPRO type campaign, moreover, was ultra vires and very probably felonious."

In 1999, King Family v. Jowers civil suit in Memphis, Tennessee occurred, the full transcript of the trial can be found here . The jury found that Lloyd Jowers and unnamed others, including those in high ranking positions within government agencies, participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King.

During the four week trial, it was pointed out that the rifle allegedly used to assassinate King did not have a scope that was sighted, which meant you could not have hit the broad side of a barn with that rifle, thus it could not have been the murder weapon.

This was only remarked on over 30 years after King was murdered and showed the level of incompetence, or more likely, evidence tampering that was committed from previous investigations conducted by the FBI.

The case of JFK and MLK are among the highest profile assassination cases in American history, and it has been shown in both cases that evidence tampering has indeed occurred, despite being in the center of the public eye. What are we then to expect as the standard of investigation for all the other cases of malfeasance? What expectation can we have that justice is ever upheld?

With a history of such blatant misconduct, it is clear that the present demand to declassify the Russiagate papers now, and not 50 years later, needs to occur if we are to address the level of criminality that is going on behind the scenes and which will determine the fate of the country.

The American People Deserve to Know

Today we see the continuation of the over seven decades' long ruse, the targeting of individuals as Russian agents without any basis, in order to remove them from the political arena. The present effort to declassify the Russiagate papers and exonerate Michael Flynn, so that he may freely speak of the intelligence he knows, is not a threat to national security, it is a threat to those who have committed treason against their country.

On Oct. 6th, 2020, President Trump ordered the declassification of the Russia Probe documents along with the classified documents on the findings concerning the Hillary Clinton emails. The release of these documents threatens to expose the entrapment of the Trump campaign by the Clinton campaign with help of the US intelligence agencies.

The Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe released some of these documents recently, including former CIA Director John Brennan's handwritten notes for a meeting with former President Obama, the notes revealing that Hillary Clinton approved a plan to "vilify Donald Trump by stirring up scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service."

Trey Gowdy, who was Chair of the House Oversight Committee from June 13th, 2017 – Jan. 3rd, 2019, has stated in an interview on Oct. 7th, 2020 that he has never seen these documents. Devin Nunes, who was Chair of the House Intelligence Committee from Jan. 3rd, 2015 – Jan. 3rd, 2019, has also said in a recent interview that he has never seen these documents.

And yet, both the FBI and CIA were aware and had access to these documents and sat on them for four years, withholding their release from several government-led investigations that were looking into the Russiagate scandal and who were requesting relevant material that was in the possession of both intelligence bureaus. Do these intelligence bureaus sound like they are working for the "national security" of the American people?

The truth must finally be brought to light, or the country will rot from its head to tail.

Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation .


[Oct 10, 2020] Jim Comey Ignored State Department Whistleblower on HIllary's Crimes With Classified Material by Larry C Johnson - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Oct 10, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Jim Comey Ignored State Department Whistleblower on HIllary's Crimes With Classified Material by Larry C Johnson

One year before Jim Comey was immersed in his plot to overthrow Donald Trump, the duly elected President of the United States, a brave Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department of State came forward with firsthand information of Hillary Clinton's rampant abuse of Classified material. The man, a senior State Department diplomat who had served as the acting Ambassador (Chargé d'Affaires) in the Asia Pacific region under President Clinton, also was a veteran of the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.

The letter from this whistleblower is stunning and I am going to present it in total. It is dated 10 January 2016. You can read it for yourself here starting at page 121 . I became aware of this letter thanks to the assiduous research and writings of Charles Ortel (he wrote about this recently at the American Thinker ).

The letter explains in great detail how Hillary and her cabal of sychophants used an unclassified system to disseminate Top Secret and Secret intelligence. But the Senior Diplomat did not stop there. He explained carefully and specifically who the FBI needed to interview and the questions they needed to ask. You do not need to take my word for it. You can read the letter for yourself.

And what did the sanctimonious, smug buffoon heading up the FBI do? Nothing. But this senior Foreign Service Officer was dogged in making sure the FBI had the information. He called FBI Headquarters and could not get any confirmation that his letter was accepted. Not satisfied, he walked into the FBI's Washington Field Office. The results of this meeting were reported to three FBI Agents working on the Hillary Clinton investigation. Named in the report are Peter Strzok and Jonathan Moffa (the third name is blacked out).

Here is the report in its entirety. Please note that the State Department official delivered the information on the 27th of January 2016, but the report was not written up until four weeks later–22 February 2016. (You can see the original on the FBI website here starting at page 11.)

I do not know if John Durham has seen these documents. I am posting to make sure that he does. There is no evidence that Inspector General Horowitz examined these documents or interviewed the Foreign Service Officer. With Secretary of State Pompeo's promise that Hillary emails will be forthcoming, I think it is worthwhile to revisit what this brave whistleblower tried to bring to the attention of the FBI, who clearly was hellbent on protecting Hillary rather than pursing justice and upholding the law. Shameful.

Reader Interactions

blue peacock , 10 October 2020 at 11:35 AM

Larry,

What's your take that the Trump administration never indicted any of the coup plotters? And there were many.

Deap , 10 October 2020 at 12:02 PM

Unfortunately the formatting on this website cuts off the sides of the letter and makes it unreadable for me - anyone else having this problem? (MacAirBook- Safari)

Great find and wish I could read it. Thanks, LJ. Share your appreciation of the American Thinker website.

Balint Somkuti, PhD , 10 October 2020 at 12:10 PM

This story reeks of divided identities and loyalties.

Sic transit gloria mundi!

JohninMK , 10 October 2020 at 12:46 PM

Sad but I suspect that the shear number of those in Government that have a vested interest in this will ensure that nothing continues to be the outcome.

Wonder how the whistleblower fared after this.

TV , 10 October 2020 at 01:10 PM

Ah.....more about the FEEBS - Famous But Incompetent.
The Democrat-media is the voice of the swamp and the DOJ/FBI are the protectors of the swamp.

Antoinetta III , 10 October 2020 at 01:37 PM

Deap, I'm having the same problem; I'm using a Toshiba Satellite with Windows 7 and running on Internet Explorer.

Antoinetta III

Crf , 10 October 2020 at 01:43 PM

Deap: use "view image in a new tab".

Fred , 10 October 2020 at 01:46 PM

Larry,

Who was the United States Ambassador to Honduras the whistlebolwer is writing about (2009), Hugo Llorens?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Llorens

No one , 10 October 2020 at 01:57 PM

Deap, right-click and view image.

Chuck Light , 10 October 2020 at 02:38 PM

Deap: I had the same formatting problem. But you can find the letter by clicking on the link in the post which states "here starting at p. 121."

When you get to the FBI Vault, click on the PDF on the left side of the page, near the top, entitled "Hillary Rodham Clinton part 23 of 23.pdf."

When the PDF opens, scroll down to page 121. The letter will be found at pp. 121 to 131. Page 132 (HRC 10114) may be the postage receipt for the letter when it was originally sent, but it is illegible.

I haven't tried to find the American Thinker article which is referenced in this post, but it may provide context.


Enjoy.

Chuck Light , 10 October 2020 at 02:58 PM

I found the Ortel article at American Thinker. Google "Charles Ortel American Thinker" and you can find a page with Ortel's articles and blogs. The article is entitled "James Comey and Robert Mueller have Massive Clinton Foundation Problems." It appears that Mr. Ortel has a significant interest in the Clinton Foundation.

smoke , 10 October 2020 at 03:06 PM

Carter Page is interviewed by Sharyl Atkinsson on C-Span 2/ Book TV this weekend. Chilling, interesting perspective. Page's book is out: Abuse and Power.

Apparently Atkinson, of Sinclair Broadcasting, has had her own troubles with illegal surveillance.

Often Book tv replays programs, sometimes late, when it can be recorded.

Roger G Spenser , 10 October 2020 at 05:15 PM

Thank you for posting this.

Artemesia , 10 October 2020 at 05:37 PM

All C Span programs are archived & can be viewed on your computer.
Accessed by typing (i.e.) "Carter Page" in the search box.
https://www.c-span.org/search/basic/?query=Carter+page

The Atkinson interview is here:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?475289-1/abuse-power

I intend to purchase a TV & subscribe to cable once I've exhausted all C Span Book TV programming.

Deap , 10 October 2020 at 06:35 PM

Thanks all for the tips to access this link. Got it. All I can remember is Barry Soetoro stating ...but Hilary didn't mean any harm running her separate insecure server.

The beginning pages of this link re-capping the strings of false and highly hedged statements about Benghazi were bone chilling to read too. I guess we should be grateful Biden did not pick Susan Rice for VP, but then he did much worse, he picked Kamala Harris.

And oh yeah, lock her up!

PS: is there some comfort seeing my spell check still does not recognize the word "Kamala"? The gods of small favors strikes again.

Diana Croissant , 10 October 2020 at 06:46 PM

am so very happy that you have been able to get the documents to prove what became so very obvious to so many who did not have access to documents but who just had working brains. They help us to understand what was going on with HRC's computer situation and with Jim Comey's FBI.

You mention Hillary's "cabal of sychophants." There was no one more eager to become a card-carrying member of that cabal than Comey himself. I do remember an interview on television--don't have the date nor can I remember the media outlet that broadcast it--in which Comey gushed about how wonderful it would be for Hillary to win since his wife and daughters and even he himself were excited about possibly having the first female POTUS.

It seemed to me at the time that it was not an appropriate statement for the head of the FBI to make on national television--especially with all the questions about Hillary's emails and her obliterated computer--not to mention also the tarmac meeting in AZ between Bill and Loretta Lynch (supposedly to discuss grandchildren). I thought then and still think that the old Peter Principal was really being played out in the FBI at the time.

I don't remember the timeline of all this. But all I remember is how rotten things seemed were the District of Columbia.

Diana Croissant , 10 October 2020 at 07:10 PM

OOPs!! I worked to long in public schools and dealt with too many incompetent principals.

I meant The Peter Principle.

[Oct 10, 2020] IRS says Clinton "charity" fraud investigation to move forward.

Oct 10, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

w 2 play_arrow


Whodathunkit , 1 hour ago

Bomb-fin-shell. Judge smacks down IRS. Says Clinton "charity" fraud investigation to move forward.
https://truepundit.com/exclusive-federal-judge-drops-massive-bomb-on-clinton-foundation-reveals-irs-cover-up-judge-blows-roof-off-protection-racket-in-moynihan-doyle-2-5-billion-case-against-clintons/

Yog Soggoth , 1 hour ago

Hillary's father ran Chicago mob after Al Capone ...

https://brassballs.blog/home/after-capone-hillarys-father-ran-chicago-mob Hot Springs was where they all gathered before they formed Las Vegas. Nothing new under the sun Son.

Roger Casement , 1 hour ago

Hmm...

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/hot-springs-arkansas-gangsters/

https://themobmuseum.org/blog/hot-springs-is-soaked-in-mob-lore/

onemorething , 3 hours ago

anthony weiner's laptop

Zionism_is_racism , 3 hours ago

most important comment in your history.

[Oct 06, 2020] CIA Director Haspel And The Anti-Trump Conspirators -

Oct 06, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

CIA Director Haspel And The Anti-Trump Conspirators by Tyler Durden Mon, 10/05/2020 - 23:00 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Authored by Chris Farrell via The Gatestone Institute,

Gina Haspel is the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Haspel is the first career clandestine service officer to become director, and the first woman. She was the CIA Chief of Station in London -- twice, and that repeat assignment is very unusual. What is most interesting is the timing of Haspel's last tour as London Station Chief -- from 2014 to early 2017. That is the same timeframe (specifically, the late summer of 2016) when the FBI approached foreign policy academic and "utility government operative" Stefan Halper to begin the operation targeting Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in an FBI-designed foreign counterintelligence operation, against Team Trump, to be launched in Cambridge, England.

Nothing speculative here -- the Justice Department Inspector General pegged the exact date of the FBI/Halper meeting as August 10, 2016. Halper had been on contract (again) with the U.S. government since the Iowa Caucuses began in October 2015. For the sake of brevity, I am not discussing Halper's role in targeting former Defense Intelligence Agency Director, Lieutenant General Mike Flynn. That is another column for another day -- and certainly Haspel knows a great deal about that, as well.

The timeframe (2014-2017) matters, because Haspel, as London Station Chief would have been briefed on the FBI's counterintelligence plan before any actions were approved to go forward. The CIA Station Chief is the top intelligence official in any given country. The FBI must inform the Station Chief of what they planned to do and get Station Chief approval. The FBI hates that, but those are the rules.

Because the various intelligence agencies are sensitive, they do not use the word "approved." Instead, they use the word "coordinated."

Jargon aside, nothing would have happened without Haspel's okay.

Think about this for a while : The current CIA director was an active, knowledgeable party to the efforts to target candidate Trump with a contrived foreign counterintelligence investigation. That carried forward to a more sophisticated and aggressive plan to carry out a soft coup against President Trump. People around President Trump were prosecuted and/or had their lives destroyed based on a scheme of U.S. government lies. Who appears to have been "in on it" from day one? Gina Haspel.

So, when we read in an article by Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist , that Haspel is personally resisting the declassification and release of records on "Russiagate," we are not surprised. In fact, we are relieved, because a few of us have been shouting from the mountaintops about Haspel for years, to no avail. The smarmy James Comey is easier to identify and loathe than the elusive Haspel.

For those seeking more information on Haspel , Shane Harris of the Washington Post wrote a nauseating hagiography of Haspel in July 2019. Consistent with WaPo 's standards there are several factual errors and loads of opinion masquerading as "tough reporting." Harris (and one assumes Haspel) makes sure readers know that Haspel and company "boils down" presidential intelligence briefings to "a few key points that they think Trump absolutely needs to know." We are supposed to also believe that "Trump favors pictures and graphics over text." Of course, the CIA director's office did not cooperate with Harris. No, not at all.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890

The FBI is not allowed to penetrate and subvert a presidential campaign. Executive Order 12333, Section 2.9 , "Undisclosed Participation in Organizations in the United States," prohibits it in plain language. Historically, the prohibition is a consequence of U.S. Army Counterintelligence penetrating Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at the behest of the FBI during the 1960s -- among other abuses of power and authority. That legal prohibition is the reason the FBI felt the need to manufacture a "foreign counterintelligence threat" in the UK and then "import" the investigation back into the United States.

The FBI plotters needed to establish a foreign counterintelligence "event" to run their operation. The UK was the easiest and operationally safest/friendliest place to pull it off, especially with Stefan Halper's connections to Cambridge. Haspel was clearly fully informed and had "coordinated" the operation. She also enjoyed cordial relationships with MI6 and GCHQ. Now we (largely, but imperfectly) know what transpired. Halper under oath, in public, would fill in a lot of blanks. Gina Haspel, under the same circumstances and conditions, might just complete the puzzle.

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[Oct 06, 2020] Comey's Amnesia Makes Senate Session Unforgettable - Antiwar.com Original

Notable quotes:
"... The New York Times ..."
Oct 06, 2020 | original.antiwar.com

Comey's Amnesia Makes Senate Session Unforgettable

by Ray McGovern Posted on October 06, 2020

Former FBI Director James Comey testified to Congress last Wednesday that he did not remember much about what was going on when the FBI deceived the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court into approving four warrants for surveillance of Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Few outsiders are aware that those warrants covered not only Page but also anyone Page was in contact with as well as anyone Page's contacts were in contact with – under the so-called two-hop surveillance procedure. In other words, the warrants extend coverage two hops from the target – that is, anyone Page talks to and anyone they, in turn, talk to.

At the hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsay Graham reviewed the facts (most of them confirmed by the Department of Justice inspector general) showing that none of the four FISA warrants were warranted.

Graham gave a chronological rundown of the evidence that Comey and his "folks" either knew, or should have known, that by signing fraudulent FISA warrant applications they were perpetrating a fraud on the court.

The "evidence" used by Comey and his "folks" to "justify" warrants included Page's contacts with Russian officials (CIA had already told the FBI those contacts had been approved) and the phony as a three-dollar bill "Steele dossier" paid for by the Democrats.

Two Hops to the World

But let's not hop over the implications of two-hop surveillance , which apparently remains in effect today. Few understand the significance of what is known in the trade as "two-hop" coverage. According to a former NSA technical director, Bill Binney, when President Barack Obama approved the current version of "two hops," the NSA was ecstatic – and it is easy to see why.

Let's say Page was in touch with Donald Trump (as candidate or president); Trump's communications could then be surveilled, as well. Or, let's say Page was in touch with Google. That would enable NSA to cover pretty much the entire world. A thorough read of the transcript of Wednesday's hearing, particularly the Q-and-A, shows that this crucial two-hop dimension never came up – or that those aware of it, were too afraid to mention it. It was as if Page were the only one being surveilled.

Here is a sample of The New York Times 's typical coverage of such a hearing:

"Senate Republicans sought on Wednesday to promote their efforts to rewrite the narrative of the Trump-Russia investigation before Election Day, using a hearing with the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey to cast doubt on the entire inquiry by highlighting problems with a narrower aspect of it.

"Led by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee spent hours burrowing into mistakes and omissions made by the FBI when it applied for court permission to wiretap the former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016 and 2017. Republicans drew on that flawed process to renew their claims that Mr. Comey and his agents had acted with political bias, ignoring an independent review that debunked the notion of a plot against President Trump."

Flawed process? Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz pinpointed no few than 17 "serious performance failures" related to the four FISA warrant applications on Page. Left unsaid is the fact that Horowitz's investigation was tightly circumscribed. Basically, he asked the major players "Were you biased?" And they said "No."

Chutzpah-full Disingenuousness

Does the NYT believe we were all born yesterday? When the Horowitz report was released in early December 2019, Fox News' Chris Wallace found those serious performance failures "pretty shocking." He quoted an earlier remark by Rep. Will Hurd (R,TX) a CIA alumnus:

"Why is it when you have 17 mistakes -- 17 things that are misrepresented or lapses -- and every one of them goes against the president and for investigating him, you have to say, 'Is that a coincidence'? it is either gross incompetence or intentionality."

Throughout the four-hour hearing on Wednesday, Comey was politely smug – a hair short of condescending.

There was not the slightest sign he thought he would ever be held accountable for what happened under his watch. You see, four years ago, Comey "knew" Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in; that explains how he, together with CIA Director John Brennan and National Intelligence Director James Clapper, felt free to take vast liberties with the Constitution and the law before the election, and then launched a determined effort to hide their tracks post election.

Trump had been forewarned. On Jan. 3, 2017, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), with an assist from Rachel Maddow, warned Trump not to get crosswise with the "intelligence community," noting the IC has six ways to Sunday to get back at you.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/fotKK5kcMOg

Three days later, Comey told President-elect Trump, in a one-on-one conversation, what the FBI had on him – namely, the "Steele Dossier." The media already had the dossier, but were reluctant (for a host of obvious reasons) to publish it. When it leaked that Comey had briefed Trump on it, they finally had the needed peg.

New Parvenu in Washington

After the tête-à-tête with Comey on Jan. 6, 2017, newcomer Trump didn't know what hit him. Perhaps no one told him of Schumer's warning; or maybe he dismissed it out of hand. Is that what Comey was up to on Jan. 6, 2017?

Was the former FBI director protesting too much in his June 2017 testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee when he insisted he'd tried to make it clear to Trump that briefing him on the unverified but scurrilous information in the dossier wasn't intended to be threatening?

It took Trump several months to figure out what was being done to him.

Trump to NYT: 'Leverage' (aka Blackmail)

In a long Oval Office interview with the Times on July 19, 2017, Trump said he thought Comey was trying to hold the dossier over his head.

" Look what they did to me with Russia, and it was totally phony stuff. the dossier Now, that was totally made-up stuff," Trump said. "I went there [to Moscow] for one day for the Miss Universe contest, I turned around, I went back. It was so disgraceful. It was so disgraceful.

"When he [Comey] brought it [the dossier] to me, I said this is really made-up junk. I didn't think about anything. I just thought about, man, this is such a phony deal. I said, this is – honestly, it was so wrong, and they didn't know I was just there for a very short period of time. It was so wrong, and I was with groups of people. It was so wrong that I really didn't, I didn't think about motive. I didn't know what to think other than, this is really phony stuff."

The Steele dossier, paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign and compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, includes a tale of Trump cavorting with prostitutes, who supposedly urinated on each other before the same bed the Obamas had slept in at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Trump told the Times : "I think [Comey] shared it so that I would think he had it out there. As leverage."

Still Anemic

Even with that lesson in hand, Trump still proved virtually powerless in dealing with the National Security State/intelligence community. The president has evidenced neither the skill nor the guts to even attempt to keep the National Security State in check.

Comey, no doubt doesn't want to be seen as a "dirty cop," With Trump in power and Attorney General William Barr his enforcer, there was always the latent threat that they would use the tools at their disposal to expose and even prosecute Comey and his National Security State colleagues for what the president now knows was done during his candidacy and presidency.

Despite their braggadocio about taking on the Deep State, and the continuing investigations, it seems doubtful that anything serious is likely to happen before Election Day, Nov. 3.

On Wednesday, Comey had the air of one who is equally sure, this time around, who will be the next president. No worries. Comey could afford to be politely vapid for five more weeks, and then be off the hook for any and all "serious performance failures" – some of them felonies.

Thus, a significant downside to a Biden victory is that the National Security State will escape accountability for unconscionable misbehavior, running from misdemeanors to insurrection. No small thing.

Sen. Graham concluded the hearing with a pious plea: "Somebody needs to be held accountable." Yet, surely, he has been around long enough to know the odds.

Given his disastrous presidency, either way the prospects are bleak: no accountability for the National Security State, which is to be expected, or four more years of Trump.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This originally appeared at Consortium News .

[Oct 06, 2020] DNI Declassifies Brennan Notes; Briefed Obama On Intelligence That Hillary Clinton Concocted Trump-Russia Allegations -

Oct 06, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

DNI Declassifies Brennan Notes; Briefed Obama On Intelligence That Hillary Clinton Concocted Trump-Russia Allegations by Tyler Durden Tue, 10/06/2020 - 16:19 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified several documents, including handwritten notes from former CIA John Brennan after he briefed former President Obama on an alleged plot by Hillary Clinton to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia as "a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server" ahead of the 2016 US election, according to Fox News .

Ratcliffe declassified Brennan's handwritten notes – which were taken after he briefed Obama on the intelligence the CIA received – and a CIA memo, which revealed that officials referred the matter to the FBI for potential investigative action.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence transmitted the declassified documents to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on Tuesday afternoon.

"Today, at the direction of President Trump, I declassified additional documents relevant to ongoing Congressional oversight and investigative activities ," Ratcliffe said in a statement to Fox News Tuesday. - Fox News

" We're getting additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED], " read Brennan's notes. "CITE [summarizing] alleged approved by Hillary Clinton a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service."

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1313568388443185157&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fdni-declassifies-brennan-notes-briefed-obama-intelligence-hillary-clinton-concocted-trump&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

As we noted last week after Ratcliffe previewed the allegation:

On September 7, 2016, US intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to former FBI officials James Comey and Peter Strzok concerning allegations that Hillary Clinton approved a plan to smear then-candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian hackers , according to information given to Sen. Lindsey Graham by the Director of National Intelligence.

According to Fox News' Chad Pergram, "In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump," after one of Clinton's foreign policy advisers proposed vilifying Trump "by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services."

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1311015809284820995&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fdni-declassifies-brennan-notes-briefed-obama-intelligence-hillary-clinton-concocted-trump&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

[Oct 05, 2020] How The DNC Hired CrowdStrike To Frame Russia For The Hack- Excerpt -

Oct 05, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

How The DNC Hired CrowdStrike To Frame Russia For The Hack: Excerpt

by Tyler Durden Sun, 10/04/2020 - 20:50 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Submitted by Thomas Farnan, originally published in The National Pulse

U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe recently declassified information indicating the CIA obtained intelligence in 2016 that the Russians believed the Clinton campaign was trying to falsely associate Russia with the so-called hack of DNC computers. CIA Director John Brennan shared the intelligence with President Obama. They knew, in other words, that the DNC was conducting false Russian flag operation against the Trump campaign . The following is an exclusive excerpt from The Russia Lie that tells the amazing story in detail:

On March 19, 2016, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, surrendered his emails to an unknown entity in a "spear phishing" scam. This has been called a "hack," but it was not. Instead, it was the sort of flim-flam hustle that happens to gullible dupes on the internet.

The content of the emails was beyond embarrassing. They showed election fraud and coordination with the media against the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. The DNC and the Clinton campaign needed a cover story.

Blaming Russia would be a handy way to deal with the Podesta emails. There was already an existing Russia operation that could easily be retrofitted to this purpose. The problem was that it was nearly impossible to identify the perpetrator in a phishing scheme using computer forensic tools.

The only way to associate Putin with the emails was circumstantially.

The DNC retained a company that called itself "CrowdStrike" to provide assistance. CrowdStrike's chief technology officer and co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, is an anti-Putin, Russian expat and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council .

With the Atlantic Council in 2016, all roads led to Ukraine. The Atlantic Council's list of significant contributors includes Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk.

The Ukrainian energy company that was paying millions to an entity that was funneling large amounts to Hunter Biden months after he was discharged from the US Navy for drug use, Burisma, also appears prominently on the Atlantic Council's donor list.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the Western puppet installed in Ukraine, visited the Atlantic Council's Washington offices to make a speech weeks after the coup.

Pinchuk was also a big donor (between $10 million and $20 million) to the Clinton Foundation. Back in '15, the Wall Street Journal published an investigative piece , " Clinton Charity Tapped Foreign Friends ." The piece was about how Ukraine was attempting to influence Clinton by making huge donations through Pinchuk. Foreign interference, anyone?

On June 12, 2016, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced : "We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton . . . We have emails pending publication."

Two days later, CrowdStrike fed the Washington Post a story , headlined, "Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump." The improbable tale was that the Russians had hacked the DNC computer servers and got away with some opposition research on Trump. The article quoted Alperovitch of CrowdStrike and the Atlantic Council.

The next day, a new blog – Guccifer 2.0 – appeared on the internet and announced:

Worldwide known cyber security company CrowdStrike announced that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers had been hacked by "sophisticated" hacker groups.

I'm very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly))) But in fact, it was easy, very easy.

Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton's and other Democrats' mail servers. But he certainly wasn't the last. No wonder any other hacker could easily get access to the DNC's servers.

Shame on CrowdStrike: Do you think I've been in the DNC's networks for almost a year and saved only 2 documents? Do you really believe it?

Here are just a few docs from many thousands I extracted when hacking into DNC's network.

Guccifer 2.0 posted hundreds of pages of Trump opposition research allegedly hacked from the DNC and emailed copies to Gawker and The Smoking Gun . In raw form, the opposition research was one of the documents obtained in the Podesta emails, with a notable difference: It was widely reported the document now contained " Russian fingerprints ."

The document had been cut and pasted into a separate Russian Word template that yielded an abundance of Russian "error "messages . In the document's metadata was the name of the Russian secret police founder, Felix Dzerzhinsky, written in the Russian language.

The three-parenthesis formulation from the original post ")))" is the Russian version of a smiley face used commonly on social media. In addition, the blog's author deliberately used a Russian VPN service visible in its emails even though there would have been many options to hide any national affiliation.

Under the circumstances, the FBI should have analyzed the DNC computers to confirm the Guccifer hack. Incredibly, though, the inspection was done by CrowdStrike, the same Atlantic Council-connected private contractor paid by the DNC that had already concluded in The Washington Post that there was a hack and Putin was behind it.

CrowdStrike would declare the "hack" to be the work of sophisticated Russian spies. Alperovitch described it as, " skilled operational tradecraft ."

There is nothing skilled, though, in ham-handedly disclosing a Russian identity when trying to hide it. The more reasonable inference is that this was a set-up. It certainly looks like Guccifer 2.0 suddenly appeared in coordination with the Washington Post 's article that appeared the previous day.

FBI Director James Comey confirmed in testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee in January 2017 that the FBI's failure to inspect the computers was unusual to say the least. "We'd always prefer to have access hands-on ourselves if that's possible," he said.

But the DNC rebuffed the FBI's request to inspect the hardware. Comey added that the DNC's hand-picked investigator, CrowdStrike, is "a highly respected private company."

What he did not reveal was that CrowdStrike never corroborated a hack by forensic analysis. In testimony released in 2020, it was revealed that CrowdStrike admitted to Congressional investigators as early as 2017 that it had no direct evidence of Russian hacking.

CrowdStrike's president Shawn Henry testified, "There's not evidence that [documents and emails] were actually exfiltrated [from the DNC servers]. There's circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated."

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The circumstantial evidence was Guccifer 2.0.

This was a crucial revelation because the thousand ships of Russiagate launched upon the positive assertion that CrowdStrike had definitely proven a Russian hack. Yet this fact was kept from the American public for more than three years.

The reasonable inference is that the DNC was trying to frame Russia and the FBI and intelligence agencies were going along with the scheme because of political pressure.

Those who assert that it is a "conspiracy theory" to say that CrowdStrike would fabricate the results of computer forensic testing to create a false Russian flag should know that it was caught doing exactly that around the time it was inspecting the DNC computers.

On Dec. 22, 2016, CrowdStrike caused an international stir when it claimed to have uncovered evidence that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery computer app to help pro-Russian separatists. Voice of America later determined the claim was false , and CrowdStrike retracted its finding.

Ukraine's Ministry of Defense was forced to eat crow and admit that the hacking never happened.

If you wanted a computer testing firm to fabricate a Russian hack for political reasons in 2016, CrowdStrike was who you went out and hired.

To read the rest of the story, click The Russia Lie: How the Military Industrial Complex Targeted Trump and buy the ebook for just $5.
play_arrow LEEPERMAX , 4 minutes ago

Nobody faces consequences

No one is gonna go ta jail

And everyone walks

[Oct 01, 2020] CIA Director Haspel Personally Blocking Declassification Of Russiagate Documents

CIA is the cornerstone of the deep state.
Notable quotes:
"... The REASON they won't release them: The TRUMP Collusion wasn't with the Russians , but with APARTHEID Isra-h-e-l-l. But NO ONE will investigate that. M.A.G.A. is out. M.I.G.A is in. ..."
"... 'Bloody Gina' is Trump's loyalist appointee, following through on what loyalist Pompeo started to protect Trump Crime Family Corruption, Chabad Mafia, and ZOG. ..."
"... please allow me to still congratulate Gina on reducing the almighty Third Option into the Toiletpaper Option. ..."
"... 2018, BREAKING: Trump appoints Haspel as first female CIA director ..."
"... 2017: Breaking: CIA Director Mike Pompeo appoints Haspel as the first female CIA officer to be named deputy director. ..."
"... Fathead and Esper were best buds at West Point.. ..."
"... Evidence destruction was one the main purposes of the Mueller "investigation". ..."
"... Please. If you can see what Trump has done, basically bending the US and its taxpayers over for Israel, you'd realize he's just another in a long line of AIPAC Presidents. Ain't nobody opposing him. CIA knows what Russia knows about him, and they're just using him as bait. ..."
"... proof is in the pudding, Hillary still walks free, none of the corrupt ones are in jail and won't ever go to jail. Face it, Biff has many fooled. ..."
"... U.S. Navy Reserve Doctor on Gina Haspel Torture Victim: "One of the Most Severely Traumatized Individuals I Have Ever Seen" ..."
"... What bothers me more is how deep the Deep State goes in Washington. They totally control the government and without mass firings it is impossible to even make a dent in it. This country is gone and just doesn't know it yet. Once Kamala is crowned as queen reality will come slamming home pdq. By the time the country realizes what has happened to them it will be way too late, no matter how many guns they have at home. Once they cut off access to your money, very few people will be independent enough to survive on their own. ..."
"... Trump has opened the eyes of more Americans to the simple fact that an unelected bureaucracy is running the country ..."
"... DJT hired this c8nt, sure, but the pool of candidates equipped to take over the CIA is very small, and all are career swamp things. If DJT put in a true outsider, the ranks would close and the "Director" would know nothing, could do nothing, and nothing would change. The ranks would just wait for another President. Trump is powerless over the CIA. After all, they could easily have him 'accidentally' killed; they've done it before. ..."
"... The CIA just needs to be dissolved in acid. The political, psychological and historical deep-rooted corruption isn't fixable by anyone. ..."
"... McConnell would never confirm a "true outsider". Mitch is the real problem here, he tells Trump who he will and will not confirm, so Trump has to accept one of Mitch's choices. ..."
"... He could put in Mike Flynn. And any vested employee who "closed ranks" would go on immediate and permanent furlough. ..."
"... Here's something we Americans can learn from the Russians. In August 1991 after Gorbachev left to the Black Sea for a short vacation, the heads of the USSR "power ministries" (KGB chairman, armed forces chief of staff, Minister of Interior, etc. etc.) formed the "State Committee for Extrordinary Situation" ( G.K.Ch .P.) and tried to overthrow the government. ..."
"... That's what happened in Washington in 2016-2018 - "GKChP Lite." ..."
"... After the putsch attempt failed, the leaders were arrested and the power ministries reorganized - the KGB was split into several departments including the FSB and SVR for internal and external intelligence. ..."
"... Trump can declassify these personally if he wants, at any time. He could even go live on air and read portions of it to the public. He has the power, but he refuses to use it. ..."
"... Trumps entire cabinet is full of Goldman Sachs, Skull and Bones, CFR, Pentagon, CIA, Career politicians... at what point do you realize he was never going to drain the swamp? Both candidates are a joke and so is this website for becoming a Big R Republican website. ..."
"... This is all kabuki theater because Trump could have signed an Executive Order releasing everything back to JFK 3 years ago instead of flapping his yap. Comey has a Hollywood movie coming out this fall, As Biden said, "Shut up, man". ..."
"... No one is going to prison that deserves to over this. They'll crucify some desk monkey or intern, pat each other on the back and brag about a job well done. We've seen it the last four years, some low level schmuck changes the footer on some emails and the DOJ is all over it like white on rice. Totally ignoring the fact there is a seditionist movement, maybe even treasonous, happening at a systemic level throughout government. Four years is enough time to build a case, lord knows any one with half a mind can find all the evidence needed in four damned days. ..."
"... The a-holes running the DOJ won't prosecute Comey, or Clinton, or Brennan or any other name we know. Because they're doing dirty deeds themselves and don't want to set the precedent in fear those who come after them might in turn prosecute them ..."
Oct 01, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Ian Schwartz via RealClearPolitics,

"Federalist" co-founder Sean Davis reports that CIA Director Gina Haspel is personally blocking the release of documents that will show "what actually happened" with Russiagate.

" This isn't just a scandal about Democrat projection, this is a scandal about what was a coup planned against the incoming administration at the highest levels and I can report here tonight that these declassifications that have come out," Davis told FOX News host Tucker Carlson on Wednesday. "Those weren't easy to get out and there are far more waiting to get out."

"Unfortunately those releases and declassifications according to multiple sources I've talked to are being blocked by CIA director Gina Haspel who herself was the main link between Washington and London ," Davis said.

"As the London station chief from John Brennan's CIA during the 2016 election. Recall, it was London where Christopher Steele was doing all this work. And I'm told that it was Gina Haspel personally who is blocking a continued declassification of these documents that will show the American people the truth of what actually happened."

Watch:


pier , 1 hour ago

The REASON they won't release them: The TRUMP Collusion wasn't with the Russians , but with APARTHEID Isra-h-e-l-l. But NO ONE will investigate that. M.A.G.A. is out. M.I.G.A is in.

Joseph Sullivan , 1 hour ago

No. This is all the UK. And Brit east India/pharma complex I'm serious. Israel is a UK proxy.

tion , 1 hour ago

True. 'Bloody Gina' is Trump's loyalist appointee, following through on what loyalist Pompeo started to protect Trump Crime Family Corruption, Chabad Mafia, and ZOG.

My last comment including my sentiments towards Gina got eaten by censorship for reasons obvious to me, but please allow me to still congratulate Gina on reducing the almighty Third Option into the Toiletpaper Option.

acetrumchura , 1 hour ago

2018, BREAKING: Trump appoints Haspel as first female CIA director

acetrumchura , 1 hour ago

2017: Breaking: CIA Director Mike Pompeo appoints Haspel as the first female CIA officer to be named deputy director.

BGen. Jack Ripper , 49 minutes ago

Fathead and Esper were best buds at West Point..

NoWorries77 , 1 hour ago

Evidence destruction was one the main purposes of the Mueller "investigation".

realitybiter , 2 hours ago

Trump Has played like Tom Brady. Without either guard or tackle. Take the CIA and the FBI. They are both still ran by rats. Tree of liberty is VERY thirsty.

eatapeach , 1 hour ago

Please. If you can see what Trump has done, basically bending the US and its taxpayers over for Israel, you'd realize he's just another in a long line of AIPAC Presidents. Ain't nobody opposing him. CIA knows what Russia knows about him, and they're just using him as bait.

GreatUncle , 57 minutes ago

Either they are accountable or they are treasonous. CIA is the globalist intelligence agency now.

MAGAMAN , 2 hours ago

It will happen, the fuse just keeps getting shorter. Nobody even refutes that Obama is a traitor that spied on Trump's campaign and tried to overthrow the President. The evidence is overwhelming and continues to snow ball.

ChiangMaiXPat , 1 hour ago

It will never happen as Trump appointed these Clowns. Imagine appointing people working DIRECTLY against your self interest. Does this sound logical or even remotely plausible? I don't recall it EVER happening in any other administration.

spqrusa , 2 minutes ago

He cannot do anything without Consent from the Privy Council and the circle of demons.

ThaBigPerm , 2 hours ago

Aaaand Trump can just order declassification over "her" head. Do it.

Lather Rinse Repeat , 1 hour ago

Surfaces the cabal's foot soldiers. CIA Director Haspel was a great leader when appointed. But when process drives Haspel to block an action, the message is that Haspel is rot and so is Haspel's network. These networks run deep and wide and prosecuting 1 or 10 does nothing - you need them all, or the problem comes back in 5 years.

Lokiban , 2 hours ago

He won't

proof is in the pudding, Hillary still walks free, none of the corrupt ones are in jail and won't ever go to jail. Face it, Biff has many fooled.

spam filter , 2 hours ago

The way he's constantly saying, "someone should do something about this" ...Tells my spidey sense that he has little power in the swamp.

Propaganda Phil , 2 hours ago

Isn't she the same chick who destroyed all the torture tapes? Good luck.

Mr. Bones , 1 hour ago

All power of classification is derived from the office of the executive.

He could do exactly this, unilaterally.

Farmer Tink , 1 hour ago

First, normal people who consume news from the networks, particularly those that get their news from MSNBC and social media, would never hear this. Second, if they did find out about this, they'd never believe it. It would cause too much cognitive dissonance for them to believe.

They wouldn't believe it unless the four legacy broadcast media told them so. They just live in a land of Orange Man Bad as far as news go. A plot to overthrow the US government by Obama and the Brits would be unfathomable to them.

Someone Else , 2 hours ago

Trump had an abrasive demeanor during the debate and in general.

How could he not, when truly everybody for four years HAS fought him tooth and nail? Few would have had the ability to stand up to what he has stood up to.

Quia Possum , 1 hour ago

He had that demeanor before he was president too, so I don't accept that excuse.

desertboy , 27 minutes ago

U.S. Navy Reserve Doctor on Gina Haspel Torture Victim: "One of the Most Severely Traumatized Individuals I Have Ever Seen"

justyouwait , 2 hours ago

All this crap needs to come out. Any date for the release before the election will have the Dems and their media lap dogs crying foul. It just doesn't matter. They will NEVER support the release of any documents that are damming to them. He should release it all right up to the day of the election. This country needs to know all the criminality that went down. That goes for the so called Durham report too, of which there have been so many rumors. That one is likely to be a huge zero though by the time Barr gets done with it and then tells us there were "improprieties" but nothing really bad. What a joke.

What bothers me more is how deep the Deep State goes in Washington. They totally control the government and without mass firings it is impossible to even make a dent in it. This country is gone and just doesn't know it yet. Once Kamala is crowned as queen reality will come slamming home pdq. By the time the country realizes what has happened to them it will be way too late, no matter how many guns they have at home. Once they cut off access to your money, very few people will be independent enough to survive on their own.

John Couger , 2 hours ago

Trump has opened the eyes of more Americans to the simple fact that an unelected bureaucracy is running the country

Sigh. , 2 hours ago

DJT hired this c8nt, sure, but the pool of candidates equipped to take over the CIA is very small, and all are career swamp things. If DJT put in a true outsider, the ranks would close and the "Director" would know nothing, could do nothing, and nothing would change. The ranks would just wait for another President. Trump is powerless over the CIA. After all, they could easily have him 'accidentally' killed; they've done it before.

The CIA just needs to be dissolved in acid. The political, psychological and historical deep-rooted corruption isn't fixable by anyone.

Mclovin , 1 hour ago

McConnell would never confirm a "true outsider". Mitch is the real problem here, he tells Trump who he will and will not confirm, so Trump has to accept one of Mitch's choices.

gcjohns1971 , 1 hour ago

He could put in Mike Flynn. And any vested employee who "closed ranks" would go on immediate and permanent furlough.

There are only a couple or three thousand CIA agents and analysts. The rest are contractors.

To bypass the swamp things you sideline them and put your own people in charge of the contracts.

otschelnik , 1 hour ago

Here's something we Americans can learn from the Russians. In August 1991 after Gorbachev left to the Black Sea for a short vacation, the heads of the USSR "power ministries" (KGB chairman, armed forces chief of staff, Minister of Interior, etc. etc.) formed the "State Committee for Extrordinary Situation" ( G.K.Ch .P.) and tried to overthrow the government.

That's what happened in Washington in 2016-2018 - "GKChP Lite."

After the putsch attempt failed, the leaders were arrested and the power ministries reorganized - the KGB was split into several departments including the FSB and SVR for internal and external intelligence.

Trump has to do the same thing - break them up.

Occams_Razor_Trader , 1 hour ago

Kennedy wasn't a big fan................. look where it got him......................

Back and to the left.................................

LostinRMH , 2 hours ago

Trump can declassify these personally if he wants, at any time. He could even go live on air and read portions of it to the public. He has the power, but he refuses to use it.

LostinRMH , 2 hours ago

The only timing Trump is interested in is running out the clock. If he get's a second term, a lot of these current issues will magically vanish, and new ones will appear. This is just a scripted political show for the sheeple. It's all fake.

Oldwood , 2 hours ago

The swamp owns the government's employment agency. All hires come from within the swamp.

LooseLee , 1 hour ago

Sorry Old Man. Trump could have handled this sooooo much better and differently. I call BS.

knightowl77 , 50 minutes ago

Here is the "B.S."

80 to 90% of the Federal Government are swamp creatures or friendly to the swamp...90 out of 100 U.S. Senators are either swamp members or at least friendly to the swamp....Trump can only get people confirmed to certain agencies who are Not hostile to the swamp...McConnell and company are blocking the draining....The Dems would be even worse or just impeach Trump....

No One else has even tried...I doubt anyone else could've survived the swamp as long as Trump has....So you tell us HOW he could have done it better and differently?????????

AlexTheCat3741 , 1 hour ago

Not one person who has had a prior association with John Brennan should be doing anything in the Trump Administration. And if that person cannot be fired, then reassign them to cleaning toilets or picking up trash.

WHERE IS PRESIDENT TRUMP GETTING HIS PERSONNEL CHOICES FROM? We know Chris Cristie was one who recommended director of the "Fibbers Bureau of Insurrection", Chris Wray and he is an absolute disaster AND NEARLY AS BAD AS JAMES COMEY WHO MUST BE SUFFERING FROM DEMENTIA TOO AS HE CANNOT SEEM TO REMEMBER ANYTHING WHILE UNDER OATH BEFORE A SENATE COMMITTEE.

And now we have this Gina Haspel running the CIA? ARE YOU F CKING KIDDING??

The first person to next get the ax in the Trump Administration is whoever it is that is giving him these personnel choices, e.g., Rex Tillerson, James Matis, John Kelly, Kirsten Nielson, Mark Esper, Mark Miley..........WHO IS PICKING THIS TRASH WHEN THE PRESIDENT NEEDS REAL HELP PERFORMING A COLON FLUSH ON THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO GET THE GARBAGE OUT AND TO UNDO THE DAMAGE DONE BY 8 YEARS OF BARACK O'DINGLEBARRY AND SLOW JOE BIDEN??

Citi The Real , 1 hour ago

Trumps entire cabinet is full of Goldman Sachs, Skull and Bones, CFR, Pentagon, CIA, Career politicians... at what point do you realize he was never going to drain the swamp? Both candidates are a joke and so is this website for becoming a Big R Republican website.

DeeDeeTwo , 1 hour ago

This is all kabuki theater because Trump could have signed an Executive Order releasing everything back to JFK 3 years ago instead of flapping his yap. Comey has a Hollywood movie coming out this fall, As Biden said, "Shut up, man".

Alfred , 2 hours ago

The Director of the CIA is a cabinet position. If she doesn't want to take direction from POTUS, she should be fired.

Wild Bill Steamcock , 53 minutes ago

Yeah, there's a reason she's blocking it. If those papers are released, it'll lead to someone high up the food chain facing a courtroom out of necessity because people will lose their goddamed ****.

Once that happens, you'll by necessity have to go after six more. Then six more. Then everyone in D.C., their families, friends, and pet dogs are gonna be locked up.

They protect themselves. "Obeyance of the law is for thee, not for me."

Wild Bill Steamcock , 41 minutes ago

No one is going to prison that deserves to over this. They'll crucify some desk monkey or intern, pat each other on the back and brag about a job well done. We've seen it the last four years, some low level schmuck changes the footer on some emails and the DOJ is all over it like white on rice. Totally ignoring the fact there is a seditionist movement, maybe even treasonous, happening at a systemic level throughout government. Four years is enough time to build a case, lord knows any one with half a mind can find all the evidence needed in four damned days.

The a-holes running the DOJ won't prosecute Comey, or Clinton, or Brennan or any other name we know. Because they're doing dirty deeds themselves and don't want to set the precedent in fear those who come after them might in turn prosecute them

radical-extremist , 1 hour ago

Be aware CIA people stick together like glue. They're more loyal to each other than they are the US or any president. Once you're in the CLUB, you're in the CLUB for life. Trump was absolutely right about not trusting "our intelligence agencies".

12Doberman , 1 hour ago

I hate the CIA...and it's been a power unto itself for a very long time. The idea that it is under civilian oversight is a joke.

Max21c , 1 hour ago

the CIA...and it's been a power unto itself for a very long time. The idea that it is under civilian oversight is a joke.

Quite true there is no oversight and the secret police community and intelligence community are presently and have been for a long time above the law, above the Constitution, above the very framework of government per above Congress & above the President and above the Courts... and everybody just goes along with the pack of criminals in the security state and accepts that they have the right to commit crimes, run criminal activities, and abuse secret police powers... and nobody ever stands up to the Nazis and NeoNazis and these radicals in the military secret police, military intelligence, Pentagon Gestapo, National Security Council, FBI & CIA and the rest of the criminal underworld network inside and around the organized criminal enterprises and organized criminal networks of the security state...

12Doberman , 1 hour ago

That's right and the civilian government is largely just a facade.

ken , 1 hour ago

CIA wasn't W-A-S for preventing 9/11...or were they involved in it? Did the missing trillions go to Israel, and that other country, as payment for services???

_arrow
protrumpusa , 2 hours ago

Someone asked in previous post - why do democrats hate Trump? Good question.
It can't be his policies - who except illegals don't want secure borders, who doesn't want a strong private buisiness economy, who doesn't want manufacturing jobs to be brought back from China.
Our democrat leaders, plus Romney all have a connection to Ukraine's stolen treasury money and Soros's money too, and Trump doesn't . This I believe is the reason democrats hate President Trump

protrumpusa , 2 hours ago

The Obama administration and the FBI knew that it was they who were meddling in a presidential campaign - using executive intelligence powers to monitor the president's political opposition. This, they also knew, would rightly be regarded as a scandalous abuse of power if it ever became public. There was no rational or good-faith evidentiary basis to believe that Trump was in a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin or that he'd had any role in Russian intelligence's suspected hacking of Democratic Party email accounts.

[snip]

In the stretch run of the 2016 campaign, President Obama authorized his administration's investigative agencies to monitor his party's opponent in the presidential election, on the pretext that Donald Trump was a clandestine agent of Russia. Realizing this was a gravely serious allegation for which there was laughably insufficient predication, administration officials kept Trump's name off the investigative files. That way, they could deny that they were doing what they did. Then they did it . . . and denied it.

LEEPERMAX , 30 minutes ago

Gina Haspel worked directly for the instigator of the Crossfire Hurricane operation – John Brennan. It would have been impossible for Haspel not to have known about the British spying from London since it was reported in UK newspaper on a weekly basis.

She certainly was controlling Stefan Halper , Josef Mifsud , Stephan Roh , Alexander Downer, Andrew Wood, John McCain, Mark Warner, Adam Schiff and the other conspirators.

Kan , 2 hours ago

The FBI and CIA are the enemy of the people. There is little doubt at this point that they serve nobody but the bankers that formed the organization and themselves.

Gunston_Nutbush_Hall , 2 hours ago

How convenient.

CIA operative Trump nominates Haspel to be the CIA director, after CIA Operative Trump picked CIA chief Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, thereafter Epstein is Trumpincided on CIA Operatives Barr Pompeo Trump's watch, while running smoke cover for the CIA's Obama's False Flag National Government.

Shortly after taking office in 1999, Jesse Ventura writes he was asked to attend a meeting at the state Capitol. He says 23 CIA agents were waiting for him in a basement conference room.

The greatest False Flag ever? Brainwashing Americans to think Constitutional Federal Government exists.

Kefeer , 17 minutes ago

The people who want to know and care to know the truth already know the truth. It is suspect that Trump appoints people like Christopher Wray and Gina Haspel and I really do not know what to make of it - is he part of the swamp or making bad decisions? I honestly do not know, but my biblical lens filter tells me we are in trouble regardless of the outcomes because so many of the institutions in government and industry are so corrupt.

Maltheus , 29 minutes ago

Trump is absolutely incompetent, when it comes to selecting people. He always has been. Flynn was one of the few, who was halfway decent, and he got thrown to the wolves. Pretty much everyone else, he's ever chosen, has knifed him in the back, and most of us saw it coming a mile away.

Tuffmug , 13 minutes ago

The Swamp is deep and has had twenty + years to grow . Trump had to chose the ones who stunk least from a slimy pool of corrupted officials and fight against every agency, each filled with deep state snakes. I'm just surprised he is still breathing.

Kinskian , 29 seconds ago

So his incompetence begins and ends with "selecting people" and that gets no downvotes from the 'tards. I understand why. You're still blaming other people for Trump's failures in office instead of placing the blame squarely with HIM. He is incompetent in his role as President, and that is his responsibility.

LEEPERMAX , 36 minutes ago

Gina Haspel would have known about the coup. If she has not reported all of this to the President Trump, she is complicit in the overthrow attempt and is guilty of HIGH TREASON.

Wild Bill Steamcock , 49 minutes ago

Spooks run this world. And they certainly like power, and money. But do you want to know what they like most of all?

Information.

Control of information drives everything else. And anyone who has even sniffed that world knows to get quality information you can't buy it. Instead you have to trade information of equal value.

We're not important enough to have the opportunity to know what they know. I don't know about you, but I'm a little angry about that.

StealthBomber , 30 minutes ago

That is because they are un-accountable.

Wild Bill Steamcock , 30 minutes ago

and untouchable.

Take one out and the whole thing collapses.

insanelysane , 51 minutes ago

Don't think we need declassifications to know what happened. We know what happened.

as I've stated many times, governments would be completely unstable if the government legally proved that organizations within the government were involved is sedition. With the IRS scandal the deflection was that a few rogue employees did some things even though the entire IRS was involved in harassing far right and far left organizations.

The problem with Russiagate is that none of the rogue employees are willing to to go down without taking everyone involved down. The IRS rogues got nice payouts and no prison time.

radical-extremist , 1 hour ago

She doesn't want them released because obviously it implicates her in Strzok's Crossfire Hurricane scheme. It also puts mud on the face of MI6, which is why Trump might be hesitant.

October is young.

12Doberman , 1 hour ago

Haspel is also likely a figurehead in many respects. From what I've read about CIA over the years those at the top have competing agendas and don't trust and share information with each other. The idea that a president is sworn in ever 4-8 years and is brought up to speed on everything they are doing is laughable...and likely impossible. No president fully controls the CIA and it has it's own agenda that runs across and through administrations...may as well call it the head of the deep state snake.

Felix da Kat , 2 hours ago

Haspel is a Brennan redux.

The deep state is much deeper than anyone dare thought.

If Trump cannot do unwind the DS,then all is lost.

If Biden gets in, he will only serve to further entrench DS operatives.

Looking bleak out there, folks.

1nd1v1s1ble1 , 3 hours ago

*sigh* As if anything is going to come of this...when has any high ranking politician EVER been taken to task or incarcerated for their crimes? It's the same political theater brought to you by the MSM/Jesuit/Jooish/Freemason cult who ritually perform their televised 'skits' to the masses to make it appear as if justice exists or better yet, we have a Republic- newsflash: it died a long, long time ago. The frightened mask-wearing, compliant sheeple lap it up every f'n time-when do you awake and realize there is no bi-partisan political machine, there is no blue versus red, just like their cronies in Hollyweird, these politicians are simply actors who were too ugly to make it there, orange man aint gonna save ya, bumbling joe aint gonna save ya, understand Stockholm Syndrome-survivors of 'merica....they DO NOT GIVE A F#*K ABOUT YOU OR YOUR FAMILY and would prefer you were dead.

'It's a BIG club and you ain't in it...'

-George Carlin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyvxt1svxso

MrBoompi , 1 hour ago

Even the POTUS cannot do anything in DC alone, no matter what he wants to do. He needs people to cooperate or follow orders. It seems many or most of the people around him are deep state spies. I think they are scared ****less of what Trump might try to declassify. I think the CIA would destroy evidence before providing proof of a seditious coup. If you've committed murder or treason, destroying evidence seems like jaywalking.

Now we know Haspel is personally involved and we probably know exactly why she is blocking the release of this information.

Jack_Ewing , 17 minutes ago

Trump was supposed to drain the swamp but surrounded himself with the scariest of swamp creatures, this Medusa-like entity being one of the most terrifying. Pompeo, Mnuchin, Wray, Miller, Haspel, Kushner, and the chief of the all, the official cover-upper for the Deep State for the last 40 years, William Barr.

donkey_shot , 45 minutes ago

surprise, surprise: one-time iraqi detainee torturer and current CIA chief gina haspel is a nasty piece of work: geez, whodathunk?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Haspel

lwilland1012 , 50 minutes ago

The only reason I can think of for holding these documents is that the conspiracy is so vast and intricate, it might destroy 80 plus percent of the government! If that's what it comes down to, so be it! Blow the whole PHUCKING thing to kingdom come!

Philthy_Stacker , 45 minutes ago

An accurite assumption.

LOL123 , 1 hour ago

Gina Haspel doesn't have a legal leg to stand on.

"The most explosive revelation was that the dossier was bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee , a fact that the Clinton campaign took pains to hide, that Clinton officials lied about, and that Fusion GPS refused to reveal on its own. It wasn't an intelligence report at all. It was a political hit job paid for by Trump's opponent."

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/trump-russia-dossier-scandal/

Political issues " incorporated" into public stock holding corporations.

"Individual shareholders cannot generally sue over the deprivation of a corporation's rights; only the board of directors has the standing to assert a corporation's constitutional rights in court. [7] -USA

Ever since Citizens United, the Supreme Court's 2010 decision allowing unlimited corporate and union spending on political issues, Americans have been debating whether, as Mitt Romney said, "Corporations are people, my friend."

The question came to the Supreme Court in a challenge to regulations implementing President Obama's landmark health care law. Those regulations require employers with 50 or more employees to provide those employees with comprehensive health insurance, which must include certain forms of contraception. The contraception requirement was designed to protect the rights of women. Studies show that access to contraception has positive benefits for women's education, income, mental health, and family stability.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

*****

since a political entity ( DNC and Hillary Campaign funded a public corporation which is a " corporate personhood" and can be sued it is open to discovery in a court of law.

the chickens have come home to roost....as Mitt Romney says....corporations are the citizens "best friend".

R.G. , 1 hour ago

Citizens ARE corporaions.

4Y_LURKER , 1 hour ago

Finkel is Einhorn!

Einhorn is Finkel!

Totally_Disillusioned , 1 hour ago

If Sean Davis was able to unearth this, President Trump, Pompeo have known this for some time and Ratcliffe certainly knows this. the question is "why is she allowed to block disclosure?". None of the players are currently in service and would not be at risk if their involvement was disclosed. What possibly is the excuse? Are they using the old excuse of not revealing sources and methods?

All these people need a stern reminder the govt is owned by the people...they work for us. So far we are the only people kept in the dark. Breakup the intel 17 agencies and re-engineer down to two - one domestic and one international.

SirBarksAlot , 1 hour ago

It's always a national security issue when it's your responsibility to release the documents that would incriminate you.

Gunston_Nutbush_Hall , 3 hours ago

Exactly why CIA Trump hand selected her. Exactly for the same reason CIA Trump hand selected BARR.

TO PROVIDE CLEAN SMOKE N COVER FOR THEIR CIA NATIONAL GOVERNMENT.

Barr: CIA operative

It is a sobering fact that American presidents (many of whom have been corrupt) have gone out of their way to hire fixers to be their attorney generals.

Consider recent history: Loretta Lynch (2015-2017), Eric Holder (2009-2015), Michael Mukasey (2007-2009), Alberto Gonzales (2005-2007), John Ashcroft (2001-2005),Janet Reno (1993-2001), **** Thornburgh (1988-1991), Ed Meese (1985-1988), etc.

Barr, however, is a particularly spectacular and sordid case. As George H.W. Bush's most notorious insider, and as the AG from 1991 to 1993, Barr wreaked havoc, flaunted the rule of law, and proved himself to be one of the CIA/Deep State's greatest and most ruthless champions and protectors :

A strong case can be made that William Barr was as powerful and important a figure in the Bush apparatus as any other, besides Poppy Bush himself.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/ciabushiran-contra-covert-operative-fixer-william-barr-nominated-attorney-general/5662609

Gunston_Nutbush_Hall , 3 hours ago

...Shortly after taking office in 1999, Jesse Ventura writes he was asked to attend a meeting at the state Capitol. He says 23 CIA agents were waiting for him in a basement conference room.

Bobby Farrell Can Dance , 3 hours ago

The Navalny "incident" is the latest pathetic CIA and British MI6 operation and the Belarus incitement. Sloppy, unoriginal and going to backfire in their stupid faces.

Everybody knows the evil empire wants Nordstream II dead, Navalny is the latest lever and that woman they recognized as leader of Belarus is as laughable as that Guaido goon they recognized in Venezuela, but he's actually outside of Venezuela - yeah that's how popular he is. Western intelligence agenices are hacks, they are past their peak.

John Hansen , 3 hours ago

The real stupid thing is the West will succeed.

Spinifex , 20 minutes ago

Christopher Steele is THE GUY who 'doctored all this up'. Why has he not been bought before congress and asked questions?

Sergi Scripal worked for Christopher Steele. Sergi Scripal earned tens of thousands of pounds 'providing information' to Christopher Steele. Why is he 'not being asked questions? He's not 'dead'. Sergi Scripal is 'alive and well' and 'being hidden' by the U.K. Government 'for his own safty.' The U.K. can provide 'access to Sergi Scripal.

Pablo Miller worked for Christopher Steele. Pablo Miller was Sergi Scripals 'handler' with MI6. Pablo Miller was also the 'last person to talk to Sergi Scripal' before Sergi Scripal 'surccumed to Novichok poison.' Why is Pablo Miller (aka: Antonio Alvarez de Hidalgo - https://gosint.wordpress.com/2019/02/02/who-is-mi6-officer-pablo-miller/

All three worked for Orbis Business Intelligence the company that wrote the 'Steele Dossier' that Gina Haspel had access to and 'approved' sending onto the FBI and CIA. All three, Christopher Steele, Sergi Scripal and Pablo Miller are 'alive and well' and all three are able to provide information about the Steele Dossier, what was in the Steele Dossier, and WHERE the information in the Steele Dossier came from. Ask the questions dammit, and you'll get the answers.

headless blogger , 58 minutes ago

Not a fan of Trump, although I voted for him the first time, but he will be in serious trouble if Biden gets into office as there are too many vengeful people on that side of the isle. They attempted a coup d'etat which is the worse treason, where most of these people would be executed in "normal" times.

So, they HAVE TO win at all costs, in their thinking. They will then turn the tables on Trump as well as the entire Conservative camp. It looks like an ugly future if they win. If Trump wins, it will be ugly too.

Sure signs to get the hell out now if you can.

The Technocracy crowd is behind all of this, btw. They are waiting for the full collapse at which time we will be inundated with Tech Billionaires coming forward to "save us". BEWARE!!


4 play_arrow 1
1nd1v1s1ble1 , 1 hour ago

*sigh* As if anything is going to come of this...when has any high ranking politician EVER been taken to task or incarcerated for their crimes? It's the same political theater brought to you by the MSM/Jesuit/Jooish/Freemason Satanic cult who ritually perform their televised 'skits' to the masses to make it appear as if justice exists or better yet, we have a Republic- newsflash: it died a long, long time ago. The frightened mask-wearing, compliant sheeple lap it up every f'n time-when do you awake and realize there is no bi-partisan political machine? There is no blue versus red, just like their cronies in Hollyweird, these colluding politicians are simply actors who were too ugly to make it there, orange man aint gonna save ya, bumbling joe aint gonna save ya, understand Stockholm Syndrome-survivors of 'merica....they DO NOT GIVE A F#*K ABOUT YOU OR YOUR FAMILY and would actually prefer you were dead.

'It's a BIG club and you and I ain't in it...'

-George Carlin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyvxt1svxso

flight77 , 1 hour ago

The capital of the USA is Jerusalem.

hoytmonger , 1 hour ago

Trump is giving Israel another $11 billion to "secure another Arab-Israeli peace treaty."

He's buying the deals with US taxpayer money...

https://www.mintpressnews.com/trump-admin-poised-to-gift-israel-11-billion-in-bid-to-secure-another-arab-israeli-peace-treaty/271603/

gfmucci1 , 1 hour ago

Better/cheaper than sending US military to fight in another useless war.

headless blogger , 1 hour ago

Gina Haspel was selected by Trump!! When you take into consideration Trump's selections of Haspel, Bolton, and many others, it becomes obvious there is someone in his admin that is directing him to bring these people on. He brings them on and then they betray him.

5onIt , 1 hour ago

Pence is the dude you are looking for.

Haspel was the CIA Station Chief in London, when this was all going down.

Be sure, she has chit to hide.

LEEPERMAX , 1 hour ago

John Brennan led the coup this side of the Atlantic, while Gina Haspel , who was in the CIA London office at the time, worked the coup from London as the CIA chief in cooperation with GCHQ and Robert Hannigan. Both are creepy, corrupt traitors of America.

LEEPERMAX , 1 hour ago

👉 CIA Director Gina Haspel is Complicit with the Attempted Overthrow of Trump

samsara , 1 hour ago

Abu Ghraib = Gina Haspel

Graphic drawings allege CIA's 'borderline torture' of Abu ...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/guantanamo-bay-abu-zubaydah-drawings-cia-torture-pictures-a9335001.html

The current head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gina Haspel, oversaw one such site where torture was carried out. ... Abu Zubaydah, Courtesy Professor Mark P. Denbeaux, Seton Hall University ...

y_arrow
Mister Delicious , 2 hours ago

She was Brennan's London pet.

She should be fired and escorted from the building, and then DOJ NSD should open an investigation into her contacts with Brennan.

Think there might be a Demstate coup attempt?

Well, don't you imagine any friend of John Brennan's is not a friend of Trump.

I don't care how much you love Orange Jesus - he has picked absolutely terrible people over and over and over.

Good DNI now but he needs to take charge.

richsob , 3 hours ago

Orange Fat Boy is getting played like a violin. You and I both know it. Does he? Probably because you can see it on his face but he's just not willing to do what it would take to get everything out into the open. And if he tries to expose everything after he's lost the election nobody will listen to him......even you and I. It will be too late then.

jamesmmu , 3 hours ago

NEW YORK TIMES PROVES IT IS FAKE NEWS: Shreds Years of Its Own Reporting on Trump Tax Fraud and Russiagate

AlexTheCat3741 , 2 hours ago

We would think that the New York Slimes would know something about losses. After all, they paid $1.1 Billion in 1993 for The Boston Globe and in 2013, sold it for $70 Million to businessman John Henry, the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox, and a massive 93% loss.

But it's worse than that because included in that sale is BostonGlobe.com ; Boston.com ; the direct-mail marketing company Globe Direct; the company's 49 percent interest in Metro Boston, a free daily paper; Telegram.com and The Worcester Telegram & Gazette. The Times bought the Telegram & Gazette for $295 million in 1999.

We should be convinced to pay any attention to Fake News Tabloid, The New York Slimes, given that kind of Business Acumen? I don't think so.

rwe2late , 3 hours ago

Hope & Change, Drain the swamp, End the wars

Angelic Obama allegedly prevented from saving us by "deep state" Republicans.

Angelic Trump allegedly prevented from saving us by "deep state" Democrats.

Poor us, our chosen leaders and parties are always so blameless in failing us.

protrumpusa , 4 hours ago

President Trump has gotten rid just about everyone in this article I found 3 years ago
> The ATLANTIC COUNCIL is funded by BURISMA, GEORGE SOROS OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATION & others. It was a CENTRIST, MILITARISTIC think tanks,now turned leftist group

> JOE BIDEN extorted Ukraine to FIRE the prosecutor investigating BURISMA, HUNTER's employer.

> LTC VINDMAN & FIONA HILL met MANY TIMES with DANIEL FRIED of the ATLANTIC COUNCIL. FIONA HILL is a former CoWorker of CHRISTOPHER STEELE !

> AMBASSADOR YOVANOVITCH is connected to the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, is PRAISED in their documents, gave Ukraine a "do not prosecute" list, was involved in PRESSURING Ukraine to not prosecute GEORGE SOROS Group.

> BILL TAYLOR has a financial relationship with the ATLANTIC COUNCIL and the US UKRAINE BUSINESS COUNCIL (USUBC) which is also funded by BURISMA.

> TAYLOR met with THOMAS EAGER (works for ADAM SCHIFF) in Ukraine on trip PAID FOR by the ATLANTIC COUNCIL. This just days before TAYLOR first texts about the "FAKE" Quid Pro Quo !

> TAYLOR participated in USUBC Events with DAVID J. KRAMER (JOHN MCCAIN advisor) who spread the STEELE DOSSIER to the media and OBAMA officials.

> JOE BIDEN is connected to the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, he rolled out his foreign policy vision while VP there, He has given speeches there, his adviser on Ukraine, MICHAEL CARPENTER (heads the Penn Biden Center) is a FELLOW at the ATLANTIC COUNCIL.

> KURT VOLKER is now Senior Advisor to the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, he met with burisma

[Sep 30, 2020] Opinion - I Ran the C.I.A. Now I m Endorsing Hillary Clinton by Michael J. Morell

Highly recommended!
In no way he is a honest intelligence officer. At best, he is a dirty political hack.
Aug 05, 2016 | www.nytimes.com

During a 33-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, I served presidents of both parties -- three Republicans and three Democrats. I was at President George W. Bush's side when we were attacked on Sept. 11; as deputy director of the agency, I was with President Obama when we killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

I am neither a registered Democrat nor a registered Republican. In my 40 years of voting, I have pulled the lever for candidates of both parties. As a government official, I have always been silent about my preference for president.

No longer. On Nov. 8, I will vote for Hillary Clinton. Between now and then, I will do everything I can to ensure that she is elected as our 45th president.

Two strongly held beliefs have brought me to this decision. First, Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief. I trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president -- keeping our nation safe. Second, Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.

I spent four years working with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, most often in the White House Situation Room. In these critically important meetings, I found her to be prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her mind if presented with a compelling argument.

I also saw the secretary's commitment to our nation's security; her belief that America is an exceptional nation that must lead in the world for the country to remain secure and prosperous; her understanding that diplomacy can be effective only if the country is perceived as willing and able to use force if necessary; and, most important, her capacity to make the most difficult decision of all -- whether to put young American women and men in harm's way.

They'll enjoy our special rate of $1 a week.

Mrs. Clinton was an early advocate of the raid that brought Bin Laden to justice, in opposition to some of her most important colleagues on the National Security Council. During the early debates about how we should respond to the Syrian civil war, she was a strong proponent of a more aggressive approach, one that might have prevented the Islamic State from gaining a foothold in Syria.

I never saw her bring politics into the Situation Room. In fact, I saw the opposite. When some wanted to delay the Bin Laden raid by one day because the White House Correspondents Dinner might be disrupted, she said, "Screw the White House Correspondents Dinner."

In sharp contrast to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump has no experience on national security. Even more important, the character traits he has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief.

These traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law.

The dangers that flow from Mr. Trump's character are not just risks that would emerge if he became president. It is already damaging our national security.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated.

Mr. Putin is a great leader, Mr. Trump says, ignoring that he has killed and jailed journalists and political opponents, has invaded two of his neighbors and is driving his economy to ruin. Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American, interests -- endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia's annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States.

In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.

Mr. Trump has also undermined security with his call for barring Muslims from entering the country. This position, which so clearly contradicts the foundational values of our nation, plays into the hands of the jihadist narrative that our fight against terrorism is a war between religions.

In fact, many Muslim Americans play critical roles in protecting our country, including the man, whom I cannot identify, who ran the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorism Center for nearly a decade and who I believe is most responsible for keeping America safe since the Sept. 11 attacks.

My training as an intelligence officer taught me to call it as I see it. This is what I did for the C.I.A. This is what I am doing now. Our nation will be much safer with Hillary Clinton as president.

Michael J. Morell was the acting director and deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2010 to 2013.

[Sep 30, 2020] DNI Letter Supports Allegation That Hillary Clinton Created 'Russiagate' by b

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... In the infamous Steele dossier , prepared for the Clinton campaign by a 'former' British spy, the first entry that is tying the Trump campaign to the 'Russian DNC hack' was allegedly written on July 28 2016. ..."
"... The president of Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company which investigated the DNC leak, later said that his company never found any proof that Russia had hacked the DNC. ..."
"... The claims made in the Ratcliffe letter fit the timeline of the scandal as it developed. They supports the assertion that the Clinton campaign made up 'Russiagate' from whole cloth. It was supported in that by a myriad of media and by dozens of high level anti-Trump activists in the FBI and CIA. ..."
"... "There was no transition because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after me spying on my campaign. They started from the day I won and even before I won. From the day I came down the escalator with our First Lady. They were a disaster. They were a disgrace to our country. And we've caught 'em. We've caught 'em all. We've got it all on tape. We've caught 'em all." ..."
"... The need to then cover for murder added to the urgency to propagate the whole "Russiagate" fiction. The US' misnamed "intelligence community" and mass media both were complicit in the murder of Rich, so they had additional motivation to lead the public off the scent with an entirely fabricated false narrative. ..."
"... I doubt that it was solely a Clinton operation. After all, CIA director Mike Morrell kicked it off with his piece in the NY Times, which signaled some significant level of support at least parts of the intelligence community. ..."
"... The whole Russiagate affaire was very reminiscent of the Ken Starr inquisition, which yielded nothing until Bubba cavalierly incriminated himself with Monica. Trump has yet to prove himself that stupid. ..."
"... Remember when Tulsi Gabbard called out Hillary Clinton about getting the media to support her Russiagating of her? ..."
"... "Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know -- it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It's now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly." ..."
"... Seriously, Mr. President? You have been given a personal intelligence briefing from your CIA Director that one of the candidates to succeed you in the Presidency is an actual, bought and paid-for agent of Russia? And you don't go public because Ole Meanie Mitch won't let you ? ..."
"... This said to me that Obama knew it was all BS from the beginning. Of course, there have been gobs of disclosures and evidence since that it was fake and BS, and none whatsoever that it was real. ..."
"... Thanks to Wikileaks, we have a copy of an email exchange between Hillary's Campaign Manager, John Podesta and longtime Democratic operative Brent Budowsky talking about how Hillary should take on The Donald. Budowski tells Podesta: "Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria."" ..."
"... The Russiagate fabrication was a political convenience for the Dems, but it allowed Trump and his NATO/EU agents to sanction, pressurise, interfere with Russia in every dimension, because Trump 'had to' to show they he was not Russia's sock puppets! ..."
"... The video I just watched and linked to on the Week in Review thread makes this observation: The Ds burned the US-Russia relationship while the Rs made no real protest; now we have the Rs burning the US-China relationship while the Ds make no real protest. ..."
"... Assange announced on June 12, 2016 that a new tranche of DNC emails had been leaked to Wikileaks and was being prepared for publication. The effort to manufacture the false narrative about Russian hacking began immediately after that, likely within minutes of the announcement. ..."
"... A "populist outsider" will NEVER be allowed to win the Presidency. It was claimed that Obama was also a "populist outsider" yet he served the Deep State/Empire and the US establishment very well. ..."
"... Russiagate was primarily a means of initiating a new McCarthyism as part of a plan to counter Russia and China. ..."
Sep 30, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Where the allegations that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential elections made up by the Clinton campaign?

A letter sent by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe seems to suggest so :

On Tuesday, Ratcliffe, a loyalist whom Trump placed atop U.S. intelligence in the spring, sent Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) a letter claiming that in late July 2016, U.S. intelligence acquired "insight" into a Russian intelligence analysis. That analysis, Ratcliffe summarized in his letter, claimed that Clinton had a plan to attack Trump by tying him to the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee.
...
Ratcliffe stated that the intelligence community "does not know the accuracy of this allegation or to the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication."
bigger

The letter says that then CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on the intelligence. He reported that the Russians believed that Clinton approved the campaign plan on July 26 2016.

So U.S. intelligence spying on Russian intelligence analysts found that the Russians believed that Clinton started a 'Trump is supported by the Russian hacking of the DNC' campaign. The Russian's surely had reason to think that.

Emails from the Democratic National Committee were published by Wikileaks on July 22 2016, shortly before the Democratic National Convention. They proved that during the primaries the DNC had actively worked against candidate Bernie Sanders.

On July 24 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook went on CNN and made, to my knowledge, the very first allegations (video) that Russia had 'hacked' the DNC in support of Donald Trump.

It is likely that the Russian analysts had seen that.

Mook's TV appearance was probably a test balloon raised to see if such claims would stick.

Two days later Clinton allegedly approved campaign plans to emphasize such claims.

In the infamous Steele dossier , prepared for the Clinton campaign by a 'former' British spy, the first entry that is tying the Trump campaign to the 'Russian DNC hack' was allegedly written on July 28 2016.

The president of Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company which investigated the DNC leak, later said that his company never found any proof that Russia had hacked the DNC.

There are suspicions that Seth Rich, an IT administrator for the DNC and Bernie Sanders supporter, has leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks . Rich was murdered on July 10 2016 in Washington DC in an alleged 'robbery' during which nothing was stolen.

The claims made in the Ratcliffe letter fit the timeline of the scandal as it developed. They supports the assertion that the Clinton campaign made up 'Russiagate' from whole cloth. It was supported in that by a myriad of media and by dozens of high level anti-Trump activists in the FBI and CIA.

Posted by b on September 30, 2020 at 16:04 UTC | Permalink


psychohistorian , Sep 30 2020 16:30 utc | 1

Are you trying to tell me b that "We came, we saw, he died" Clinton is suspected of wrongdoing?/snark

I am all for bringing down the whole house of corrupt cards that fronts for the private finance cult. The Clintons are just examples of semi-recent to recent corruption. Obama is in that boat as is Biden and others.

But just remember that Trump was already entirely corrupt before (s)elected into power. Trump is just another front for global private finance evil that humanity must face.

annie , Sep 30 2020 16:36 utc | 2
i've always suspected (assumed) russiagate came from the clinton campaign.
LXV , Sep 30 2020 16:37 utc | 3
Another "conspiracy theory" turned into conspiracy fact.

With regards to Killary being "supported in that by a myriad of media and by dozens of anti-Trump activists...", well, it's a pay-to-play world and CGI was the piggybank at that particular time...

james , Sep 30 2020 16:38 utc | 4
thanks b... the timeline certainly fits and is consistent here.... larry johnson at sst has an article up on the same topic... how much of this is coming out now due the election and how much of it is coming out now, just because it happens to be coming out now??
Et Tu , Sep 30 2020 16:41 utc | 5
It's hard to tell when Trump is ever being truthful, but in last night's debate he clearly stated:

"There was no transition because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after me spying on my campaign. They started from the day I won and even before I won. From the day I came down the escalator with our First Lady. They were a disaster. They were a disgrace to our country. And we've caught 'em. We've caught 'em all. We've got it all on tape. We've caught 'em all."

Whether that is indicative of an imminent substantial October surprise i guess we will all have to wait and see.

William Gruff , Sep 30 2020 16:50 utc | 6
The murder/robbery of Seth Rich has frequently been described as "botched" , which I have always felt was a strange way to describe a murder. It is as if the mass media were trying to exculpate the murderer even though we are supposed to not know who the murderer actually is.

So nothing was taken from Rich, but perhaps that is because the murderer couldn't find what he was looking for? The USB thumb drive with the purloined emails, maybe? Of course, by the time Rich was murdered the emails had already been passed along to Wikileaks, but I suppose the murderer might not have known that at the time. That would make an effort to retrieve the emails "botched" , wouldn't it? This suggested to me from the moment that I heard it that those in the mass media who seeded the story of a robbery being "botched" in fact were knowingly covering for the effort to control the leak which was what was "botched" .

The need to then cover for murder added to the urgency to propagate the whole "Russiagate" fiction. The US' misnamed "intelligence community" and mass media both were complicit in the murder of Rich, so they had additional motivation to lead the public off the scent with an entirely fabricated false narrative.

Cousin Jack , Sep 30 2020 16:59 utc | 7
With no evidence at all my suspicion is that Rich was killed as a crime of passion committed by a hotheaded member of his own family, which would explain both the family's reticence and the somewhat muted investigation.
vk , Sep 30 2020 17:05 utc | 8
There are suspicions that Seth Rich, an IT administrator for the DNC and Bernie Sanders supporter, has leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks. Rich was murdered on July 10 2016 in Washington DC in an alleged 'robbery' during which nothing was stolen.

That explains why Bernie Sanders suddenly became the "sheep dog". He flat out doesn't want to be assassinated and doesn't want his family to be also assassinated.

Bemildred , Sep 30 2020 17:19 utc | 9
Gee, and it isn't even October yet.
karlof1 , Sep 30 2020 17:26 utc | 10
While it would be a boon for the nation, I rather doubt Trump will have Barr indict the Clintons for their crimes or go after the daily fraud committed at the Fed or on Wall Street. I doubt Trump has any inkling that in order to truly make America Great Again he must first destroy the Financial Parasites who caused America's downfall in the first place. Thirty-four days to go.
annie , Sep 30 2020 17:37 utc | 11
Assange repeatedly stated russia didn't leak the emails. i saw no compelling reason to think he would lie about it. then when the steel dossier came out it was so over the top and reeked of fabrication. the whole thing was so far fetched and then ratcheted up 1000 fold after she lost the election as an excuse. she never took any responsibility for her loss.

i think what amazes me most is how the media, and everyone following along, believed this story that drove the narrative for years. this ridiculous obsession with russia was all part of a coverup to distract the public from how rotten to the core the dnc is.

Hoarsewhisperer , Sep 30 2020 18:06 utc | 12
Thanks b.

The mention of Seth Rich in connection with Russiagate prompted a hazy recollection of an article over at SST by Larry C Johnson (LCJ), who has been exposing flaws in the Russiagate fiasco for several years. LCJ deduced from the publicly-available Wikileaks/DNC files that they couldn't have been hacked over the WWW because the timestamp for each file indicated that those files came from a portable device, a thumb drive. From that info, and Assange being very upset about the murder of Seth Rich, LCJ concluded that Rich sent the DNC files to Wikileaks.

I looked up SST's "Russiagate" files and found the relevant article dated August 28, 2019 from which the following brief extract is the section mentioning file-types which LCJ found so compelling...
...
An examination of the Wikileaks DNC files shows they were created on 23 and 25 May and 26 August respectively. The fact that they appear in a FAT system format indicates the data was transfered to a storage device, such as a thumb drive.

How can you prove this? The truth lies in the "last modified" time stamps on the Wikileaks files. Every single one of these time stamps end in even numbers. If you are not familiar with the FAT file system, you need to understand that when a date is stored under this system the data rounds the time to the nearest even numbered second.

Bill examined 500 DNC email files stored on Wikileaks and found that all 500 files ended in an even number -- 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0. If a system other than FAT had been used, there would have been an equal probability of the time stamp ending with an odd number. But that is not the case with the data stored on the Wikileaks site. All end with an even number.
...

Tuyzentfloot , Sep 30 2020 18:06 utc | 13
Maybe the Russians had read this article from july 26th : http://patricklawrence.us/shades-cold-war-dnc-fabricated-russian-hacker-conspiracy-deflect-blame-email-scandal/.
JohnH , Sep 30 2020 18:13 utc | 14
I doubt that it was solely a Clinton operation. After all, CIA director Mike Morrell kicked it off with his piece in the NY Times, which signaled some significant level of support at least parts of the intelligence community.

The whole Russiagate affaire was very reminiscent of the Ken Starr inquisition, which yielded nothing until Bubba cavalierly incriminated himself with Monica. Trump has yet to prove himself that stupid.

I suspect that Hillary was delighted at the prospect of revenge for all she and Bubba had gone through in the 1990s...except that she totally blew it...

Kali , Sep 30 2020 18:20 utc | 15
Remember when Tulsi Gabbard called out Hillary Clinton about getting the media to support her Russiagating of her? Here it is, you can see she blames Hillary as the source of the story:

"Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know -- it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It's now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly."

The Ballad of Tulsi and Hillary shows us how much the US and the world lost by the media supporting Hillary in her plan to Russiagate the world.

Prairie Bear , Sep 30 2020 18:23 utc | 16
The letter says that then CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on the intelligence. He reported that the Russians believed that Clinton approved the campaign plan on July 26 2016.

I was one of those who thought that the whole Russia conspiracy was dubious from day one, although I might have been kind of, "Well, maybe " for a day or so.

But that line from your post I quoted above points to one of the earliest and most convincing pieces of evidence to me that the whole thing was fake. It was reported early on that Obama had been briefed on the Russian interference and he wanted to go public to the American people about what was going on, but Senator Mitch McConnell wouldn't agree to it!

Seriously, Mr. President? You have been given a personal intelligence briefing from your CIA Director that one of the candidates to succeed you in the Presidency is an actual, bought and paid-for agent of Russia? And you don't go public because Ole Meanie Mitch won't let you ?

This said to me that Obama knew it was all BS from the beginning. Of course, there have been gobs of disclosures and evidence since that it was fake and BS, and none whatsoever that it was real.

Erelis , Sep 30 2020 18:26 utc | 17
Even with all the revelations debunking the whole Russiagate narrative, the Deep State has been successful in instilling in the news media, Hollywood, political elites of both parties, and the overwhelming base of the democratic party that Russia somehow "installed" Trump, that he is a Putin "puppet/puppy" (your choice), and any resistance to establishment democratic party power is due to Russian manipulation of social media, and in general Russia (etc.) is fundamental to causing social and political problems. It took America about seven years to get over McCarthyism. Russiagate will stay in American discourse for a long time.

The dangerous part of Russiagate is that it has reached the level of hysteria that it can be used by American Deep State to justify direct and dangerous confrontations with Russia up to and including war. Russiagate pales the propaganda about Saddam and WNDs. Let us remember that two days into the US invasion of Iraq, the invasion had a 72% approval rating according to Gallup. Any conflict with Russia will probably have even higher approval levels.

Between Trump and Biden, it is Biden who will be the most likely to start the final conflagration.

Tuyzentfloot , Sep 30 2020 18:30 utc | 18
Also nice, a list of journalists, commentators etc & media organizations who never succumbed to Russiagate :

https://medium.com/@codecodekoen/list-of-vindicated-russiagate-skeptics-3f6fc0e55812

spudski , Sep 30 2020 18:50 utc | 21
@19

The probability of all 500 files having even numbers as a random outcome starts with a decimal point followed by 150 zeroes and then a three.

Tuyzentfloot , Sep 30 2020 19:05 utc | 22
@hoarsewhisperer I trust that the time stamps indicates that a FAT format was used at a certain stage. What I don't recall is that how this would exclude workflows which involve an USB stick at any later stage after a hack. I think this technical proof is not as decisive as it seems and calculating huge statistical odds does not change that. The fact that the NSA has not come up with proof, now that does mean something. Something Baskervillish.
Rae , Sep 30 2020 19:25 utc | 23
Who cares.

Found it interesting that in the very mainstream 'Friends' sitcom it was already a joke in the 90s that "gi joe looks after american foreign oil interests".

Except for a few conflict sitreps there really hasn't been much of note posted here this year.

spudski , Sep 30 2020 19:27 utc | 24
Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney has also argued that the data could not have been hacked because internet speeds at the time were not sufficient for the transfer of the data when it was extracted. He claims that the speed was consistent with saving to a thumb drive.
Bart Hansen , Sep 30 2020 19:35 utc | 25
The word "botched" could have been invented to explain why nothing was stolen, in order to put off those who questioned the motive. No witness came forward but it could be that someone saw the shooting from a distance and yelled at the perp.
Per/Norway , Sep 30 2020 19:46 utc | 26
"Ratcliffe's letter, which is based on information obtained by the CIA, states that Hillary decided on 26 July 2016 to launch the Russia/Trump strategem. But the CIA was mistaken. The Clinton effort started in 2015--December 2015 to be precise.

Thanks to Wikileaks, we have a copy of an email exchange between Hillary's Campaign Manager, John Podesta and longtime Democratic operative Brent Budowsky talking about how Hillary should take on The Donald. Budowski tells Podesta: "Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria.""

Larry Johnson wrote today in his article "I Told You Long Ago, Hillary's Team Helped Fabricate the Trump Russia Collusion Lie by Larry C Johnson"

TrixiefromDixie , Sep 30 2020 19:55 utc | 27
If I remember correctly Obummer signed legislation making it ok for the press to openly lie to everyone in the us! HR4310, legalized propaganda for US consumption. He gave us fake news!
powerandpeople , Sep 30 2020 20:11 utc | 28
The constant stream of US, UK, NATO, EU fabrications framing Russia, from MH17, Skripal, 'interfering in elections' garbage, the Navalry poisoning, coupled with endless provocations like interfering in the Syrian settlement, twisting the OPCW work, attempting to destroy the Iran nuclear agreement and so much more appear to -finally - running out Russia's strategic patience with the Trump administration.

1. 24 September Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov:

"...the incumbent US administration has lost its diplomatic skills almost for good."

https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4350105

2. 30 September FM Lavrov:

"we have come to realise that in terms of Germany and its EU and NATO allies' conduct, ...it is impossible to deal with the West until it stops using provocations and fraud and starts behaving honestly and responsibly."

https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4350105

The Russiagate fabrication was a political convenience for the Dems, but it allowed Trump and his NATO/EU agents to sanction, pressurise, interfere with Russia in every dimension, because Trump 'had to' to show they he was not Russia's sock puppets!

Looks like Russia might be shifting strategy from strictly going through the defined and agreed processes in relation to problems with the West to perhaps not engaging so meticulously.

After all, what's the point when the agreed processes are ignored by the other party?

So, does "impossible to deal with" mean "will not deal with"?

We'll see.

karlof1 , Sep 30 2020 20:43 utc | 29
The video I just watched and linked to on the Week in Review thread makes this observation: The Ds burned the US-Russia relationship while the Rs made no real protest; now we have the Rs burning the US-China relationship while the Ds make no real protest.

Many other nations are watching, some already having joined the China-Russia bloc while others get ready as they watch what little remains of US soft power go down the tubes thanks to Imperial tactics being deployed onto US streets. Meanwhile, lurking not too far away is the coming escalation of the financial crisis which Trump's Trade War has exacerbated. Those running this show are myopic to the max--in order to post an economic recovery, the markets existing in those nations now being alienated will be essential since the domestic market will be far too weak to fuel a recovery by itself, even with enlightened leadership.

Eric Zuesse , Sep 30 2020 20:53 utc | 30
Regarding the allegation by "b" that:

"On July 24 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook went on CNN and made, to my knowledge, the very first allegations (video) that Russia had 'hacked' the DNC in support of Donald Trump."

It is not the case that it was the first such allegation. To my knowledge, the first such allegation that was published was published on 14 June 2016 in the Washington Post, headlining "Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump" and I provide here an archived link to it instead of that newspaper's link, so that no paywall will block a reader from seeing that article:
https://archive.is/T4C2G

William Gruff , Sep 30 2020 21:09 utc | 31
powerandpeople @28: "So, does "impossible to deal with" mean "will not deal with"?"

Highly unlikely. The Russians will continue to pursue reason even after the war on Russia goes hot. If the Russians give up on diplomacy then that means Lavrov is out of a job. The Russians are capable of walking and chewing gum, or shooting and talking as the case may be, at the same time.

By the way, I think the same is true for the Chinese, even if they have not done much shooting lately. When America's war against them goes hot they will keep the door to diplomacy open throughout the conflict. Neither of these countries wants a war and it is the US that is pushing for one. They will be happy to stop the killing as soon as the US does.

Personally I think that may be a mistake because when the war goes hot and the US suffers some military defeats and sues for peace, if America still has the capability to wage war then the peace will just be temporary. The US will use any cessation of hostilities to rearm and try to catch its imagined enemies off guard.

Whether or not the US will be able to rearm after significant military defeats in its current de-industrialized condition is another matter.

David , Sep 30 2020 21:28 utc | 32
How can the US possibly contemplate a war with China? The US cannot function without China's production. To cite just one example; eighty percent of US pharmaceuticals are produced in China. The US needs China far more than China needs the US. A war with China is a war the US cannot win.
William Gruff , Sep 30 2020 21:37 utc | 33
Eric Zuesse @30

Assange announced on June 12, 2016 that a new tranche of DNC emails had been leaked to Wikileaks and was being prepared for publication. The effort to manufacture the false narrative about Russian hacking began immediately after that, likely within minutes of the announcement.

Jackrabbit , Sep 30 2020 21:43 utc | 34
We already knew that Hillary had engaged Steele in Spring 2016 as what was termed an "insurance policy". This "insurance" angle makes no sense: 1) Hillary was the overwhelming favorite when she engaged Steele and had virtually unlimited resources that she could call upon. And, 2) the bogus findings in Steele's dossier could easily be debunked by any competent intelligence agency so it wasn't any sort of "insurance" at all.

<> <> <> <> <>

That Hillary started Russiagate is not surprising. This limited hangout, which is so titillating to some, is meant to cover for a far greater conspiracy than Hillary's vindictiveness.

We should first recognize a few things:

These facts lead to the following conclusions:
  1. A "populist outsider" will NEVER be allowed to win the Presidency. It was claimed that Obama was also a "populist outsider" yet he served the Deep State/Empire and the US establishment very well.
  2. Hillary's 2016 "campaign mistakes" were likely deliberate/calculated to allow Trump to win. MAGA Nationalist Trump was the Deep State's favorite. This explains why Trump announced that he would not investigate the Clintons within days of his being elected and why Trump picked close associates of all his 'Never Trump' Deep State enemies to fill key posts in his Administration such as: John Brennan's gal Gina Haspel for CIA Director; John McCain's guy Mike Pence as VP; the Bush's guy William Barr for Attorney General; and the neocon's John Bolton for NSA.
  3. Russiagate was primarily a means of initiating a new McCarthyism as part of a plan to counter Russia and China.

!!
William Gruff , Sep 30 2020 21:46 utc | 35
David @32: "How can the US possibly contemplate a war with China?"

Sadly, the United States is suffering from delusions of exceptionality. Mass psychosis. The importance of industrial capacity is radically underestimated by the top economic theorists (and thus advisors) in the West, and except for some of the deplorable working people in America and perhaps about five or six Marxists in the country, the rest of the American population is equally delusional. "Well, if we can't get it from China then we will just order it from Amazon!

No, really, it's that bad.

[Sep 30, 2020] I Told You Long Ago, Hillary's Team Helped Fabricate the Trump Russia Collusion Lie by Larry C Johnson - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Notable quotes:
"... Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin , but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria ..."
"... one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world ..."
Sep 29, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

I hope you are sitting down and prepared to go into shock. Breaking news--""In late July 2016, US intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against US Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians' hacking of the DNC." If you are not a regular reader of SST, yes, you will be shocked. But for you old timers, you already knew this.

Yes. I am taking another well earned victory lap. I was the first to write about this. You can find my piece here ( published on 6 May 2019 ). Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe gave Senator Lindsey Graham a letter today detailing recently declassified intelligence outlining the Clinton Campaign's effort to manufacture a collusion narrative featuring Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Here's the letter:

Ratcliffe's letter, which is based on information obtained by the CIA, states that Hillary decided on 26 July 2016 to launch the Russia/Trump strategem. But the CIA was mistaken. The Clinton effort started in 2015--December 2015 to be precise. Thanks to Wikileaks, we have a copy of an email exchange between Hillary's Campaign Manager, John Podesta and longtime Democratic operative Brent Budowsky talking about how Hillary should take on The Donald. Budowski tells Podesta:

" Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin , but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria ."

This was more then opposition research by Hillary's campaign. It entailed an extensive weaponization of U.S. and foreign law enforcement and intelligence assets that set out to identify and target members of Trump's campaign who could be used to feed the Russian collusion meme. Hillary, for example, had a powerful and dangerous ally in a London firm comprised of former MI6 assets– Hakluyt:

there was a second, even more powerful and mysterious opposition research and intelligence firm lurking about with significant political and financial links to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign for president against Donald Trump.

Meet London-based Hakluyt & Co. , founded by three former British intelligence operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations pay huge sums. . . .

Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's Henry Williams as " one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world " and as "a retirement home for ex-MI6 [British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking "

It is no mere coincidence that Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, who was credited by the FBI as serving up the predicate to launch the investigation into George Papadopolous, also was closely tied to the Clinton Foundation and funneling Austailian money to the Clinton's. Back in 2006, Downer was Australia's Foreign Minister when he and Bill Clinton signed a $25 million Memorandum of Understanding, marking the first round of Australian taxpayer donations to the Clinton Foundation.

The timing of Alexander Downer's "sudden concern" about Papadopolous is very suspect. Downer waited two months before informing US authorities about Papadopoulus's alleged drunken bragging about the Trump team working with the Russians to get Hillary. But why wait two months? Should we take it as nothing more than this being a coincidence with the fact that Hillary at the same time approved an effort by her campaign to tie Trump to Russia in order to divert attention from her email scandal. The alleged Russian hacking of DNC emails was front-page news around the world by June 15. Why did it take Downer four more weeks to comprehend the dire implications of Papadopoulus's intoxicated ramblings? Papadopoulos disputes Downer's account. Yet, per Mueller, this was one more event justifying the Russian interference meme.

It was Downer who told the FBI of Papodopoulos' comments, which became one of the "driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia's attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump's associates conspired," The Times reported.

Downer, a long-time Aussie chum of Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been on Hakluyt's advisory board since 2008. Officially, he had to resign his Hakluyt role in 2014, but his informal connections continued uninterrupted, the News Corp. Australian Network reported in a January 2016 exclusive:

But it can be revealed Mr. Downer has still been attending client conferences and gatherings of the group, including a client cocktail soirée at the Orangery at Kensington Palace a few months ago.

His attendance at that event is understood to have come days after he also attended a two-day country retreat at the invitation of the group, which has been involved in a number of corporate spy scandals in recent times.

The Clinton Plot, aided and abetted by the CIA and the FBI, to destroy Donald Trump continues to chug along. But it is no longer avoiding scrutiny. The truth is coming out, albeit slowly. But this latest revelation should be considered in the context of news that John Durham also is taking a fresh look at the criminal conduct of the Clinton Foundation. I do not think these matters are unrelated.


blue peacock , 29 September 2020 at 08:41 PM

"..Russian intelligence analysis alleging that US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against US Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians' hacking of the DNC."

Larry,

So what analysis did the US IC have not just in the Obama administration but also in the Trump administration? Why didn't they get the intel on Hillary's plan?

All Trump appointees were in place by early 2017 - AG, DAG, FBI & CIA Director, DNI. Is the story now that the Russian IC knew about Hillary's plan but the Trump IC did not?

fakebot , 29 September 2020 at 09:15 PM

A well earned victory lap. It looks like Trump finally got some people who were willing to go there.

In saying that, in the past, or at least immediately after he assumed office, he was reluctant to go after Hillary. And I think she has too much dirt on other people, too much leverage to be put down.

I like this direction and I hope to see something happen.

BTW, Trump is killing the debate. Killing it.

Larry C Johnson , 29 September 2020 at 10:48 PM

Blue Peacock
The fact that this was hidden is further evidence that the Deep State was hiding this info and trying to suppress it. The Russian meme is bullshit. What I mean by that is the narrative that Trump was colluding with the Russians. He wasn't. It was a fabricated narrative and the evidence was being withheld. If Trump interfered in trying to release that info they were going to use it as evidence of "obstruction of justice."

James Lung , 29 September 2020 at 11:37 PM

Good News, Mr. Johnson. Politico reports that Ratcliffe duped by Russian Disinformation. Source: SSCI. Warner and his succubus Richard Burr investigated the matter. Nothing to see. Russian disinformation. Nothing to see here.

Larry C Johnson , 29 September 2020 at 11:41 PM

James,
Appreciate your humor. Politico is a disgrace. Ignore reality and whistle past the graveyard. We'll see if the Little Old Lady from South Carolina finds his testicles tomorrow and presses the issue with Jimmy Comey. But facts are facts. There is zero evidence that the Russians hacked the DNC.

Deap , 30 September 2020 at 01:00 AM

I recall Comey reporting he took a disturbing "letter" he had received to Loretta Lynch, when he was agonizing over either (1) disclosing the Carlos Danger Weiner emails or (2) the fake "exoneration" over the original Clinton email debacle.

Can't remember which event. . I believe Comey explained to Lunch, see what i am up against?

Lynch apparently only gave Comey a very jaundiced eye, and made no comment. So Comey went ahead and did what he did on his own -either (1) re-open the Weiner emails; or (2) go forward with the pre-judged "exoneration". (Memory fritz here)

Does this ring a bell? Was this Clinton instigated Trump Russia hoax claim in the "letter" to Comey? Did this have anything to do with Bill Clinton's "random" tarmac meeting with Lynch in this same time frame?

The tarmac Lynch meeting would have coincided with the "exoneration" move by Comey.

PS, thanks for keeping us on top of this still very evolving and breaking story - 3.5 years later. Way too many loose ends that have not yet come together, but odd events when put into relationship with other later disclosures help clear the fog.

Deap , 30 September 2020 at 01:23 AM

......."
" To be clear, this is not Russian disinformation and has not been assessed as such by the Intelligence Community. I'll be briefing Congress on the sensitive sources and methods by which it was obtained in the coming days," he (Radcliffe) wrote.........

From the net.

Fred , 30 September 2020 at 07:38 AM

James,

It gets better, Facebook labels the DNI's letter as false information, and it only took them an hour to do so. Of course they turned it over to CNN's former reporter Alan Duke, Editor-in-Chief & co-founder of "Lead Stories".

turcopolier , 30 September 2020 at 09:41 AM

Larry

Congratulations on your early discernment of the centrality of the Clinton Group in this conspiracy. What was the date of your first piece on this? I would like to re-publish it.

J , 30 September 2020 at 10:08 AM

Larry, Colonel,

It's seems that every time that investigation/prosecution of those involved in the Seth Rich murder is brought up, D.C. looks and runs the other way as fast as possible. What do you think is going on? Was Rich one more of the Clinton Group's body count?

james , 30 September 2020 at 11:52 AM

larry - ditto pats comment to you... you have been consistent and informative in all of this reporting... thanks..

Diana Croissant , 30 September 2020 at 12:04 PM

Larry,

Yes, you DO deserve a victory lap. It's too bad that your right to a victory lap is now confirmed so much later than it should have been. We could have had saved lots and lots of time and newsprint if others had listened earlier. D.C. really is full of swamp gas that the truth is often clouded over and ignored for a long time.

So much time wasted and so much in the way of tax payors' money spent over the years only to have this finally confirmed years later. My greatest wish would be that we never have to hear a word from HRC ever again.

Thanks for taking "no quarter" on the perpetrators of this attempt to subvert our government.

j. casey , 30 September 2020 at 12:21 PM

"[A]betted by the CIA and the FBI" and legions of MSM types tripping over each other to get their daggers bloody. If indictments go out (a big "if") the people coordinating the MSM should be served, too.

Mike46 , 30 September 2020 at 03:31 PM

Fred wrote:

"It gets better, Facebook labels the DNI's letter as false information, and it only took them an hour to do so. Of course they turned it over to CNN's former reporter Alan Duke, Editor-in-Chief & co-founder of "Lead Stories". "

The burden of proof is on your side. A letter is not proof. Anyone can write one.

Show the evidence. Time to put up or shut up.

[Sep 30, 2020] Hillary Clinton cooked up Russiagate to smear Trump distract from her own scandals, declassified docs suggest -- RT USA News

Sep 30, 2020 | www.rt.com

Hillary Clinton cooked up Russiagate to smear Trump & distract from her own scandals, declassified docs suggest 29 Sep, 2020 21:47 Get short URL Hillary Clinton cooked up Russiagate to smear Trump & distract from her own scandals, declassified docs suggest FILE PHOTOS. © Reuters / Kyle Grillot ; Reuters / Carlo Allegri 428 18 Follow RT on RT Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton OK'ed a plan to smear then-rival Donald Trump with accusations about Russian election-hacking to distract from her email scandal, newly-declassified papers appear to show.

Clinton approved an advisor's proposal to "vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services" in July 2016, according to information declassified on Tuesday by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. The bombshell revelation was made public in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee chair Lindsey Graham (R-S. Carolina), in response to a request for information related to the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane (i.e. Russiagate) probe.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1311023996637335552&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F502083-clinton-russiagate-obama-trump%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=219d021%3A1598982042171&width=550px

By the end of July 2016, US intelligence agencies had picked up chatter that their Russian counterparts not only knew of the scheme, but that Clinton was behind it – though the declassified material stresses that the American intelligence community "does not know the accuracy" of the claim that Clinton had green-lighted such a plan, or whether the Russians were exaggerating. However, then-CIA director John Brennan apparently followed up that assessment by briefing then-President Barack Obama on Clinton's Russian smear scheme, according to his handwritten notes – suggesting the spy agencies were very much aware what was going on.

READ MORE: 'They were trying to do a coup!': Trump says after FBI docs reveal agents bought liability insurance during Flynn probe

The news made a splash among the president's supporters and other Russiagate skeptics, one of whom observed the timing of the events described in the declassified material dovetailed seamlessly with the timetable in which Russiagate was unveiled to the public. Clinton staffer Robby Mook appeared on CNN on July 24, 2016 to claim that "Russian state actors broke into the [Democratic National Committee]" and "stole" the campaign's emails "for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump."

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Former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele filed his report around the same date, accusing the Trump campaign of colluding with Russian security services to hack the DNC and dump the emails via Wikileaks. The false information that made up the infamous "peepee dossier" – collected under contract from opposition research firm Fusion GPS – was used to justify securing a FISA warrant for Trump campaign aide Carter Page. That warrant, and others that followed, have since been declared invalid, as it was discovered the Obama administration had "violated its duty of candor" on its application for every warrant.

ALSO ON RT.COM FBI used Steele Dossier to spy on Trump, KNOWING its primary sub-source was a suspected 'Russian agent,' DOJ reveals

Just a month before the 2016 election, Obama's intelligence agencies announced that they believed Russia was responsible for hacking the DNC – allegations it has since emerged were made without even examining the server on which the emails were stored.

More than a year after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's report shocked Russiagate true believers with the absence of the promised proof of collusion, the colossal conspiracy theory has all but unraveled.

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[Sep 29, 2020] Hillary Clinton Accused Of Approving Scheme To Smear Trump With Russia Accusations

Images and part of the tweets removed. Most links to Twitter video removed. See the original for the full text.
Sep 29, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Update (1712ET): Online sleuths such as The Last Refuge are already connecting dots between when the Trump-Russia allegations surfaced and the newly released briefing timeline .

TheLastRefuge @TheLastRefuge2 · Sep 29, 2020 This is additionally important for a specific reference point. Clinton ally, and former acting CIA Director Mike Morell first published the Clinton created Russia narrative (in the New York Times) less than a week after this July 26, 2016, briefing by Brennan.
The Reckoning @sethjlevy This conversation between @jaketapper and @RobbyMook happened on July 25th. The Reckoning @sethjlevy On day 1 of the Democrat Convention as Wikileaks began their DNC releases Mook's interview uses the release to begin spinning the Trump Russia tale. This was planned, prepared, purposeful and the beginning of one of the most damaging psy op disinformation campaigns in US history.
https://twitter.com/sethjlevy/status/963977316547399680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1311019881039618049%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fus-intelligence-investigated-hillary-clinton-over-alleged-plan-smear-trump-russia Sean Davis @seanmdav · Sep 29, 2020 Replying to @seanmdav Today's declassification confirms that from the beginning, the FBI knew its anti-Trump investigation was based entirely on Russian disinformation. Brennan and Comey were personally warned. They responded by fabricating evidence and defrauding the courts. https:// judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/ 09-29-20_Letter%20to%20Sen.%20Graham_Declassification%20of%20FBI's%20Crossfire%20Hurricane%20Investigations_20-00912_U_SIGNED-FINAL.pdf BenTallmadge @BenKTallmadge https:// twitter.com/benktallmadge/ status/1310676483501768705?s=21 BenTallmadge @BenKTallmadge Replying to @BenKTallmadge Alexander Vindman was working at thé US embassy in Moscow when the wife of former mayor wired $3.5M to Hunter Biden, right before Russia took Crimea H/t @grabaroot https:// twitter.com/playstrumpcard /status/1310648949393502214?s=21 https:// twitter.com/playstrumpcard /status/1310648949393502214

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Meanwhile, this is being downplayed by intelligence officials as Russian disinformation, which DNI Ratcliffe has refuted.

Chuck Ross @ChuckRossDC · 3h Intel officials came out within minutes to claim Russian disinfo in the Ratcliffe letter. We didn't find out for nearly three years that Russian disinfo might have been in the dossier.

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Jeremy Herb @jeremyherb
New statement from Ratcliffe on unverified Russian intel: "To be clear, this is not Russian disinformation and has not been assessed as such by the Intelligence Community. I'll be briefing Congress on the sensitive sources and methods by which it was obtained in the coming days." 5:35 PM · Sep 29, 2020

* * *

On September 7, 2016, US intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to former FBI officials James Comey and Peter Strzok concerning allegations that Hillary Clinton approved a plan to smear then-candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian hackers , according to information given to Sen. Lindsey Graham by the Director of National Intelligence.

According to Fox News' Chad Pergram, "In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump," after one of Clinton's foreign policy advisers proposed vilifying Trump "by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services."


Chad Pergram @ChadPergram · Sep 29, 2020 Replying to @ChadPergram 5) DNI info to Grahm: On 07 September 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding 'U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's approval of a plan.. Chad Pergram @ChadPergram 6) DNI info to Graham:...concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.'" 2:51 PM · Sep 29, 2020

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Read the letter from DNI Director John Ratcliffe to Lindsey Graham below:

it

Jack PosobiecO

@JackPosobiec

BREAKING: According to handwritten notes, Brennan briefed Obama on Hillary's approval of a proposal to attack Trump in the 2016 election by tying him to Putin

United Slates Senate

290 Russell Senate Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20510

Chairman Graham.

In response to your request for Intelligence Community (IC) information related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Crossfire Hurricane Investigation, I have declassified the following:

In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians' hacking of the Democratic National Committee. The IC docs not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.

According to his handwritten notes, former Central Intelligence Agency Director Brennan subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the "alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26. 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services."

On 07 September 2016. U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding "U.S. Presidential candidate I lillary Clinton's approval of a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server."

As referenced in his 24 September 2020 letter to your Committee, Attorney General Ban has advised that the disclosure of this information will not interfere with ongoing Department of Justice investigations. Additional declassification and public disclosure of related intelligence remains under consideration; however, the IC welcomes the opportunity to provide a classified briefing with further detail at your convenience.

Respectfully,

i RatcliiTc

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Wikileaks

In 2017, it was claimed that the "blame Russia" plan was hatched "within twenty-four hours" of Clinton losing the election - while the US intelligence investigation predates that by several months.

New book by 'Shattered' by Clinton insiders reveals that "blame Russia" plan was hatched "within twenty-four hours" of election loss.

The authors detail how Clinton went out of her way to pass blame for her stunning loss on "Comey and Russia."

"She wants to make sure all these narratives get spun the right way," a longtime Clinton confidant is quoted as saying.

The book further highlights how Clinton's Russia-blame-game was a plan hatched by senior campaign staffers John Podesta and Robbv Mook. less than "within twenty-fourhours" after she conceded:

That strategy had been set within twenty -four hours of her concession speech. Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple ofhours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script theywould pitch to the press and the public. Already. Russian hacking was the centerpieceof the argument.

The Clinton camp settled on a two-pronged plan -- pushing the press to cover how"Russian hacking was the major unreported story of the campaign, overshadowed by thecontents of stolen e-mails and Hillary*s own private-server imbroglio.'' while"hammering the media for focusing so intently on the investigation into her e-mail, whichhad created a cloud over her candidacy ." the authors wrote.

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[Sep 29, 2020] US intel referred Clinton campaign to FBI, alleging it concocted Russia collusion story

Sep 29, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

ET AL September 29, 2020 at 12:17 pm

JustTheNews.com : US intel referred Clinton campaign to FBI, alleging it concocted Russia collusion story
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/us-intel-referred-clinton-campaign-fbi-alleging-it

US intelligence believed Clinton plot to 'stir up a scandal' was a 'means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.'

"In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians' hacking of the Democratic National Committee," Ratcliffe wrote Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham. "The IC does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication
####

The chronology of events supports something like this. It seems to me t that when it was evident that t-Rump might win the election, the Dems prepared the ground for a 'poison pill' to leave behind. Ultimately this is what O-Bomber signed off when t-Rump won. What this does tell us is that the Dems have become as well verse in the black arts of political sabotage at least as well as what the Reps have done since the 1990s and onwards.

This is the basis of the current undeclared civil war in America. It was driven from the top down by corrupt elites who never imagined that it would gain traction below ground as globalization would cement the West's Fukuyamiyan superioritiy in to the foreseeable future. Then there was 9/11, 2008 and a further self-made quagmire in more sensless Do Something interventions around the world.

ET AL September 29, 2020 at 12:25 pm

The funny thing here is now the Repubs are trying to spin it that Putin was actually trying to hurt t-Rump! What's thre phrase, a day late and a dollar short ?

[Sep 29, 2020] Steele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe

And why Brennan still walks free ?
Sep 29, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

ET AL September 25, 2020 at 3:41 am

TheHill.com : Steele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/518138-steele-dossier-sub-source-was-subject-of-fbi-counterintelligence-probe

The detail was previously redacted from a footnote in Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz's 2019 report on four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrant applications

the investigation was opened "based on information by the FBI indicating that the Primary Sub-source may be a threat to national security." The investigation was closed in 2011 and not reopened.
####

I had assumed that anyone of Russian origin who is in contact with certain American officials/agencies is automatically probed. Not much of a surprise.

[Sep 26, 2020] Steele Dossier Sub-Source Was Subject of FBI Counter-Intel Probe

That the Steele dossier was potentially based on the words of a Russian spy should have been a red flag against its use. It seems that the FBI had not informed the FISA court about the dubious sourcing of the dossier allegations.
Igor Danchenko, the premier sub-source for the Steele dossier, had earlier worked for the Democrat affiliate Brookings Institute:
Notable quotes:
"... The American Conservative ..."
"... National Review ..."
Sep 26, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

New information strikes the strongest blow yet at the foundations of the Russian collusion narrative. April 4, 2019: A protestor outside the White House demanding the release of the full Mueller Report. (By bakdc/Shutterstock)

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

|

1:34 PM

DECLAN LEARY

In a September 24th letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Attorney General Bill Barr revealed that the "primary sub-source" for the Steele dossier was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in 2009. The source's Russian ties had been called into question, and the individual was considered a possible national security threat, according to Attorney General Barr's letter. This sub-source has elsewhere been identified as Russian national Igor Danchenko.

This latest revelation in the Russiagate saga lands just over a month before the election, chipping away further at one of the main lines of criticism that many on the left have leveled against President Trump -- and bolstering suggestions from the president's own camp that the FBI and other executive agencies engaged in substantial misconduct during the transition period in 2016. Allegations contained in the Steele dossier justified FISA warrants against Trump campaign advisor Carter Page and inspired many of the collusion claims that have been floated in the four years since Trump's election victory.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/13045197114175078?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13045197114175078-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theamericanconservative.com&rid=www.theamericanconservative.com&width=838

The attorney general's letter attributes the finding to a now-declassified footnote in the inspector general's report on the dubious FISA warrants. The footnote reports that the individual later identified as Christopher Steele's primary source was under FBI investigation from 2009 to 2011; the investigation was terminated because the subject "had apparently left the United States."

The FBI found that Danchenko had been in contact with two known Russian intelligence officers in 2005 and 2006. In his exchanges with one of these contacts, the Steele sub-source openly expressed his desire to join the Russian diplomatic service. All of this was known to the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team as early as December 2016 -- five months before Robert Mueller was even appointed to investigate collusion charges originating from Danchenko.

A few other interesting details:

Specifically, the FBI received reporting indicating a research fellow for an influential foreign policy advisor in the Obama Administration was at a work-related event in late 2008 when they were approached by another employee of the think tank ("the employee"). The employee reportedly indicated that if the two individuals at the table "did get a job in the government and had access to classified information" and wanted "to make a little extra money," the employee knew some people to whom they could speak. According to the research fellow, there was no pretext to the conversation; the employee had not been invited to the table

And if that weren't enough, "one interviewee did note that the Primary Sub-source persistently asked about the interviewee's knowledge of a particular military vessel." Real subtle there, Igor.

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It now seems likely that the panic about foreign influence which swept over our politics for four years rested on the word of not just a Russian spy, but the worst Russian spy of all time. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Declan Leary is the Collegiate Network Fellow at The American Conservative and a graduate of John Carroll University. His work has been published at National Review , Crisis, and elsewhere.

[Sep 25, 2020] New Documents Further Unveil Obama's Anti-Trump Campaign

Notable quotes:
"... In pretending to be the statesman to bring China to heel, this gangster of a statesman manifested the loss of diplomatic skill almost for good. ..."
"... The scheme smells of rotten fish and there's an attempt to deflect attention from the real problem which centers on a corrupt 'secret society' of jurists. The right waves its hands in our faces while the left plunges the knives in our backs. Who are Donald Trump's handlers? ..."
Sep 25, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

A number of recent document releases shine new lights on 'Russiagate'. That conspiracy theory, peddled by the Obama administration, the Democratic Party aligned media and 'deep state' actors opposed to President Trump, alleged that Trump was in cahoots with Russia. The disinformation campaign had the purpose of sabotaging his presidency.

To some extend it has worked as intended. But due to the legal investigation of the whole affair much more is now known about those who conspired against Trump. Some of them are likely to end up in legal jeopardy.

Some of those are the agents under FBI director Comey who used the easily debunked Steele dossier, paid for by the Democratic party, to gain a FISA court warrants that allowed them to spy on the Trump campaign. It now turns out that the main source for the dossier they used was a shady actor who the FBI had earlier investigated for an alleged connection to Russian intelligence:

The primary sub-source for the Steele dossier was the subject of an earlier counterintelligence investigation by the FBI, and those facts were known to the Crossfire Hurricane team as early as December 2016, according to newly released records from the Justice Department that were first reported by CBS News.

The timing matters because the dossier was first used two months earlier, in October 2016, to help secure a surveillance warrant for former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, and then used in three subsequent surveillance renewals.

"Between May 2009 and March 2011, the FBI maintained an investigation into the individual who later would be identified as Christopher Steele's Primary Sub-source," the two page FBI memo states. "The FBI commenced this investigation based on information by the FBI indicating that the Primary Sub-source may be a threat to national security."

That the Steele dossier was potentially based on the words of a Russian spy should have been a red flag against its use. It seems that the FBI had not informed the FISA court about the dubious sourcing of the dossier allegations.

Igor Danchenko, the premier sub-source for the Steele dossier, had earlier worked for the Democrat affiliate Brookings Institute:

Danchenko worked at the time as a Russia analyst for the Brookings Institution, a prominent liberal foreign policy think tank.

An employee of the think tank said that another employee, seemingly Danchenko, told others that if they got jobs in the government and obtained classified security clearances, they might be put them in touch with people so they could "make a little extra money."

"The coworker did express suspicion of the employee and had questioned the possibility that the employee might actually be a Russian spy," the FBI memo says.

Danchenko may or may not have been a Russian spy. But the fact the FBI had once opened a full counter-intelligence investigation of him which was never concluded shines a very bad light on the dossier peddlers.

Shortly before Trump was inaugurated the Obama administration released an 'Intelligence Community Assessment', concocted by hand-selected agents under CIA director John Brennan, that claimed that Russia hade preferred Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. That had never made sense. Clinton was a well known factor to the Kremlin while Trump was a wild card that potentially would cause chaos - which is what he ended up doing. It only now turns out that several CIA analysts had come to that conclusion but that there thinking was excluded from the published analysis :

Former CIA Director John Brennan personally edited a crucial section of the intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and assigned a political ally to take a lead role in writing it after career analysts disputed Brennan's take that Russian leader Vladimir Putin intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump clinch the White House , according to two senior U.S. intelligence officials who have seen classified materials detailing Brennan's role in drafting the document.

The explosive conclusion Brennan inserted into the report was used to help justify continuing the Trump-Russia "collusion" investigation, which had been launched by the FBI in 2016. It was picked up after the election by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who in the end found no proof that Trump or his campaign conspired with Moscow.

The Obama administration publicly released a declassified version of the report -- known as the "Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent Elections (ICA)" -- just two weeks before Trump took office, casting a cloud of suspicion over his presidency. Democrats and national media have cited the report to suggest Russia influenced the 2016 outcome and warn that Putin is likely meddling again to reelect Trump.

The ICA is a key focus of U.S. Attorney John Durham's ongoing investigation into the origins of the "collusion" probe. He wants to know if the intelligence findings were juiced for political purposes.

Around the same time the ICA was written FBI agents involved in the anti-Trump investigation were messaging each other about Russiagate issues. A new release of parts of their conversations is quite damaging :

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents tasked by fired former Director James Comey to take down Donald Trump during and after the 2016 election were so concerned about the agency's potentially illegal behavior that they purchased liability insurance to protect themselves less than two weeks before Trump was inaugurated president, previously hidden FBI text messages show. The explosive new communications and internal FBI notes were disclosed in federal court filings today from Sidney Powell, the attorney who heads Michael Flynn's legal defense team.
...
The new disclosures made by DOJ also show that the FBI used so-called national security letters (NSLs) to spy on Flynn's finances. Unlike traditional subpoenas, which require judicial review and approval before authorities can seize an innocent person's property and information, NSLs are never independently reviewed by courts. One of the agents noted in a text message that the NSLs were just being used as a pretext by FBI leadership to buy time to find dirt on Flynn after the first investigation of him yielded no derogatory information.
...
In one series of texts sent the same day as the infamous Jan. 5 Oval Office meeting between Obama, Biden, Comey, Sally Yates, and Susan Rice , one agent admits that "Trump was right" when he tweeted that the FBI was delaying his briefings as incoming president so they could cook up evidence against him. As The Federalist first reported last May, that Jan. 5 meeting was the key to understanding the entire anti-Trump operation run out of Obama's FBI.

"The 'Intelligence' briefing on so-called 'Russian hacking' was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case," Trump tweeted on January 3. "Very strange!"

Brennan's 'Intelligence Community Assessment' was published on January 5. The White House round also led to a renewal of the investigation of Trump's incoming National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn. That investigation, codenamed 'razor', had had no results and was supposed to be closed. The FBI agents did not like the White House plans at all:

"So razor is going to stay open???" an agent wrote on Jan. 5.

"[Y]ep," another FBI agent responded. "[C]rimes report being drafted."

"F," the first agent wrote back.

"[W]hat's the word on how [Obama's] briefing went?" one agent asked, referring to the Jan. 5 meeting.

"Dont know but people here are scrambling for info to support certain things and its a mad house," an FBI agent responded.

"[J]esus," an agent wrote back. "[T]rump was right. [S]till not put together . why do we do this to ourselves. [W]hat is wrong with these people[?]

Last but not least the Durham investigation into the FBI's operation against Trump released a protocol of an interview with an FBI agent who was involved in the investigation against General Flynn and in the later Mueller investigation against Trump:

A 13-page summary of an interview with Flynn case agent William Barnett, made public in a court filing by prosecutors just before midnight Thursday, [..] revealed that the veteran agent harbored deep doubts and skepticism about the merits of the investigation into Flynn's potential ties with Russia -- at least in its early stages -- and questioned the Mueller team's tactics in the broader probe of the Trump campaign's contacts with Russians, known as Crossfire Hurricane.

Though Barnett said he repeatedly expressed those doubts to colleagues and superiors -- and says he feared groupthink and a "get Trump" attitude was driving the investigation forward -- he continued to be included in the work of Mueller's attorneys during sensitive interviews.

All together those releases by the Justice Department and the new reports again demonstrate that there was no legit Russiagate and no reason to investigate the Trump campaign. It was all a conspiracy theory concocted to make it more difficult for Trump to pursue the policies he had advocated during his election campaign.

It was even more than that. Mike Whitney is right in calling it an illicit coup attempt. Obama, his éminence grise John Brennan, and all those willing minions who were part of it should be in jail.

If all the energy wasted on peddling Russiagate had instead been used to push real political alternatives to Trump's programs the Democrats and their voters would likely be in a better position.

Posted by b on September 25, 2020 at 16:52 UTC | Permalink


steven t johnson , Sep 25 2020 17:25 utc | 1

The significance of the FBI opening a counterintelligence file on Danchenko based on one item of gossip depends entirely upon how many such files it opens on such evidence. The significance of the file staying open depends on how quickly the FBI closes such files. My knowledge, such as it is, is that the FBI is quick to open "investigations" on any evidence, including simple gossip and habitually leaves them open to provide an opening for later pursuit (i.e., a serious investigation) if it wishes. That is, the claim the source is tainted is very weak. The added conclusion that a tainted source cannot provide correct information means essentially no informant subject to a possible criminal charge should serve as motive for an investigation. This is an absurdity, indulged as special pleading for Trump. The argument reduces to, "Danchenko" is a Russian, thus may be a Russian spy. This kind of nonsense is what many Democrats rely on, ironically.

The claim that of course it would make no sense for Putin et al. to favor Trump because Clinton was a "known quantity" is shameless nonsense. If the quantity known is a relentless hostility, even the unknown Trump would promise the chance of a more favorable US foreign policy. There are two further points here. First, the tacit admission that Putin didn't get a favorable outcome from Trump concedes all claims about Trump's less warlike, more pacific foreign policy are more shameless nonsense. Second, the phony logic offered to defend Trump proves Trump has always had significant support in the so-called Deep State. Brennan may have had other motives in editing this BS out, but no one will ever prove it wasn't dropped because it was blatantly stupid pro-Trump twaddle.

Similarly, the breathless report of January 5 meeting ignores how James Comey, a man notorious for intervening in the election by announcing yet another nothingburger investigation into email servers, was part of the meeting. It simply was not a meeting of Obama conspirators. The indignant comments by disloyal FBI agents merely concedes again that the supposed Deep State conspiracy was also in favor of Trump. I have no idea why Deep State conspirators favoring Trump would buy liability insurance against being charged with conspiring *against* Trump. Pretending their actions were justified by the pro-Democratic Party faction of the Deep State could easily impel them to make things look better. I would really like to see the actual terms of the policy, though. I suspect it was meant to cover their asses if they were called out by their boss Comey for violating confidentiality, playing partisan politics on the job, all manner of illegal and immoral acts.

The inclusion of a vocal Trump defender in the Mueller investigation of Flynn ("at least in the early stages...") is not, *not,* *NOT,* an indication of hanky panky. It is evidence of an honest investigation. Though hardly conclusive evidence, trying to pretend it is proof of the opposite is a shameless perversion of reason.

Trumpery, Trumpery, Trumpery.

Even the seemingly high-minded conclusion about pushing real political alternatives to Trump's programs fails to merit respect. There is only a limited amount of disagreement on policy issues between Trump (and his Republic Party---not a democracy!---tail) and the Democratic Party. Trumpery about how there is a real difference of principle driving the Deep State conspiracy is unbelievable even when spouting more Trumpery.

steven t johnson , Sep 25 2020 17:33 utc | 2
PS Real evidence for Obama's anti-Trump campaign would be about how he encouraged Clinton to contest Trump's loss of the vote. She had vastly more ground for refusing to concede than Trump does. And unlike this BS, this anti-Trump campaign doesn't violate any laws or even regulations. It would even be a principled stand for majority rule. Every single person who upheld the legitimacy of minority rule because, Electoral College, is dedicated to Trump's legitimacy. Rube Goldberg conspiracy theories purporting to show Trump is a victim of the Deep State determined to fight his salvation of humanity are refuted by this alone.
David G , Sep 25 2020 17:36 utc | 3
The link at "excluded from the published analysis" does not work.
Josh , Sep 25 2020 17:36 utc | 4
True enough. Luckily for us, that was just the beginning of their increasingly bizzare behavior. It's been quite a show so far, and they haven't even finished figuring out how to hang this election yet...
More to come, surely.
Good article B.
Thanks again.
Jackrabbit , Sep 25 2020 17:37 utc | 5
b: "Obama's Anti-Trump Campaign"

LMFAO.

So we are to believe that Russia can't kill their targets and that the US Deep State can't prevent an unwanted "populist" from being President despite the ease of manipulating the USA money-driven selection of a President?

Really?

Well, it was NOT an "anti-Trump campaign". It was an anti-Russia campaign flavored with "Trump is a populist!" sweetener.

Because the US Deep State WANTED to initiate a new McCarthyism AND to elect MAGA Nationalist Trump.

Obama himself was a Deep-State approved faux populist Presidential stooge that conducted secret wars and betrayed his 'base' to advance the interests of the establishment. Trump is merely the Republican Obama.

<> <> <> <> <> <>

The US Presidency is the lynchpin of the Empire. No true "populist outsider" will EVER be allowed to occupy that office.

It's difficult to fathom why smart people can't see this.

!!

Bart Hansen , Sep 25 2020 17:42 utc | 6
Do a search on "Danchenko and Fiona Hill", the latter being one of those who testified with Marie Yovanovich and was sainted by the media.
karlof1 , Sep 25 2020 17:48 utc | 7
If all the energy wasted on peddling Russiagate had instead been used to push real political alternatives to Trump's programs the Democrats and their voters would likely be in a better position.

The Ds defeated that possibility when they conspired to derail Sanders and promote Clinton. As a result, Obama's legacy is Trump. But there was a Deep State faction pulling Obama's strings that's likely supporting the attempt to foment a domestic Color Revolution, yet for the life of me I can't see why as all the grifters are getting billions--unless--it's perceived that Trump's stalled their imperialist projects or stopped what they hoped to accomplish via JCPOA. In other words, we need a better motive for Russiagate than the mere disruption of Trump's administration.

Red Ryder , Sep 25 2020 18:03 utc | 8
The Nexus is Ukraine, where the DNC, Obama and others were heavily involved with corruption, money into their pockets and money laundered for campaign uses, illegally brought back into the US.

It was never Russia or Russians. It was always the Podesta-Clinton-Obama operatives and their true believers in FBI and DOJ, working with the Russophobes in NGOs and the State Dept.

The desperation as Trump became a real possible President and then an actual elected President was to cover their crimes in Ukraine and the illegal actions to spy on Trump and set up Trump campaign associates.

The difficult call now is how high up do the present investigators have cover to save the institutions of the FBI and DOJ? A real take down would go to Obama, Biden, Clapper, Comey, Brennan, Podesta, Clinton and all their lieutenants. It would collapse the CIA, State, FBI, DOJ, and all the lying experts on Russia who perjured to Congress.

c , Sep 25 2020 18:12 utc | 9
Yes, this is pretty much beating a dead horse.
profk , Sep 25 2020 18:17 utc | 10
Red Ryder gets it -- Ukraine is the specific catalyst, linked to the New Cold War against Russia and the corruption of the Democrats involved in that conflict.

There is also Flynn and his dirt on Obama's Syria/ISIS policy -- remember his Al Jazeera interview about Obama's "wilful decision" to ignore DIA reports on ISIS. Flynn knows the US and its allies had some kind of links to ISIS and Nusra Front (Al Qaeda) in Syria.

And there is also the more general concern, raised by Karlof1, about the Presidency and the empire.

NemesisCalling , Sep 25 2020 18:31 utc | 11
I have been reading and nodding in agreement with Mike Whitney since his work started showing up on counterpunch. Does counterpunch still feature his work? My guess is not. Mike Whitney is a full-blown unapologetic Trump-defender and has consistently and very clearly shown that the recent BLM and urban riots are entirely funded and sewn by Democratic-party alligned elite.

I'm glad b can agree with some things the above writer has put-forth. I wonder if b knows about the den of vipers brooding here at the bar, spouting off about white-supremacists and other fictions designed to obfuscate the clear and present danger to our duly-elected POTUS and to render his supporters as racist fascists.

I wish b would just come out and say it. There is a real difference btw the two options on Nov. 3. Yes, both parties are elites and not in any way to be given cart blanche with our trust, but only one party has proven that it has attempted to usurp our democracy, infiltrate and hijack and make partisan the checks and balances of our government and FBI, and call 50% of the population "deplorables."

My only question to the idiots still holding onto their noble quest of dethroning POTUS because he is immoral: what do you think will happen after? At some point it becomes imperative for you to think about that and wonder if DJT really is the only one standing btw the people and utter tyranny.

karlof1 , Sep 25 2020 18:45 utc | 12
I found this barb delivered by Lavrov during his presser with Zarif I linked to on the open thread to be very curious when thought about in the context of Russiagate:

"The fact that the United States has threatened to impose sanctions on those who defy the American interpretation of the current situation serves as further proof of Washington's desire to move like a bull in a china shop, putting ultimatums to everyone and punishing everyone indiscriminately because, in my view, the incumbent US administration has lost its diplomatic skills almost for good ." [My Emphasis]

Red Ryder @8 & profk @10 connect Ukraine and the outing of the Empire's role in the creation of Daesh. Yes, it seems much is related to Russia's Phoenix-like rise and outwitting the Empire's buffoons beginning in 2013 that's generated the above behavior noted by Lavrov. If TrumpCo does get a second term, unless the entire foreign policy team is dumped and replaced, its agenda will go nowhere other than further into the hole they've dug for themselves over the past 20 years--almost every nation is now against Bush's USA as many now know who the terrorists really are and where they live.

dan of steele , Sep 25 2020 19:44 utc | 13
David G | Sep 25 2020 17:36 utc | 3

here is the link to "excluded from the published analysis"

Old and Grumpy , Sep 25 2020 19:47 utc | 14
What if the goal of 2016 election was to set up the 2020 American color revolution? If so Trump needed to win. Obama and the FBI did the groundwork here at home. There is some debate if the first Trump dossier was actually the second one to cover for the Cody Shearer one that was given to Strobe Talbot to give to Christopher Steele. Still it had the same goal as to foster doubt about the legitimacy of 2016 that is currently culminating with the gun toting, fire bombing hissy fit of the children of liberal privilege. Now if those blasted supreme righties would just show up, and the whole thing can go really hot like it did in Ukraine, Libya, Egypt, almost Syria, and any country I might be forgetting. Notice the Trump administration is parroting the left's white supremacist conspiracy. Its all really bad theater, but does anyone really care the crumbing infrastructure and the looming economic collapse when you can instead root for your team. Yes, I am guilty of the later too. Added bonus we already have a twofer of enemies (Russian and China) for yet another elitist war.
H.Schmatz , Sep 25 2020 19:54 utc | 15
I very doubt that it was "Russiagate" who make it difficult for Trump to pursue the policies he had been advocating during his election campaign...In fact, "Russiagate" has long ago been debunked and we have not seen Trump worrying a bit about the average American Joe, most flagrant during this pandemic...I doubt he would had behaved different were the "Russiagate" to have never existed..

Simply, electoral "promises" almost never are fullfilled in the already dating decades neoliberal order, both from the right or the "alleged" liberal left...

On the same grounds, we could affirm then that conspiracy theories about Obama´s birth place made it difficult for Obama to pursue the policies he had been advocating during his election campaign....

That Trump has ties to Russian oligarchs is, to my view, out of doubt for anyone following a bit some writers who use to deeply research their analyses out there like John Helmer.... That these oligarchas had anything to do, in this respect, with the Kremlin, it is doubtful, but highly likely related to business shenanigans amongst them and Trump & Co...related to illegal bribes and money laundering...

What have been largely proved is that Trump and his administration have been using big data management corporations and social networks engineering to manipulate elections and give coups eveywhere ( as the thorough research I posted at the Week in Review leaves in evidence it happened in several countries in Latin America , which leads us to suspect that they would not resist the desire to use the same methods in the US...before...and after the 2016 elections...having Bannon ad chief of campaign and then as chief of staff in 2016 so as that does not add for tranquility, with what legal methods is respected for achieving whatever goal..as the last events have clearly showed...

It was during Trump´s mandate that the war on Yemen continued towards total erradication of Yemenis, especially of Shia belief, by indiscriminate bombing and blockade of essential goods...that Qasem Soleimani was murdered without any justified reason...that NATO started a cheeky build up in Russian borders who remained still free of it...that the US withdrew from most international agreements leaving US/Russia, US/Iran, US/LatinAmerican relations at its lowest levels, by underminig any remaining trust...Trump reinstated and made even harsher sanctions against everybody who was not already a "puppet regime", including Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina, Russia, Iran, China, and, even looping the loop, against puppet governments in the EU...

I very doubt it was Russiagate which kept him from releasing his tax records as requested by governance transparecny, returning the ammounts of money defrauded in the "University Loans" affair, clarifying his ties to Epstein network, stopping sowing hatred and divide amongst US population, build the most world wide network of far-right extremists since post WWII around the world but especially in Europe to undermine what of "democracy" remains left, labeled and declared as "terrorists" any political party abroad who does not go along and oppose his puppet government´s corrupt policies anywhere, lit the Middle East on fire by continuously provoking Iran, Lebanon, Syria, sent his regime envoys to the EU to twist arm so that the European countries dedicate more budget to buy provedly ineffective arms from the US when the money is most needed for socio-economic and health issues in the middle of a pandemic, not to mention the requisition of health supplies´ cargos in the very Chinese tarmac which had been previously ordered and bought by European countries which needed them urgently, criminalized, and tried to label them as second cathegory citizens, a great part of US population of non-white foreign descent through whose hard work and shameful labor conditions US thrived along all these decades, well, you name it, the list would be almost for a book...or two...

To blame all this mess on "Russiagate" is, well, in the best case, underestimating the readership here...

Ma Laoshi , Sep 25 2020 19:54 utc | 16
Oh please, b: "legal jeopardy", don't make me laugh. It's been four years . The whole political part of Trump's career he's been under the tutelage of mafia consigliere Roy Cohn. Even better known, he's flown on the Lolita Express, and the FBI has a trove of videos etc from Epstein's safe (hmm, what else does the latter have in common with Roy Cohn besides the Trump connection). Bottom line, he's a deeply compromised individual who's concluded long ago, and correctly, that he's in over his head and better off just playing along. He's had no reservations appointing professional Russophobes like Fiona Hill; in fact, which of his appointees has not been a Cold Warrior besides perhaps T-Rex, who was a mere Venezuela hawk because of some old Exxon bad blood, and who was quickly ditched anyway. Even now, his own FBI director spouts RussiaGate red meat, and the Donald is doing squat about it.

What does it all matter to Trump? He doesn't have a good name to clear. He didn't run for president expecting to win, let alone to carry out this or that specific program. This Vale Tudo carnival atmosphere clearly suits him: if his opponents can make baseless accusations, so can he. If they can expect to skate beyond some meaningless fall guys, so can he. To actually uphold the law--it's just not how he rolls.

Had he mostly contented himself with playing president on TV and enjoying the perks of the office, and understood you can't just let a pandemic kill off your own voters, all would've been dandy. But, predictably, his ego got the better of him, and he just had to be the statesman who was finally going to bring China to heel. Again, merely tweeting about it could've been ignored, but by appointing an array of rabid ideologues who went to work on "decoupling", he's sided with a Deep State which will hate him regardless, against Corporate America which went into China to, you know, make money. In this way, he's made himself enemies a Republican can ill afford; combine this with his personal style (or lack of it), and just about nobody has his back any more. So the machine goes about purging this alien body from its system.

snake , Sep 25 2020 19:56 utc | 17
when do the American people get to investigate Truman, Ike, John McCain, JFK, Johnson, Bush, Obama, FBI, Trump, 9/11, CIA, invasion of Iraq, wall street, the US Treasury, the military, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and the like..?
,==He did it==> he did not do it, <=someone else did it, ==>avoids the basic problem:

America has a government that
a.) conducts wars to protect the economic interest of its favored few.
b.) uses law , to grant feudal lords wealth creating by extracting bits of wealth from Americans.
c.) conducts nearly all its affairs in classified secret..
d.) is un accountable for the money it spends.
e.) is un accountable for the genocides it conducts in foreign lands.
f.) has two crime families which divide and conquer the citizens to control all election outcomes
g.) has given to private bankers, its power to print money, control the economy, and tax the people.
h.) has not adhered to the Bill of Rights or the un amended constitution.
i.) refuses to require private media to speak only the truth.
j.) Refuses to comply with and orto enforce the 1st and 4th amendment<=papers and effects t/b secure
expand this list as you like

and

Americans have
a.) no access to the USA. <= 3 votes, insolation of state or voting district,
out 527 positions don't get it & none for the President
b.) must pay to the USA taxes and have no input as to how such taxes are collected or used,
c.) must register their presence to the USA with id numbers
d.) must obey USA laws which Americans had no say in writing, or passing.
e.) must endure foreign wars and domestic programs that serve no legitimate domestic interest.
expand this list as you like.

vk , Sep 25 2020 19:59 utc | 18
This kind of stuff have always happened in the USA.

The question to be made is this: why is this time more damaging to the social fabric of the USA?

H.Schmatz , Sep 25 2020 20:24 utc | 19
Because the US Deep State WANTED to initiate a new McCarthyism

@Posted by: Jackrabbit | Sep 25 2020 17:37 utc | 5

You are onto something there...I do not recall whose US think tank analyse I read about US youth tending ideologically to the left...the same could be said of any youth around the world after they have been left without future prospect and past opportunities to rise through the social ladder by rampant savage neoliberal capitalism...

I said at the time that the Ukrainian experiment of 2014 was a general dressed rehearsal for a future planned authoritarian fascist rule in most of the world, especially the West, once the prospects, already known by the elites, of collapsing capitalism are obvious for the general public and cause the consequent uprising..It is in this context that the pandemic and its sudden impoverishing outcome fits, along with the "orchestrated" violent riots at various locations, to justify martial law...

Notice that "rewritting of history of WWII" in favor of fascism is a feature of any US administration since the fall of the USSR...

Past days I read that Roger Stone, former Trump advisor, if i am not wrong also implied in a corruption case, advised Trump to declare martial law after winning in Novemeber...It is in that context that all the noise we have been hearing all these past months about the riots, militias, coups, and so on fit...What we have not heard about is about hundreds of thousands of evictions, inacabable line ups for food banks, and the total socio-economic disaster more than anything willingly built by TPTB...

Recal that they "built their own reality, and when you are catching up with that reality, they build another one"...

uncle tungsten , Sep 25 2020 20:37 utc | 20
Thank you H Schmatz and Ma Laoshi - clarifying material.

Meanwhile India Punchline has swallowed the entire stock of BLUE PILLS!

Oriental Voice , Sep 25 2020 20:40 utc | 21
Ma Laoshi @16:

Right on money, man! I can't help but chuckle and recall a quote from Agatha Christie's A Mirror Crack'd : "Yes, you can see her. You seem to-understand her very well." Here, change 'her' to 'him' and you pretty much summed up how Trump stumbling into that house on Penn Ave. and his antics in office since. In pretending to be the statesman to bring China to heel, this gangster of a statesman manifested the loss of diplomatic skill almost for good.

Chances are he stands a good chance of stumbling into the same office again in Nov. Heaven help the US of A in diplomacy for the next four years.

William Gruff , Sep 25 2020 20:46 utc | 22
Old and Grumpy @14: "What if the goal of 2016 election was to set up the 2020 American color revolution?"

But to what end? If you can control the outcome of the election sufficiently to pick the winner, then what point does a color revolution serve? You put a candidate in office just so that you can then remove him with a coup? This just injects tremendous expense and uncertainty into the management of the empire.

I realize that there are some who are deeply invested in the notion that the establishment wanted a Trump win, despite all of the opposition from them that Trump ended up facing, but it makes no sense. PNAC , the former roadmap for the empire, is now all but dead and the establishment is grudgingly falling in line behind the hail-mary play of a "Great Reset" . Most of the empire's proxies in Syria have been wiped out, the US influence in Libya is likewise mostly gone, and Myanmar is slipping away. Venezuela is still holding their own against the empire. The "Pivot to Asia" is spinning in place and going nowhere fast, and Russia and China are diplomatically outmaneuvering the US before the eyes of the rest of the world. This is definitely not where the elites wanted things to end up four years after 2016.

The efforts to foster a color revolution in the US are just signs of panicked desperation. It is not what they were aiming for in 2016.

Profk , Sep 25 2020 20:53 utc | 25
Yes, karlof1, ukraine and Syria are connected. Good point.
Curmudgeon , Sep 25 2020 21:29 utc | 26
In reply to vk | Sep 25 2020 19:59 utc | 18

Assuming your question is rhetorical, no it isn't. My question is whether or not the FISA court is culpable in this event. While we repeat the mantra that the FBI didn't inform the court about the dubious source, it is apparent to me the court failed in proper diligence. The scheme smells of rotten fish and there's an attempt to deflect attention from the real problem which centers on a corrupt 'secret society' of jurists. The right waves its hands in our faces while the left plunges the knives in our backs. Who are Donald Trump's handlers?

anonymous , Sep 25 2020 21:51 utc | 27
@NemesisCalling 11

"recent BLM and urban riots are entirely funded and sewn by Democratic-party alligned elite."

Prove it. Perhaps you're confusing the DNC BLM national organization withe the autonomous BLM actions in the streets. Two very different animals.

Your problem is that you still think the two parties are separate entities. There is only one party in this country, the Property Party, and it has two right wings, the Democrats and the Republicans.

"At some point it becomes imperative for you to think about that and wonder if DJT really is the only one standing btw the people and utter tyranny."

Only morons wonder about such things. No one here wants to read your delusional Qanon/MAGA bullshit.

[Sep 25, 2020] Get Trump -- FBI Agent From Mueller Team Says Flynn Case Was Politically Motivated -Dead End- - Others Bought Misconduct Insurance

The fact that large part of population consider Democratic leadership criminal and anther part Trump administration criminal is a new factor in 2020 elections. Look like neoliberal Dems made another blunder in unleashing American Maidan in those circumstances.
Sep 25, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Thanks to Judge Emmet Sullivan refusing the DOJ's request to drop the Michael Flynn case, a cache of explosive documents has now been released to the public revealing that at least one FBI agent on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team thought the case was a politically motivated "dead end," and others bought professional liability insurance as their bosses were continuing the investigation based on " conspiracy theories. "

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1309465118795849730&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fget-trump-fbi-agents-mueller-team-says-flynn-case-was-politically-motivated-dead-end&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=219d021%3A1598982042171&width=550px

In one case, FBI agent William J. Barnett said during a Sept. 17 interview that he believed Mueller's prosecution of Flynn was part of an attitude to "get Trump," and that he didn't want to pursue the Trump-Russia collusion investigation because it was "not there" and a "dead end," according to Fox News .

Barnett, during his interview, detailed his work at the FBI, and his assignment to the bureau's original cases against Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Barnett said the Flynn investigation was assigned the code name "Crossfire Razor," which was part of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation -- the bureau's code name for the original Trump-Russia probe.

Barnett told investigators that he thought the FBI's Trump-Russia probe was "opaque" and "with little detail concerning specific evidence of criminal events."

" Barnett thought the case theory was 'supposition on supposition,'" the 302 stated, and added that the "predication" of the Flynn investigation was "not great, " and that it "was not clear" what the "persons opening the case wanted to 'look for or at.'"

After six weeks of investigating, Barnett said he was "still unsure of the basis of the investigation concerning Russia and the Trump campaign working together , without a specific criminal allegation." - Fox News

When Barnett approached agents about what they thought the 'end game' was with Flynn - suggesting they interview the former National Security Adviser "and the case be closed unless derogatory information was obtained," he was cautioned not to conduct an interview, as it may tip Flynn off that he was under investigation.

"Barnett still did not see any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government," the 302 states. "Barnett was willing to follow any instructions being given by the deputy director as long as it was not a violation of the law."

Insurance over "conspiracy theories"?

Another revelation from documents in the Flynn case comes in the form of text messages released on Thursday in which agents bought liability insurance, fearing they would be sued over an investigation into Flynn based on "conspiracy theories."

about:blank

about:blank

me title=

"We all went and purchased professional liability insurance," one analyst texted on Jan. 10, 2017 - 10 days before Trump was inaugurated, according to Just The News .

"Holy crap," responded a colleague. "All of the analysts too?"

"Yep," replied the first analyst. "All the folks at the Agency as well."

"Can I ask who are the most likely litigators?" responded a colleague. "As far as potentially suing y'all."

"Haha, who knows .I think the concern when we got it was that there was a big leak at DOJ and the NYT among others was going to do a piece," the first analyst texted back.

NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST

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The explosive messages were attached to a new filing by Flynn's attorney Sidney Powell, who argued to the court that is considering dismissing her client's guilty plea that the emails show "stunning government misconduct" and "wrongful prosecution."

A hearing is scheduled for next Tuesday.

" There was no case against General Flynn ," Powell wrote in the new motion. " There was no crime. The FBI and the prosecutors knew that. This American hero and his entire family have suffered for four years from public abuse, slander, libel, and all means of defamation at the hands of the very government he pledged his life to defend." - Just The News

Thanks to Judge Sullivan's hatred of Flynn, the world now knows how much more corrupt the Mueller investigation was.


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novictim , 1 minute ago

"We all went and purchased professional liability insurance," one analyst texted on Jan. 10, 2017 - 10 days before Trump was inaugurated, according to Just The News .

Ok.

BUT NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THESE PROTECTORS OF THE CONSTITUTION BLEW THE WHISTLE.

None of these FBI agents seeing egregious abuse of power by the FBI leveled at a decorated Lt. Gen. had the moral fortitude to stand up and say "NO!". They all hated Trump so much that they simply bought protection insurance for themselves.

FIRE ALL OF THEM.

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J J Pettigrew , 2 minutes ago

A soft coup attempt...

does this qualify as "swaying an election"? Like the 2018 election that gave the House to the Dems and Pelosi her power?

Or is this an attempt to flip an election from 2016?

They always accuse others of that which they themselves are guilty...ALWAYS. At least they let us know what they are up to. Like who is in bed with Russian oligarchs.....Hunter gets the 3.5 million

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Everybodys All American , 6 minutes ago

Judge Sullivan has no choice. If he does not drop this case now then he is in serious violation of the law in a big time way. Anything is possible from this idiot but he will be impeached and removed if he does not dismiss this case for sure now.

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whackedinflorida , 8 minutes ago

It has been fairly obvious that if Sullivan refused to dismiss the case and insists on having a hearing, a large amount of government misconduct would ultimately be disclosed. Leftists are willing to believe anything if it fits their narrative, and ignore second order effects of what they do. By the end of this, the charges against Flynn will be dismissed (or he will be pardoned), and the prosecutors will be the ones facing the justice system. Its almost as if Sullivan is doing Trump's bidding.

Show More Replies
otschelnik , 10 minutes ago

To start going up the food chain as to how this ****show got started we need to know a couple of pieces of information which the deep state is jealously hiding from us:

1) WHO WERE THE CONTRACTORS ACCESSING THE NSA DATABASE? This will draw a straight line back to the Democrat party.

2) WHO WERE THE FBI AGENTS TAKING LIABILITY INSURANCE? These are the same as USSR NKVD henchmen shooting kulaks and political prisoners in the back of the head.

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Fabelhaft , 8 minutes ago

Flynn's courage reduces Mueller's battlefield manner to the shell-shocked infirmaries of WW1.

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Aubiekong , 16 minutes ago

If we lived in a country of law and order. The democratic leadership would all be in prison along with all those involved in the "investigation".

gaaasp , 32 minutes ago

When can Flynn speak freely?

turbojarhead , 26 minutes ago

I think you nailed it-Flynn cannot interview due to his legal case-the man who knows where ALL the bodies are buried, SPECIFICALLY in the Iran deal. It ALMOST seems like Sullivan-maybe at the behest of others-has been desperate to keep Flynn from being able to speak up for 4 years...

Maxter , 1 minute ago

It doesn't make much sense that Flynn knows where all the bodies are buried but never told the Trump team before all this mess.

[Sep 25, 2020] Secret Report Exposes CIA's Brennan Overruled Dissenting Analysts Who Concluded Russia Favored Hillary by Paul Sperry

When intelligence honchos became politicians the shadow of Lavrentiy Beria emerge behind them. while politization of FBI create political police like Gestapo, politization of CIA is much more serious and dangerous. It creates really tight control over the country by shadow intelligence agency. In a sense CIA and the cornerstone of the "deep state"
Sep 25, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations.com,

Former CIA Director John Brennan personally edited a crucial section of the intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and assigned a political ally to take a lead role in writing it after career analysts disputed Brennan's take that Russian leader Vladimir Putin intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump clinch the White House, according to two senior U.S. intelligence officials who have seen classified materials detailing Brennan's role in drafting the document.

John Brennan, left, with Robert Mueller in 2013: The CIA director's explosive conclusion in the ICA helped justify continuing Trump-Russia "collusion" investigations, notably Mueller's probe as special counsel. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews

The explosive conclusion Brennan inserted into the report was used to help justify continuing the Trump-Russia "collusion" investigation, which had been launched by the FBI in 2016. It was picked up after the election by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who in the end found no proof that Trump or his campaign conspired with Moscow.

The Obama administration publicly released a declassified version of the report -- known as the "Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent Elections (ICA)" -- just two weeks before Trump took office, casting a cloud of suspicion over his presidency. Democrats and national media have cited the report to suggest Russia influenced the 2016 outcome and warn that Putin is likely meddling again to reelect Trump.

The ICA is a key focus of U.S. Attorney John Durham's ongoing investigation into the origins of the "collusion" probe. He wants to know if the intelligence findings were juiced for political purposes.

RealClearInvestigations has learned that one of the CIA operatives who helped Brennan draft the ICA, Andrea Kendall-Taylor, financially supported Hillary Clinton during the campaign and is a close colleague of Eric Ciaramella, identified last year by RCI as the Democratic national security "whistleblower" whose complaint led to Trump's impeachment, ending in Senate acquittal in January.

John Durham: He is said to be using the long-hidden report on the drafting of the ICA as a road map in his investigation of whether the Obama administration politicized intelligence. Department of Justice via AP

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The two officials said Brennan, who openly supported Clinton during the campaign, excluded conflicting evidence about Putin's motives from the report , despite objections from some intelligence analysts who argued Putin counted on Clinton winning the election and viewed Trump as a "wild card."

The dissenting analysts found that Moscow preferred Clinton because it judged she would work with its leaders, whereas it worried Trump would be too unpredictable. As secretary of state, Clinton tried to "reset" relations with Moscow to move them to a more positive and cooperative stage, while Trump campaigned on expanding the U.S. military, which Moscow perceived as a threat.

These same analysts argued the Kremlin was generally trying to sow discord and disrupt the American democratic process during the 2016 election cycle. They also noted that Russia tried to interfere in the 2008 and 2012 races, many years before Trump threw his hat in the ring.

"They complained Brennan took a thesis [that Putin supported Trump] and decided he was going to ignore dissenting data and exaggerate the importance of that conclusion, even though they said it didn't have any real substance behind it," said a senior U.S intelligence official who participated in a 2018 review of the spycraft behind the assessment, which President Obama ordered after the 2016 election.

He elaborated that the analysts said they also came under political pressure to back Brennan's judgment that Putin personally ordered "active measures" against the Clinton campaign to throw the election to Trump, even though the underlying intelligence was "weak."

Adam Schiff: Soon after the Democrat took control of the House Intelligence Committee, its review of the drafting of the intelligence community assessment was classified and locked in a Capitol basement safe. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

The review, conducted by the House Intelligence Committee, culminated in a lengthy report that was classified and locked in a Capitol basement safe soon after Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff took control of the committee in January 2019.

The official said the committee spent more than 1,200 hours reviewing the ICA and interviewing analysts involved in crafting it, including the chief of Brennan's so-called "fusion cell," which was the interagency analytical group Obama's top spook stood up to look into Russian influence operations during the 2016 election.

Durham is said to be using the long-hidden report, which runs 50-plus pages, as a road map in his investigation of whether the Obama administration politicized intelligence while targeting the Trump campaign and presidential transition in an unprecedented investigation involving wiretapping and other secret surveillance.

The special prosecutor recently interviewed Brennan for several hours at CIA headquarters after obtaining his emails, call logs and other documents from the agency. Durham has also quizzed analysts and supervisors who worked on the ICA.

A spokesman for Brennan said that, according to Durham, he is not the target of a criminal investigation and "only a witness to events that are under review." Durham's office did not respond to requests for comment.

The senior intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said former senior CIA political analyst Kendall-Taylor was a key member of the team that worked on the ICA. A Brennan protégé, she donated hundreds of dollars to Clinton's 2016 campaign, federal records show. In June, she gave $250 to the Biden Victory Fund.

Andrea Kendall-Taylor: A Brennan protégé, she donated hundreds of dollars to Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, and recently defended the ICA in a "60 Minutes" interview . "60 Minutes"/YouTube

Kendall-Taylor and Ciaramella entered the CIA as junior analysts around the same time and worked the Russia beat together at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. From 2015 to 2018, Kendall-Taylor was detailed to the National Intelligence Council, where she was deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia. Ciaramella succeeded her in that position at NIC, a unit of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that oversees the CIA and the other intelligence agencies.

It's not clear if Ciaramella also played a role in the drafting of the January 2017 assessment. He was working in the White House as a CIA detailee at the time. The CIA declined comment.

Kendall-Taylor did not respond to requests for comment, but she recently defended the ICA as a national security expert in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview on Russia's election activities, arguing it was a slam-dunk case "based on a large body of evidence that demonstrated not only what Russia was doing, but also its intent. And it's based on a number of different sources, collected human intelligence, technical intelligence."

But the secret congressional review details how the ICA, which was hastily put together over 30 days at the direction of Obama intelligence czar James Clapper, did not follow longstanding rules for crafting such assessments. It was not farmed out to other key intelligence agencies for their input, and did not include an annex for dissent, among other extraordinary departures from past tradecraft.

Eric Ciaramella: The Democratic national security "whistleblower," whose complaint led to President Trump's impeachment, was a close colleague of Kendall-Taylor. It's not clear if Ciaramella also played a role in the drafting of the January 2017 assessment. whitehouse.gov

It did, however, include a two-page annex summarizing allegations from a dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. His claim that Putin had personally ordered cyberattacks on the Clinton campaign to help Trump win happened to echo the key finding of the ICA that Brennan supported. Brennan had briefed Democratic senators about allegations from the dossier on Capitol Hill.

"Some of the FBI source's [Steele's] reporting is consistent with the judgment in the assessment," stated the appended summary, which the two intelligence sources say was written by Brennan loyalists.

"The FBI source claimed, for example, that Putin ordered the influence effort with the aim of defeating Secretary Clinton, whom Putin 'feared and hated.' "

Steele's reporting has since been discredited by the Justice Department's inspector general as rumor-based opposition research on Trump paid for by the Clinton campaign. Several allegations have been debunked, even by Steele's own primary source, who confessed to the FBI that he ginned the rumors up with some of his Russian drinking buddies to earn money from Steele.

Former FBI Director James Comey told the Justice Department's watchdog that the Steele material, which he referred to as the "Crown material," was incorporated with the ICA because it was "corroborative of the central thesis of the assessment "The IC analysts found it credible on its face," Comey said.

Christopher Steele: His dossier allegations were summarized in a two-page annex to the ICA, but dissenting views about the Kremlin's favoring Hillary Clinton over Trump were excluded. Victoria Jones/PA via AP

The officials who have read the secret congressional report on the ICA dispute that. They say a number of analysts objected to including the dossier, arguing it was political innuendo and not sound intelligence.

"The staff report makes it fairly clear the assessment was politicized and skewed to discredit Trump's election," said the second U.S. intelligence source, who also requested anonymity.

Kendall-Taylor denied any political bias factored into the intelligence.

"To suggest that there was political interference in that process is ridiculous," she recently told NBC News.

Her boss during the ICA's drafting was CIA officer Julia Gurganus. Clapper tasked Gurganus, then detailed to NIC as its national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, with coordinating the production of the ICA with Kendall-Taylor.

They, in turn, worked closely with NIC's cybersecurity expert Vinh Nguyen, who had been consulting with Democratic National Committee cybersecurity contractor CrowdStrike to gather intelligence on the alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee computer system. (CrowdStrike's president has testified he couldn't say for sure Russian intelligence stole DNC emails, according to recently declassified transcripts.)

Durham's investigators have focused on people who worked at NIC during the drafting of the ICA, according to recent published reports.

No Input From CIA's 'Russia House'

The senior official who identified Kendall-Taylor said Brennan did not seek input from experts from CIA's so-called Russia House, a department within Langley officially called the Center for Europe and Eurasia, before arriving at the conclusion that Putin meddled in the election to benefit Trump.

"It was not an intelligence assessment. It was not coordinated in the [intelligence] community or even with experts in Russia House," the official said. "It was just a small group of people selected and driven by Brennan himself and Brennan did the editing."

The official noted that National Security Agency analysts also dissented from the conclusion that Putin personally sought to tilt the scale for Trump. One of only three agencies from the 17-agency intelligence community invited to participate in the ICA, the NSA had a lower level of confidence than the CIA and FBI, specifically on that bombshell conclusion.

The official said the NSA's departure was significant because the agency monitors the communications of Russian officials overseas. Yet it could not corroborate Brennan's preferred conclusion through its signals intelligence. Former NSA Director Michael Rogers, who has testified that the conclusion about Putin and Trump "didn't have the same level of sourcing and the same level of multiple sources," reportedly has been cooperating with Durham's probe.

The second senior intelligence official, who has read a draft of the still-classified House Intelligence Committee review, confirmed that career intelligence analysts complained that the ICA was tightly controlled and manipulated by Brennan, who previously worked in the Obama White House.

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Brennan's tight control over the process of drafting the ICA belies public claims the assessment reflected the "consensus of the entire intelligence community." His unilateral role also raises doubts about the objectivity of the intelligence.

In his defense, Brennan has pointed to a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report that found "no reason to dispute the Intelligence Community's conclusions."

"The ICA correctly found the Russians interfered in our 2016 election to hurt Secretary Clinton and help the candidacy of Donald Trump," argued committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va.

"Our review of the highly classified ICA and underlying intelligence found that this and other conclusions were well-supported," Warner added.

"There is certainly no reason to doubt that the Russians' success in 2016 is leading them to try again in 2020, and we must not be caught unprepared."

Brennan, ex-Obama homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco and ex-national intelligence director James Clapper, interviewed by Nicolle Wallace of MSNBC, right, at a 2018 Aspen Instutute event. Aspen Institute

However, the report completely blacks out a review of the underlying evidence to support the Brennan-inserted conclusion, including an entire section labeled "Putin Ordered Campaign to Influence U.S. Election." Still, it suggests elsewhere that conclusions are supported by intelligence with "varying substantiation" and with "differing confidence levels." It also notes "concerns about the use of specific sources."

Adding to doubts, the committee relied heavily on the closed-door testimony of former Obama homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco, a close Brennan ally who met with Brennan and his "fusion team" at the White House before and after the election. The extent of Monaco's role in the ICA is unclear.

Brennan last week pledged he would cooperate with two other Senate committees investigating the origins of the Russia "collusion" investigation. The Senate judiciary and governmental affairs panels recently gained authority to subpoena Brennan and other witnesses to testify.

Several Republican lawmakers and former Trump officials are clamoring for the declassification and release of the secret House staff report on the ICA.

"It's dynamite," said former CIA analyst Fred Fleitz, who reviewed the staff report while serving as chief of staff to then-National Security Adviser John Bolton.

"There are things in there that people don't know," he told RCI.

"It will change the dynamic of our understanding of Russian meddling in the election."

However, according to the intelligence official who worked on the ICA review, Brennan ensured that it would be next to impossible to declassify his sourcing for the key judgment on Putin. He said Brennan hid all sources and references to the underlying intelligence behind a highly sensitive and compartmented wall of classification.

He explained that he and Clapper created two classified versions of the ICA – a highly restricted Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information version that reveals the sourcing, and a more accessible Top Secret version that omits details about the sourcing.

Unless the classification of compartmented findings can be downgraded, access to Brennan's questionable sourcing will remain highly restricted, leaving the underlying evidence conveniently opaque, the official said.

[Sep 25, 2020] 'They were trying to do a coup!'- Trump says after FBI docs reveal agents bought liability insurance during Flynn probe -- RT USA News

Sep 25, 2020 | www.rt.com

US President Donald Trump said the FBI targeted him for a "coup" after newly released documents showed that federal agents bought liability insurance over fears their handling of the Trump-Russia probe could lead to legal trouble.

The new documents were disclosed in a federal court filing on Thursday by Sidney Powell, defense attorney for former Trump adviser Michael Flynn. Seizing on the new release, the president ran a victory lap at a campaign rally in Florida, telling the crowd the FBI had been "caught" attempting a "coup."

"Today a trove of text messages was released from FBI agents involved in the Russian witch hunt. You gotta see this," Trump said, reading out a headline from the Federalist .

These people are scum. They were trying to do a coup. And we've caught them before that, we caught them spying on our nation Never forget: they are coming after me because I'm fighting for you.

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The documents, which largely consist of text messages between unnamed federal agents, reveal that both FBI and CIA personnel purchased professional liability insurance days before Trump took office, fearing that illicit media leaks at the Department of Justice could result in lawsuits against many involved in the first leg of the Trump-Russia investigation – then known by its FBI codename, "Crossfire Hurricane."

"We all went and purchased professional liability insurance," one agent said in a text on January 10, 2017, some 10 days before Trump's inauguration.

"Holy crap. All the analysts too?" another agent said, prompting the first to reply "Yep. All the folks at the Agency as well" – an apparent reference to the CIA.

ALSO ON RT.COM New evidence shows FBI knew General Flynn was not 'agent of Russia' but prosecuted him anyway

When the first agent was asked who might be filing lawsuits, he responded: "Haha, who knows I think [the] concern when we got it was that there was a big leak at DOJ and the [New York Times] among others was going to do a piece."

The thought was if that piece comes out, and Jan 20th comes around the new [attorney general] might have some questions then yada yada yada we all get screwed.

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The messages also indicate that the FBI's separate investigation into Michael Flynn, then Trump's national security advisor, was kept alive long after senior figures in the bureau ordered the probe closed, finding no "derogatory information" on Flynn. While one agent expressed relief in early November 2016 that the Flynn probe – named "Crossfire Razor" – was ordered shut, that order had been overturned by January 2017, bureau personnel said in the messages.

Other texts show agents discussing the use of National Security Letters (NSLs) as a pretext to 'buy time' and drag out the investigation, allowing the FBI to continue digging into Flynn's finances with little judicial oversight, despite prior "traces" turning up "nothing."

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Flynn was forced to resign as national security advisor in 2017 and later charged for misleading the FBI about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, with whom he was accused of discussing US sanctions on Russia prior to Trump's swearing-in as president. The DOJ has since ordered Flynn's case closed after prior document dumps revealed misconduct at the bureau, Flynn's judge has refused to comply with the order.

ALSO ON RT.COM EXPLOSIVE transcripts show Flynn wanted to work with Russia against ISIS, Kislyak warned Trump 'Russiagate' was targeting HIM

Among other revelations, the new messages also show that some agents believed FBI officials running the Trump-Russia investigation were biased in favor of then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, even hoping she would win the 2016 race.

"Doing all this election research – I think some of these guys want a Clinton presidency," the agent said, prompting another to respond that "they seem to respect that they know what they are gonna get."

"Haha, really. Instead of a wild card like Trump," the first agent said.

The FBI documents were not the only blockbuster publication on Thursday. A new DOJ memo made public by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) suggests the FBI was aware that a primary source for Christopher Steele – a former British intelligence operative hired by the Clinton team to compile dirt on Trump in an infamous "dossier" – was the subject of a counter-intelligence investigation in 2009. Despite deeming the source a potential Russian spy, the bureau relied on Steele's dossier to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, disregarding the questionable origins of his so-called intelligence.

ALSO ON RT.COM FBI used Steele Dossier to spy on Trump, KNOWING its primary sub-source was a suspected 'Russian agent,' DOJ reveals

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[Sep 25, 2020] FBI used Steele Dossier to spy on Trump, KNOWING its primary sub-source was a suspected 'Russian agent,' DOJ reveals -- RT USA News

Sep 25, 2020 | www.rt.com

FBI used Steele Dossier to spy on Trump, KNOWING its primary sub-source was a suspected 'Russian agent,' DOJ reveals 25 Sep, 2020 01:07 Get short URL FBI used Steele Dossier to spy on Trump, KNOWING its primary sub-source was a suspected 'Russian agent,' DOJ reveals U.S. Attorney General William Barr delivers remarks in Washington, U.S., October 3, 2019. © REUTERS/Tom Brenner 50 Follow RT on RT The FBI was aware of a counterintelligence investigation into the man Christopher Steele relied on for his Trump-Russia dossier, but kept renewing the FISA warrant to spy on the president anyway, according to a damning new letter.

The dossier compiled by British spy Christopher Steele, paid through the firm Fusion GPS by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, was used by the FBI to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page in October 2016, prior to the presidential election. The warrant was renewed after Donald Trump got elected president and finally expired sometime in late 2017.

In a redacted, two-page memo made public on Thursday by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), the US Department of Justice reveals that Steele's "primary sub-source" (PSS) had been under FBI investigation in 2009 as a possible Russian agent. The FBI team going after Trump ("Crossfire Hurricane") became aware of this in December 2016 and interviewed the PSS in January 2017 – then renewed the Page FISA warrant three more times anyway.

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"In December 2016, the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE team identified the Primary Sub-source used by Christopher Steele and, at that time, became familiar with the 2009 investigation. The CROSSFIRE HURRICANE team interviewed the Primary Sub-source over the course of three sequential days in January 2017. At that time, the 2009 investigation remained closed. The 2009 investigation remains closed to this day," says the DOJ memo.

The reason the FBI had closed the investigation, as the memo reveals, was that the PSS had left the US in September 2010. The FBI said "consideration would be given to re-opening the investigation in the event" the person returned to the US. For whatever reason, though the PSS did return at some point, the investigation was never reopened.

ALSO ON RT.COM 'Russian agent' or Steele's patsy? 'Revealed' identity of primary sub-source for Russiagate dossier sparks fresh speculation

While the DOJ memo does not name the PSS, some enterprising internet sleuths fingered him in July as one Igor Danchenko. His attorney Mark E. Schamel confirmed the identification to the New York Times a day after RT reported on it. Danchenko had worked as a researcher for the Brookings Institution until 2010. This lines up with the memo saying he was working at a think tank in Washington, DC when some coworkers suspected him of being a "Russian spy."

The FBI's investigation came up with nothing much beyond a September 2006 "contact with a known Russian intelligence officer," and him being "very familiar" with a "Washington, DC–based Russian officer."

Flimsy as that seems now, it was a lot more than they ever had on Carter Page. It didn't help that FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith had altered evidence to make Page look like a foreign agent, when he in fact was not. In August, Clinesmith pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of making a false statement.

ALSO ON RT.COM FBI lawyer pleads GUILTY to altering email evidence in Trump spying scandal

When he sent over the memo to Graham, Attorney General Bill Barr wrote that additional classified information that "bears upon the FBI's knowledge concerning the reliability" of the Steele dossier may be declassified by the Director of National Intelligence soon, as it won't interfere with the criminal investigation conducted by US Attorney John Durham.

The Steele Dossier has been the keystone of 'Russiagate' – the manufactured scandal accusing Trump of having ties or "colluding" with Russia during the 2016 election – from the very beginning. It had already emerged that the "Crossfire Hurricane" team had interviewed Danchenko in January 2017 and established that the Dossier was fabricated, but proceeded to use it to spy on Trump, framing Carter Page as a Russian agent anyway. At the time, they already knew that Danchenko had been under FBI investigation as a suspected Russian agent – but it didn't seem to bother them in the least.

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Simply put, this means Crossfire Hurricane team members – such as former agent Peter Strzok and his paramour Lisa Page, as well as FBI director James Comey and his deputy deputy Andrew McCabe, ought to have some explaining to do.

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[Sep 25, 2020] John Durham Investigating FBI Handling Of Clinton Foundation Pay-To-Play Allegations -

Sep 25, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

John Durham Investigating FBI Handling Of Clinton Foundation Pay-To-Play Allegations by Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2020 - 17:00 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

US Attorney John Durham is investigating how the FBI handled their investigation of bribery and pay-to-play allegations against the Clinton Foundation .

Notably, former FBI Director James Comey's family supported Clinton in the 2016 US election, while the wife of his #2, Andrew McCabe, received roughly $700,000 from Clinton allies in her failed bid for Virginia state office - all while the FBI was handling the Clinton Foundation investigation.

In a Thursday report by the New York Times that mounts a robust, editorialized defense of Clintonworld ('Durham's probe is politically charged' - 'Durham is chasing down conspiracy theories,' etc) - we learn that Durham has sought documents and interviews about how the FBI handled allegations of political corruption at the Clinton Foundation .

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Recall that nothing ever came of revelations that the Hillary Clinton-led State Department authorized $151 billion in Pentagon-brokered deals to 16 countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation - a 145% increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration, according to IBTimes .

American defense contractors also donated to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and in some cases made personal payments to Bill Clinton for speaking engagements. Such firms and their subsidiaries were listed as contractors in $163 billion worth of Pentagon-negotiated deals that were authorized by the Clinton State Department between 2009 and 2012. - IBTimes

Then there was that $1 million check Qatar reportedly gave Bill Clinton for his birthday in 2012, which the charity confirmed it accepted . Coincidentally, we're sure, Qatar was one of the countries which gained State Department clearance to buy US weapons while Clinton was Secretary of State, "even as the department signaled them out of a range of alleged ills," according to IBTimes.

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Then there was $145 million donated to the Foundation from parties linked to the Uranium One deal prior to its approval through a rubber-stamp committee .

"The committee almost never met, and when it deliberated it was usually at a fairly low bureaucratic level," Richard Perle said. Perle, who has worked for the Reagan, Clinton and both Bush administrations added, " I think it's a bit of a joke. " – CBS

The Clinton Foundation, meanwhile, told the NY Times that it "has regularly been subjected to baseless, politically motivated allegations, and time after time these allegations have been proven false."

Oddly, however, donations to the foundation plummeted 90% after Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election - which would be odd if it wasn't a pay-for-play enterprise.

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And according to Clinton Foundation whistleblowers, the organization "operated as an unregistered foreign agent."

Via Sara Carter at SaraaCarter.com

The Clinton Foundation operated as a foreign agent 'early in its life' and 'throughout it's existence' and did not operate as a 501c3 charitable foundation as required, and is not entitled to its status as a nonprofit, alleged two highly qualified forensic investigators, accompanied by three other investigators, said in explosive testimony Thursday to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

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Doyle and Moynihan have amassed 6,000 documents in their nearly two-year investigation through their private firm MDA Analytics LLC. The documents were turned over more than a year and a half ago to the IRS, according to John Solomon, who first published the report last week in The Hill.

" The investigation clearly demonstrates that the foundation was not a charitable organization per se, but in point of fact was a closely held family partnership ," said Doyle, who formerly worked on Wall Street and has been involved with finance for the last ten years conducting investigations.

"As such it was governed in a fashion in which it sought in large measure to advance the personal interests of its principals as detailed within the financial analysis of this submission and further confirmed within the supporting documentation and evidence section."

Will Durham's inquiry into the FBI's handling of the Clinton Foundation result in anything? If recent history is any indicator, don't hold your breath.

[Sep 20, 2020] Norm Eisen- Central Operative in the "Color Revolution" in the US

Notable quotes:
"... these "contested election" scenarios we are hearing so much about play perfectly into the Color Revolution framework sketched out Revolver News' first installment in the Color Revolution series. ..."
"... the man who implemented the David Brock blueprint for suing the President into paralysis and his allies into bankruptcy, who helped mainstream and amplify the Russia Hoax, who drafted 10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats a full month before President Trump ever called the Ukraine President in 2018, who personally served as special counsel litigating the Ukraine impeachment, who created a template for Internet censorship of world leaders and a handbook for mass mobilizing racial justice protesters to overturn democratic election results, there is perhaps no man alive with a more decorated resume for plots against President Trump. ..."
"... Indeed, the story of Norm Eisen – a key architect of nearly every attempt to delegitimize, impeach, censor, sue and remove the democratically elected 45th President of the United States ..."
"... In Norm Eisen's case, the "same people same playbook" refrain takes an arrestingly literal turn when one realizes that Norm Eisen wrote a classic Color Revolution regime change manual, and conveniently titled it "The Playbook." ..."
Sep 20, 2020 | www.ronpaulforums.com
Originally from Meet Norm Eisen: Legal Hatchet Man and Central Operative in the "Color Revolution" Against President Trump

In our report on Never Trump State Department official George Kent, Revolver News first drew attention to the ominous similarities between the strategies and tactics the United States government employs in so-called "Color Revolutions" and the coordinated efforts of government bureaucrats, NGOs, and the media to oust President Trump.

Our recent follow-up to this initial report focused specifically on a shadowy, George Soros linked group called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), which convened "war games" exercises suggesting the likelihood of a "contested election scenario," and of ensuing chaos should President Trump refuse to leave office. We further showed how these "contested election" scenarios we are hearing so much about play perfectly into the Color Revolution framework sketched out Revolver News' first installment in the Color Revolution series.

This third installment of Revolver News' series exposing the Color Revolution against Trump will focus on one quiet and indeed mostly overlooked participant in the Transition Integrity Project's biased election "war games" exercise -- a man by the name of Norm Eisen.

As the man who implemented the David Brock blueprint for suing the President into paralysis and his allies into bankruptcy, who helped mainstream and amplify the Russia Hoax, who drafted 10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats a full month before President Trump ever called the Ukraine President in 2018, who personally served as special counsel litigating the Ukraine impeachment, who created a template for Internet censorship of world leaders and a handbook for mass mobilizing racial justice protesters to overturn democratic election results, there is perhaps no man alive with a more decorated resume for plots against President Trump.

Indeed, the story of Norm Eisen – a key architect of nearly every attempt to delegitimize, impeach, censor, sue and remove the democratically elected 45th President of the United States – is a tale that winds through nearly every facet of the color revolution playbook. There is no purer embodiment of Revolver's thesis that the very same regime change professionals who run Color Revolutions on behalf of the US Government in order to undermine or overthrow alleged "authoritarian" governments overseas, are running the very same playbook to overturn Trump's 2016 victory and to pre-empt a repeat in 2020. To put it simply, what you see is not just the same Color Revolution playbook run against Trump, but the same people using it against Trump who have employed it in a professional capacity against targets overseas -- same people same playbook.

In Norm Eisen's case, the "same people same playbook" refrain takes an arrestingly literal turn when one realizes that Norm Eisen wrote a classic Color Revolution regime change manual, and conveniently titled it "The Playbook."

Just what exactly is President Obama's former White House Ethics Czar (yes, Norm Eisen was Obama's ethics Czar), his longtime friend since Harvard Law School, who recently partook in war games to simulate overturning a Trump electoral victory, doing writing a detailed playbook on how to use a Color Revolution to overthrow governments? The story of Norm Eisen only gets more fascinating, outrageous, and indispensable to understanding the planned chaos unfolding before our eyes, leading up to what will perhaps be the most chaotic election in our nation's recent history.

... ... ...

A deep dive into Eisen's book would exceed the scope of this relatively brief exposé. It is nonetheless important for us to draw attention to key passages of Eisen's book to underscore how closely the "Playbook" corresponds to events unfolding right here at home. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that regime change professionals such as Eisen simply decided to run the same playbook against Trump that they have done countless times when foreign leaders are elected overseas that they don't like and want to remove via extra-democratic means -- "peaceful protests," "democratic breakthroughs" and such.
... ... ...

More: https://www.revolver.news/2020/09/me...esident-trump/

[Sep 20, 2020] Norm Eisen And The Colour Revolution Playbook!

Highly recommended!
The narrative is based on Wikipedia article
Notable quotes:
"... Russian military leaders view the "colour revolutions" as a "new US and European approach to warfare that focuses on creating destabilizing revolutions in other states as a means of serving their security interests at low cost and with minimal casualties. ..."
"... the activities of radical public associations and groups using nationalist and religious extremist ideology, foreign and international nongovernmental organizations, and financial and economic structures, and also individuals, focused on destroying the unity and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, destabilizing the domestic political and social situation -- including through inciting "color revolutions" -- and destroying traditional Russian religious and moral values ..."
Sep 16, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Wikipedia:

Worldwide media use the term Colour Revolution (sometimes Coloured Revolution ) to describe various related movements that developed in several countries of the former Soviet Union , in the People's Republic of China and in the Balkans during the early-21st century. The term has also been applied to a number of revolutions elsewhere, including in the Middle East and in the Asia-Pacific region, dating from the 1980s to the 2010s. Some observers (such as Justin Raimondo and Michael Lind ) have called the events a revolutionary wave , the origins of which can be traced back to the 1986 People Power Revolution (also known as the "Yellow Revolution") in the Philippines .

Participants in colour revolutions have mostly used nonviolent resistance , also called civil resistance . Such methods as demonstrations, strikes and interventions have aimed to protest against governments seen as corrupt and/or authoritarian and to advocate democracy , and they have built up strong pressure for change. Colour-revolution movements generally became associated with a specific colour or flower as their symbol. The colour revolutions are notable for the important role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and particularly student activists in organising creative non-violent resistance .

Such movements have had a measure of success as for example in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 's Bulldozer Revolution (2000), in Georgia 's Rose Revolution (2003) and in Ukraine 's Orange Revolution (2004). In most but not all cases, massive street-protests followed disputed elections or requests for fair elections and led to the resignation or overthrow of leaders regarded by their opponents as authoritarian . Some events have been called "colour revolutions", but differ from the above cases in certain basic characteristics. Examples include Lebanon's Cedar Revolution (2005) and Kuwait 's Blue Revolution (2005).

Russia and China share nearly identical views that colour revolutions are the product of machinations by the United States and other Western powers and pose a vital threat to their public and national security.

Revolution Location Date started Date ended Description
Yellow Revolution Philippines 22 February 1986 25 February 1986 The 1986 People Power Revolution (also called the " EDSA " or the "Yellow" Revolution) in the Philippines was the first successful non-violent uprising in the contemporary period. It was the culmination of peaceful demonstrations against the rule of then-President Ferdinand Marcos – all of which increased after the 1983 assassination of opposition Senator Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. A contested snap election on 7 February 1986 and a call by the powerful Filipino Catholic Church sparked mass protests across Metro Manila from 22–25 February. The Revolution's iconic L-shaped Laban sign comes from the Filipino term for People Power, " Lakás ng Bayan ", whose acronym is " LABAN " ("fight"). The yellow-clad protesters, later joined by the Armed Forces , ousted Marcos and installed Aquino's widow Corazón as the country's eleventh President, ushering in the present Fifth Republic .
Coconut Revolution Papua New Guinea 1 December 1988 20 April 1998 Long-standing secessionist sentiment in Bougainville eventually led to conflict with Papua New Guinea. The inhabitants of Bougainville Island formed the Bougainville Revolutionary Army and fought against government troops. On 20 April 1998, Papua New Guinea ended the civil war. In 2005, Papua New Guinea gave autonomy to Bougainville.
Velvet Revolution (Czechoslovakia) Czechoslovakia 17 November 1989 29 December 1989 in 1989, a peaceful demonstration by students (mostly from Charles University ) was attacked by the police – and in time contributed to the collapse of the communist government in Czechoslovakia.
Bulldozer Revolution Yugoslavia 5 October 2000 The 'Bulldozer Revolution' in 2000, which led to the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević . These demonstrations are usually considered to be the first example of the peaceful revolutions which followed. However, the Serbians adopted an approach that had already been used in parliamentary elections in Bulgaria (1997) , Slovakia (1998) and Croatia (2000) , characterised by civic mobilisation through get-out-the-vote campaigns and unification of the political opposition. The nationwide protesters did not adopt a colour or a specific symbol; however, the slogan " Gotov je " (Serbian Cyrillic: Готов је , English: He is finished ) did become an aftermath symbol celebrating the completion of the task. Despite the commonalities, many others refer to Georgia as the most definite beginning of the series of "colour revolutions". The demonstrations were supported by the youth movement Otpor! , some of whose members were involved in the later revolutions in other countries.
Rose Revolution Georgia 3 November 2003 23 November 2003 The Rose Revolution in Georgia, following the disputed 2003 election , led to the overthrow of Eduard Shevardnadze and replacing him with Mikhail Saakashvili after new elections were held in March 2004. The Rose Revolution was supported by the Kmara civic resistance movement.
Second Rose Revolution Adjara (Georgia) 20 February 2004 May-July 2004 Following the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Adjara crisis (sometimes called "Second Rose Revolution" or Mini-Rose Revolution ) led to the exit of Chairman of the Government Aslan Abashidze from office.
Orange Revolution Ukraine 22 November 2004 23 January 2005 The Orange Revolution in Ukraine followed the disputed second round of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election , leading to the annulment of the result and the repeat of the round – Leader of the Opposition Viktor Yushchenko was declared President, defeating Viktor Yanukovych . The Orange Revolution was supported by PORA .
Purple Revolution Iraq January 2005 Purple Revolution was a name first used by some hopeful commentators and later picked up by United States President George W. Bush to describe the coming of democracy to Iraq following the 2005 Iraqi legislative election and was intentionally used to draw the parallel with the Orange and Rose revolutions. However, the name "purple revolution" has not achieved widespread use in Iraq, the United States or elsewhere. The name comes from the colour that voters' index fingers were stained to prevent fraudulent multiple voting. The term first appeared shortly after the January 2005 election in various weblogs and editorials of individuals supportive of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The term received its widest usage during a visit by U.S. President George W. Bush on 24 February 2005 to Bratislava , Slovak Republic, for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin . Bush stated: "In recent times, we have witnessed landmark events in the history of liberty: A Rose Revolution in Georgia, an Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and now, a Purple Revolution in Iraq."
Tulip Revolution Kyrgyzstan 27 February 2005 11 April 2005 The Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (also sometimes called the "Pink Revolution") was more violent than its predecessors and followed the disputed 2005 Kyrgyz parliamentary election . At the same time, it was more fragmented than previous "colour" revolutions. The protesters in different areas adopted the colours pink and yellow for their protests. This revolution was supported by youth resistance movement KelKel .
Cedar Revolution Lebanon 14 February 2005 27 April 2005 The Cedar Revolution in Lebanon between February and April 2005 followed not a disputed election, but rather the assassination of opposition leader Rafik Hariri in 2005. Also, instead of the annulment of an election, the people demanded an end to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon . Nonetheless, some of its elements and some of the methods used in the protests have been similar enough that it is often considered and treated by the press and commentators as one of the series of "colour revolutions". The Cedar of Lebanon is the symbol of the country, and the revolution was named after it. The peaceful demonstrators used the colours white and red, which are found in the Lebanese flag. The protests led to the pullout of Syrian troops in April 2005, ending their nearly 30-year presence there, although Syria retains some influence in Lebanon.
Blue Revolution Kuwait March 2005 Blue Revolution was a term used by some Kuwaitis to refer to demonstrations in Kuwait in support of women's suffrage beginning in March 2005; it was named after the colour of the signs the protesters used. In May of that year the Kuwaiti government acceded to their demands, granting women the right to vote beginning in the 2007 parliamentary elections. Since there was no call for regime change, the so-called "blue revolution" cannot be categorised as a true colour revolution.
Jeans Revolution Belarus 19 March 2006 25 March 2006 In Belarus, there have been a number of protests against President Alexander Lukashenko , with participation from student group Zubr . One round of protests culminated on 25 March 2005; it was a self-declared attempt to emulate the Kyrgyzstan revolution, and involved over a thousand citizens. However, police severely suppressed it, arresting over 30 people and imprisoning opposition leader Mikhail Marinich .

A second, much larger, round of protests began almost a year later, on 19 March 2006, soon after the presidential election . Official results had Lukashenko winning with 83% of the vote; protesters claimed the results were achieved through fraud and voter intimidation, a charge echoed by many foreign governments. Protesters camped out in October Square in Minsk over the next week, calling variously for the resignation of Lukashenko, the installation of rival candidate Alaksandar Milinkievič , and new, fair elections.

The opposition originally used as a symbol the white-red-white former flag of Belarus ; the movement has had significant connections with that in neighbouring Ukraine, and during the Orange Revolution some white-red-white flags were seen being waved in Kiev. During the 2006 protests some called it the " Jeans Revolution " or "Denim Revolution", blue jeans being considered a symbol for freedom. Some protesters cut up jeans into ribbons and hung them in public places. It is claimed that Zubr was responsible for coining the phrase.

Lukashenko has said in the past: "In our country, there will be no pink or orange, or even banana revolution." More recently he's said "They [the West] think that Belarus is ready for some 'orange' or, what is a rather frightening option, 'blue' or ' cornflower blue ' revolution. Such 'blue' revolutions are the last thing we need". On 19 April 2005, he further commented: "All these coloured revolutions are pure and simple banditry."

Saffron Revolution Myanmar 15 August 2007 26 September 2007 In Myanmar (unofficially called Burma), a series of anti-government protests were referred to in the press as the Saffron Revolution after Buddhist monks ( Theravada Buddhist monks normally wear the colour saffron) took the vanguard of the protests. A previous, student-led revolution, the 8888 Uprising on 8 August 1988, had similarities to the colour revolutions, but was violently repressed.
Grape Revolution Moldova 6 April 2009 12 April 2009 The opposition is reported to have hoped for and urged some kind of Orange revolution, similar to that in Ukraine, in the follow-up of the 2005 Moldovan parliamentary elections , while the Christian Democratic People's Party adopted orange for its colour in a clear reference to the events of Ukraine.

A name hypothesised for such an event was "Grape Revolution" because of the abundance of vineyards in the country; however, such a revolution failed to materialise after the governmental victory in the elections. Many reasons have been given for this, including a fractured opposition and the fact that the government had already co-opted many of the political positions that might have united the opposition (such as a perceived pro-European and anti-Russian stance). Also the elections themselves were declared fairer in the OSCE election monitoring reports than had been the case in other countries where similar revolutions occurred, even though the CIS monitoring mission strongly condemned them.

There was civil unrest all over Moldova following the 2009 Parliamentary election due to the opposition claiming that the communists had fixed the election. Eventually, the Alliance for European Integration created a governing coalition that pushed the Communist party into opposition.

Green Movement Iran 13 June 2009 11 February 2010 Green Movement is a term widely used to describe the 2009–2010 Iranian election protests . The protests began in 2009, several years after the main wave of colour revolutions, although like them it began due to a disputed election, the 2009 Iranian presidential election . Protesters adopted the colour green as their symbol because it had been the campaign colour of presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi , whom many protesters thought had won the elections . However Mousavi and his wife went under house arrest without any trial issued by a court.
Melon Revolution Kyrgyzstan 6 April 2010 14 December 2010 The Kyrgyz Revolution of 2010 in Kyrgyzstan (also sometimes called the "Melon Revolution") led to the exit of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev from office. The total number of deaths should be 2,000.
Jasmine Revolution Tunisia 18 December 2010 14 January 2011 Jasmine Revolution was a widely used term for the Tunisian Revolution . The Jasmine Revolution led to the exit of President Ben Ali from office and the beginning of the Arab Spring .
Lotus Revolution Egypt 25 January 2011 11 February 2011 Lotus Revolution was a term used by various western news sources to describe the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 that forced President Mubarak to step down in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring , which followed the Jasmine Revolution of Tunisia. Lotus is known as the flower representing resurrection, life and the sun of ancient Egypt. It is uncertain who gave the name, while columnist of Arabic press, Asharq Alawsat, and prominent Egyptian opposition leader Saad Eddin Ibrahim claimed to name it the Lotus Revolution. Lotus Revolution later became common on western news source such as CNN. Other names, such as White Revolution and Nile Revolution, are used but are minor terms compare to Lotus Revolution. The term Lotus Revolution is rarely, if ever, used in the Arab world.
Pearl Revolution Bahrain 14 February 2011 22 November 2014 In February 2011, Bahrain was also affected by protests in Tunisia and Egypt. Bahrain has long been famous for its pearls and Bahrain's speciality. And there was the Pearl Square in Manama, where the demonstrations began. The people of Bahrain were also protesting around the square. At first, the government of Bahrain promised to reform the people. But when their promises were not followed, the people resisted again. And in the process, bloodshed took place (18 March 2011). After that, a small demonstration is taking place in Bahrain.
Coffee Revolution Yemen 27 January 2011 23 November 2011 An anti-government protest started in Yemen in 2011. The Yemeni people sought to resign Ali Abdullah Saleh as the ruler. On 24 November, Ali Abdullah Saleh decided to transfer the regime. In 2012, Ali Abdullah Saleh finally fled to the United States(27 February).
Jasmine Revolution China 20 February 2011 20 March 2011 A call which first appeared on 17 February 2011 on the Chinese language site Boxun.com in the United States for a "Jasmine revolution" in the People's Republic of China and repeated on social networking sites in China resulted in blocking of internet searches for "jasmine" and a heavy police presence at designated sites for protest such as the McDonald's in central Beijing, one of the 13 designated protest sites, on 20 February 2011. A crowd did gather there, but their motivations were ambiguous as a crowd tends to draw a crowd in that area. Boxun experienced a denial of service attack during this period and was inaccessible.
Snow Revolution Russia 4 December 2011 18 July 2013 Protests started on 4 December 2011 in the capital, Moscow against the results of the parliamentary elections, which led to the arrests of over 500 people. On 10 December, protests erupted in tens of cities across the country; a few months later, they spread to hundreds both inside the country and abroad. The name of the Snow Revolution derives from December - the month when the revolution had started - and from the white ribbons the protesters wore.
Colourful Revolution Macedonia 12 April 2016 20 July 2016 Many analysts and participants of the protests against President of Macedonia Gjorge Ivanov and the Macedonian government refer to them as a "colourful Revolution", due to the demonstrators throwing paint balls of different colours at government buildings in Skopje , the capital.
Velvet Revolution (Armenia) Armenia 31 March 2018 8 May 2018 In 2018, a peaceful revolution was led by member of parliament Nikol Pashinyan in opposition to the nomination of Serzh Sargsyan as Prime Minister of Armenia , who had previously served as both President of Armenia and prime minister, eliminating term limits which would have otherwise prevented his 2018 nomination. Concerned that Sargsyan's third consecutive term as the most powerful politician in the government of Armenia gave him too much political influence, protests occurred throughout the country, particularly in Yerevan , but demonstrations in solidarity with the protesters also occurred in other countries where Armenian diaspora live.

During the protests, Pashinyan was arrested and detained on 22 April, but he was released the following day. Sargsyan stepped down from the position of Prime Minister, and his Republican Party decided to not put forward a candidate. An interim Prime Minister was selected from Sargsyan's party until elections were held, and protests continued for over one month. Crowd sizes in Yerevan consisted of 115,000 to 250,000 people at a time throughout the revolution, and hundreds of protesters were arrested. Pashinyan referred to the event as a Velvet Revolution. A vote was held in parliament, and Pashinyan became the Prime Minister of Armenia.

Many have cited the influence of the series of revolutions which occurred in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989. A peaceful demonstration by students (mostly from Charles University ) was attacked by the police – and in time contributed to the collapse of the communist government in Czechoslovakia. Yet the roots of the pacifist floral imagery may go even further back to the non-violent Carnation Revolution of Portugal in April 1974, which is associated with the colour carnation because carnations were worn, and the 1986 Yellow Revolution in the Philippines where demonstrators offered peace flowers to military personnel manning armoured tanks.

Student movements

The first of these was Otpor! ("Resistance!") in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which was founded at Belgrade University in October 1998 and began protesting against Miloševic' during the Kosovo War . Most of them were already veterans of anti-Milošević demonstrations such as the 1996–97 protests and the 9 March 1991 protest . Many of its members were arrested or beaten by the police. Despite this, during the presidential campaign in September 2000, Otpor launched its " Gotov je " (He's finished) campaign that galvanised Serbian discontent with Miloševic' and resulted in his defeat.

Members of Otpor have inspired and trained members of related student movements including Kmara in Georgia, Pora in Ukraine, Zubr in Belarus and MJAFT! in Albania. These groups have been explicit and scrupulous in their practice of non-violent resistance as advocated and explained in Gene Sharp 's writings. The massive protests that they have organised, which were essential to the successes in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine, have been notable for their colourfulness and use of ridiculing humor in opposing authoritarian leaders.

Critical analysis

The analysis of international geopolitics scholars Paul J. Bolt and Sharyl N. Cross is that "Moscow and Beijing share almost indistinguishable views on the potential domestic and international security threats posed by colored revolutions, and both nations view these revolutionary movements as being orchestrated by the United States and its Western democratic partners to advance geopolitical ambitions."

Russian assessment

According to Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies , Russian military leaders view the "colour revolutions" as a "new US and European approach to warfare that focuses on creating destabilizing revolutions in other states as a means of serving their security interests at low cost and with minimal casualties."

Government figures in Russia , such as Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (in office from 2012) and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (in office from 2004), have characterised colour revolutions as externally-fuelled acts with a clear goal to influence the internal affairs that destabilise the economy, conflict with the law and represent a new form of warfare. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that Russia must prevent colour revolutions: "We see what tragic consequences the wave of so-called colour revolutions led to. For us this is a lesson and a warning. We should do everything necessary so that nothing similar ever happens in Russia".

The 2015 presidential decree The Russian Federation's National Security Strategy ( О Стратегии Национальной Безопасности Российской Федерации ) cites "foreign sponsored regime change" among "main threats to public and national security," including

the activities of radical public associations and groups using nationalist and religious extremist ideology, foreign and international nongovernmental organizations, and financial and economic structures, and also individuals, focused on destroying the unity and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, destabilizing the domestic political and social situation -- including through inciting "color revolutions" -- and destroying traditional Russian religious and moral values

Chinese view

Articles published by the Global Times , a state-run nationalist tabloid, indicate that Chinese leaders also anticipate the Western powers, such as the United States, using "color revolutions" as a means to undermine the one-party state. An article published on 8 May 2016 claims: "A variation of containment seeks to press China on human rights and democracy with the hope of creating a 'color revolution.'" A 13 August 2019 article declared that the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill protests were a colour revolution that "aim[ed] to ruin HK 's future."

The 2015 policy white paper "China's Military Strategy" by the State Council Information Office said that "anti-China forces have never given up their attempt to instigate a 'color revolution' in this country."

Azerbaijan

A number of movements were created in Azerbaijan in mid-2005, inspired by the examples of both Georgia and Ukraine. A youth group, calling itself Yox! (which means No!), declared its opposition to governmental corruption. The leader of Yox! said that unlike Pora or Kmara , he wants to change not just the leadership, but the entire system of governance in Azerbaijan. The Yox movement chose green as its colour.

The spearhead of Azerbaijan's attempted colour revolution was Yeni Fikir ("New Idea"), a youth group closely aligned with the Azadlig (Freedom) Bloc of opposition political parties. Along with groups such as Magam ("It's Time") and Dalga ("Wave"), Yeni Fikir deliberately adopted many of the tactics of the Georgian and Ukrainian colour revolution groups, even borrowing the colour orange from the Ukrainian revolution.

In November 2005 protesters took to the streets, waving orange flags and banners, to protest what they considered government fraud in recent parliamentary elections. The Azerbaijani colour revolution finally fizzled out with the police riot on 26 November, during which dozens of protesters were injured and perhaps hundreds teargassed and sprayed with water cannons.

Bangladesh Main article: 2013 Shahbag protests

On 5 February 2013, protests began in Shahbag and later spread to other parts of Bangladesh following demands for capital punishment for Abdul Quader Mollah , who had been sentenced to life imprisonment, and for others convicted of war crimes by the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh . On that day, the International Crimes Tribunal had sentenced Mollah to life in prison after he was convicted on five of six counts of war crimes . Later demands included banning the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party from politics including election and a boycott of institutions supporting (or affiliated with) the party.

Protesters considered Mollah's sentence too lenient, given his crimes. Bloggers and online activists called for additional protests at Shahbag. Tens of thousands of people joined the demonstration, which gave rise to protests across the country.

The movement demanding trial of war criminals is a protest movement in Bangladesh, from 1972 to present.

Belarus

In Belarus , there have been a number of protests against President Alexander Lukashenko , with participation from student group Zubr . One round of protests culminated on 25 March 2005; it was a self-declared attempt to emulate the Kyrgyzstan revolution, and involved over a thousand citizens. However, police severely suppressed it, arresting over 30 people and imprisoning opposition leader Mikhail Marinich .

A second, much larger, round of protests began almost a year later, on 19 March 2006, soon after the presidential election . Official results had Lukashenko winning with 83% of the vote; protesters claimed the results were achieved through fraud and voter intimidation, a charge echoed by many foreign governments. Protesters camped out in October Square in Minsk over the next week, calling variously for the resignation of Lukashenko, the installation of rival candidate Alaksandar Milinkievič , and new, fair elections.

The opposition originally used as a symbol the white-red-white former flag of Belarus ; the movement has had significant connections with that in neighbouring Ukraine, and during the Orange Revolution some white-red-white flags were seen being waved in Kiev. During the 2006 protests some called it the " Jeans Revolution " or "Denim Revolution", blue jeans being considered a symbol for freedom. Some protesters cut up jeans into ribbons and hung them in public places. It is claimed that Zubr was responsible for coining the phrase.

Lukashenko has said in the past: "In our country, there will be no pink or orange, or even banana revolution." More recently he's said "They [the West] think that Belarus is ready for some 'orange' or, what is a rather frightening option, 'blue' or ' cornflower blue ' revolution. Such 'blue' revolutions are the last thing we need". On 19 April 2005, he further commented: "All these colored revolutions are pure and simple banditry."

Burma Main article: Saffron Revolution

In Burma (officially called Myanmar), a series of anti-government protests were referred to in the press as the Saffron Revolution after Buddhist monks ( Theravada Buddhist monks normally wear the colour saffron) took the vanguard of the protests. A previous, student-led revolution, the 8888 Uprising on 8 August 1988, had similarities to the colour revolutions, but was violently repressed.

China Main articles: Chinese democracy movement and 2011 Chinese pro-democracy protests

A call which first appeared on 17 February 2011 on the Chinese language site Boxun.com in the United States for a "Jasmine revolution" in the People's Republic of China and repeated on social networking sites in China resulted in blocking of internet searches for "jasmine" and a heavy police presence at designated sites for protest such as the McDonald's in central Beijing, one of the 13 designated protest sites, on 20 February 2011. A crowd did gather there, but their motivations were ambiguous as a crowd tends to draw a crowd in that area. Boxun experienced a denial of service attack during this period and was inaccessible.

Fiji Main articles: 2009 Fijian constitutional crisis and Fijian general election, 2014

In the 2000s, Fiji suffered numerous coups. But at the same time, many Fiji citizens resisted the military. In Fiji, there have been many human rights abuses by the military. Anti-government protesters in Fiji have fled to Australia and New Zealand. In 2011, Fijians conducted anti Fijian government protests in Australia. On 17 September 2014, the first democratic general election was held in Fiji.

Guatemala Main article: 2015 Guatemalan protests

In 2015, Otto Pérez Molina , President of Guatemala, was suspected of corruption. In Guatemala City, a large number of protests rallied. Demonstrations took place from April to September 2015. Otto Pérez Molina was eventually arrested on 3 September. The people of Guatemala called this event "Guatemalan Spring".

Moldova

The opposition is reported to have hoped for and urged some kind of Orange revolution, similar to that in Ukraine, in the follow-up of the 2005 Moldovan parliamentary elections , while the Christian Democratic People's Party adopted orange for its colour in a clear reference to the events of Ukraine.

A name hypothesised for such an event was "Grape Revolution" because of the abundance of vineyards in the country; however, such a revolution failed to materialise after the governmental victory in the elections. Many reasons have been given for this, including a fractured opposition and the fact that the government had already co-opted many of the political positions that might have united the opposition (such as a perceived pro-European and anti-Russian stance). Also the elections themselves were declared fairer in the OSCE election monitoring reports than had been the case in other countries where similar revolutions occurred, even though the CIS monitoring mission strongly condemned them.

There was civil unrest all over Moldova following the 2009 Parliamentary election due to the opposition claiming that the communists had fixed the election. Eventually, the Alliance for European Integration created a governing coalition that pushed the Communist party into opposition.

Mongolia

On 25 March 2005, activists wearing yellow scarves held protests in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar , disputing the results of the 2004 Mongolian parliamentary elections and calling for fresh elections. One of the chants heard in that protest was "Let's congratulate our Kyrgyz brothers for their revolutionary spirit. Let's free Mongolia of corruption."

An uprising commenced in Ulaanbaatar on 1 July 2008, with a peaceful meeting in protest of the election of 29 June. The results of these elections were (it was claimed by opposition political parties) corrupted by the Mongolian People's Party (MPRP). Approximately 30,000 people took part in the meeting. Afterwards, some of the protesters left the central square and moved to the HQ of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party – which they attacked and then burned down. A police station was also attacked. By the night rioters vandalised and then set fire to the Cultural Palace (which contained a theatre, museum and National art gallery). Cars torching, bank robberies and looting were reported. The organisations in the burning buildings were vandalised and looted. Police used tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon against stone-throwing protesters. A 4-day state of emergency was installed, the capital has been placed under a 2200 to 0800 curfew, and alcohol sales banned, rioting not resumed. 5 people were shot dead by the police , dozens of teenagers were wounded from the police firearms and disabled and 800 people, including the leaders of the civil movements J. Batzandan, O. Magnai and B. Jargalsakhan, were arrested. International observers said 1 July general election was free and fair.

Pakistan Main articles: Lawyers' Movement and Movement to impeach Pervez Musharraf

In 2007, the Lawyers' Movement started in Pakistan with the aim of restoration of deposed judges. However, within a month the movement took a turn and started working towards the goal of removing Pervez Musharraf from power.

Russia Main articles: Russian opposition , Dissenters' March , Strategy-31 , and 2011–13 Russian protests

The liberal opposition in Russia is represented by several parties and movements.

An active part of the opposition is the Oborona youth movement. Oborona claims that its aim is to provide free and honest elections and to establish in Russia a system with democratic political competition. This movement under the leadership of Oleg Kozlovsky was one of the most active and radical ones and is represented in a number of Russian cities. During the elections of 8 September 2013, the movement contributed to the success of Navalny in Moscow and other opposition candidates in various regions and towns throughout Russia. The "oboronkis" also took part with other oppositional groups in protests against fraud in the Moscow mayoral elections.

Since the 2012 protests, Aleksei Navalny mobilised with support of the various and fractured opposition parties and masses of young people against the alleged repression and fraud of the Kremlin apparatus. After a strong campaign for the 8 September elections in Moscow and the regions, the opposition won remarkable successes. Navalny reached a second place in Moscow with surprising 27% behind Kremlin-backed Sergei Sobyanin finishing with 51% of the votes. In other regions, opposition candidates received remarkable successes. In the big industrial town of Yekaterinburg, opposition candidate Yevgeny Roizman received the majority of votes and became the mayor of that town. The slow but gradual sequence of opposition successes reached by mass protests, election campaigns and other peaceful strategies has been recently called by observers and analysts as of Radio Free Europe "Tortoise Revolution" in contrast to the radical "rose" or "orange" ones the Kremlin tried to prevent.

The opposition in the Republic of Bashkortostan has held protests demanding that the federal authorities intervene to dismiss Murtaza Rakhimov from his position as president of the republic, accusing him of leading an "arbitrary, corrupt, and violent" regime. Airat Dilmukhametov , one of the opposition leaders, and leader of the Bashkir National Front , has said that the opposition movement has been inspired from the mass protests of Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Another opposition leader, Marat Khaiyirulin , has said that if an Orange Revolution were to happen in Russia, it would begin in Bashkortostan.

South Korea Main article: Candlelight Revolution

From 2016 to 2017, the candlelight protest was going on in South Korea with the aim to force the ousting of President Park Geun-hye . Park was impeached and removed from office, and new presidential elections were held.

Uzbekistan Main article: 2005 Andijan unrest

In Uzbekistan , there has been longstanding opposition to President Islam Karimov , from liberals and Islamists. Following protests in 2005, security forces in Uzbekistan carried out the Andijan massacre that successfully halted country-wide demonstrations. These protests otherwise could have turned into colour revolution, according to many analysts.

The revolution in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan began in the largely ethnic Uzbek south, and received early support in the city of Osh . Nigora Hidoyatova , leader of the Free Peasants opposition party, has referred to the idea of a peasant revolt or 'Cotton Revolution'. She also said that her party is collaborating with the youth organisation Shiddat , and that she hopes it can evolve to an organisation similar to Kmara or Pora. Other nascent youth organisations in and for Uzbekistan include Bolga and the freeuzbek group.

Uzbekistan has also had an active Islamist movement, led by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan , most notable for the 1999 Tashkent bombings , though the group was largely destroyed following the 2001 NATO invasion of Afghanistan .

Response in other countries

When groups of young people protested the closure of Venezuela's RCTV television station in June 2007, president Hugo Chávez said that he believed the protests were organised by the West in an attempt to promote a "soft coup" like the revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia. Similarly, Chinese authorities claimed repeatedly in the state-run media that both the 2014 Hong Kong protests – known as the Umbrella Revolution – as well as the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests , were organised and controlled by the United States.

In July 2007, Iranian state television released footage of two Iranian-American prisoners, both of whom work for western NGOs, as part of a documentary called "In the Name of Democracy." The documentary purportedly discusses the colour revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia and accuses the United States of attempting to foment a similar ouster in Iran.

Other examples and political movements around the world

The imagery of a colour revolution has been adopted by various non-revolutionary electoral campaigns. The 'Purple Revolution' social media campaign of Naheed Nenshi catapulted his platform from 8% to become Calgary's 36th Mayor. The platform advocated city sustainability and to inspire the high voter turn out of 56%, particularly among young voters.

In 2015, the NDP of Alberta earned a majority mandate and ended the 44-year-old dynasty of the Progressive Conservatives . During the campaign Rachel Notley 's popularity gained momentum, and the news and NDP supporters referred to this phenomenon as the "Orange Crush" per the party's colour. NDP parodies of Orange flavoured Crush soda logo became a popular meme on social media.

[Sep 20, 2020] THE TAKE-DOWN OF TRUMP ALA THE "COLOR REVOLUTION"- NORM EISEN'S REVOLUTIONARY PLAYBOOK A Deeply Embedded (Demster) Lawfare Operative; Regime Change Professionals More. What's Going On- Conservative Firing Line

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... yes, Norm Eisen was Obama's ethics Czar ..."
"... From Dictatorship to Democracy ..."
"... Washington Free Beacon ..."
"... One NGO called the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG) was bold or reckless enough to draw the parallels between the Color Revolution in Belarus and the events playing out against Trump explicitly ..."
"... Now, would the reader care to take a guess as to who runs the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group? If you guessed Norm Eisen, you would be correct. ..."
Sep 20, 2020 | conservativefiringline.com

Revolver Exclusive -- Meet Norm Eisen: Legal Hatchet Man and Central Operative in the "Color Revolution" Against President Trump

In our report on Never Trump State Department official George Kent , Revolver News first drew attention to the ominous similarities between the strategies and tactics the United States government employs in so-called "Color Revolutions" and the coordinated efforts of government bureaucrats, NGOs, and the media to oust President Trump.

Trending: Tweet of the Day: Dem. Sen. Blumenthal Threatens -- 'Nothing' Off The Table If GOP Forces Vote on SCOTUS Pick

Our recent follow-up to this initial report focused specifically on a shadowy, George Soros linked group called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), which convened "war games" exercises suggesting the likelihood of a "contested election scenario," and of ensuing chaos should President Trump refuse to leave office. We further showed how these "contested election" scenarios we are hearing so much about play perfectly into the Color Revolution framework sketched out Revolver News' first installment in the Color Revolution series.

This third installment of Revolver News ' series exposing the Color Revolution against Trump will focus on one quiet and indeed mostly overlooked participant in the Transition Integrity Project's biased election "war games" exercise -- a man by the name of Norm Eisen.

As the man who implemented the David Brock blueprint for suing the President into paralysis and his allies into bankruptcy , who helped mainstream and amplify the Russia Hoax, who drafted 10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats a full month before President Trump ever called the Ukraine President in 2018 , who personally served as special counsel litigating the Ukraine impeachment, who created a template for Internet censorship of world leaders and a handbook for mass mobilizing racial justice protesters to overturn democratic election results, there is perhaps no man alive with a more decorated resume for plots against President Trump.

Indeed, the story of Norm Eisen – a key architect of nearly every attempt to delegitimize, impeach, censor, sue and remove the democratically elected 45th President of the United States – is a tale that winds through nearly every facet of the color revolution playbook. There is no purer embodiment of Revolver's thesis that the very same regime change professionals who run Color Revolutions on behalf of the US Government in order to undermine or overthrow alleged "authoritarian" governments overseas, are running the very same playbook to overturn Trump's 2016 victory and to pre-empt a repeat in 2020. To put it simply, what you see is not just the same Color Revolution playbook run against Trump, but the same people using it against Trump who have employed it in a professional capacity against targets overseas -- same people same playbook.

In Norm Eisen's case, the "same people same playbook" refrain takes an arrestingly literal turn when one realizes that Norm Eisen wrote a classic Color Revolution regime change manual, and conveniently titled it "The Playbook."

Just what exactly is President Obama's former White House Ethics Czar ( yes, Norm Eisen was Obama's ethics Czar ), his longtime friend since Harvard Law School, who recently partook in war games to simulate overturning a Trump electoral victory, doing writing a detailed playbook on how to use a Color Revolution to overthrow governments? The story of Norm Eisen only gets more fascinating, outrageous, and indispensable to understanding the planned chaos unfolding before our eyes, leading up to what will perhaps be the most chaotic election in our nation's recent history.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -

"I'd Rather Have This Book Than The Atomic Bomb"

Before we can fully appreciate the significance of Norm Eisen's Color Revolution manual "The Playbook," we must contextualize this important book in relation to its place in Color Revolution literature.

As a bit of a refresher to the reader, it is important to emphasize that when we use the term "Color Revolution" we do not mean any general type of revolution -- indeed, one of the chief advantages of the Color Revolution framework we advance is that it offers a specific and concrete heuristic by which to understand the operations against Trump beyond the accurate but more vague term "coup." Unlike the overt, blunt, method of full scale military invasion as was the case in Iraq War, a Color Revolution employs the following strategies and tactics:

A "Color Revolution" in this context refers to a specific type of coordinated attack that the United States government has been known to deploy against foreign regimes, particularly in Eastern Europe deemed to be "authoritarian" and hostile to American interests. Rather than using a direct military intervention to effect regime change as in Iraq, Color Revolutions attack a foreign regime by contesting its electoral legitimacy, organizing mass protests and acts of civil disobedience, and leveraging media contacts to ensure favorable coverage to their agenda in the Western press. [Revolver]

This combination of tactics used in so-called Color Revolutions did not come from nowhere. Before Norm Eisen came Gene Sharp -- originator and Godfather of the Color Revolution model that has been a staple of US Government operations externally (and now internally) for decades. Before Norm Eisen's "Playbook" there was Gene Sharp's classic "From Dictatorship to Democracy," which might be justly described as the Bible of the Color Revolution. Such is the power of the strategies laid out by Sharp that a Lithuanian defense minister once said of Sharp's preceding book (upon which Dictatorship to Democracy builds) that "I would rather have this book than the nuclear bomb."

Gene Sharp

It would be impossible to do full justice to Gene Sharp within the scope of this specific article. Here are some choice excerpts about Sharp and his biography to give readers a taste of his significance and relevance to this discussion.

Gene Sharp, the "Machiavelli of nonviolence," has been fairly described as "the most influential American political figure you've never heard of." 1 Sharp, who passed away in January 2018, was a beloved yet "mysterious" intellectual giant of nonviolent protest movements , the "father of the whole field of the study of strategic nonviolent action." 2 Over his career, he wrote more than twenty books about nonviolent action and social movements. His how-to pamphlet on nonviolent revolution, From Dictatorship to Democracy , has been translated into over thirty languages and is cited by protest movements around the world . In the U.S., his ideas are widely promoted through activist training programs and by scholars of nonviolence, and have been used by nearly every major protest movement in the last forty years . 3 For these contributions, Sharp has been praised by progressive heavyweights like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times, compared to Gandhi, and cast as a lonely prophet of peace, champion of the downtrodden, and friend of the left . 4

Gene Sharp's influence on the U.S. activist left and social movements abroad has been significant. But he is better understood as one of the most important U.S. defense intellectuals of the Cold War, an early neoliberal theorist concerned with the supposedly inherent violence of the "centralized State," and a quiet but vital counselor to anti-communist forces in the socialist world from the 1980s onward.

In the mid-1960s, Thomas Schelling, a Nobel Prize-winning nuclear theorist, recruited 29-year-old Sharp to join the Center for International Affairs at Harvard , bastion of the high Cold War defense, intelligence, and security establishment. Leading the so-called "CIA at Harvard" were Henry Kissinger, future National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and future CIA chief Robert Bowie. Sharp held this appointment for thirty years. There, with Department of Defense funds, he developed his core theory of nonviolent action: a method of warfare capable of collapsing states through theatrical social movements designed to dissolve the common will that buttresses governments, all without firing any shots. From his post at the CIA at Harvard, Sharp would urge U.S. and NATO defense leadership to use his methods against the Soviet Union. [Nonsite]

We invite the reader to reflect on the passages in bold, particularly their potential relevance to the current domestic situation in the United States. Sharp's book and strategy for "non violent revolution" AKA "peaceful protests" has been used to undermine or overthrow target governments all over the world, particularly in Eastern Europe.

Gene's color revolution playbook was of course especially effective in Eastern Bloc countries in Eastern Europe:

Finally, there is no shortage of analysis as to the applicability of Sharp's methods domestically within the USA in order to advance various left wing causes. This passage specifically mentions the applicability of Sharp's methods to counter act Trump.

Ominous stuff indeed. For readers who wish to read further, please consult the full Politico piece from which we have excerpted the above highlighted passages. There is also a fascinating documentary on Sharp instructively titled " How to Start a Revolution ."

This is all interesting and disturbing, to say the least. In its own right it would suggest a compelling nexus point between the operations run against Trump and the Color Revolution playbook. But what does this have to do with our subject Norm Eisen? It just so happens that Eisen explicitly places himself in the tradition of Gene Sharp, acknowledging his book "The Playbook" as a kind of update to Sharp's seminal "Dictatorship to Democracy."

Watch the Clip Here

And there we have it, folks -- Norm Eisen, former Obama Ethics Czar, Ambassador to Czechoslovakia during the "Velvet Revolution," key counsel in impeachment effort against Trump, and participant in the ostensibly bi-partisan election war games predicting a contested election scenario unfavorable to Trump -- just happens to be a Color Revolution expert who literally wrote the modern "Playbook" in the explicitly acknowledged tradition of Color Revolution Godfather Gene Sharp's "From Dictatorship to Democracy."

Before we turn to the contents of Norm Eisen's Color Revolution manual, full title "The Democracy Playbook: Preventing and Reversing Democratic Backsliding," it will be useful to make a brief point regarding the term "democracy" itself, which happens to appear in the title of Gene Sharp's book "From Dictatorship to Democracy" as well.

Just like the term "peaceful protestor," which, as we pointed out in our George Kent essay is used as a term of craft in the Color Revolution context, so is the term "democracy" itself. The US Government launches Color Revolutions against foreign targets irrespective of whether they actually enjoy the support of the people or were elected democratically. In the case of Trump, whatever one says about him, he is perhaps the most "democratically" elected President in America's history. Indeed, in 2016 Trump ran against the coordinated opposition of the establishments of both parties, the military industrial complex, the corporate media, Hollywood, and really every single powerful institution in the country. He won, however, because he was able to garner sufficient support of the people -- his true and decisive power base as a "populist." Precisely because of the ultra democratic "populist" character of Trump's victory, the operatives attempting to undermine him have focused specifically on attacking the democratic legitimacy of his victory.

In this vein we ought to note that the term "democratic backsliding," as seen in the subtitle of Norm Eisen's book, and its opposite "democratic breakthrough" are also terms of art in the Color Revolution lexicon. We leave the full exploration of how the term "democratic" is used deceptively in the Color Revolution context (and in names of decidedly anti-democratic/populist institutions) as an exercise to the interested reader. Michael McFaul, another Color Revolution expert and key anti-Trump operative somewhat gives the game away in the following tweet in which the term "democratic breakthrough" makes an appearance as a better sounding alternative to "Color Revolution:"

Most likely as a response to Revolver News' first Color Revolution article on State Department official George Kent, former Ambassador McFaul issued the following tweet as a matter of damage control:

What on earth then might Color Revolution expert and Obama's former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who has been a key player agitating for President Trump's impeachment, mean by "democratic breakthrough?"

Being a rather simple man from a simple background, McFaul perhaps gave too much of this answer away in the following explanation (now deleted).

Trump has lost the Intelligence Community. He has lost the State Department. He has lost the military. How can he continue to serve as our Commander in Chief ?

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) September 5, 2020

With this now-deleted tweet we get a clearer picture of the power bases that must be satisfied for a "democratic breakthrough" to occur -- and conveniently enough, not one of them is subject to direct democratic control. McFaul, Like Eisen, George Kent, and so many others, perfectly embodies Revolver's thesis regarding the Color Revolution being the same people running the same playbook. Indeed, like most of the star never-Trump impeachment witnesses, McFaul has been an ambassador to an Eastern European country. He has supported operations against Trump, including impeachment. And, like Norm Eisen, he has actually written a book on Color Revolutions (more on that later).

Norm Eisen's The Democracy Playbook: A Brief Overview:

A deep dive into Eisen's book would exceed the scope of this relatively brief exposé. It is nonetheless important for us to draw attention to key passages of Eisen's book to underscore how closely the "Playbook" corresponds to events unfolding right here at home. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that regime change professionals such as Eisen simply decided to run the same playbook against Trump that they have done countless times when foreign leaders are elected overseas that they don't like and want to remove via extra-democratic means -- "peaceful protests," "democratic breakthroughs" and such.

First, consider the following passage from Eisen's Playbook:

If you study this passage closely, you will find direct confirmation of our earlier point that "democracy" in the Color Revolution context is a term of art -- it refers to anything they like that keeps the national security bureaucrats in power. Anything they don't like, even if elected democratically, is considered "anti-democratic," or, put another way, "democratic backsliding." Eisen even acknowledges that this scourge of populism he's so worried about actually was ushered in with "popular support," under "relatively democratic and electoral processes." The problem is precisely that the people have had enough of the corrupt ruling class ignoring their needs. Accordingly, the people voted first for Brexit and then for Donald Trump -- terrifying expressions of populism which the broader Western power structure did everything in its capacity to prevent. Once they failed, they viewed these twin populist victories as a kind of political 9/11 to be prevented by any means necessary from recurring. Make no mistake, the Color Revolution has nothing to do with democracy in any meaningful sense and everything to do with the ruling class ensuring that the people will never have the power to meddle in their own elections again.

The passage above can be insightfully compared to the passage in Gene Sharp's book noting ripe applications to the domestic situation.

It is instructive to compare the passage in Eisen's Color Revolution book to the passage in Michael McFaul's Color Revolution book

First off, it is absolutely imperative to look at every single one of the conditions for a Color Revolution that McFaul identifies. It is simply impossible not to be overcome with the ominous parallels to our current situation. Specifically, however, note condition 1 which refers to having a target leader who is not fully authoritarian, but semi-autocratic. This coincides perfectly well with Eisen's concession that the populist leaders he's so concerned about might be "illiberal" but enjoy "popular support" and have come to power via "relatively democratic electoral processes."

Consulting the above passage from McFaul's book, we note that McFaul has been perhaps the most explicit about the conditions which facilitate a Color Revolution. We invite the reader to supply the contemporary analogue to each point as a kind of exercise.

  1. A semi-autocratic regime rather than fully autocratic
  2. An unpopular incumbent (note blanket negative coverage of Trump, fake polls)
  3. A united and organized opposition (media, intel community, Hollywood, community groups, etc)
  4. An ability to quickly drive home the point that voting results were falsified -- See our piece on the Transition Integrity Project
  5. Enough independent media to inform citizens of falsified vote (see full court press in media pushing contested election narrative, social media censorship)
  6. A political opposition capable of mobilizing tens of thousands or more demonstrators to protest electoral fraud ( SEE BLACK LIVES MATTER AND ANTIFA )

On point number four, which is especially relevant to our present situation, Eisen has an interesting thing to say about the role of a contested election scenario in the Orange Revolution, arguably the most important Color Revolution of them all.

Finally, let's look at one last passage from Norm Eisen's Color Revolution "Democracy Playbook" and cross-reference it with McFaul's conditions for a Color Revolution as well as the situation playing out right now before our very eyes:

A few things immediately jump out at us. First, the ominous instruction: "prepare to use electoral abuse evidence as the basis for reform advocacy." Secondly, we note the passage suggesting that opposition to a target leader might avail itself of "extreme institutional measures" including impeachment processes, votes of no confidence, and, of course, the good old-fashioned "protests, strikes, and boycotts" (all more or less peaceful no doubt).

By now the Color Revolution agenda against Trump should be as plain as day. Regime change professionals like McFaul, Eisen, George Kent, and others, who have refined their craft conducting color revolutions overseas, have taken it upon themselves to use the same tools, the same tactics -- quite literally, the same playbook -- to overthrow President Trump. Yet again, same people, same playbook.

We conclude this study of key Color Revolution figure Norm Eisen by exploring his particularly proactive -- indeed central role -- in effecting one of the Color Revolution's components mentioned in the Eisen Playbook -- impeachment.

-- -- -- –

The Ghost of Democracy's Future

We mentioned at the outset of this piece that Norm Eisen is many things -- a former Obama Ethics Czar (but of course), Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, participant in the now notorious Transition Integrity Project, et cetera. But he earned his title as "legal hatchet man" of the Color Revolution for his tireless efforts in promoting the impeachment of President Trump.

The litany of Norm Eisen's legal activity cited at the beginning of this piece bears repeating.

As the man who implemented the David Brock blueprint for suing the President into paralysis and his allies into bankruptcy , who helped mainstream and amplify the Russia Hoax, who drafted 10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats a full month before President Trump ever called the Ukraine President in 2018 , who personally served as DNC co-counsel for litigating the Ukraine impeachment

If that resume doesn't warrant the title "legal hatchet man" we wonder what does? We encourage interested readers or journalists to explore those links for themselves. By way of conclusion, it simply suffices to note that much of Eisen's impeachment activity he conducted before there was any discussion or knowledge of President Trump's call to the Ukrainian President in 2018 -- indeed before the call even happened. Impeachment was very clearly a foregone conclusion -- a quite literal part of Norm Eisen's Color Revolution playbook -- and it was up to people like Eisen to find the pretext, any pretext.

Despite their constant invocation of "democracy" we ought to note that transferring the question of electoral outcomes to adversarial legal processes is in fact anti-Democratic -- in keeping with our observation that the Color Revolution playbook uses "democracy" as a term of art, often meaning the precise opposite of the usual meaning suggesting popular support.

Perhaps the most important entry in Eisen's entry is the first, that is, Eisen's participation in the infamous David Brock blueprint on how to undermine and overthrow the Trump presidency.

The Washington Free Beacon attended the retreat and obtained David Brock's private and confidential memorandum from the meeting. The memo, " Democracy Matters: Strategic Plan for Action ," outlines Brock's four-year agenda to attack Trump and Republicans using Media Matters, American Bridge, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) , and Shareblue.

The memo contains plans for defeating Trump through impeachment , expanding Media Matters' mission to combat " government misinformation ," ensuring Democratic control of the Senate in the 2018 midterm elections , filing lawsuits against the Trump administration, monetizing political advocacy , using a "digital attacker" to delegitimize Trump's presidency and damage Republicans, and partnering with Facebook to combat "fake news." [Washington Free Beacon]

This leaked memo was written before President Trump took office, further suggesting that all of the efforts to undermine Trump have not been good faith responses to his behavior, but a pre-ordained attack strategy designed to overturn the 2016 election by any means necessary. The Color Revolution expert who suggests impeachment as a tactic in his Color Revolution "playbook" was already in charge of impeachment before Trump even took office -- -Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is run by none other than Norm Eisen.

But the attempt to overturn the 2016 election using Color Revolution tactics failed. And so now the plan is to overthrow Trump in 2020, hence Norm Eisen's noted participation in the Transition Integrity Project. Looking around us, one is forced to ask the deeply uncomfortable question, "transition into what?"

To conclude, we would like to call back to a point we raised in the first piece in our color revolution series. In this piece, we noted that star Never Trump impeachment witness George Kent just happens to be running the Belarus desk at the State Department. Belarus, we argued, with its mass demonstrations egged on by US Government backed NGOS, its supposed "peaceful protests" and of course its contested election results all fit the Color Revolution mold curiously enough.

One NGO called the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG) was bold or reckless enough to draw the parallels between the Color Revolution in Belarus and the events playing out against Trump explicitly. In response to a remark by a twitter user that the TDWG's remarks about Belarus suggested parallels to the United States, the TDWG ominously replied:

Now, would the reader care to take a guess as to who runs the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group? If you guessed Norm Eisen, you would be correct.

Stay tuned for more in Revolver.news' groundbreaking coverage of the Color Revolution against Trump. Be sure to check out the previous installments in this series.

[Sep 14, 2020] Obama as the leader of Russiagate

Libya was a precursor and training ground of Russiagate...
Sep 14, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

NAV , 3 hours ago

Obama was saved by the MSM from the reputation of traitor, a man professing peace and harmony among all races for which good people elected him, to that of a rabid sycophant of the oligarchs, to that of a pliant instrument of despotism, intent upon the ruin of America in general - an enemy to the cause of liberty, sowing violence and division.. Obama was a wolf presented in sheep's clothing, a betrayer of the American Dream, the perpetrator of criminal acts for which the nation is now suffering. For this he and that woman he married were paid to gallop about in fancy dress and mansions flagrantly blowing the $40,000,000 handed them by the Globalists. The force from which he and his have been saved is condemnation and ostracism.

From his past as a communist Alinsky community "organizer," we should have known his aim was overthrow of the country.

jeff montanye , 2 hours ago

agree with everything but "that woman he married."

close enough for an upvote.

NAV , 1 hour ago

Sorry, Jeff, I understand, but it is hard for me to forgive the selfishness of a woman who has had opportunity and wealth all her life in America and then had the gall to say that she was not proud of America until she was 44 years old, when she said of her husband's 2008 Democrat presidential nomination, "For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback."

She had/has no concept of what is/was the American Dream, ie, opportunity and property rights. Does she not know that a billion people in this world subsist on a dollar or less a day and have NO hope of anything better? How proud and how thankful THEY would be for the opportunities of a better life in America, which she and her husband have helped to erase in support of communism, IMHO.

createnewaccount , 11 hours ago

Obama was President because they could.

Same with any outrage.

P Dunne , 13 hours ago

No doubt Clinton was a war monger she got loads of cash from special interests seeking destabilization in the region.

fxrxexexdxoxmx2 , 13 hours ago

This so untrue.

The Clinton's have only ever thought about children. Wanting to save them, shelter them, keep them close.

Every effort taken by the Clinton's was about safe secure and frequent access to children.

Trying to make that a bad thing is like saying the Netflix movie ' Cuties' was not an artistic expression worthy of an Oscar.

Vivekwhu , 6 hours ago

Trump is in office not in power. Now he leaves a few hundred US troops in Syria to openly steal the oil. Obiden would have farted nice flowery democratic language to hide the robbery at gunpoint, but Trump is so honest and brazen.

Let it Go , 4 hours ago

How quickly people forget! Our memory has a way of removing rough edges from events we should not try to whitewash the past and rewrite history to present a different picture of what really happened. Because of the stark contrast in the demeanor and style of Trump and Obama, the media has "photoshopped" reality.

For years former President Obama remained more or less off the grid. Now that he has reemerged we should take a moment to review the Obama era. The article below reminds us of many of the scandals that took place during this time in history.

https://Obama Suffered Scandal Upon Scandal Upon Scandal.html

Max21c , 4 hours ago

The Plot Against Libya: An Obama-Biden-Clinton Criminal Conspiracy

This is clearly another Washingtonian Triumph and Success story. Other people's lives are destroyed but Washingtonians and elites get the tsetse fly headlines for a spell. Libya is just another great achievement by the Washington Regime and its state security apparatus and puppet journalists. It's the claimed thoughtful good intentions of Ivy Leaguers & JudeoWASP elites that counts and the headlines that matter not the bodies, bloodshed, butchery, and slaughter.

Keep in mind it's for the people! The reason the Washingtonians destroy countries abroad is because "it's for the people." The reason Washingtonians sick the secret police on people and persecute people at home is because "it's for the people."

Let it Go , 4 hours ago

One thing we have come to expect on any issue confronting our nation is grandstanding from those in both parties. The government in Washington like those in other countries specialize in putting lipstick "On A Pig." It is very possible Washington is a swamp that cannot be drained.

Strangely, as time has passed it seems the polarizing divide that grips the nation might be planned or contrived merely to create a pathway to greater power by the forces that hold us hostage. The article below explores how those in power with the aid of the media have created an environment of gridlock where they can run free and continue exploiting those they pretend to serve.
http://Washington Specializes On Putting Lipstick On A Pig.html

Obamaroid Ointment , 4 hours ago

The Obama Regime tried to pull a coup here too, in fact they still haven't given up on it.

Manthong , 10 hours ago

At least Goldman is not involved.

Mentaliusanything , 7 hours ago

Hahahahahahaha! They are always "involved" Just not directly only covertly

[Sep 11, 2020] Mueller's 'Angry Democrats' Scrubbed Cell Phones After Russia Investigation -

Sep 11, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Mueller's 'Angry Democrats' Scrubbed Cell Phones After Russia Investigation by Tyler Durden Thu, 09/10/2020 - 18:20 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Over two dozen phones belonging to members of Robert Mueller's special counsel team were wiped clean before they were handed over to the Inspector General, according to information contained in 87 pages of DOJ records released on Thursday.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1304125283855892480&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fmuellers-angry-democrats-scrubbed-cell-phones-after-russia-investigation&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=219d021%3A1598982042171&width=550px

Some of the phones were wiped using the Apple operating system's 'wrong-password' failsafe, where the wrong password must be entered ten times - after which the system wipes the drive.

Those who couldn't seem to remember their password 10 times in a row include 'attack dog' lawyer Andrew Weissman , who urged DOJ attorneys to go rogue and 'not' help US Attorney John Durham investigate FBI and DOJ conduct during the Trump investigation.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1304138990908518401&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fmuellers-angry-democrats-scrubbed-cell-phones-after-russia-investigation&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=219d021%3A1598982042171&width=550px

The malarkey continues (via National Review ):

A phone belong to assistant special counsel James Quarles "wiped itself without intervention from him," the DOJ's records state.

Andrew Weismann, a top prosecutor on Mueller's team, "accidentally wiped" his cell phone, causing the data to be lost. Other members of the team also accidentally wiped their phones, the DOJ said.

Phones issued to at least three other Mueller prosecutors, Kyle Freeny, Rush Atkinson, and senior prosecutor Greg Andres were also wiped of data.

Additionally, t he cell phone of FBI lawyer Lisa Page was misplaced by the special counsel's office . While it was eventually obtained by the DOJ inspector general, by that point the phone had been restored to its factory settings, wiping it of all dat a. The phone of FBI agent Peter Strzok was also obtained by the inspector general's office, which found "no substantive texts, notes or reminders" on it.

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[Aug 27, 2020] Ukrainian flagged as intel danger to Trump had extensive contact with Obama officials, memos show

Aug 27, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

ET AL August 25, 2020 at 7:08 am

Just the News: Ukrainian flagged as intel danger to Trump had extensive contact with Obama officials, memos show
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/ukrainian-flagged-spy-danger-trump-had-extensive-contact

Obama State Department considered Konstantin Kilimnik a 'sensitive source,' Senate report now identifies him as Russian intel officer.

"Thank you very much for looking into this and very sorry to ask," U.S. embassy official Alexander "Sasha" Kasanof wrote businessman Konstantin Kilimnik in a Dec. 6, 2015 email obtained by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators and reviewed by Just the News. "Ambassador very unhappy about the article, though agree it stinks to me to (sic) of people we know very well."

A few lines later, Kasanof's email offered Kilimnik some valuable inside skinny about the Obama administration's assessment of a sensitive meeting between indicted fugitive Ukrainian oligarch Dmitri Firtash's associate Yuriy Boyko and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.
####

Plenty more at the link including original (cable) source material.

Kilimnik was good enough for Nuland

This story is worth repeating again and again. The recent Senate Intelligence Committee report fingering Kilimnik is FoS media fodder and of course the media refuses to look at the actual material, rather 'trust' what the pols say. i-Racki WMDs anyone? Yet more proof that those who profess their journalistic creed is 'to hold the powerful to account' have long since stopped doing so and are more than willing to switch their interpretations 180 degrees depending on which politics they support.

[Aug 25, 2020] An Open Letter to Strobe Talbott About RussiaGate by Tom Couser

RussiaGate is about MIC, Intelligence agencies and Dem leadership need to have an enemy to milt taxpayers and retain power and military budget. Nothing personal, strictly business.
Aug 25, 2020 | www.antiwar.com

Tom Couser Posted on August 20, 2020

I met Strobe Talbott in 1968 when he and I were graduate students at Magdalen College, Oxford. I liked him and respected him, and after we lost touch as friends, I followed his career at Time , the State Department, and the Brookings Institution with admiration. In recent years, however, I've become disillusioned with the foreign policy he advocated with regard to Russia and was disturbed to learn of his involvement in the genesis of the Russiagate narrative.

August 3, 2020

Dear Strobe,

It has been a long time – a very long time – since we've been in touch, but I assume you remember me from 1968, when we met at Magdalen College, Oxford. Having just graduated from Yale, you were there on a Rhodes Scholarship; I was on a Reynold Scholarship granted by my alma mater, Dartmouth. Despite your three-barreled WASP name (Nelson Strobridge Talbott) and your distinguished pedigree (son of a Yale football captain, Hotchkiss alum, etc.) you were unpretentious, and we made friends quickly.

Despite assurances from my draft board that I would not be drafted that year, I got an induction notice on Nixon's inauguration day. You were the first person I consulted. Safe from the draft, like most Rhodes Scholars, you listened sympathetically. We were together in our opposition to the War if not in our vulnerability to the draft.

You and I played the occasional game of squash. And when my Dartmouth fraternity brother and Rhodes Scholar John Isaacson injured your eye with his racket, I visited you in the Radcliffe Infirmary during your convalescence. I was reading Tristram Shandy as part of my program, and one day I read some bits to you. You seemed to share my amusement; I can still see you smiling in your hospital bed with a big patch on one eye. When your father came from Ohio to visit you, he invited me, along with your Yale classmate Rob Johnson out to dinner at the Bear.

You had majored in Russian at Yale and were writing a thesis on some topic in Russian literature, Mayakovsky, perhaps? At any rate, you seemed committed to Russian studies. (Little did I know.) When I chose to take a student tour behind the Iron Curtain during the spring vac, you gave me some reading suggestions and advised me to dress warmly. Having packed for England's relatively mild climate, I lacked a warm enough coat; you generously loaned me your insulated car coat, which served me well in Russia's raw spring cold.

You likely debriefed me after my travels; I must have passed on to you my sense of the Soviet Union as a very drab place with a demoralized, often drunk, population, and a general sense of repression. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy my trip – just that I was struck by the stark differences at the time between the West and the East. How lucky I was to have been born in the "free world."

The tour returned from Moscow and St. Petersburg via Ukraine and Czechoslovakia. In Prague, just after the brutal suppression of Prague Spring, we were acutely aware of how hated the Russians were. This just reinforced my distaste for what Ronald Reagan later termed the Evil empire – perhaps the only thing he said I ever agreed with. So, like you, I was staunchly anti-Communist at the time.

The next year, you got a gig polishing the text of Nikita Krushchev's memoirs, which had been smuggled out of Russia. The publisher put you up in an "undisclosed location," which you let on was the Commodore Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts; we met for coffee in Harvard Square with friends of yours, possibly including Brooke Shearer whom you later married, and one of her brothers, Cody or Derek. It may have been then that I drove you to the school where I was teaching on a deferment, Kimball Union Academy in central New Hampshire; you stayed overnight before returning to civilization.

Your second year, you moved into a house with Bill Clinton and two other Rhodes Scholars.

During the next few years – the early 70s – you and I exchanged occasional letters. After that, the rest is history: your illustrious career – as a journalist at Time , then as a Russia hand and Deputy Secretary of State Department in the Clinton administration, and then as president of the Brookings Institution – was easy to follow in the media.

Eventually our paths diverged, I lost touch with you, with one exception.

In the mid-1990s, while you were serving at State, a close friend asked me to ask you to do her a favor. I hate asking for favors, even for myself, and resent those who use connections to advance themselves. But all my friend needed was for a senior State official to sign off on a job application of some sort. I phoned your office from mine. I got a frosty reception from your administrative assistant, who was justifiably protective of your time, but she put me through. You recognized my voice, sounded glad to be in touch, and granted the favor. It never came to anything, but I remember how pleased I was even to have such a brief task-oriented phone encounter with you after a lapse of two decades.

In any case, over the next several decades I followed your career with interest and was pleased with your success.

As I was by that of another member of the Oxford cohort, Bob Reich, another fraternity brother of mine. We were not close, and I saw him less often in Oxford than I saw you. But you and he both wound up in the Clinton administration – the Oxford troika, I like to call you. You and Bob were doing what Rhodes Scholars were supposed to do: go into professions, network, and perform public service. The Rhodes to success. Never a whiff of scandal about either of you. You, Strobe, were very much what we Dartmouth men referred to as a straight arrow.

So why am I writing you now, after all these years? And why a public letter?

In part, because I have become progressively more critical of the foreign policy that you have advocated. Early on you were advocating disarmament. Good. And closer relations with the Soviet Union. Also good. Indeed, you were regarded as something of a Russophile (never a compliment). But while you initially resisted the expansion of NATO, you eventually went along with it. Like George Kennan, I consider that decision to be a serious mistake (and a breach of a promise not to expand NATO "one inch" to the east after Germany was reunited).

When the Cold War ended, the Warsaw Pact dissolved. NATO did not; instead, it expanded eastward to include former Warsaw Pact members and SSRs until today it borders Russia. Russia resistance to this is inevitably denounced in the West as "Russian aggression." Hence the tension in Ukraine today. You're not personally responsible for all of this of course. But you are deeply implicated in what seems to me a gratuitously provocative, indeed imperialistic, foreign policy.

Two old friends could amicably agree disagree on that, as I disagree with virtually all my liberal friends.

But your loyalty to the Clintons has apparently extended to involvement in generating the Russiagate narrative, which has exacerbated tensions between Russia and the USA and spread paranoia in the Democratic establishment and mainstream media. I am always disturbed by the hypocrisy of Americans who complain about foreign meddling in our elections, when the USA is the undisputed champ in that event. Indeed, we go beyond meddling (Yeltsin's reelection in 1996) to actual coups, not to mention regime-change wars.

My concern about this has come to a head with the recent revelation of your complicity in the dissemination of the Steele dossier, whose subsource, Igor Danchenko, was a Russian national employed by Brookings.

I don't know which is worse: that you and your colleagues at Brookings believed the dossier's unfounded claims, or that you didn't but found it politically useful in the attempt to subvert the Trump campaign and delegitimize his election. I suspect the latter. But doesn't this implicate you in the creation of a powerful Russophobic narrative in contemporary American politics that has demonized Putin and needlessly ramped up tension between two nuclear powers?

A lifelong Democrat who voted for Bill twice and Hillary once, I am no fan of Trump or of Putin. But Russiagate has served as a distraction from Hillary's responsibility for her catastrophic defeat and from the real weaknesses of the neoliberal Democratic Party, with its welfare "reform," crime bill, and abandonment of its traditional working-class base.

Moreover, in and of itself, the Russiagate story represents what Matt Taibbi has called this generation's WMD media scandal. The narrative, challenged from the beginning by a few intrepid independent journalists like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Aaron Maté, and the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, is now being further undermined by the declassification of documents by the Senate. If, as I have recently read, you were active in disseminating the Steele dossier, you have contributed to the mainstream media's gas-lighting of the American public – liberals, at least (like most of my friends). Ironically, then, you have given credence to Trump's often, but not always, false charge: "Fake News." Once described as a Russophile, you now seem complicit in the creation of a nation-wide paranoid and hysterical Russophobia and neo-McCarthyism.

Say it ain't so, Strobe!

So long, old friend,

Tom Couser

[Aug 24, 2020] Lee Smith on 'The Permanent Coup'; Clinesmith Likely Just 1st Indictment - American Thought Leaders -

YouTube video with interesting thoughts about Russiagate from a conservative. America Thought Leaders is interviewed by Lee Smith.
Aug 24, 2020 | www.youtube.com


MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN
, 23 hours ago (edited)

You get as much justice as you can afford..,.. poor people in America know this. Justice is Swift for the poor man. Good example jussie Smollett...... America has no justice yet to this day. The great Awakening started for me by, Nancy pelosi. She said we are above you. Referring to the elite.... Two-tier justice system, that's why so many people are watching. Trump 20 🇺🇸 20 Landslide Victory 🤔


tmc che
, 23 hours ago (edited)

The federal government bureaucrats and politicians are running the government like the Five Mafia Families of NY ran NYC and beyond. ...selective prosecutions is all that can be seen from coast to coast. Everyone knows what's really going on. If you're associated with President Trump, however distant, or are a Republican instant prosecution. If you're a Democrat member of a coup d'etat, fo'get about it. Shakespeare was right about the lawyers. At least about the lawyers in the Southern District of NY. Attorney General Barr should have gutted that cabal of seditious traitors, top to bottom, left to right. Probably most of the DC contingent of the DOJ as well.


Stef Peters
, 23 hours ago

Funny how fast Bannon was indicted - and Durham's been at it how long?


Linda T
, 22 hours ago (edited)

Fantastic interview. I hope many who do not understand the significance of this will take a step back and really understand that these people are after ALL of us...

Christina Richardson , 23 hours ago

Love Nunes he is a very brave man super fighter for good. American hero

froukje matthews , 20 hours ago

I hope that the American citizens will continue to inform themselves about the shenanigans that the Democrats have been up to and prevent the mob with this 'world view" (which means total control by a view) will not be allowed to take root. The alternative is this; if the US can be turned into a CCP of America then what chance does the rest of us have? Please Americans, clean up you education system and make sure it is free and fair and available to everyone without indoctrination from anyone. And dare to stand up against regimes that violate human rights. At present you are the only government who publicly states the genocide that is going on in China and dares to take steps to stop the money hungry corporations to find loopholes....


Frank Davis
, 21 hours ago

Very good interview. It's just so disturbing that the press is so corrupted. The Constitution grants them freedoms to help the public not to lie and tear our system down. No one trusts the media at this point, nor should they. It's both sad and dangerous. Who would have ever thought that the media would turn into public enemy #1.


Lorraine Holmes
, 18 hours ago

Indict Soros, Obama, Clintons for high treason crimes!


,

Rudy B
, 22 hours ago (edited)

RINOs are a large part of the permanent coup. The heap of human waste includes not just Obama but also Romney, both Bush's, McCain, Graham, Murkowski and a very long list of bureaucrats.

CJK CJK , 22 hours ago

The head of this corruption is obama.


BoumtjeBoumtje
, 21 hours ago

The Turkish businessman mentioned in Chapter 8: The Scope is named Ekim Alptekin. Get his full story ekimdefensefund.org

FretNot TrustinGod , 17 hours ago

Diane Feinstein & Slick Willie acted like they cared about China but they (and many others) would sell anyone down the river, any time day or night, and stick a fork in, if it benefits them.


Fran Rushie
, 19 hours ago

I have Lee Smith's first book on the corruption... I'm getting tired of reading these books without seeing any indictments... I will buy the new book after John Durham and AG Barr start making some real indictments of James Brennan, Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Lisa Page, Hilary for funding the Dossier, ... all these people need to be behind bars...we can't live in a country of no consequences for Democrats...


Terence Winters
, 7 hours ago

The rolling coup based on a confirmation bias based on the false steele dossier.


rareword
, 9 hours ago


rareword
, 9 hours ago

The speech that got Trump elected says it all:

"Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American People. There is nothing the political establishment will not do, and no lie they will not tell, to hold on to their prestige and power at your expense.

The Washington establishment, and the financial and media corporations that fund it, exists for only one reason: to protect and enrich itself.

The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. As an example, just one single trade deal they'd like to pass, involves trillions of dollars controlled by many countries, corporations and lobbyists. For those who control the levers of power in Washington, and for the global special interests they partner with, our campaign represents an existential threat.

It's a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.

The corporate media in our country is no longer involved in journalism. They are a political special interest, no different than any lobbyist or other financial entity with an agenda.

The establishment and their media enablers wield control over this nation through means that are well known. Anyone who challenges their control is deemed a sexist, a racist, a xenophobe and morally deformed. They will attack you, they will slander you, they will seek to destroy your career and reputation. And they will lie, lie and lie even more.

I didn't need to do this. I built a great company, and I had wonderful life. I could have enjoyed the benefits of years of successful business for myself and my family, instead of going through this absolute horror show of lies, deceptions and malicious attacks. I'm doing it because this country has given me so much, and I feel strongly it was my turn to give back. We will vote to put this corrupt government cartel out of business.

We will remove from our politics the special interests who have betrayed our workers, our borders, our freedoms, and our sovereign rights as a nation. We will end the politics of profit, we will end the rule of special interests, we will put a stop to the raiding of our country – and the disenfranchisement of our people."


leon landowski
, 9 hours ago

Trump, Flynn, Stone, Page, Papa D; all have suffered because of this attempted coup. The main victims though are the American electorate who have had their Democratic mandate stymied for the last 4 years.


Tim Wilster
, 20 hours ago

Trumps only DOG in the fight is America. The Swamp has anti American interest. Look who backs the Dem party! Soros, BLM, Netfilx, Amazon, and a ton of others that have $$$ instead of Americans in mind. Look who owns the Media and tell me why they are so far left. Does it make sense? They know it isn't Russia but even Ivy league Schools funding from China. WHY? Hmmmm. Who is pumping money into Silicon Valley? Hmmm

Joseph Olson , 7 hours ago

DOJ.gov/biography ~ Wm Pelham BARR was CIA from 1973 to 1977 > once a spook, thereafter always just a sheepdipped spook > Sessions, Whitaker, BARR & WRAY are deep state coverup team


Robert Booker
, 21 hours ago

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/how-society-unravels


Andrew
, 4 hours ago (edited)

Biggest threat to US democracy is NOT from the OUTSIDE world - it is the Deep State and MSM.Trump isn't divisive; he's simply reacted to all of abuses that have been going on. Thank God we have a Leader like him. He is a HERO - not a villain


Inisfad
, 33 minutes ago

This is very interesting, but my initial reaction is trust Trump. He understood, even before any of this occurred, that this would be the result of his presidency. The Obama/Hillary plan was not something concocted by Obama - he was a 'puppet' to a much larger, 16 year plan to finally weaken the US on the world stage, in order to usher in a different kind of global condition. But Trump knew all of this - he has been preparing for this presidency for decades. He will win in 2020, and the darkness that Smith talks about regarding a 'permanent coup' will not happen. It's all going to be brought down. This is not another 4 year election, but a crossroads to the future.

D D , 10 hours ago

Obama has much to answer for


Fleur D'Rose
, 16 hours ago (edited)

If the Dems win there will be a Witch Hunt like one could not dream possible. The Dems will throw the Justice System as we know it out the window. They will arrest President Trump and every person that stood up for him on charges of treason. They will resurrect the Russia Hoax and the Ukraine Hoax and the China-Virus Hoax will be blamed on President Trump decisively. Trump supporters will be outraged and the Democrats will send in the troops to confiscate all their guns. Americans if you love your life get out in person and vote for President Trump in November.

[Aug 23, 2020] Catapulting Russian-Meddling Propaganda by Ray McGovern

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The fresh orgy of anti-Russian invective in the lickspittle media (LSM) has the feel of fin de siècle . The last four reality-impaired years do seem as though they add up to a century. And no definitive fin is in sight, as long as most people don't know what's going on. ..."
"... The LSM should be confronted: "At long last have you left no sense of decency?" But who would hear the question -- much less any answer? ..."
"... Thus the reckless abandon with which The New York Times is leading the current full-court press to improve on what it regards as Special Counsel Robert Mueller's weak-kneed effort to blame the Russians for giving us Donald Trump. The press is on, and there are no referees to call the fouls. ..."
"... Incidentally, Mueller's report apparently was insufficient, only two years in the making, and just 448 pages. The Senate committee's magnum opus took three years, is almost 1,000 pages -- and fortified. So there. ..."
"... is a good offense, and the Senate Intelligence Committee's release of its study -- call it "Mueller (Enhanced)" -- and the propaganda fanfare -- come at a key point in the Russiagate/Spygate imbroglio. It also came, curiously, as the Democratic Convention was beginning, as if the Republican-controlled Senate was sending Trump a message. ..."
"... The cognoscenti and the big fish themselves may be guessing that Trump/Barr/Durham will not throw out heavier lines for former FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for example. But how can they be sure? What has become clear is that the certainty they all shared that Hillary Clinton would be the next president prompted them not only to take serious liberties with the Constitution and the law, but also to do so without taking rudimentary steps to hide their tracks. ..."
"... The incriminating evidence is there. And as Trump becomes more and more vulnerable and defensive about his ineptness -- particularly with regard to Covid-19 -- he may summon the courage to order Barr and Durham to hook the big fish, not just minnows like Clinesmith. The neuralgic reality is that no one knows at this point how far Trump will go. To say that this kind of uncertainty is unsettling to all concerned is to say the obvious. ..."
"... None of that takes us much beyond the Mueller report and other things generally well known -- even in the LSM. Nor does the drivel about people like Paul Manafort "sharing polling data with Russians" who might be intelligence officers. That data was "mostly public" the Times itself reported , and the paper had to correct a story that the data was intended for Russian oligarchs, when it was meant for Ukrainian oligarchs instead. That Manafort was working to turn Ukraine towards the West and not Russia is rarely mentioned. ..."
"... On the Steele Dossier, the committee also missed a ruling by a British judge against Christopher Steele, labeling his dossier an attempt to help Hillary Clinton get elected. Consortium News explained back in October 2017 that both CrowdStrike and Steele were paid for by the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign to push Russiagate. ..."
"... the description of #WikiLeaks ' publishing activities by this #SenateIntelligenceCommittee 's Report appears a true #EdgarHoover 's disinformation campaign to make a legitimate media org completely radioactive ..."
"... And that's not the half of it. In September 2018, Mazzetti and his NYT colleague Scott Shane wrote a 10,000-word feature, "The Plot to Subvert an Election," trying to convince readers that the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) had successfully swayed U.S. opinion during the 2016 election with 80,000 Facebook posts that they said had reached 126 million Americans. ..."
"... That turned out to be a grotesquely deceptive claim. Mazzetti and Shane failed to mention the fact that those 80,000 IRA posts (from early 2015 through 2017, meaning about half came after the election), had been engulfed in a vast ocean of more than 33 trillion Facebook posts in people's news feeds – 413 million times more than the IRA posts. Not to mention the lack of evidence that the IRA was the Russian government, as Mueller claimed. ..."
"... "Liberals are embracing every negative claim about Russia just because elements of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency produced a report last Jan. 6 that blamed Russia for 'hacking' Democratic emails and releasing them to WikiLeaks ." ..."
Aug 23, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Catapulting Russian-Meddling Propaganda


by Tyler Durden Sat, 08/22/2020 - 23:20 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Authored by Ray McGovern via ConsortiumNews.com,

The New York Times is leading the full-court press to improve on what it regards as Special Counsel Robert Mueller's weak-kneed effort to blame the Russians for giving us Donald Trump...

The fresh orgy of anti-Russian invective in the lickspittle media (LSM) has the feel of fin de siècle . The last four reality-impaired years do seem as though they add up to a century. And no definitive fin is in sight, as long as most people don't know what's going on.

The LSM should be confronted: "At long last have you left no sense of decency?" But who would hear the question -- much less any answer? The corporate media have a lock on what Americans are permitted or not permitted to hear. Checking the truth, once routine in journalism, is a thing of the past.

Thus the reckless abandon with which The New York Times is leading the current full-court press to improve on what it regards as Special Counsel Robert Mueller's weak-kneed effort to blame the Russians for giving us Donald Trump. The press is on, and there are no referees to call the fouls.

The recent release of a 1,000-page, sans bombshells and already out-of-date report by the Senate Intelligence Committee has provided the occasion to "catapult the propaganda," as President George W. Bush once put it.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/VxnegxNEDAc

As the the Times 's Mark Mazzetti put it in his article Wednesday:

"Releasing the report less than 100 days before Election Day, Republican-majority senators hoped it would refocus attention on the interference by Russia and other hostile foreign powers in the American political process, which has continued unabated."

Mazzetti is telling his readers, soto voce : regarding that interference four years ago, and the "continued-unabated" part, you just have to trust us and our intelligence community sources who would never lie to you. And if, nevertheless, you persist in asking for actual evidence, you are clearly in Putin's pocket.

Incidentally, Mueller's report apparently was insufficient, only two years in the making, and just 448 pages. The Senate committee's magnum opus took three years, is almost 1,000 pages -- and fortified. So there.

Iron Pills

Recall how disappointed the LSM and the rest of the Establishment were with Mueller's anemic findings in spring 2019. His report claimed that the Russian government "interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion" via a social media campaign run by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and by "hacking" Democratic emails. But the evidence behind those charges could not bear close scrutiny.

You would hardly know it from the LSM, but the accusation against the IRA was thrown out of court when the U.S. government admitted it could not prove that the IRA was working for the Russian government. Mueller's ipse dixit did not suffice, as we explained a year ago in "Sic Transit Gloria Mueller."

The Best Defense

is a good offense, and the Senate Intelligence Committee's release of its study -- call it "Mueller (Enhanced)" -- and the propaganda fanfare -- come at a key point in the Russiagate/Spygate imbroglio. It also came, curiously, as the Democratic Convention was beginning, as if the Republican-controlled Senate was sending Trump a message.

Durham

One chief worry, of course, derives from the uncertainty as to whether John Durham, the US Attorney investigating those FBI and other officials who launched the Trump-Russia investigation will let some heavy shoes drop before the election. Barr has said he expects "developments in Durham's investigation hopefully before the end of the summer."

FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith already has decided to plead guilty to the felony of falsifying evidence used to support a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveillance to spy on Trump associate Carter Page. It is abundantly clear that Clinesmith was just a small cog in the deep-state machine in action against candidate and then President Trump. And those running the machine are well known. The president has named names, and Barr has made no bones about his disdain for what he calls spying on the president.

The cognoscenti and the big fish themselves may be guessing that Trump/Barr/Durham will not throw out heavier lines for former FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for example. But how can they be sure? What has become clear is that the certainty they all shared that Hillary Clinton would be the next president prompted them not only to take serious liberties with the Constitution and the law, but also to do so without taking rudimentary steps to hide their tracks.

The incriminating evidence is there. And as Trump becomes more and more vulnerable and defensive about his ineptness -- particularly with regard to Covid-19 -- he may summon the courage to order Barr and Durham to hook the big fish, not just minnows like Clinesmith. The neuralgic reality is that no one knows at this point how far Trump will go. To say that this kind of uncertainty is unsettling to all concerned is to say the obvious.

So, the stakes are high -- for the Democrats, as well -- and, not least, the LSM. In these circumstances it would seem imperative not just to circle the wagons but to mount the best offense/defense possible, despite the fact that virtually all the ammunition (as in the Senate report) is familiar and stale ("enhanced" or not).

Black eyes might well be in store for the very top former law enforcement and intelligence officials, the Democrats, and the LSM -- and in the key pre-election period. So, the calculation: launch "Mueller Report (Enhanced)" and catapult the truth now with propaganda, before it is too late.

No Evidence of Hacking

The "hacking of the DNC" charge suffered a fatal blow three months ago when it became known that Shawn Henry, president of the DNC-hired cyber-security firm CrowdStrike, admitted under oath that his firm had no evidence that the DNC emails were hacked -- by Russia or anyone else.

(YouTube)

Henry gave his testimony on Dec. 5, 2017, but House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff was able to keep it hidden until May 7, 2020.

Here's a brief taste of how Henry's testimony went: Asked by Schiff for "the date on which the Russians exfiltrated the data", Henry replied, "We just don't have the evidence that says it actually left."

You did not know that? You may be forgiven -- up until now -- if your information diet is limited to the LSM and you believe The New York Times still publishes "all the news that's fit to print." I am taking bets on how much longer the NYT will be able to keep Henry's testimony hidden; Schiff's record of 29 months will be hard to beat.

Putting Lipstick on the Pig of Russian 'Tampering'

Worse still for the LSM and other Russiagate diehards, Mueller's findings last year enabled Trump to shout "No Collusion" with Russia. What seems clear at this point is that a key objective of the current catapulting of the truth is to apply lipstick to Mueller's findings.

After all, he was supposed to find treacherous plotting between the Trump campaign and the Russians and failed miserably. Most LSM-suffused Americans remain blissfully unaware of this, and the likes of Pulitzer Prize winner Mazzetti have been commissioned to keep it that way.

In Wednesday's article , for example, Mazzetti puts it somewhat plaintively:

"Like the special counsel the Senate report did not conclude that the Trump campaign engaged in a coordinated conspiracy with the Russian government -- a fact that the Republicans seized on to argue that there was 'no collusion'."

How could they!

Mazzetti is playing with words. "Collusion," however one defines it, is not a crime; conspiracy is.

'Breathtaking' Contacts: Mueller (Enhanced)

Mark Mazzetti (YouTube)

Mazzetti emphasizes that the Senate report "showed extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and people tied to the Kremlin," and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the intelligence committee's vice chairman, said the committee report details "a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections."

None of that takes us much beyond the Mueller report and other things generally well known -- even in the LSM. Nor does the drivel about people like Paul Manafort "sharing polling data with Russians" who might be intelligence officers. That data was "mostly public" the Times itself reported , and the paper had to correct a story that the data was intended for Russian oligarchs, when it was meant for Ukrainian oligarchs instead. That Manafort was working to turn Ukraine towards the West and not Russia is rarely mentioned.

Recent revelations regarding the false data given the FISA court by an FBI lawyer to "justify" eavesdropping on Trump associate Carter Page show the Senate report to be not up to date and misguided in endorsing the FBI's decision to investigate Page. The committee may wish to revisit that endorsement -- at least.

On the Steele Dossier, the committee also missed a ruling by a British judge against Christopher Steele, labeling his dossier an attempt to help Hillary Clinton get elected. Consortium News explained back in October 2017 that both CrowdStrike and Steele were paid for by the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign to push Russiagate.

Also missed by the intelligence committee was a document released by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that revealed that Steele's "Primary Subsource and his friends peddled warmed-over rumors and laughable gossip that Steele dressed up as formal intelligence memos."

Smearing WikiLeaks

The Intelligence Committee report also repeats thoroughly debunked myths about WikiLeaks and, like Mueller, the committee made no effort to interview Julian Assange before launching its smears. Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi, who partnered with WikiLeaks in the publication of the Podesta emails, described the report's treatment of WikiLeaks in this Twitter thread :

2. the description of #WikiLeaks ' publishing activities by this #SenateIntelligenceCommittee 's Report appears a true #EdgarHoover 's disinformation campaign to make a legitimate media org completely radioactive

3. Clearly, to describe #WikiLeaks and its publishing activities the #SenateIntelligenceCommittee's Report completely rely on #US intelligence community+ #MikePompeo's characterisation of #WikiLeaks. There is not even any pretense of an independent approach

4. there are also unsubstantiated claims like:
– "[WikiLeaks'] disclosures have jeopardized the safety of individual Americans and foreign allies" (p.200)
– "WikiLeaks has passed information to U.S. adversaries" (p.201)

5. it's completely false that "#WikiLeaks does not seem to weigh whether its disclosures add any public interest value" (p.200) and any longtime media partner like me could provide you dozens of examples on how wrong this characterisation [is].

Titillating

Mazzetti did add some spice to the version of his article that dominated the two top right columns of Wednesday's Times with the blaring headline: "Senate Panel Ties Russian Officials to Trump's Aides: G.O.P.-Led Committee Echoes Mueller's Findings on Election Tampering."

Those who make it to the end of Mazzetti's piece will learn that the Senate committee report "did not establish" that the Russian government obtained any compromising material on Mr. Trump or that they tried to use such materials [that they didn't have] as leverage against him." However, Mazzetti adds,

"According to the report, Mr. Trump met a former Miss Moscow at a party during one trip in 1996. After the party, a Trump associate told others he had seen Mr. Trump with the woman on multiple occasions and that they 'might have had a brief romantic relationship.'

"The report also raised the possibility that, during that trip, Mr. Trump spent the night with two young women who joined him the next morning at a business meeting with the mayor of Moscow."

This is journalism?

Another Pulitzer in Store?

The Times appends a note reminding us that Mazzetti was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on Donald Trump's advisers and their connections to Russia.

And that's not the half of it. In September 2018, Mazzetti and his NYT colleague Scott Shane wrote a 10,000-word feature, "The Plot to Subvert an Election," trying to convince readers that the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) had successfully swayed U.S. opinion during the 2016 election with 80,000 Facebook posts that they said had reached 126 million Americans.

That turned out to be a grotesquely deceptive claim. Mazzetti and Shane failed to mention the fact that those 80,000 IRA posts (from early 2015 through 2017, meaning about half came after the election), had been engulfed in a vast ocean of more than 33 trillion Facebook posts in people's news feeds – 413 million times more than the IRA posts. Not to mention the lack of evidence that the IRA was the Russian government, as Mueller claimed.

In exposing that chicanery, prize-winning investigative reporter Gareth Porter commented :

"The descent of The New York Times into this unprecedented level of propagandizing for the narrative of Russia's threat to U.S. democracy is dramatic evidence of a broader problem of abuses by corporate media Greater awareness of the dishonesty at the heart of the Times' coverage of that issue is a key to leveraging media reform and political change."

Nothingburgers With Russian Dressing: the Backstory

The late Robert Parry.

"It's too much; it's just too much, too much", a sedated, semi-conscious Robert Parry kept telling me from his hospital bed in late January 2018 a couple of days before he died. Bob was founder of Consortium News .

It was already clear what Bob meant; he had taken care to see to that. On Dec. 31, 2017 the reason for saying that came in what he titled "An Apology & Explanation" for "spotty production in recent days." A stroke on Christmas Eve had left Bob with impaired vision, but he was able to summon enough strength to write an Apologia -- his vision for honest journalism and his dismay at what had happened to his profession before he died on Jan. 27, 2018. The dichotomy was "just too much".

Parry rued the role that journalism was playing in the "unrelenting ugliness that has become Official Washington. Facts and logic no longer mattered. It was a case of using whatever you had to diminish and destroy your opponent this loss of objective standards reached deeply into the most prestigious halls of American media."

What bothered Bob most was the needless, dishonest tweaking of the Russian bear. "The U.S. media's approach to Russia," he wrote, "is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. Does any sentient human being read The New York Times ' or The Washington Post 's coverage of Russia and think that he or she is getting a neutral or unbiased treatment of the facts? Western journalists now apparently see it as their patriotic duty to hide facts that otherwise would undermine the demonizing of Putin and Russia."

Parry, who was no conservative, continued:

"Liberals are embracing every negative claim about Russia just because elements of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency produced a report last Jan. 6 that blamed Russia for 'hacking' Democratic emails and releasing them to WikiLeaks ."

Bob noted that the 'hand-picked' authors "evinced no evidence and even admitted that they weren't asserting any of this as fact."

It was just too much.

Robert Parry's Last Article

Peter Strzok during congressional hearing in July 2018. (Wikimedia Commons)

Bob posted his last substantive article on Dec. 13, 2017, the day after text exchanges between senior FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were made public. (Typically, readers of The New York Times the following day would altogether miss the importance of the text-exchanges.)

Bob Parry rarely felt any need for a "sanity check." Dec. 12, 2017 was an exception. He called me about the Strzok-Page texts; we agreed they were explosive. FBI Agent Peter Strzok was on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's staff investigating alleged Russian interference, until Mueller removed him.

Strzok reportedly was a "hand-picked" FBI agent taking part in the Jan 2017 evidence-impoverished, rump, misnomered "intelligence community" assessment that blamed Russia for hacking and other election meddling. And he had helped lead the investigation into Hillary Clinton's misuse of her computer servers. Page was Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's right-hand lawyer.

His Dec. 13, 2017 piece would be his fourth related article in less than two weeks; it turned out to be his last substantive article. All three of the earlier ones are worth a re-read as examples of fearless, unbiased, perceptive journalism. Here are the links .

Bob began his article on the Strzok-Page bombshell:

"The disclosure of fiercely anti-Trump text messages between two romantically involved senior FBI officials who played key roles in the early Russia-gate inquiry has turned the supposed Russian-election-meddling "scandal" into its own scandal, by providing evidence that some government investigators saw it as their duty to block or destroy Donald Trump's presidency.?

"As much as the U.S. mainstream media has mocked the idea that an American 'deep state' exists and that it has maneuvered to remove Trump from office, the text messages between senior FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page reveal how two high-ranking members of the government's intelligence/legal bureaucracy saw their role as protecting the United States from an election that might elevate to the presidency someone as unfit as Trump."

Not a fragment of Bob's or other Consortium News analysis made any impact on what Bob used to call the Establishment media. As a matter of fact, eight months later during a talk in Seattle that I titled "Russia-gate: Can You Handle the Truth?", only three out of a very progressive audience of some 150 had ever heard of Strzok and Page.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ngIKjpucQh8

And so it goes.

Lest I am accused of being "in Putin's pocket," let me add the explanatory note that we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity included in our most explosive Memorandum for President Trump, on "Russian hacking."

Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence profession has eroded in the public mind to the point that agenda-free analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we add this disclaimer, which applies to everything we in VIPS say and do: We have no political agenda; our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our former intelligence colleagues.

We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental. The fact we find it is necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly politicized times.

somecallmetimmah , 1 hour ago

Only brain-washed losers read the new york times. Garbage propaganda for garbage people.

AtATrESICI , 43 minutes ago

"developments in Durham's investigation hopefully before the end of the summer." What summer? The summer of 2099.

Mouldy , 1 hour ago

So in a nutshell.. They just called half the USA too stupid to make an informed decision for themselves.

ominous , 1 hour ago

the disagreement is over which half is the stupid half

homeskillet , 25 minutes ago

The MIC's bogey man. What a crock of **** this whole country has become. Pravda puts out more truth than our MSM. I trust Putin more than the Dem leaders at this point.

Demeter55 , 1 hour ago

The Globalist/New World Order/Deep State/Elitists (or whatever other arrogant subsection of the psychopaths among us you wish to consider) have one great failing which will defeat them utterly in the end:

They do not know when to cut their losses.

As a result of that irrational stubbornness, born of a "Manifest Destiny" assumption of an eternal lock on the situation, they will go too far.

  • Having more wealth than anyone is temporary.
  • Having more power than anyone is temporary.
  • Life is temporary.
  • And we outnumber them by several billion.

Even if they systematically try to destroy us, they will not have the ability unless we are complicit in our own destruction. While there are many who have "taken the knee" to these tyrants in training, there are more who have no intention of doing so.

Most nations are not so buffaloed as to fall for this propaganda, but the United States especially was created with the notion that all men are created equal, and this is ingrained in the national character. We don't buy it.

And our numbers are growing daily, as people wake up and realize they have to take a side for themselves, their families, their communities.

The global covid-panic was a masterful attack, but it will fail. Indeed, it has failed already. The building counter-attack will take out those who chose to declare war on humanity. There really is no alternative for us, the humans. Live Free or Die, as they say in New Hampshire.

And despite the full support of the MSM and the DNC, the Would-Be Masters of the Universe will not succeed.

sborovay07 , 1 hour ago

Sad Assange wasn't granted immunity to testify and was silenced just prior to the release of the Mueller report. Little has been heard since except his health is horrific. Now, all the Deep State figures on both sides are just throwing as much mud against Trump as possible to hide the truth. If Durnham does not indict the Deep State figures who participated in the Obama led coup, all is for not. Only the foot soldiers marching in lock step will be charged.

wn , 1 hour ago

To sum it up.

Conclusion of the Democrats.

Americans need Russian brains to decide their leader in order to move forward.

nokilli , 25 minutes ago

Once the MO for "Russian hacking" is published to the international intelligence community, any (((party))) can pose as a "Russian hacker."

This is the way computers work. Sybil is eponymous.

KuriousKat , 35 minutes ago

Mazzeti looks like the typical Gopher boy for the CIA Station Chiefs around the world..they retire or become contributors to NewsWeek Wapo or NYT. ..not Any major network w/o one...Doing **** like this is mandatory..not elective.

[Aug 21, 2020] The deep state "beef" with Trump is that he's rocking the boat

Aug 21, 2020 | www.unz.com

He [Bezos] and people like him are more concerned with maintaining the Dollar as reserve currency in order to facilitate the continued sell-out of Americans for cheap foreign manufactured goods, technology sells to China, and their own personal enrichment.

"The theory that refuses to die is that the US, as the country with "the" global reserve currency, "must have" a large trade deficit with the rest of the world."
https://www.sgtreport.com/2019/07/and-the-us-dollars-status-as-global-reserve-currency/

In both cases, the "beef" with Trump is that he's rocking the boat -- both in terms of his criticism of the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama wars for Israel and the Petrodollar, and in terms of the America First noises he's made. While he's proven to be a fairly reliable Zionist stooge (although he hasn't started any new wars in the Mideast, and been more of a placeholder), he's edging a little too close to America First (with his domestic rhetoric and some of his policies) for comfort.

[Aug 21, 2020] Why Brennan, Strzok, DOJ Needed Julian Assange Arrested; And Why UK Officials Obliged... -

Notable quotes:
"... To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to CIA interests, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the CIA were in 2016. It is within this network of foreign and domestic operations where FBI Agent Peter Strzok is clearly working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI operations. ..."
"... By now people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor now generally admitted/identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the CIA (John Brennan) to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London. { Go Deep } ..."
"... In a similar fashion the CIA tasked U.S. intelligence asset Stefan Halper to target another Trump campaign official, Carter Page. Under the auspices of being a Cambridge Professor Stefan Halper also targeted General Michael Flynn. Additionally, using assistance from a female FBI agent under the false name Azra Turk, Halper also targeted Papadopoulos . ..."
"... The initial operations to target Flynn, Papadopoulos and Page were all based overseas. This seemingly makes the CIA exploitation of the assets and the targets much easier. ..."
"... In short, Peter Strzok appears to be the very eager, profoundly overzealous James Bond wannabe, who acted as a bridge between the CIA and the FBI. The perfect type of FBI career agent for CIA Director John Brennan to utilize. ..."
"... It was also Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson who was domestically tasked with a Russian lobbyist named Natalia Veselnitskya. A little reported Russian Deputy Attorney General named Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was working double-agents for the CIA and Kremlin. Karapetyan was directing the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, and Glenn Simpson was organizing her inside the U.S. ..."
"... All of this context outlines the extent to which the CIA was openly involved in constructing a political operation that settled upon anyone in candidate Donald Trump's orbit. ..."
"... Additionally, Christopher Steele was a British intelligence officer, hired by Fusion-GPS to assemble and launder fraudulent intelligence information within his dossier. And we cannot forget Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, who was recruited by Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to participate in running an operation against the Trump campaign and create the impression of Russian involvement. Deripaska refused to participate . ..."
"... The key point of all that background is to see how committed the CIA and FBI were to the constructed narrative of Russia interfering with the 2016 election. The CIA, FBI, and by extension the DOJ, put a hell of a lot of work into it. Intelligence community work that Durham is now unraveling. ..."
"... Rohrabacher recounted his conversation with Assange to The Hill. "Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] emails during last year's presidential election," Rohrabacher said, "Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails." ..."
"... Knowing how much effort the CIA and FBI put into the Russia collusion-conspiracy narrative, it would make sense for the FBI to take keen interest after this August 2017 meeting between Rohrabacher and Assange; and why the FBI would quickly gather specific evidence (related to Wikileaks and Bradley Manning) for a grand jury by December 2017. ..."
"... The Weissmann/Mueller report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election. This claim is directly disputed by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, as outlined during the Dana Rohrabacher interview, and by Julian Assange on-the-record statements. ..."
"... The predicate for Robert Mueller's investigation was specifically due to Russian interference in the 2016 election. The fulcrum for this Russia interference claim is the intelligence community assessment; and the only factual evidence claimed within the ICA is that Russia hacked the DNC servers; a claim only made possible by relying on forensic computer analysis from Crowdstrike, a DNC contractor. ..."
"... The CIA holds a massive conflict of self-interest in upholding the Russian hacking claim. The FBI holds a massive interest in maintaining that claim. All of those foreign countries whose intelligence apparatus participated with Brennan and Strzok also have a vested self-interest in maintaining that Russia hacking and interference narrative. ..."
"... This Russian "hacking" claim is ultimately so important to the CIA, FBI, DOJ, ODNI and U.K intelligence apparatus ..."
Aug 21, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by 'sundance' via TheConservativeTreehouse.com,

According to reports in November of 2019, U.S Attorney John Durham and U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr were spending time on a narrowed focus looking carefully at CIA activity in the 2016 presidential election. One recent quote from a media-voice increasingly sympathetic to a political deep-state notes:

"One British official with knowledge of Barr's wish list presented to London commented that "it is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services"". ( Link )

It is interesting that quote came from a British intelligence official, as there appears to be evidence of an extensive CIA operation that likely involved U.K. intelligence services. In addition, and as a direct outcome, there is an aspect to the CIA operation that overlaps with both a U.S. and U.K. need to keep Wikileaks founder Julian Assange under tight control. In this outline we will explain where corrupt U.S. and U.K. interests merge.

To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to CIA interests, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the CIA were in 2016. It is within this network of foreign and domestic operations where FBI Agent Peter Strzok is clearly working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI operations.

By now people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor now generally admitted/identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the CIA (John Brennan) to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London. { Go Deep }

In a similar fashion the CIA tasked U.S. intelligence asset Stefan Halper to target another Trump campaign official, Carter Page. Under the auspices of being a Cambridge Professor Stefan Halper also targeted General Michael Flynn. Additionally, using assistance from a female FBI agent under the false name Azra Turk, Halper also targeted Papadopoulos .

The initial operations to target Flynn, Papadopoulos and Page were all based overseas. This seemingly makes the CIA exploitation of the assets and the targets much easier.

One of the more interesting aspects to the Durham probe is a possibility of a paper-trail created as a result of the tasking operations. We should watch closely for more evidence of a paper trail as some congressional reps have hinted toward documented evidence (transcripts, recordings, reports) that are exculpatory to the targets (Page & Papadop). HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes has strongly hinted that very specific exculpatory evidence was known to the FBI and yet withheld from the FISA application used against Carter Page that also mentions George Papadopoulos. I digress

However, there is an aspect to the domestic U.S. operation that also bears the fingerprints of the CIA; only this time due to the restrictive laws on targets inside the U.S. the CIA aspect is less prominent. This is where FBI Agent Peter Strzok working for both agencies starts to become important.

Remember, it's clear in the text messages Strzok has a working relationship with what he called their "sister agency", the CIA. Additionally, Brennan has admitted Strzok helped write the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which outlines the Russia narrative; and it is almost guaranteed the July 31st, 2016, "Electronic Communication" from the CIA to the FBI that originated FBI operation "Crossfire Hurricane" was co-authored from the CIA by Strzok . and Strzok immediately used that EC to travel to London to debrief intelligence officials around Australian Ambassador to the U.K. Alexander Downer.

In short, Peter Strzok appears to be the very eager, profoundly overzealous James Bond wannabe, who acted as a bridge between the CIA and the FBI. The perfect type of FBI career agent for CIA Director John Brennan to utilize.

Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson hired CIA Open Source analyst Nellie Ohr toward the end of 2015 ; at appropriately the same time as " FBI Contractors " were identified exploiting the NSA database and extracting information on a specific set of U.S. persons.

It was also Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson who was domestically tasked with a Russian lobbyist named Natalia Veselnitskya. A little reported Russian Deputy Attorney General named Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was working double-agents for the CIA and Kremlin. Karapetyan was directing the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, and Glenn Simpson was organizing her inside the U.S.

Glenn Simpson managed Veselnitskaya through the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. However, once the CIA/Fusion-GPS operation using Veselnitskaya started to unravel with public reporting back in Russia Deputy AG Karapetyan fell out of a helicopter to his death (just before it crashed).

Simultaneously timed in late 2015 through mid 2016, there was a domestic FBI operation using a young Russian named Maria Butina tasked to run up against republican presidential candidates . According to Patrick Byrne, Butina's handler, it was FBI agent Peter Strzok who was giving Byrne the instructions on where to send her. { Go Deep }

All of this context outlines the extent to which the CIA was openly involved in constructing a political operation that settled upon anyone in candidate Donald Trump's orbit.

International operations directed by the CIA, and domestic operations seemingly directed by Peter Strzok operating with a foot in both agencies. [ Strzok gets CIA service coin ]

Recap :

  • Mifsud tasked against Papadopoulos (CIA).
  • Halper tasked against Flynn (CIA), Page (CIA), and Papadopoulos (CIA).
  • Azra Turk , pretending to be Halper asst, tasked against Papadopoulos (FBI).
  • Veselnitskaya tasked against Donald Trump Jr (CIA, Fusion-GPS).
  • Butina tasked against Trump, and Donald Trump Jr (FBI).

Additionally, Christopher Steele was a British intelligence officer, hired by Fusion-GPS to assemble and launder fraudulent intelligence information within his dossier. And we cannot forget Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, who was recruited by Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to participate in running an operation against the Trump campaign and create the impression of Russian involvement. Deripaska refused to participate .

All of this engagement directly controlled by U.S. intelligence; and all of this intended to give a specific Russia impression. This predicate is presumably what John Durham is currently reviewing.

The key point of all that background is to see how committed the CIA and FBI were to the constructed narrative of Russia interfering with the 2016 election. The CIA, FBI, and by extension the DOJ, put a hell of a lot of work into it. Intelligence community work that Durham is now unraveling.

We also know specifically that John Durham is looking at the construct of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA); and talking to CIA analysts who participated in the construct of the January 2017 report that bolstered the false appearance of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This is important because it ties in to the next part that involves Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

On April 11th, 2019, the Julian Assange indictment was unsealed in the EDVA. From the indictment we discover it was under seal since March 6th, 2018 : (Link to pdf)

On Tuesday April 15th more investigative material was released . Again, note the dates: Grand Jury, * December of 2017 * This means FBI investigation prior to .

The FBI investigation took place prior to December 2017, it was coordinated through the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) where Dana Boente was U.S. Attorney at the time. The grand jury indictment was sealed from March of 2018 until after Mueller completed his investigation, April 2019 .

Why the delay?

What was the DOJ waiting for?

Here's where it gets interesting .

The FBI submission to the Grand Jury in December of 2017 was four months after congressman Dana Rohrabacher talked to Julian Assange in August of 2017: "Assange told a U.S. congressman he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents did not come from Russia."

( August 2017, The Hill Via John Solomon ) Julian Assange told a U.S. congressman on Tuesday he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents he published during last year's election did not come from Russia and promised additional helpful information about the leaks in the near future.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who is friendly to Russia and chairs an important House subcommittee on Eurasia policy, became the first American congressman to meet with Assange during a three-hour private gathering at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has been holed up for years.

Rohrabacher recounted his conversation with Assange to The Hill. "Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] emails during last year's presidential election," Rohrabacher said, "Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails."

Pressed for more detail on the source of the documents, Rohrabacher said he had information to share privately with President Trump. ( read more )

Knowing how much effort the CIA and FBI put into the Russia collusion-conspiracy narrative, it would make sense for the FBI to take keen interest after this August 2017 meeting between Rohrabacher and Assange; and why the FBI would quickly gather specific evidence (related to Wikileaks and Bradley Manning) for a grand jury by December 2017.

Within three months of the grand jury the DOJ generated an indictment and sealed it in March 2018. The EDVA sat on the indictment while the Mueller probe was ongoing.

As soon as the Mueller probe ended, on April 11th, 2019, a planned and coordinated effort between the U.K. and U.S. was executed; Julian Assange was forcibly arrested and removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and the EDVA indictment was unsealed ( link ).

As a person who has researched this three year fiasco; including the ridiculously false 2016 Russian hacking/interference narrative: "17 intelligence agencies", Joint Analysis Report (JAR) needed for Obama's anti-Russia narrative in December '16; and then a month later the ridiculously political Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in January '17; this timing against Assange is too coincidental.

It doesn't take a deep researcher to see the aligned Deep State motive to control Julian Assange because the Mueller report was dependent on Russia cybercrimes, and that narrative is contingent on the Russia DNC hack story which Julian Assange disputes.

This is critical. The Weissmann/Mueller report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election. This claim is directly disputed by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, as outlined during the Dana Rohrabacher interview, and by Julian Assange on-the-record statements.

The predicate for Robert Mueller's investigation was specifically due to Russian interference in the 2016 election. The fulcrum for this Russia interference claim is the intelligence community assessment; and the only factual evidence claimed within the ICA is that Russia hacked the DNC servers; a claim only made possible by relying on forensic computer analysis from Crowdstrike, a DNC contractor.

The CIA holds a massive conflict of self-interest in upholding the Russian hacking claim. The FBI holds a massive interest in maintaining that claim. All of those foreign countries whose intelligence apparatus participated with Brennan and Strzok also have a vested self-interest in maintaining that Russia hacking and interference narrative.

Julian Assange is the only person with direct knowledge of how Wikileaks gained custody of the DNC emails; and Assange has claimed he has evidence it was not from a hack.

This Russian "hacking" claim is ultimately so important to the CIA, FBI, DOJ, ODNI and U.K intelligence apparatus . Well, right there is the obvious motive to shut Assange down as soon intelligence officials knew the Mueller report was going to be public.

Now, if we know this, and you know this; and everything is cited and factual well, then certainly AG Bill Barr knows this.

The $64,000 dollar question is: will they say so publicly?


Non-Corporate Entity , 7 minutes ago

Former NSA chief Bill Binney has forensic evidence that it was a download not a hack!!! Hello?!?!

exige42 , 22 seconds ago

I believe this all holds true. My only hesitation is why Assange hasn't retaliated. He was holed up in an Embassy for how many years because of these bastards? He had to have known they were going to make a move on him sooner or later. Where is his dead plan? I hate how these corrupt evil bastards have gotten their way forever. There has got to be a turn on these SOBs. Where is the fight from these people who they are destroying ffs???!!!

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Dolar in a vortex , 1 minute ago

Jabba Barr and Bulldog Durham are a complete joke until they prove otherwise with significant indictments. And no, Steve Bannon doesn't count.

[Aug 20, 2020] Obama State Department Official Destroyed Records At Christopher Steele's Request - Zero Hedge

Aug 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Obama State Department Official Destroyed Records At Christopher Steele's Request by Tyler Durden Thu, 08/20/2020 - 15:05 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

In January 2017, former State Department official Jonathan Winer destroyed several years worth of reports from former UK spy Christopher Steele , at Steele's request, according to the Daily Caller , citing a report released Tuesday.

Winer, a former legislative assistant to former Sen. John Kerry who became the State Department's Special Envoy for Libya when Kerry was Secretary of State - was Steele's contact at the State Department, and received the now-debunked reports claiming that President Trump had been compromised by the Russians.

According to the Senate report , Winer disclosed that he destroyed reports that Steele had sent him over the years. The Senate report also says that Winer failed to reveal when asked in his first interview with the committee that he had arranged the meeting for Steele at the State Department months earlier. - Daily Caller

me title=

"After Steele's memos were published in the press in January 2017, Steele asked Winer to make note of having them, then either destroy all the earlier reports Steele had sent the Department of State or return them to Steele , out of concern that someone would be able to reconstruct his source network," reads the Senate report, which quote sWiner as saying " So I destroyed them, and I basically destroyed all the correspondence I had with him. "

In total, Winer had received over 100 intelligence reports from Steel between 2014 and 2016.

Emails that The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show that Winer shared Steele's reports with a small group of State Department officials. The Senate report says that the State Department was able to provide the committee with Steele's reports from 2015 and 2016, though most from 2014 are missing. - Daily Caller

In March, Steele told a UK court that he had "wiped" all of his dossier-linked correspondence in December, 2016 and January, 2017, and had no records of communications with his primary dossier source, Igor Danchenko.

In addition to receiving reports from Steele, Winer gave Steele various anti-Trump memos from Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal , which originated with Clinton "hatchet man" Cody Shearer. Winer claims he didn't think Steele would share the Clinton-sourced information with anyone else in the government.

about:blank

about:blank

me title=

"But I learned later that Steele did share them -- with the FBI, after the FBI asked him to provide everything he had on allegations relating to Trump, his campaign and Russian interference in U.S. elections," Winer wrote in a 2018 Op-Ed .

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Steele was paid $168,000 by opposition research firm Fusion GPS to produce his anti-Trump dossier, which was funded in part by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, who used law firm Perkins Coie as an intermediary.

Read the rest of the Daily Caller report here .

[Aug 19, 2020] Clinton and Cortez at democratic convention

Aug 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Peter AU1 , Aug 19 2020 4:53 utc | 6

John Lee

Probably best not have them both on the same stage to speak. Clinton might mistake Cortez for a secretary.

[Aug 12, 2020] Clinton absolutely worked with the CIA at Oxford. Even The Atlantic admits it, but tries to downplay it, which is exactly what you would expect from one of the parts of the "Mighty Wurlitzer"

Aug 12, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

William Gruff , Aug 12 2020 13:08 utc | 130

c1ue @108: "Or is this all a ploy for the CIA to control country music?"

Do you imagine that I am ignorantly using overly broad terminology when I say that the CIA's "Mighty Wurlitzer" encompasses the whole of the capitalist mass media ? Only juveniles would think the CIA limit their influence efforts to just CNN, FOX News, and MSNBC. Country music, like hiphop music and pop music, is part of capitalist mass media. The entertainment industry is an even more important vector for programming of media consumers than is the infotainment industry.

"In reality, the IS intel agencies recruit primarily from certain Ivy League all US universities."

Fixed that for you.

Or perhaps you mean strictly recruitment of only salaried CIA personnel with federal employee identification numbers? I would have hoped that a poster here at MoA should know that there is a clear distinction between an intelligence "operator" and an intelligence "agent" . It seems it should be obvious that non-employee intelligence assets require recruitment of one form or another as well.

I think it would be wise to assume that all of the top 5% students at all major universities have been evaluated and scouted by CIA "recruiters" . Any student who looks like they might go any place where they have any influence, either through talent or connections, will have a CIA "recruiter" sniffing their ass.

Naturally, nobody should assume that the CIA "recruiter" will approach their target and announce, "Hi! I'm your friendly neighborhood CIA recruiter!" Most recruits will be unlikely to ever even realize that they have been recruited.

Ex: CIA scum: "Hey, you told me you want to do investigative journalism after you graduate, right? I know someone over at Buzzfeed who says they're looking for someone right now. I could put in a good word for you!"

Now, the "recruit" could probably get a position at Buzzfeed after graduation anyway, but when she gets a call for an interview it seems too good to be true, so she puts her education on hold and takes the job. Meanwhile her "friend" introduces her to another "friend" with inside government info (the CIA controller hands off the asset to another controller). Our cub presstitute is grateful and indebted to both, now. When they approach her later requesting favors, she will gladly deliver, but at no point will she ever realize that she is in fact a CIA agent... an off-budget asset.

The thing with Faustian bargains is that they seem like a super good deal at the time, and the CIA shame the devil with their Faustian bargaining.

The above is, of course, just one of many approaches used by the CIA for recruitment. They are good at blackmail also, of course. As well, this is no extreme accusation. If you've spent any significant amount of time on a university campus with your eyes open (most people on university campuses are deeply engrossed in their own immediate situations) then you will have noticed these recruiters, and if you are recruitment material then you will have been approached by one or more of them. If you were engrossed in your own university trials and tribulations like most students then you could have been "befriended" by one without ever even knowing it.

In any case, Clinton absolutely worked with the CIA at Oxford. Even The Atlantic admits it, but tries to downplay it, which is exactly what you would expect from one of the parts of the "Mighty Wurlitzer" . They give a little bit of the truth to make the lie easier to swallow. Due to the Clintons' later involvement in the CIA's drug running schemes, it has become important in the official narrative for the Clintons' association with the CIA to be minimized.

Do bear in mind, though, that one can never retire from being an intelligence agent so long as the agency one was managed by continues to exist, in the same way and for the same reasons that one can never retire from being a goon for the mob. Clinton was a CIA agent from his time in Oxford to the present, and at all point in between. This requires no proof beyond the admission that Clinton was once a CIA agent. For processes that have no end, all you need to know about is their starting point.

[Aug 09, 2020] Do some research and you will find Hilary and her husband worked for Pappy Bush

Apr 18, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

From comments to Trump Campaign Time To Go After 'Liars' Who Started Witch Hunt Zero Hedge

stephysat28 , 8 hours ago link

Do some research it becomes clear quickly what the real story is. Hillary and her bunch stink to high heaven and have or YEARS. Started with her and husband. They sold this country o or personal gain.Just search a little and make sure to use factual information. It is there for anyone to find.

oddjob , 8 hours ago link

Do some research and you will find Hilary and her husband worked for Pappy Bush

[Aug 02, 2020] Clinton connection to Epstein was not accidental

Notable quotes:
"... Looks like Clinton "dicking (underage) blondes." I am shocked! ..."
Aug 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Mao , Aug 1 2020 4:15 utc | 66

In recently unsealed court documents involving dead child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, a woman named Virginia Giuffre, who publicly accused Epstein of sex trafficking, said that she once saw former Democratic President Bill Clinton on Epstein's island with "two young girls" from New York.

In the questioning by lawyer Jack Scarola, Guiffre was asked, "Do you have any recollection of Jeffrey Epstein's specifically telling you that 'Bill Clinton owes me favors?'"

"Yes, I do," Guiffre answered. "It was a laugh though. He would laugh it off. You know, I remember asking Jeffrey what's Bill Clinton doing here [on Epstein's island] kind of thing, and he laughed it off and said well he owes me favors."

https://www.newsweek.com/bill-clinton-went-jeffrey-epsteins-island-2-young-girls-virginia-giuffre-says-1521845


Hoarsewhisperer , Aug 1 2020 5:07 utc | 72

Interesting extract from Xymphora's July 31 blog entry...

Tweet (trappedpatriot):

"So they screwed up bigtime on the redactions for the Ghislaine Maxwell release today. You can literally copy and paste the redacted pages into notepad and read them. Check out document #143 for a great example. #Epstein #Maxwell"

The trick works (I'd like to think it is not a mistake but some direct action by a court employee who is tired of all the lies). From document #143 (a deposition of Maxwell where her lawyer instructs her not to answer most, but not all, questions:
...

I can wait for the Official Version but I'd be interested to hear if any of MoA's resident sleuths have found the copy/paste assertion to be true?

NemesisCalling , Aug 1 2020 5:55 utc | 74

@74 hoarse

Not holding my breath but my ears are perked.

It looks like they highlighted what was to be redacted in adobe instead of scanning redacted documents manually.

Somebody screwed up? Intentionally? Mistrial for Maxwell?

Looks like Clinton "dicking (underage) blondes." I am shocked!

Trump is looking clean and I would have already guessed it with his foray into the porn industry w/ Stormy Daniels. Whereas with paedophiles, it is about power and domination, when you are into a chick like Daniels, you are staying simple and "keeping your cart wheel in worn ruts." (Tao Te Ching)

[Aug 01, 2020] Unsealed docs say Bill Clinton was on 'pedophile island' w- 'young girls' cite Epstein saying former president 'owed him favor'

Aug 01, 2020 | www.rt.com

Newly unsealed files tied to the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking case imply that former US President Bill Clinton visited the investor's private island along with "young girls," and that the FBI knew well about the minors' abuse.

Comprising hundreds of pages of documents, the trove was released on Thursday night following a judge's order last week to have it unsealed, over the objections of Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend to Epstein who has recently been charged as an accomplice in his alleged sex-trafficking operation.

ALSO ON RT.COM US judge authorizes release of previously-sealed documents in case of Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell

The records stem from a 2015 defamation suit filed by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, which was placed under lock and key after the case was settled in 2017, but was recently unsealed, as a result of a lawsuit brought last year by conservative blogger Mike Cernovich and the Miami Herald newspaper.

Among other revelations, the documents indicate that former US president Bill Clinton consorted with "young girls" during at least one visit to Epstein's private resort in the Virgin Islands, where the billionaire was said to host regular "sex orgies."

"When you were present with Jeffery Epstein and Bill Clinton on the island, who else was there?" one witness – presumably Giuffre – was asked during an interview, to which she replied that Epstein, Maxwell, an unidentified woman named "Emmy" and "2 young girls" had been on the island with the former POTUS. The witness did not elaborate on Clinton's interactions with the girls, however.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1289016133052518401&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

The same witness also told her attorney in 2011 that she had overheard Epstein saying that Clinton owed him "favors," but noted she couldn't tell whether he was joking.

"He would laugh it off. You know, I remember asking Jeffrey 'What's Bill Clinton doing here?' and he laughed it off and said 'well he owes me a favor,'" she said. "He never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn't know if he was serious."

He told me a long time ago that everyone owes him favors. They're all in each other's pockets.

One of America's top law enforcement agencies was also apparently aware that underage girls were still being abused at Epstein's properties as far back as 2011 – years after he was sentenced for similar crimes in his first criminal case. During her defamation suit, Giuffre said she had provided the FBI a now widely circulated photo of herself and the UK's Prince Andrew – where he is pictured smiling with an arm around her bare waist.

In 2014, moreover, Giuffre contacted the FBI to request evidence they had previously seized from Epstein's residences to aid her civil case, suggesting the bureau had for long been informed of her allegations regarding Epstein and his continued involvement with minor girls.

Home USA News Unsealed docs say Bill Clinton was on 'pedophile island' w/ 'young girls' & cite Epstein saying former president 'owed him favor' 31 Jul, 2020 06:18 Get short URL FILE PHOTO: US Attorney Audrey Strauss speaks at a news conference announcing charges against Ghislaine Maxwell for her role in the sexual exploitation and abuse of minor girls by Jeffrey Epstein. © Reuters / Lucas Jackson 3593 Follow RT on RT Newly unsealed files tied to the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking case imply that former US President Bill Clinton visited the investor's private island along with "young girls," and that the FBI knew well about the minors' abuse.

Comprising hundreds of pages of documents, the trove was released on Thursday night following a judge's order last week to have it unsealed, over the objections of Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend to Epstein who has recently been charged as an accomplice in his alleged sex-trafficking operation.

ALSO ON RT.COM US judge authorizes release of previously-sealed documents in case of Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell

The records stem from a 2015 defamation suit filed by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, which was placed under lock and key after the case was settled in 2017, but was recently unsealed, as a result of a lawsuit brought last year by conservative blogger Mike Cernovich and the Miami Herald newspaper.

Among other revelations, the documents indicate that former US president Bill Clinton consorted with "young girls" during at least one visit to Epstein's private resort in the Virgin Islands, where the billionaire was said to host regular "sex orgies."

"When you were present with Jeffery Epstein and Bill Clinton on the island, who else was there?" one witness – presumably Giuffre – was asked during an interview, to which she replied that Epstein, Maxwell, an unidentified woman named "Emmy" and "2 young girls" had been on the island with the former POTUS. The witness did not elaborate on Clinton's interactions with the girls, however.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1289016133052518401&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

The same witness also told her attorney in 2011 that she had overheard Epstein saying that Clinton owed him "favors," but noted she couldn't tell whether he was joking.

"He would laugh it off. You know, I remember asking Jeffrey 'What's Bill Clinton doing here?' and he laughed it off and said 'well he owes me a favor,'" she said. "He never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn't know if he was serious."

He told me a long time ago that everyone owes him favors. They're all in each other's pockets.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1289039805528059904&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-2&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1289051260566384640&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

One of America's top law enforcement agencies was also apparently aware that underage girls were still being abused at Epstein's properties as far back as 2011 – years after he was sentenced for similar crimes in his first criminal case. During her defamation suit, Giuffre said she had provided the FBI a now widely circulated photo of herself and the UK's Prince Andrew – where he is pictured smiling with an arm around her bare waist.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-3&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1289028705818480642&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

In 2014, moreover, Giuffre contacted the FBI to request evidence they had previously seized from Epstein's residences to aid her civil case, suggesting the bureau had for long been informed of her allegations regarding Epstein and his continued involvement with minor girls.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-4&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1289021598561980416&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-5&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1289020613852635136&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

President Donald Trump also made an appearance in the unsealed papers. However, an associate of Epstein, Juan Alessi, said in an interview that Trump "never" stayed overnight while visiting Epstein's Palm Beach estate, and that he did not receive any "massages" there, as "he's got his own spa." An alleged victim also maintained that while Trump and Epstein were "good friends," Trump made no attempts to "flirt" with her. Home USA News Unsealed docs say Bill Clinton was on 'pedophile island' w/ 'young girls' & cite Epstein saying former president 'owed him favor' 31 Jul, 2020 06:18 Get short URL FILE PHOTO: US Attorney Audrey Strauss speaks at a news conference announcing charges against Ghislaine Maxwell for her role in the sexual exploitation and abuse of minor girls by Jeffrey Epstein. © Reuters / Lucas Jackson 3593 Follow RT on RT Newly unsealed files tied to the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking case imply that former US President Bill Clinton visited the investor's private island along with "young girls," and that the FBI knew well about the minors' abuse.

Comprising hundreds of pages of documents, the trove was released on Thursday night following a judge's order last week to have it unsealed, over the objections of Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend to Epstein who has recently been charged as an accomplice in his alleged sex-trafficking operation.

ALSO ON RT.COM US judge authorizes release of previously-sealed documents in case of Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell

The records stem from a 2015 defamation suit filed by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, which was placed under lock and key after the case was settled in 2017, but was recently unsealed, as a result of a lawsuit brought last year by conservative blogger Mike Cernovich and the Miami Herald newspaper.

Among other revelations, the documents indicate that former US president Bill Clinton consorted with "young girls" during at least one visit to Epstein's private resort in the Virgin Islands, where the billionaire was said to host regular "sex orgies."

"When you were present with Jeffery Epstein and Bill Clinton on the island, who else was there?" one witness – presumably Giuffre – was asked during an interview, to which she replied that Epstein, Maxwell, an unidentified woman named "Emmy" and "2 young girls" had been on the island with the former POTUS. The witness did not elaborate on Clinton's interactions with the girls, however.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1289016133052518401&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

The same witness also told her attorney in 2011 that she had overheard Epstein saying that Clinton owed him "favors," but noted she couldn't tell whether he was joking.

"He would laugh it off. You know, I remember asking Jeffrey 'What's Bill Clinton doing here?' and he laughed it off and said 'well he owes me a favor,'" she said. "He never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn't know if he was serious."

He told me a long time ago that everyone owes him favors. They're all in each other's pockets.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1289039805528059904&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-2&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1289051260566384640&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

One of America's top law enforcement agencies was also apparently aware that underage girls were still being abused at Epstein's properties as far back as 2011 – years after he was sentenced for similar crimes in his first criminal case. During her defamation suit, Giuffre said she had provided the FBI a now widely circulated photo of herself and the UK's Prince Andrew – where he is pictured smiling with an arm around her bare waist.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-3&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1289028705818480642&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

In 2014, moreover, Giuffre contacted the FBI to request evidence they had previously seized from Epstein's residences to aid her civil case, suggesting the bureau had for long been informed of her allegations regarding Epstein and his continued involvement with minor girls.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-4&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1289021598561980416&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-5&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1289020613852635136&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

President Donald Trump also made an appearance in the unsealed papers. However, an associate of Epstein, Juan Alessi, said in an interview that Trump "never" stayed overnight while visiting Epstein's Palm Beach estate, and that he did not receive any "massages" there, as "he's got his own spa." An alleged victim also maintained that while Trump and Epstein were "good friends," Trump made no attempts to "flirt" with her.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-6&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1289038574252433408&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-7&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1289043259403038720&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

Despite repeatedly insisting he had no ties to Epstein's sex-trafficking ring, legal scholar and former Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz is directly accused in the documents of having "sexual relations" with an underage girl. He is also said to have witnessed "the sexual abuse of many other minors by Epstein and several of Epstein's co-conspirators," and would later help to negotiate an undisclosed immunity deal for himself during Epstein's first criminal case. Home USA News Unsealed docs say Bill Clinton was on 'pedophile island' w/ 'young girls' & cite Epstein saying former president 'owed him favor' 31 Jul, 2020 06:18 Get short URL FILE PHOTO: US Attorney Audrey Strauss speaks at a news conference announcing charges against Ghislaine Maxwell for her role in the sexual exploitation and abuse of minor girls by Jeffrey Epstein. © Reuters / Lucas Jackson 3593 Follow RT on RT Newly unsealed files tied to the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking case imply that former US President Bill Clinton visited the investor's private island along with "young girls," and that the FBI knew well about the minors' abuse.

Comprising hundreds of pages of documents, the trove was released on Thursday night following a judge's order last week to have it unsealed, over the objections of Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend to Epstein who has recently been charged as an accomplice in his alleged sex-trafficking operation.

ALSO ON RT.COM US judge authorizes release of previously-sealed documents in case of Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell

The records stem from a 2015 defamation suit filed by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, which was placed under lock and key after the case was settled in 2017, but was recently unsealed, as a result of a lawsuit brought last year by conservative blogger Mike Cernovich and the Miami Herald newspaper.

Among other revelations, the documents indicate that former US president Bill Clinton consorted with "young girls" during at least one visit to Epstein's private resort in the Virgin Islands, where the billionaire was said to host regular "sex orgies."

"When you were present with Jeffery Epstein and Bill Clinton on the island, who else was there?" one witness – presumably Giuffre – was asked during an interview, to which she replied that Epstein, Maxwell, an unidentified woman named "Emmy" and "2 young girls" had been on the island with the former POTUS. The witness did not elaborate on Clinton's interactions with the girls, however.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1289016133052518401&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

The same witness also told her attorney in 2011 that she had overheard Epstein saying that Clinton owed him "favors," but noted she couldn't tell whether he was joking.

"He would laugh it off. You know, I remember asking Jeffrey 'What's Bill Clinton doing here?' and he laughed it off and said 'well he owes me a favor,'" she said. "He never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn't know if he was serious."

He told me a long time ago that everyone owes him favors. They're all in each other's pockets.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1289039805528059904&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-2&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1289051260566384640&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

One of America's top law enforcement agencies was also apparently aware that underage girls were still being abused at Epstein's properties as far back as 2011 – years after he was sentenced for similar crimes in his first criminal case. During her defamation suit, Giuffre said she had provided the FBI a now widely circulated photo of herself and the UK's Prince Andrew – where he is pictured smiling with an arm around her bare waist.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-3&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1289028705818480642&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

In 2014, moreover, Giuffre contacted the FBI to request evidence they had previously seized from Epstein's residences to aid her civil case, suggesting the bureau had for long been informed of her allegations regarding Epstein and his continued involvement with minor girls.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-4&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1289021598561980416&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fusa%2F496711-unsealed-epstein-docs-clinton-fbi%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px

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President Donald Trump also made an appearance in the unsealed papers. However, an associate of Epstein, Juan Alessi, said in an interview that Trump "never" stayed overnight while visiting Epstein's Palm Beach estate, and that he did not receive any "massages" there, as "he's got his own spa." An alleged victim also maintained that while Trump and Epstein were "good friends," Trump made no attempts to "flirt" with her.

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Despite repeatedly insisting he had no ties to Epstein's sex-trafficking ring, legal scholar and former Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz is directly accused in the documents of having "sexual relations" with an underage girl. He is also said to have witnessed "the sexual abuse of many other minors by Epstein and several of Epstein's co-conspirators," and would later help to negotiate an undisclosed immunity deal for himself during Epstein's first criminal case.

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More than 1,000 pages of documents from Giuffre's civil defamation case had previously been released in August 2019, indicating that a long list of wealthy and powerful figures regularly spent time with Epstein at his lavish properties. One day after that trove was unsealed, Epstein was found hanging in his Manhattan prison cell, dead from an apparent suicide after being charged with sex trafficking and imprisoned some weeks previously.

Maxwell was arrested and charged with procuring minors for sexual abuse earlier this month, after keeping a low profile in the period following Epstein's death. She has pleaded not guilty to six criminal counts and remains in custody without bail, after prosecutors had labeled her an "extreme" flight risk.

[Jul 31, 2020] Tucker Carlson calls Obama 'one of the sleaziest and most dishonest figures' in US political history

Highly recommended!
So Obama managed to beat Clinton? Incredible achievement !
BTW Gen. Flynn case goes 'all the way to the top' to Obama: Rep. Jordan
Jul 31, 2020 | www.msn.com

Tucker Carlson described former President Obama as "one of the sleaziest and most dishonest figures in the history of American politics" after his eulogy at the funeral of civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) on Thursday.

© The Hill tucker Carlson

Carlson, who also described the former president as "a greasy politician" for calling on Congress to pass a new Voting Rights Act and to eliminate the filibuster, which Obama described as a relic of the Jim Crow era that disenfranchised Black Americans, in order to do so.

me marginwidth=

"Barack Obama, one of the sleaziest and most dishonest figures in the history of American politics, used George Floyd's death at a funeral to attack the police," Carlson said before showing a segment of Obama's remarks.

Watch the latest video at foxnews.com

[Jul 29, 2020] Opinion - More willful blindness by the media on spying by Obama administration

Jul 29, 2020 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

More willful blindness by the media on spying by Obama administration

By Jonathan Turley

July 27, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - The Washington press corps seems engaged in a collective demonstration of the legal concept of willful blindness, or deliberately ignoring the facts, following the release of yet another declassified document which directly refutes prior statements about the investigation into Russia collusion. The document shows that FBI officials used a national security briefing of then candidate Donald Trump and his top aides to gather possible evidence for Crossfire Hurricane, its code name for the Russia investigation.

It is astonishing that the media refuses to see what is one of the biggest stories in decades. The Obama administration targeted the campaign of the opposing party based on false evidence. The media covered Obama administration officials ridiculing the suggestions of spying on the Trump campaign and of improper conduct with the Russia investigation. When Attorney General William Barr told the Senate last year that he believed spying did occur, he was lambasted in the media, including by James Comey and others involved in that investigation. The mocking "wow" response of the fired FBI director received extensive coverage.

The new document shows that, in summer 2016, FBI agent Joe Pientka briefed Trump campaign advisers Michael Flynn and Chris Christie over national security issues, standard practice ahead of the election. It had a discussion of Russian interference. But this was different. The document detailing the questions asked by Trump and his aides and their reactions was filed several days after that meeting under Crossfire Hurricane and Crossfire Razor, the FBI investigation of Flynn. The two FBI officials listed who approved the report are Kevin Clinesmith and Peter Strzok.

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Clinesmith is the former FBI lawyer responsible for the FISA surveillance conducted on members of the Trump campaign. He opposed Trump and sent an email after the election declaring "viva the resistance." He is now under review for possible criminal charges for altering a FISA court filing. The FBI used Trump adviser Carter Page as the basis for the original FISA application, due to his contacts with Russians. After that surveillance was approved, however, federal officials discredited the collusion allegations and noted that Page was a CIA asset. Clinesmith had allegedly changed the information to state that Page was not working for the CIA.

Strzok is the FBI agent whose violation of FBI rules led Justice Department officials to refer him for possible criminal charges. Strzok did not hide his intense loathing of Trump and famously referenced an "insurance policy" if Trump were to win the election. After FBI officials concluded there was no evidence of any crime by Flynn at the end of 2016, Strzok prevented the closing of the investigation as FBI officials searched for any crime that might be used to charge the incoming national security adviser.

Documents show Comey briefed President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden on the investigation shortly before the inauguration of Trump. When Comey admitted the communications between Flynn and Russian officials appeared legitimate, Biden reportedly suggested using the Logan Act, a law widely seen as unconstitutional and never been used to successfully convict a single person, as an alternative charge against Flynn. The memo contradicts eventual claims by Biden that he did not know about the Flynn investigation. Let us detail some proven but mostly unseen facts.

First, the Russia collusion allegations were based in large part on the dossier funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The Clinton campaign repeatedly denied paying for the dossier until after the election, when it was confronted with irrefutable evidence that the money had been buried among legal expenditures. As New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman wrote, "Folks involved in funding this lied about it and with sanctimony for a year."

Second, FBI agents had warned that dossier author Christopher Steele may have been used by Russian intelligence to plant false information to disrupt the election. His source for the most serious allegations claims that Steele misrepresented what he had said and that it was little more than rumors that were recast by Steele as reliable intelligence.

Third, the Obama administration had been told that the basis for the FISA application was dubious and likely false. Yet it continued the investigation, and then someone leaked its existence to the media. Another declassified document shows that, after the New York Times ran a leaked story on the investigation, even Strzok had balked at the account as misleading and inaccurate. His early 2017 memo affirmed that there was no evidence of any individuals in contact with Russians. This information came as the collusion stories were turning into a frenzy that would last years.

Fourth, the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and inspectors general found no evidence of collusion or knowing contact between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. What inspectors general did find were false statements or possible criminal conduct by Comey and others. While unable to say it was the reason for their decisions, they also found statements of animus against Trump and his campaign by the FBI officials who were leading the investigation. Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified he never would have approved renewal of the FISA surveillance and encouraged further investigation into such bias.

Finally, Obama and Biden were aware of the investigation, as were the administration officials who publicly ridiculed Trump when he said there was spying on his campaign. Others, like House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, declared they had evidence of collusion but never produced it. Countless reporters, columnists, and analysts still continue to deride, as writer Max Boot said it, the spinning of "absurd conspiracy theories" about how the FBI "supposedly spied on the Trump campaign."

Willful blindness has its advantages. The media covered the original leak and the collusion narrative, despite mounting evidence that it was false. They filled hours of cable news shows and pages of print with a collusion story discredited by the FBI. Virtually none of these journalists or experts have acknowledged that the collusion leaks were proven false, let alone pursue the troubling implications of national security powers being used to target the political opponents of an administration. But in Washington, success often depends not on what you see but what you can unsee.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates online @JonathanTurley . - " Source " -

[Jul 29, 2020] Deep state coup 1.0 - Conservapedia

Jul 29, 2020 | www.conservapedia.com

The Deep state coup attempt (sometimes called the soft coup or the "insurance policy" ) was an effort by high-level Obama administration intelligence community officials and holdovers to sabotage the agenda of President Donald Trump , remove him from power, and hide the illegal actions of the Obama administration.

Major players in the coup attempt were Barack Hussein Obama , Hillary Rodham Clinton , John Brennan , James Clapper , James Comey , Andrew McCabe , Rod Rosenstein , Sally Yates , Bruce Ohr , Andrew Weissmann and a host of other lower level DNC operatives in the US intelligence community and partisan aligned mainstream media organizations. Republican Sen. John McCain is also known to have shared information and worked with the plotters during the coup effort. [1]

[Jul 29, 2020] Keep hearing these things about Tashina "Tash" Gauhar, head of DoJ National Security Division seems to always be involved with all these things -- Clinton Emails, DNC/Weiner, Sessions recusal, Mueller liaison at DoJ, FISA warrants.

Tashina "Tash" Gauhar, also goes by Tanisha Guahar, is the Deputy Assistant Attorney General (DAAG) in the Department of Justice National Security Division (NSD). Gauhar is a FISA lawyer. Tash was at the DOJ since 2001, and she formerly served as assistant counsel and chief of operations in what was then called the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. She worked for DAG Rosenstein as she did for DAG Sally Yates. Tash Gauhar was the DAG's executor and enforcer for national security. Tashina Gauhar was/is best friends with Lisa Page . Tashina is reported to have attempted to get access to highly compartmentalized NSA information, and lied about being an appropriately cleared recipient.
Guahar is said to have been removed from her position in charge of FISA applications immediately after IG Michael Horowitz submitted his first draft report to Attorney General Bill Barr for classification review. Gauhar now reportedly works for Boeing . [1]
She is the DOJ/FBI lawyer at the heart of the Clinton-email investigation; the DOJ/FBI lawyer hired by Eric Holder at his firm and later at the DOJ; the DOJ/FBI lawyer who was transferred to the Clinton probe; the DOJ/FBI lawyer at the epicenter of the Weiner laptop issues, the only one from MYE who spoke to New York; the DOJ/FBI lawyer who constructs the FISA applications on behalf of Main Justice; . just happens to be the same DOJ/FBI lawyer recommending to AG Jeff Sessions that he recuse himself. Tashina Gauhar - Conservapedia
Jul 29, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Keep hearing these things about Tashina "Tash" Gauhar, head of DoJ National Security Division seems to always be involved with all these things -- Clinton Emails, DNC/Weiner, Sessions recusal, Mueller liaison at DoJ, FISA warrants.

Posted by: scott s. | 27 July 2020 at 08:50 PM

[Jul 29, 2020] The Curious Silence of the Traitors by Larry C Johnson - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Jul 29, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

27 JULY 2020 The Curious Silence of the Traitors by Larry C Johnson

Remember when John O. Brennan--Obama's CIA Director--and disgraced FBI agent, Peter Strzok, were regularly spewing anti-Trump diatribes on Twitter? Well, Strzok went silent on 11 July 2020 and Brennan did the same a week later (18 July 2020). I do not think that is a coincidence.

I have now heard from three separate sources that John Durham will have plea deals and/or indictments before 1 September 2020. Two of the first heads to roll likely will be lying lawyer Kevin Clinesmith , who deliberately withheld exculpatory from a FISA application to spy on Carter Page, and lover boy, Peter Strzok.

And then there is the retarded fool, John Brennan, who fancies himself as the Mozart of the Intelligence Community. Sorry John, you do not even qualify to clean Salieri's toliet. Until 9 days ago, John was a regular tweeter hurling foul invectives at Donald Trump.

Here are two examples of their July 11 screeds:

Trump's commutation of Stone apparently pushed them over the edge. Boo hoo. But since then it has been crickets from these two chowderheads. Has the past caught up with them? At least in Strzok's case he has retained legal representation. No indicator yet about Brennan. A competent lawyer would understand that tweets, especially those attacking the Trump Administration, is a potentially dangerous, self-incriminating activity.

More than two weeks of silence from Strzok and one week from Brennan does not appear to be a mere instance of having nothing to say. Lack of substance has not prevented these two buffoons from shooting their mouths off in the past. Is the day of reckoning nigh?


TV , 27 July 2020 at 06:08 PM

I sure hope so, but I'm not optimistic.
The swamp will not go willingly and Barr, for all his comments about "justice", is still a member in good standing.
Look at how the FBI is still out of control, hiding and shredding documents and the "career" lawyers are still operating the DOJ as an arm of the Democrat party.

Deap , 27 July 2020 at 07:24 PM

How long did Martha Stewart end up in the slammer? How much time did the Varsity Blues parents get in the Big House? People still do go to jail in this country for messing around with the facts.

Are Brennan and Strozk immune after trying to take down a sitting President, but trying to get your stupid kid into USC by cheating gets a prolonged close encounter with Bubba?

Surely, we don't have two systems of justice. One for government employees and one for the rest of us. I gather one does not "plea bargain" unless there is a case. Though Gen Flynn can still beg to differ with that presumption. Surely we are not intro framing suspects, even though their possible charge was framing the President.

Does the DOJ have clean hands at last, on Russiagate. And will a possible plea bargain finally lead to loss of their security clearances? And pensions. Did Clapper flip.

Deap , 27 July 2020 at 07:28 PM

Why was the "essential question" to only investigate the Trump campaign.

Facts in evidence clearly show Clinton was the one getting the Russians to interfere in the 2016 campaign. How is her Twitter account doing right now. Did she too drop into this sudden cone of silence?

scott s. , 27 July 2020 at 08:50 PM

Keep hearing these things about Tashina "Tash" Gauhar, head of DoJ National Security Division seems to always be involved with all these things -- Clinton Emails, DNC/Weiner, Sessions recusal, Mueller liaison at DoJ, FISA warrants.

Deap , 28 July 2020 at 01:03 AM

10AM EST - Tues - House Judiciary Hearings - Oversight of DOJ - AG Barr testifying.

nbsp; Fred , 28 July 2020 at 11:37 AM

Thanks for the write up Larry. The sounds of silence are deafening. The silence of riots apparently being news, until this instant, when Congressman Nadler was forced to see five minutes of it via video in the hearing room on Congress, to which he chastised the ranking member for not giving him 48 hours warning that truth would be shown. I wonder what antifa's masters have in store for us for the rest of the week, given their narrative is losing them voter support.

BillWade , 28 July 2020 at 01:33 PM

Strzok has a book coming out, "Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump". I'd rather see him sweating bullets before the Sep 8 release. Thanks Larry!

Deap , 28 July 2020 at 06:00 PM

Once behind bars, Strzok can't profit from his crime so this must be a frantic ghost-written doozie. And all Russia, Russia, Russia again. Talk about an issue that generates zero traction.

I think we can all write the plot upfront (OrangemanBad), upon with he will hang the most gauzy of facts Too bad he could not get Team Mueller to agree with him when it counted.

I mourn the trees sacrificed to his tawdry cause. Maintaining a wife and mistress at the same time however, does add up.

[Jul 26, 2020] Obamagate might have consequnces for Obama gang mambers but not for Obama, Biden and Clintons

Jul 26, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

MARK CHAPMAN July 24, 2020 at 5:20 pm

Former Flynn Deputy K.T. McFarland claims the Durham criminal inquiry into the friggin' in the riggin' of the "Russia Investigation" and who knew what and when at the FBI and elsewhere is just about ready to wrap up, and teases that we can expect indictments by the end of the summer. Solid documentary evidence in the form of meeting notes, email exchanges and the like has emerged, she says.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/ex-flynn-deputy-kt-mcfarland-john-durham-has-cold-hard-evidence-that-will-lead-to-indictments

[Jul 23, 2020] Fred Weir- Steele Dossier

This is a very primitive take of Steele dossier. It was part of obama color revolution attempt against Trump.
Jul 23, 2020 | eastwestaccord.com

About the Steele Dossier. From the beginning I was nagged by the question of whether anyone had seriously dug into its provenance? I mean, the chain of custody is critical in evaluating evidence, isn't it? But that didn't seem to matter to most conversations about it for the longest time. The impression was left hanging that Christopher Steele, crackerjack agent, had got the inside stuff straight from people in or near the Kremlin.

Now we learn that the FBI did interview Steele's main conduit for all those claims -- "Primary Sub-source" -- intensively, for three days, early in the Trump administration. They just never bothered to release any of their findings to the public, even as the dossier's main claim -- Trump is a Kremlin agent of long standing, beholden to Putin due to some pee tape kompromat -- took hold in the American political mind and became an article of faith for some. Still is.

The FBI notes of that interview were released just a few days ago. And they reveal the "dossier" had zero original reporting. It was concocted entirely from rumors picked up second-or-third hand, inventive guesses, drunken conversations with persons of no particular expertise, pillow talk between the main sub-source and his dependent Russian lady friend, and fragments of a garbled phone call with a "source" whose identity could not be even approximately established.

In other words, it's way worse than even I thought. And regular readers of this page know pretty well what I thought about the likely veracity of the Steele Dossier. That such a pathetic tissue of speculation, delirium and outright falsehood could capture the American political imagination and drive debate -- for years! -- is simply astounding.

"Much of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Donald Trump was built on the premise that Christopher Steele and his dossier were to be believed. This even though, early on, Steele's claims failed to bear scrutiny. Just how far off the claims were became clear when the FBI interviewed Steele's "Primary Subsource" over three days beginning on Feb. 9, 2017. Notes taken by FBI agents of those interviews were released by the Senate Judiciary Committee Friday afternoon."

[Jul 21, 2020] Tracing John Gleeson, a helper for Flynn Judge Emmet Sullivan, and Andrew Weissmann of the Robert Mueller group - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Jul 21, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"Getting" Flynn was the key to neutering the danger Trump posed to the deep state, since General Flynn was the one military advisor to Trump who was knowledgeable and who had recognized the salient fact that, under Obama, the US was employing the "raghead" element to do their bidding in Syria and elsewhere.

Without Flynn, Trump, who like many has a tendency to accept the views of credentialled experts, could be convinced to continue the deep state policy of permanent warfare aided by jihadist barbarians. Trump's tragedy was that he accepted what appeared to be the inevitable and allowed Flynn to be taken down.

Posted by: exiled off mainstreet | 21 July 2020 at 06:59 PM

[Jul 20, 2020] Who was Steele's primary Subsource and who belong his circle of heavily drinking buddies who brainstormed the set of myth which Steele put in the dossier

Did Skripal played any role in this mess. In this case his poisoning looks more logical as an attempt to hide him from Russians, who might well suspect him in playing a role in creating Steele dossier by some myths that were present in it.
Notable quotes:
"... Even Beria would laugh at this kind of "evidence". ..."
Jul 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Eric Felten via RealClearInvestigations.com,

Much of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Donald Trump was built on the premise that Christopher Steele and his dossier were to be believed. This even though, early on, Steele's claims failed to bear scrutiny. Just how far off the claims were became clear when the FBI interviewed Steele's "Primary Subsource" over three days beginning on Feb. 9, 2017. Notes taken by FBI agents of those interviews were released by the Senate Judiciary Committee Friday afternoon.

The Primary Subsource was in reality Steele's sole source, a long-time Russian-speaking contractor for the former British spy's company, Orbis Business Intelligence. In turn, the Primary Subsource had a group of friends in Russia. All of their names remain redacted. From the FBI interviews it becomes clear that the Primary Subsource and his friends peddled warmed-over rumors and laughable gossip that Steele dressed up as formal intelligence memos.

Paul Manafort: The Steele dossier's "Primary Subsource" admitted to the FBI "that he was 'clueless' about who Manafort was, and that this was a 'strange task' to have been given." AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File

Steele's operation didn't rely on great expertise, to judge from the Primary Subsource's account. He described to the FBI the instructions Steele had given him sometime in the spring of 2016 regarding Paul Manafort: "Do you know [about] Manafort? Find out about Manafort's dealings with Ukraine, his dealings with other countries, and any corrupt schemes." The Primary Subsource admitted to the FBI "that he was 'clueless' about who Manafort was, and that this was a 'strange task' to have been given."

The Primary Subsource said at first that maybe he had asked some of his friends in Russia – he didn't have a network of sources, according to his lawyer, but instead just a "social circle." And a boozy one at that: When the Primary Subsource would get together with his old friend Source 4, the two would drink heavily. But his social circle was no help with the Manafort question and so the Primary Subsource scrounged up a few old news clippings about Manafort and fed them back to Steele.

Also in his "social circle" was Primary Subsource's friend "Source 2," a character who was always on the make. "He often tries to monetize his relationship with [the Primary Subsource], suggesting that the two of them should try and do projects together for money," the Primary Subsource told the FBI (a caution that the Primary Subsource would repeat again and again.) It was Source 2 who "told [the Primary Subsource] that there was compromising material on Trump."

And then there was Source 3, a very special friend. Over a redacted number of years, the Primary Subsource has "helped out [Source 3] financially." She stayed with him when visiting the United States. The Primary Subsource told the FBI that in the midst of their conversations about Trump, they would also talk about "a private subject." (The FBI agents, for all their hardnosed reputation, were too delicate to intrude by asking what that "private subject" was).

Michael Cohen: The bogus story of the Trump fixer's trip to Prague seems to have originated with "Source 3," a woman friend of the Primary Subsource, who was "not sure if Source 3 was brainstorming here." AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File

One day Steele told his lead contractor to get dirt on five individuals. By the time he got around to it, the Primary Subsource had forgotten two of the names, but seemed to recall Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. The Primary Subsource said he asked his special friend Source 3 if she knew any of them. At first she didn't. But within minutes she seemed to recall having heard of Cohen, according to the FBI notes. Indeed, before long it came back to her that she had heard Cohen and three henchmen had gone to Prague to meet with Russians.

Source 3 kept spinning yarns about Michael Cohen in Prague. For example, she claimed Cohen was delivering "deniable cash payments" to hackers. But come to think of it, the Primary Subsource was "not sure if Source 3 was brainstorming here," the FBI notes say.

The Steele Dossier would end up having authoritative-sounding reports of hackers who had been "recruited under duress by the FSB" -- the Russian security service -- and how they "had been using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct 'altering operations' against the the Democratic Party." What exactly, the FBI asked the subject, were "altering operations?" The Primary Subsource wouldn't be much help there, as he told the FBI "that his understanding of this topic (i.e. cyber) was 'zero.'" But what about his girlfriend whom he had known since they were in eighth grade together? The Primary Subsource admitted to the FBI that Source 3 "is not an IT specialist herself."

And then there was Source 6. Or at least the Primary Subsource thinks it was Source 6.

Ritz-Carlton Moscow: The Primary Subsource admitted to the FBI "he had not been able to confirm the story" about Trump and prostitutes at the hotel. But he did check with someone who supposedly asked a hotel manager, who said that with celebrities, "one never knows what they're doing." Moscowjob.net/Wikimedia

While he was doing his research on Manafort, the Primary Subsource met a U.S. journalist "at a Thai restaurant." The Primary Subsource didn't want to ask "revealing questions" but managed to go so far as to ask, "Do you [redacted] know anyone who can talk about all of this Trump/Manafort stuff, or Trump and Russia?" According to the FBI notes, the journalist told Primary Subsource "that he was skeptical and nothing substantive had turned up." But the journalist put the Primary Subsource in touch with a "colleague" who in turn gave him an email of "this guy" journalist 2 had interviewed and "that he should talk to."

With the email address of "this guy" in hand, the Primary Subsource sent him a message "in either June or July 2016." Some weeks later the Primary Subsource "received a telephone call from an unidentified Russia guy." He "thought" but had no evidence that the mystery "Russian guy" was " that guy." The mystery caller "never identified himself." The Primary Subsource labeled the anonymous caller "Source 6." The Primary Subsource and Source 6 talked for a total of "about 10 minutes." During that brief conversation they spoke about the Primary Subsource traveling to meet the anonymous caller, but the hook-up never happened.

Nonetheless, the Primary Subsource labeled the unknown Russian voice "Source 6" and gave Christopher Steele the rundown on their brief conversation – how they had "a general discussion about Trump and the Kremlin" and "that it was an ongoing relationship." For use in the dossier, Steele named the voice Source E.

When Steele was done putting this utterly unsourced claim into the style of the dossier, here's how the mystery call from the unknown guy was presented: "Speaking in confidence to a compatriot in late July 2016, Source E, an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald TRUMP, admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between them and the Russian leadership." Steele writes "Inter alia," – yes, he really does deploy the Latin formulation for "among other things" – "Source E acknowledged that the Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee [DNC], to the WikiLeaks platform."

All that and more is presented as the testimony of a "close associate" of Trump, when it was just the disembodied voice of an unknown guy.

Perhaps even more perplexing is that the FBI interviewers, knowing that Source E was just an anonymous caller, didn't compare that admission to the fantastical Steele bluster and declare the dossier a fabrication on the spot.

But perhaps it might be argued that Christopher Steele was bringing crack investigative skills of his own to bear. For something as rich in detail and powerful in effect as the dossier, Steele must have been researching these questions himself as well, using his hard-earned spy savvy to pry closely held secrets away from the Russians. Or at the very least he must have relied on a team of intelligence operatives who could have gone far beyond the obvious limitations the Primary Subsource and his group of drinking buddies.

But no. As we learned in December from Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Steele "was not the originating source of any of the factual information in his reporting." Steele, the IG reported "relied on a primary sub-source (Primary Sub-source) for information, and this Primary Sub-source used a network of [further] sub-sources to gather the information that was relayed to Steele." The inspector general's report noted that "neither Steele nor the Primary Sub-source had direct access to the information being reported."

One might, by now, harbor some skepticism about the dossier. One might even be inclined to doubt the story that Trump was "into water sports" as the Primary Subsource so delicately described the tale of Trump and Moscow prostitutes. But, in this account, there was an effort, however feeble, to nail down the "rumor and speculation" that Trump engaged in "unorthodox sexual activity at the Ritz."

While the Primary Subsource admitted to the FBI "he had not been able to confirm the story," Source 2 (who will be remembered as the hustler always looking for a lucrative score) supposedly asked a hotel manager about Trump and the manager said that with celebrities, "one never knows what they're doing." One never knows – not exactly a robust proof of something that smacks of urban myth. But the Primary Subsource makes the best of it, declaring that at least "it wasn't a denial."

If there was any denial going on it was the FBI's, an agency in denial that its extraordinary investigation was crumbling.

bh2, 23 minutes ago

Even Beria would laugh at this kind of "evidence".


[Jul 19, 2020] Judicial Watch Uncovers Explosive FBI Emails Appearing To Reference A White House 'Confidential Informant' by Sara Carter

Obama administration was not simply dirty. It was criminal to the core.
Jul 17, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
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Authored by Sara Carter via SaraACarter.com,

A top government watchdog group obtained 136 pages of never before publicized emails between former FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and one in particular appears to refer to a confidential informant inside the White House in 2017, according to a press release from Judicial Watch .

Those emails, some of which are heavily redacted, reveal that "Strzok, Page and top bureau officials in the days prior to and following President Donald Trump's inauguration discussing a White House counterintelligence briefing that could "play into" the FBI's "investigative strategy."

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Moreover, another email sent by Strzok to Bill Priestap, the Former Assistant Director for the Counterintelligence Division, refers to what appears to be a confidential informant in the White House. The email was sent the day after Trump's inauguration.

"I heard from [redacted] about the WH CI briefing routed from [redacted]," wrote Strzok. " I am angry that Jen did not at least cc: me, as my branch has pending investigative matters there, this brief may play into our investigative strategy, and I would like the ability to have visibility and provide thoughts/counsel to you in advance of the briefing. This is one of the reasons why I raised the issue of lanes/responsibilities that I did when you asked her to handle WH detailee interaction."

In April, 2019 this reporter first published information that there was an alleged confidential informant for the FBI in the White House. In fact, then senior Republican Chairmen of the Senate Appropriations Committee Charles Grassley and Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson submitted a letter to Department of Justice Attorney General William Barr revealing the new texts from Strzok to Page showing the pair had discussed attempts to recruit sources within the White House to allegedly spy on the Trump administration.

The Chairmen revealed the information in a three page letter. The texts had been already been obtained by SaraACarter.com and information regarding the possible attempt to recruit White House sources had been divulged by several sources to this news site last week.

At the time, texts obtained by this news site and sources stated that Strzok had one significant contact within the White House – at the time that would have been Vice President Mike Pence's Chief of Staff Joshua Pitcock, as reported.

Over the past year, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, along with years of numerous Congressional investigations, has uncovered a plethora of documentation revealing the most intimate details of the FBI's now debunked investigation into Trump's campaign and its alleged conspiracy with Russia.

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For example, in a series of emails exchanged by top bureau officials – in the FBI General Counsel's office, Counterintelligence Division and Washington Field office on Jan. 19, 2017 – reveal that senior leadership, including former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were coordinating with each other in their ongoing attempt to target the incoming administration. Priestap was also included in the email exchanges. The recent discovery in April, of Priestap's handwritten notes taken in January, 2017 before the Strzok and his FBI partner interviewed Flynn were a bombshell. In Priestap's notes he states, "What's our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"

In one recent email chain obtained by Judicial Watch, FBI assistant general counsel in the FBI's National Security Law Branch stated in an email to Strzok [which was almost entirely redacted]

"I'll give Trisha/Baker a heads up too," it stated. Strzok's reply to the assistant general counsel, however, was redacted by DOJ. The response back to Strzok has also been redacted.

Then later in the evening at 7:04 p.m., Strzok sends another emails stating, "I briefed Bill (Priestap) this afternoon and he was trying without success to reach the DD [McCabe]. I will forward below to him as his [sic] changes the timeline. What's your recommendation?"

The reply, like many of the documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the DOJ, is almost entirely redacted. The email response to Strzok was from the Counterintelligence Division.

Here's what was not redacted

"Approved by tomorrow afternoon is the request. [Redacted] – please advise if I am missing something." An unidentified official replies, "[Redacted], Bill is aware and willing to jump in when we need him."

Judicial Watch Timeline of Events On Emails Obtained Through FOIA

At 8 p.m., Strzok responds back (copying officials in the Counterintelligence Division, Washington Field Office and General Counsel's office):

"Just talked with Bill. [Redacted]. Please relay above to WFO and [redacted] tonight, and keep me updated with plan for meet and results of same. Good luck."

Strzok then forwards the whole email exchange to Lisa Page, saying, "Bill spoke with Andy. [Redacted.] Here we go again "

The Day After Trump's Inauguration

The day after Trump's inauguration, on Jan. 21, 2017, Strzok forwarded Page and [a redacted person] an email he'd sent that day to Priestap. Strzok asked them to "not forward/share."

In the email to Priestap, Strzok said, "I heard from [redacted] about the WH CI briefing routed from [redacted]. I am angry that Jen did not at least cc: me, as my branch has pending investigative matters there, this brief may play into our investigative strategy , and I would like the ability to have visibility and provide thoughts/counsel to you in advance of the briefing. This is one of the reasons why I raised the issue of lanes/responsibilities that I did when you asked her to handle WH detailee interaction."

" Also, on January 21, 2017, Strzok wrote largely the same message he'd sent to Priestap directly to his counterintelligence colleague Jennifer Boone ," states Judicial Watch.

* * *

From Judicial Watch Press Release:

The records were produced to Judicial Watch in a January 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the DOJ failed to respond to a December 2017 request for all communications between Strzok and Page ( Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-00154)).

The FBI has only processed emails at a rate of 500 pages per month and has yet to process text messages. At this rate, the production of these communications, which still number around 8,000 pages, would not be completed until at least late 2021.

In other emails, Strzok comments on reporting on the anti-Trump dossier authored by Hillary Clinton's paid operative Christopher Steele.

In a January 2017 email , Strzok takes issue with a UK Independent report which claimed Steele had suspected there was a "cabal" within the FBI which put the Clinton email investigation above the Trump-Russia probe. Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence agent, was at the heart of both the Clinton email and Trump-Russia investigations.

In April and June of 2017, the FBI would use the dossier as key evidence in obtaining FISA warrants to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page. In a declassified summary of a Department of Justice assessment of the warrants that was released by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in January of this year, it was determined that those two applications to secretly monitor Page lacked probable cause.

The newly released records include a January 11, 2017, email from Strzok to Lisa Page, Priestap, and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Jon Moffa, a New York Times report which refers to the dossier as containing "unsubstantiated accounts" and "unproven claims." In the email, Strzok comments on the article, calling it "Pretty good reporting."

On January 14, 2017, FBI Assistant Director for Public Affairs Michael Kortan forwards to Strzok, Page and Priestap a link to a UK Independent article entitled "Former MI6 Agent Christopher Steele's Frustration as FBI Sat On Donald Trump Russia File for Months".

The article, citing security sources, notes that "Steele became increasingly frustrated that the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He came to believe there was a cover-up: that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Clinton's emails."

Strzok responds: "Thanks Mike. Of course not accurate [the cover-up/cabal nonsense]. Is that question gaining traction anywhere else?"

The records also include a February 10, 2017, email from Strzok to Page mentioning then-national security adviser Michael Flynn (five days before Flynn resigned) and includes a photo of Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Strzok also makes a joke about how McCabe had fat shamed Kislyak.

On February 8, 2017, Strzok, under the subject "RE: EO on Economic Espionage," emailed Lisa Page, saying, "Please let [redacted] know I talked to [redacted]. Tonight, he approached Flynn's office and got no information." Strzok was responding to a copy of an email Page had sent him. The email, from a redacted FBI official to Deputy Director McCabe read: "OPS has not received a draft EO on economic espionage. Instead, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce advised OPS that they received a draft, but they did not send us the draft. I'll follow up with our detailees about this EO." Flynn resigned on February 13, 2017.

On January 26, 2017, Nancy McNamara of the FBI's Inspection Division emailed Strzok and Priestap with the subject line "Leak," saying, "Tried calling you but the phones are forwarded to SIOC. I got the tel call report, however [redacted]. Feel free to give me a call if I have it wrong." Strzok forwarded the McNamara email to Lisa Page and an unidentified person in the General Counsel's office, saying, "Need to talk to you about how to respond to this."

On January 11, 2017, Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff emailed Kortan, saying he'd learned that Steele had worked for the Bureau's Eurasian organized crime section and had turned over the dossier on Trump-Russian "collusion" to the bureau in Rome. Kortan forwards Isikoff's email to aide Richard Quinn, who forwards to Strzok "just for visibility". Strzok forwards to his boss, Priestap and Moffa, saying, "FYI, [redacted], you or I should probably inform [redacted]. How's your relationship with him? Bill unless you object, I'll let Parmaan [presumably senior FBI official Bryan Paarmann] know." Strzok forwards the whole exchange onto Lisa Page.

On January 18, 2017, reporter Peter Elkind of ProPublica reached out to Kortan, asking to interview Strzok, Michael Steinbach, Jim Baker, Priestap, former FBI Director James Comey and DEA administrator Chuck Rosenberg for a story Elkind was working on. Kortan replied, "Okay, I will start organizing things." Further along in the thread, an FBI Press Office official reached out to an FBI colleague for assistance with the interviews, saying Steinbach had agreed to a "background discussion" with Elkind, who was "writing the 'definitive' account of what happened during the Clinton investigation, specifically, Comey's handling of the investigation, seeking to reconstruct and explain in much greater detail what he did and why he did it." In May 2017, Elkind wrote an article titled "The Problems With the FBI's Email Investigation Went Well Beyond Comey," which in light of these documents, strongly suggests many FBI officials leaked to the publication.

Strzok ended up being scheduled to meet with Elkind at 9:30 a.m. on January 31, 2017, before an Elkind interview of Comey's chief of staff Jim Rybicki. Elkind's reporting on the Clinton email investigation was discussed at length in previous emails obtained by Judicial Watch.

"These documents suggest that President Trump was targeted by the Comey FBI as soon as he stepped foot in the Oval Office," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "And now we see how the Comey FBI was desperate to spin, through high-level leaks, its mishandling of the Clinton email investigation. And, in a continuing outrage, it should be noted that Wray's FBI and Barr's DOJ continue slow-walk the release of thousands of Page-Strzok emails – which means the remaining 8,000 pages of records won't be reviewed and released until 2021-2022!"

In February 2020, Judicial Watch uncovered an August 2016 email in which Strzok says that Clinton, in her interview with the FBI about her email controversy, apologized for "the work and effort" it caused the bureau and she said she chose to use it "out of convenience" and that "it proved to be anything but." Strzok said Clinton's apology and the "convenience" discussion were "not in" the FBI 302 report that summarized the interview.

Also in February, Judicial Watch made public Strzok-Page emails showing their direct involvement in the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the bureau's investigation of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The records also show additional "confirmed classified emails" were found on Clinton's unsecure non-state.gov email server "beyond the number presented" in then-FBI Director James Comey's statements; Strzok and Page questioning the access the DOJ was granting Clinton's lawyers; and Page revealing that the DOJ was making edits to FBI 302 reports related to the Clinton Midyear Exam investigation. The emails detail a discussion about "squashing" an issue related to the Seth Rich controversy.

In January 2020, Judicial Watch uncovered Strzok-Page emails that detail special accommodations given to the lawyers of Clinton and her aides during the FBI investigation of the Clinton email controversy.

In November 2019, Judicial Watch revealed Strzok-Page emails that show the attorney representing three of Clinton's aides were given meetings with senior FBI officials.

Also in November, Judicial Watch uncovered emails revealing that after Clinton's statement denying the transmission of classified information over her unsecure email system, Strzok sent an email to FBI officials citing "three [Clinton email] chains" containing (C) [classified] portion marks in front of paragraphs."

In a related case, in May 2020, Judicial Watch received the " electronic communication " (EC) that officially launched the counterintelligence investigation, termed "Crossfire Hurricane," of President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The document was written by former FBI official Peter Strzok.

[Jul 18, 2020] Real Russiagate bombshell -- FBI knew Steele dossier was fiction, Strzok notes show NYTimes reporting misleading and inaccurate

Notable quotes:
"... "primary sub-source" ..."
"... "misleading and inaccurate" ..."
"... "no evidence" ..."
"... Interestingly, June 2017 is when the FBI and DOJ signed off on the last extension of the FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign via adviser Carter Page. The warrant was signed by acting FBI director and Comey's former deputy Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein – who wrote both the memo used to fire Comey and the scope memo for the Mueller investigation. ..."
"... Evidence has shown that the initial FISA warrant against Page – in October 2016, shortly before the election – and the three renewals all relied heavily on the Steele Dossier, without making it clear to the court that it was unverified opposition research compiled at the behest of a rival political party. ..."
"... "miscarriage of justice" ..."
"... "collusion" ..."
"... Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! ..."
"... the infamous dossier used as a pretext to spy on President Donald Trump's campaign was unreliable ..."
Jul 17, 2020 | www.rt.com

New documents show the FBI was aware that the infamous dossier used as a pretext to spy on President Donald Trump's campaign was unreliable, and that the New York Times published false information about the 'Russiagate' probe.

The two documents were published on Friday by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), as part of an ongoing probe of the FBI's investigation of Trump. One is a 59-page, heavily redacted interview of the "primary sub-source" for Christopher Steele, the British spy commissioned through a series of cut-outs by the Hillary Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump during the 2016 election campaign.

While the identity of the source is hidden, the document makes it clear it was not a current or former Russian official, but a non-Russian employee of Steele's British company, Orbis. The source's testimony seriously questioned the claims made in the dossier – which is best known for the salacious accusation that Trump was being blackmailed by Russia with tapes of an alleged sex romp in a Moscow hotel.

The second, and more intriguing, document is a five-page printout of a February 14, 2017 article from the New York Times, along with 13 notes by Peter Strzok, one of the senior FBI agents handling the Russiagate probe. The article was published five days after the FBI interview with the sub-source, and Strzok actually shows awareness of it (in note 11, specifically).

In the very first note, Strzok labeled as "misleading and inaccurate" the claim by the New York Times that the Trump campaign had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials before the 2016 election, noting there was "no evidence" of this.

Likewise, Strzok denied the FBI was investigating Roger Stone (note 10) – a political operative eventually indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller over allegedly lying about (nonexistent) ties to WikiLeaks, whose sentence Trump recently commuted to outrage from 'Russiagate' proponents. Nor was Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort on any calls involving Russian government officials, contrary to claims by the Times (note 3).

Not only did the FBI know the story was false, in part based on the knowledge they had from Steele's source, but the recently ousted FBI director Jim Comey had openly disputed it in June 2017. The paper stood by its reporting.

Interestingly, June 2017 is when the FBI and DOJ signed off on the last extension of the FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign via adviser Carter Page. The warrant was signed by acting FBI director and Comey's former deputy Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein – who wrote both the memo used to fire Comey and the scope memo for the Mueller investigation.

Evidence has shown that the initial FISA warrant against Page – in October 2016, shortly before the election – and the three renewals all relied heavily on the Steele Dossier, without making it clear to the court that it was unverified opposition research compiled at the behest of a rival political party.

ALSO ON RT.COM So it wasn't 'by the book'? Strzok notes reveal Obama & Biden were involved in FBI going after General Flynn

The last two renewals, in April and June 2017, were requested after the sub-source interview. Commenting on the document release, Sen. Graham called these two renewals a "miscarriage of justice" and argued that the FBI and the Department of Justice should have stopped and re-evaluated their case.

Mueller eventually found no "collusion" between Trump and Russia as alleged by the Democrats, but not before a dozen people – from Stone and Manafort to Trump's first national security adviser Michael Flynn and innocent Russian student Maria Butina – became casualties of the investigation.

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Austin Rock 22 hours ago Staggering is the monumental deceitful effort to hitch Trump to Russia. And yet for MSM and their poodles in the press no barb thrown is too outragious, no smear is too false enough. With Google, Twitter and Facebook on board we Europeans are being played. But we Europeans are not as stupid as your average US punter. These pathetic fairy tales are an embarressement to journalism.

[Jul 18, 2020] Devin Nunes on new revelations about origins of the Russia probe -- We want indictments

Jul 17, 2020 | news.yahoo.com

Senate panel releases key FBI memo on Christopher Steele; reaction from John Solomon, co-author of 'Fallout,' and Rep. Devin Nunes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.

[Jul 18, 2020] The New Peter Strzok Notes Just Made the NYT Look Like Bigger Idiots Over Their Trump-Russia Collusion Peddling

Jul 18, 2020 | townhall.com

The Trump-Russia collusion story continues to be eaten away, and these new notes from disgraced ex-FBI Agent Peter Strzok center on The New York Times and their reporting that got the ball rolling on this media manufactured myth. Yes, it's about time we say that because these documents, which analyzed the piece about Trump aides having contacts with Russian intelligence officials before the 2016 election, has more utility being used to catch crap from birdcages now that's been exposed as a fraud. In 2017, this "bombshell" dropped . Even at the outset, there was still no evidence of collusion. Just rumor and unsubstantiated gossip.

"The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation," that's what the Times had in their piece. It's one of the many bombshells that turned out to be nothing burgers, part of the liberal media's Russia fetish that turned into one of the biggest, if not the biggest , journalism fails ever. It's sad, really. All one had to do was merely accept that Lady McBeth, aka Hillary Rodham Clinton, lost the 2016 election. Any person with cognitive function knew that this story was just simply too good to be true. Second, when weeks and months go by and no evidence arises, it's a dud. When multiple "breaks" in the case, arise and turn out to be garbage -- there's nothing to the story. It's not real. It's a myth, but the anti-Trump opposition press kept pressing and pressing until we got a clown show the likes of which we have never seen. Now, part of it is a bit annoying because we all knew the truth before these clowns did, but seeing these guys fail and have their work just be totally trashed, burned to a crisp, and then pissed on is just pure gold. Two words that can be applied to the entire Democrat-media complex: Suck. It.

So, let's get to the notes that deliver a tomahawk to the face of the liberal media. Based on the FBI's notes, pretty much everything in it was a lie. "Misleading, inaccurate, and no evidence" are the key phrases Strzok used concerning this fake news story. The story said that Paul Manafort was plugged into the calls. The FBI said, "We are unaware of any calls with any Russian govt official in which Manafort was a party."

The publication said Roger Stone was part of the FBI's Russian inquiry. The FBI denied this. Then-FBI Director James Comey, who would later be fired for cause in May of 2017, also disputed the story but the NYT decided to stand by it because 'orange man bad.' Well, they do deserve Pulitzers I guess for being the biggest dupes in the business for taking fake information at face value. Has the media learned that yet too? Probably not because they're all abjectly stupid people, but not all classified information is true. It can be false. Remember that next time you report on leaks about North Korean Kim Jong-un being brain dead.

The ripple effect from stories like this was severe. It led scores of reporters down a media-manufactured alternate reality that some have not climbed out of yet. They took the blue pill and remained in wonderland.

"Ignorance is bliss," or maybe in this case just pure unadulterated idiocy.

You guys were wrong. How many times do we have to hit you on the head with a baseball bat until you get it? You were wrong. Your stories were trash, based in lies and false information and weaponized by Democrats to try and usurp a duly elected president because you don't like him. You're all entitled brats who deserve an ass-kicking. And Barack Obama appears to be calling the shots on some of the major battles in this fake news fiasco, specifically when it comes to Michael Flynn, who has been vindicated regarding his role in this whole mess. He was innocent and targeted by former members of the Obama administration, including former Vice President Joe Biden.


[Jul 09, 2020] Indictments Imminent In 'Obamagate' Probe by John Solomon

Notable quotes:
"... Top former [Obama] officials, including former CIA Director John Brennan, are said to be targets of the Durham investigation. ..."
"... "The deep state is so deep that ppl get away w political crimes," wrote Grassley on Twitter. "Durham should be producing some fruit of his labor." ..."
Jul 09, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Via WND.com,

Investigative reporter John Solomon says there's a "lot of activity" in U.S. Attorney John Durham's criminal investigation of the Obama administration's probe of now-debunked claims of Trump-Russia collusion during the 2016 election.

"My sources tell me there's a lot of activity. I'm seeing, personally, activity behind the scenes [showing] the Department of Justice is trying to bring those first indictments, " Solomon said in an interview with the Fox Business Network's Lou Dobbs reported by the Washington Examiner .

"And I would look for a time around Labor Day to see the first sort of action by the Justice Department."

Solomon said he's seeing "action consistent with building prosecutions and preparing for criminal plea bargains."

"Until they bring it before the grand jury you never know if it's going to happen. I'm seeing activity consistent with that. "

Top former [Obama] officials, including former CIA Director John Brennan, are said to be targets of the Durham investigation.

But Attorney General William Barr has said he doesn't expect Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to be subjects of a criminal investigation.

Solomon said he is hearing from defense lawyers and people "on the prosecution side" that complications with the coronavirus pandemic are "slowing down" the grand jury process.

"There is overwhelming evidence in the public record now that crimes were committed," Solomon said.

He cited "falsification of documents, false testimony, false representations before the FISA court."

WND reported this week Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Durham should launch any prosecutions before the November election.

"The deep state is so deep that ppl get away w political crimes," wrote Grassley on Twitter. "Durham should be producing some fruit of his labor."

A report from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz found at least 17 "significant" errors or omissions related to the Obama administration's efforts to use the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provisions against Trump.

WND reported former U.S. attorney Joe DiGenova said the public shouldn't worry about whether or not charges are filed against Obama and Biden.

"Shaming" them will undoubtedly happen, with or without charges, he argued in an interview with Boston radio host Howie Carr.

"I happen to believe that the public shaming of former President Obama and Vice President Biden is far more important than indicting them," he said.

[Jul 09, 2020] Is Strzok Memo The Rosetta Stone Of Obamagate- -

Jul 09, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Is Strzok Memo The Rosetta Stone Of Obamagate? by Tyler Durden Wed, 07/08/2020 - 22:25 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

So much happens so fast in a world with a 15-minute news cycle that it's difficult for a journalist to stop and breathe, let alone ponder the meaning of the latest breathless reporting.

As an example, it seems like it was months ago when the D.C. Court of Appeals ordered Judge Emmet Sullivan to dismiss the case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, but it was actually less than two weeks ago. June 24 to be exact, but to Flynn it probably seems like forever. No word from Sullivan about whether he intends to follow the order of the senior court, or continue to stall in an effort to punish Lt. Gen. Flynn for his political crime of supporting President Trump. But based on his record so far, Sullivan can probably be counted on to drag his feet while thumbing his nose at justice.

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Whether it is the Flynn case, or the persecution of one-time Trump adviser Roger Stone for a procedural crime of lying before a malevolent Congress, the implicit reason behind all the over-the-top harassment almost seems to be to goad Trump into pardoning his much-maligned associates in order to create another fake news cycle as we head into the 2020 election. Nobody asks, "Did you see what that corrupt judge did? Or what the Democrat-worshiping DOJ did?" It's always " Did you hear what that crazy bastard Trump did?" )

It doesn't seem to matter to the mainstream media that evidence has mounted into the stratosphere that Trump has been right all along about his campaign being illegally surveilled by the Obama administration. It doesn't matter that Trump survived a two-plus year investigation by a special counsel and was cleared of any kind of collusion with the Russians. The Democrats and their agents in the Deep State know that whatever they do to harass Trump will be treated as noble and patriotic by the corrupt media, and that whenever evidence surfaces of their criminal behavior it will be promptly buried again.

Which brings us to the infamous handwritten notes by disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok about a White House meeting that surfaced in a recent filing in the Flynn case. Strzok had already earned a prominent place in the "Wish I Hadn't Done That" Hall of Fame for his serial confession via text message of not just marital infidelity but also constitutional perfidy. But the half-page of notes released by Flynn's defense team rises to the level of a history-altering "Oops!" Indeed, it could well be the Rosetta stone that allows us to penetrate the secrets of the anti-Trump conspiracy that stretched from the FBI to the CIA, the Justice Department and the White House.

What we know about the provenance of the notes comes from Flynn's attorney Sidney Powell, who said they were written by Strzok about a meeting that took place on Jan. 4, 2017. The only problem is that the cast of characters in the memo duplicates those who were in attendance at the White House on Jan. 5, 2017, to discuss how the Obama administration should proceed in its dealings with Flynn, who was accused of playing footsie with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak prior to assuming his official role as national security adviser. Attorney General William Barr has gone on the record (on the "Verdict With Ted Cruz" podcast) that the notes actually describe the Jan. 5 meeting.

If so, the notes strongly contradict Susan Rice's CYA "memo to self" where the Obama national security adviser recounts the Jan. 5 meeting and stresses three times that President Obama and his team were handling the Flynn investigation "by the book." Methinks the lady doth protest too much, especially now that we have Strzok's contemporaneous notes to contradict her memo, which suspiciously was written in the final minutes of the Obama administration as Donald Trump was being sworn in at the Capitol.

From what we can tell, Strzok (unlike Rice) was not writing his memo to protect anyone. He seems to have merely jotted down some notes about what various participants in the meeting said, including President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Rice, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and Strzok's boss -- FBI Director James Comey. Chances are, at this point Strzok had no idea his dirty laundry was going to be aired or that his role as a master of the universe was going to be toppled.

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But to see the importance of these notes, we need to transcribe them from the cryptic handwritten notes. Words and phrases that are outright guesses are reproduced in brackets. Speakers are noted at the beginning of each line. "NSA" stands for Rice. "D" stands for Comey. "DAG" stands for Yates. "VP" stands for Biden. "P" stands for Obama. "Cuts" is said to refer to summaries of phone calls monitored under a FISA warrant to collect foreign intelligence.

NSA - D - DAG: Flynn cuts. Other [countries].

D - DAG: Lean forward on [illegible, but possibly "ambass" as in ambassador. Others have speculated on "useless" or "unless," which don't fit the context, or "unclass" as in "unclassified" or even a name beginning with m. We just don't know.]

VP: "Logan Act"

P: These are unusual times

VP: I've been on the Intel Committee for 10 years and I never

P: Make sure you look at thing[s] + have the right people on it

P: Is there anything I shouldn't be telling transition team?

D: Flynn -- > Kislyak calls but appear legit.

[Apple][??] - Happy New Year - Yeah right

The reasons why these nine lines are so important have been adequately explored by other writers on most of the relevant topics. Most significantly from a political point of view is confirmation that Biden lied when he said he had nothing to do with the criminal prosecution of Flynn. The Logan Act is a more than 200-year-old statute that forbids ordinary Americans from negotiating with foreign governments that have a dispute with the United States. No one has ever been convicted under the law, and Flynn was not an ordinary American, but rather the incoming national security adviser; nonetheless it was a central plank in the plan to give Flynn enough rope to hang himself. The fact that quotes appear only around the words Logan Act suggest that this was a direct quote from Biden.

In addition, the order by Obama presumably to Comey to "have the right people on it" suggests that there was a political element to the investigation and that the president wanted loyalists to handle it. What other explanation is there? Who exactly are the "wrong people" in the FBI? (That's a rhetorical question. Obviously the wrong people were Strzok, Comey and their buddies at the FBI and CIA who were wiretapping honest Americans and framing a president.)

Finally, and most importantly for Flynn and his attorneys, we have a contemporaneous account of the FBI director assuring the president that Flynn's conversations with Kislyak were "legit." In that case, why did Strzok reveal in an instant message on Jan. 4, 2017, the day before this historic meeting, that the FBI agent in charge should NOT close the case against Flynn even though it should have already been closed because no evidence had accrued against him? If Comey thought the general's conversations with Kislyak were "legit," then why did Strzok tell another FBI contact that the "7th floor [was] involved" in the decision to keep the Flynn case alive. The seventh floor being where the offices of Comey and the rest of the top FBI brass are located. Strzok was ecstatic to find out that the case had "serendipitously" not been closed, and told his girlfriend Lisa Page, "Our utter incompetence actually helps us."

There seems to be no consensus among analysts about the context of Strzok's notes. According to Rice's independent recollection of the Jan. 5 meeting, only the principals named above were present. CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had already been booted out of the meeting after giving a briefing on alleged Russian election interference. It seems unlikely that Strzok would have been present in any capacity.

Andrew McCarthy at National Review speculates that "Strzok's notes were taken when someone later briefed him about the White House meeting that Strzok did not attend." The New York Post concludes that the Strzok memo is "plainly Strzok's notes of FBI chief Jim Comey's account." Certainly if Strzok were briefed by someone in attendance, it was most likely Comey. But Ivan Pentchoukov of The Epoch Times floats a much more interesting idea about how Strzok came to be in possession of the facts he recorded in the memo.

"The on-the-fly nature of the notes suggest that he was either physically present or listened in on a conference call," Pentchoukov speculates.

Well, the Washington Post reports that "Strzok's lawyer told The Fact Checker that Strzok did not attend the meeting," and then suggests that probably means "the notes may recount what someone else - perhaps Comey - told him about the meeting." Yes, maybe so, but there is good reason not to skate over the possibility that, as Pentchoukov puts it, Strzok "listened in" on the conversation.

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This is indeed heady stuff, as it is beyond reason to think that Strzok was an invited participant. The last thing anyone at that meeting would want is an independent account of what was said as they planned how to entrap one of the incoming president's closest aides. Yet that does not eliminate the chance that Strzok benefited from some kind of surveillance technique to eavesdrop on the conversation, either with the knowledge of one person in the room or possibly with none. Of course it is scary to think that the FBI was wiretapping the White House, but they did it to Trump Tower, so who knows?

It is the nature of the notes themselves that lends credence to this speculation. If they were written after the fact to memorialize a conversation Strzok had with Comey or someone else, there is no way to account for the brevity and choppiness of the account. Rather than just put "Logan Act" next to VP, an after-the-fact recitation would have been more likely to specify, "The Vice President brought up the Logan Act as one statute that could be used to prosecute Flynn's dangerous dealings with the Russian ambassador." And most suspiciously, there is no explanation for why Strzok would have cut off the end of Biden's other contribution to the conversation. "I've been on the Intel Committee for 10 years and I never," the transcript goes. "Never what?" the reader wants to know.

Of course we can add the words ourselves: "Never heard of anyone being prosecuted for talking to a foreign leader, especially not if they had a legitimate interest in establishing relations with their counterpart prior to a new president taking office." If Strzok were making leisurely notes while talking to his boss, or especially if he had gone back to his own office and thought it worthwhile to record what he had been told, would it make any sense for him to stop in mid-sentence?

No, it wouldn't. It only makes sense if, as Pentchoukov describes it, the notes were written "on the fly." Certainly not with a tape recorder running, where one could establish an exact transcript, but hurriedly, sloppily, furtively. That would also explain why the handwriting is not exactly consistent with other known samples of Strzok's script. Presumably, the FBI has validated the handwriting as Strzok's, but does the FBI have any reason to lie about that? Hmm.

Ultimately, if Strzok is indeed the author, we need him to testify under oath exactly what is in the notes, and how they came to be written. Hopefully the FBI, the attorney general or someone else will declassify the extensive redactions above and below the nine lines that were released. One has to imagine that in those passages, Strzok revealed his source for the material quoted, as well as confirming the date of the meeting, and possibly the reason for the meeting. He has quite a tale to tell -- one that could change history.

If there were even one Republican senator in charge of a committee who had the curiosity of a 3-year-old, it is likely we could actually get to the bottom of the shenanigans that nearly toppled a president and finally pin the "tale" on the donkey -- the Democratic donkey that is.

But Republican senators in an election year have better things to do than protect and defend the Constitution. There are fundraisers to attend, after all.


[Jul 03, 2020] Dangerous Game - How the Wreckage of Russiagate Ignited a New Cold War by Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter

Jul 02, 2020 | libertarianinstitute.org

It's been nearly four years since the myth of Trump-Russia collusion made its debut in American politics, generating an endless stream of stories in the corporate press and hundreds of allegations of conspiracy from pundits and officials. But despite netting scores of embarrassing admissions, corrections, editor's notes and retractions in that time, the theory refuses to die.

Over the years, the highly elaborate "Russiagate" narrative has fallen away piece-by-piece. Claims about Donald Trump's various back channels to Moscow -- Carter Page , George Papadopoulos , Michael Flynn , Paul Manafort , Alfa Bank -- have each been thoroughly discredited. House Intelligence Committee transcripts released in May have revealed that nobody who asserted a Russian hack on Democratic computers, including the DNC's own cyber security firm , is able to produce evidence that it happened. In fact, it is now clear the entire investigation into the Trump campaign was without basis .

It was alleged that Moscow manipulated the president with " kompromat " and black mail, sold to the public in a " dossier " compiled by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele. Working through a DC consulting firm , Steele was hired by Democrats to dig up dirt on Trump, gathering a litany of accusations that Steele's own primary source would later dismiss as "hearsay" and "rumor." Though the FBI was aware the dossier was little more than sloppy opposition research, the bureau nonetheless used it to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign.

Even the claim that Russia helped Trump from afar, without direct coordination, has fallen flat on its face. The " troll farm " allegedly tapped by the Kremlin to wage a pro-Trump meme war -- the Internet Research Agency -- spent only $46,000 on Facebook ads, or around 0.05 percent of the $81 million budget of the Trump and Clinton campaigns. The vast majority of the IRA's ads had nothing to do with U.S. politics, and more than half of those that did were published after the election, having no impact on voters. The Department of Justice, moreover, has dropped its charges against the IRA's parent company, abandoning a major case resulting from Robert Mueller's special counsel probe.

Though few of its most diehard proponents would ever admit it, after four long years, the foundation of the Trump-Russia narrative has finally given way and its edifice has crumbled. The wreckage left behind will remain for some time to come, however, kicking off a new era of mainstream McCarthyism and setting the stage for the next Cold War.

It Didn't Start With Trump

The importance of Russiagate to U.S. foreign policy cannot be understated, but the road to hostilities with Moscow stretches far beyond the current administration. For thirty years, the United States has exploited its de facto victory in the first Cold War, interfering in Russian elections in the 1990s, aiding oligarchs as they looted the country into poverty, and orchestrating Color Revolutions in former Soviet states. NATO, meanwhile, has been enlarged up to Russia's border, despite American assurances the alliance wouldn't expand " one inch " eastward after the collapse of the USSR.

Unquestionably, from the fall of the Berlin Wall until the day Trump took office, the United States maintained an aggressive policy toward Moscow. But with the USSR wiped off the map and communism defeated for good, a sufficient pretext to rally the American public into another Cold War has been missing in the post-Soviet era. In the same 30-year period, moreover, Washington has pursued one disastrous diversion after another in the Middle East, leaving little space or interest for another round of brinkmanship with the Russians, who were relegated to little more than a talking point. That, however, has changed.

The Crisis They Needed

The Washington foreign policy establishment -- memorably dubbed " the Blob " by one Obama adviser -- was thrown into disarray by Trump's election win in the fall of 2016. In some ways, Trump stood out as the dove during the race, deeming "endless wars" in the Middle East a scam, calling for closer ties with Russia, and even questioning the usefulness of NATO. Sincere or not, Trump's campaign vows shocked the Beltway think tankers, journalists, and politicos whose worldviews (and salaries) rely on the maintenance of empire. Something had to be done.

In the summer of 2016, WikiLeaks published thousands of emails belonging to then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, her campaign manager, and the Democratic National Committee. Though damaging to Clinton, the leak became fodder for a powerful new attack on the president-to-be. Trump had worked in league with Moscow to throw the election, the story went, and the embarrassing email trove was stolen in a Russian hack, then passed to WikiLeaks to propel Trump's campaign.

By the time Trump took office, the narrative was in full swing. Pundits and politicians rushed to outdo one another in hysterically denouncing the supposed election-meddling, which was deemed the "political equivalent" of the 9/11 attacks , tantamount to Pearl Harbor , and akin to the Nazis' 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom. In lock-step with the U.S. intelligence community -- which soon issued a pair of reports endorsing the Russian hacking story -- the Blob quickly joined the cause, hoping to short-circuit any tinkering with NATO or rapprochement with Moscow under Trump.

The allegations soon broadened well beyond hacking. Russia had now waged war on American democracy itself, and "sowed discord" with misinformation online, all in direct collusion with the Trump campaign. Talking heads on cable news and former intelligence officials -- some of them playing both roles at once -- weaved a dramatic plot of conspiracy out of countless news reports, clinging to many of the "bombshell" stories long after their key claims were blown up .

A large segment of American society eagerly bought the fiction, refusing to believe that Trump, the game show host, could have defeated Clinton without assistance from a foreign power. For the first time since the fall of the USSR, rank-and-file Democrats and moderate progressives were aligned with some of the most vocal Russia hawks across the aisle, creating space for what many have called a " new Cold War. "

Stress Fractures

Under immense pressure and nonstop allegations, the candidate who shouted "America First" and slammed NATO as " obsolete " quickly adapted himself to the foreign policy consensus on the alliance, one of the first signs the Trump-Russia story was bearing fruit.

Demonstrating the Blob in action, during debate on the Senate floor over Montenegro's bid to join NATO in March 2017, the hawkish John McCain castigated Rand Paul for daring to oppose the measure, riding on anti-Russian sentiments stoked during the election to accuse him of "working for Vladimir Putin." With most lawmakers agreeing the expansion of NATO was needed to "push back" against Russia, the Senate approved the request nearly unanimously and Trump signed it without batting an eye -- perhaps seeing the attacks a veto would bring, even from his own party.

Allowing Montenegro -- a country that illustrates everything wrong with NATO -- to join the alliance may suggest Trump's criticisms were always empty talk, but the establishment's drive to constrain his foreign policy was undoubtedly having an effect. Just a few months later, the administration would put out its National Security Strategy , stressing the need to refocus U.S. military engagements from counter-terrorism in the Middle East to "great power competition" with Russia and China.

On another aspiring NATO member, Ukraine, the president was also hectored into reversing course under pressure from the Blob. During the 2016 race, the corporate press savaged the Trump campaign for working behind the scenes to " water down " the Republican Party platform after it opposed a pledge to arm Ukraine's post-coup government. That stance did not last long.

Though even Obama decided against arming the new government -- which his administration helped to install -- Trump reversed that move in late 2017, handing Kiev hundreds of Javelin anti-tank missiles. In an irony noticed by few , some of the arms went to open neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian military, who were integrated into the country's National Guard after leading street battles with security forces in the Obama-backed coup of 2014. Some of the very same Beltway critics slamming the president as a racist demanded he pass weapons to out-and-out white supremacists.

Ukraine's bid to join NATO has all but stalled under President Volodymyr Zelensky, but the country has nonetheless played an outsized role in American politics both before and after Trump took office. In the wake of Ukraine's 2014 U.S.-sponsored coup, "Russian aggression" became a favorite slogan in the American press, laying the ground for future allegations of election-meddling.

Weaponizing Ukraine

The drive for renewed hostilities with Moscow got underway well before Trump took the Oval Office, nurtured in its early stages under the Obama administration. Using Ukraine's revolution as a springboard, Obama launched a major rhetorical and policy offensive against Russia, casting it in the role of an aggressive , expansionist power.

Protests erupted in Ukraine in late 2013, following President Viktor Yanukovych's refusal to sign an association agreement with the European Union, preferring to keep closer ties with Russia. Demanding a deal with the EU and an end to government corruption, demonstrators -- including the above-mentioned neo-Nazis -- were soon in the streets clashing with security forces. Yanukovych was chased out of the country, and eventually out of power.

Through cut-out organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy, the Obama administration poured millions of dollars into the Ukrainian opposition prior to the coup, training, organizing and funding activists. Dubbed the "Euromaidan Revolution," Yanukovych's ouster mirrored similar US-backed color coups before and since, with Uncle Sam riding on the back of legitimate grievances while positioning the most U.S.-friendly figures to take power afterward.

The coup set off serious unrest in Ukraine's Russian-speaking enclaves, the eastern Donbass region and the Crimean Peninsula to the south. In the Donbass, secessionist forces attempted their own revolution, prompting the new government in Kiev to launch a bloody "war on terror" that continues to this day. Though the separatists received some level of support from Moscow, Washington placed sole blame on the Russians for Ukraine's unrest, while the press breathlessly predicted an all-out invasion that never materialized.

In Crimea -- where Moscow has kept its Black Sea Fleet since the late 1700s -- Russia took a more forceful stance, seizing the territory to keep control of its long term naval base. The annexation was accomplished without bloodshed, and a referendum was held weeks later affirming that a large majority of Crimeans supported rejoining Russia, a sentiment western polling firms have since corroborated . Regardless, as in the Donbass, the move was labeled an invasion, eventually triggering a raft of sanctions from the U.S. and the EU (and more recently, from Trump himself ).

The media made no effort to see Russia's perspective on Crimea in the wake of the revolution -- imagining the U.S. response if the roles were reversed, for example -- and all but ignored the preferences of Crimeans. Instead, it spun a black-and-white story of "Russian aggression" in Ukraine. For the Blob, Moscow's actions there put Vladimir Putin on par with Adolf Hitler, driving a flood of frenzied press coverage not seen again until the 2016 election.

Succumbing to Hysteria

While Trump had already begun to cave to the onslaught of Russiagate in the early months of his presidency, a July 2018 meeting with Putin in Helsinki presented an opportunity to reverse course, offering a venue to hash out differences and plan for future cooperation. Trump's previous sit-downs with his Russian counterpart were largely uneventful, but widely portrayed as a meeting between master and puppet. At the Helsinki Summit, however, a meager gesture toward improved relations was met with a new level of hysterics.

Trump's refusal to interrogate Putin on his supposed election-hacking during a summit press conference was taken as irrefutable proof that the two were conspiring together. Former CIA Director John Brennan declared it an act of treason , while CNN gravely contemplated whether Putin's gift to Trump during the meetings -- a World Cup soccer ball -- was really a secret spying transmitter. By this point, Robert Mueller's special counsel probe was in full effect, lending official credibility to the collusion story and further emboldening the claims of conspiracy.

Though the summit did little to strengthen U.S.-Russia ties and Trump made no real effort to do so -- beyond resisting the calls to directly confront Putin -- it brought on some of the most extreme attacks yet, further ratcheting up the cost of rapprochement. The window of opportunity presented in Helsinki, while only cracked to begin with, was now firmly shut, with Trump as reluctant as ever to make good on his original policy platform.

Sanctions!

After taking a beating in Helsinki, the administration allowed tensions with Moscow to soar to new heights, more or less embracing the Blob's favored policies and often even outdoing the Obama government's hawkishness toward Russia in both rhetoric and action.

In March 2018, the poisoning of a former Russian spy living in the United Kingdom was blamed on Moscow in a highly elaborate storyline that ultimately fell apart (sound familiar?), but nonetheless triggered a wave of retaliation from western governments. In the largest diplomatic purge in US history, the Trump administration expelled 60 Russian officials in a period of two days, surpassing Obama's ejection of 35 diplomats in response to the election-meddling allegations.

Along with the purge, starting in spring 2018 and continuing to this day, Washington has unleashed round after round of new sanctions on Russia, including in response to " worldwide malign activity ," to penalize alleged election-meddling , for " destabilizing cyber activities ," retaliation for the UK spy poisoning , more cyber activity , more election-meddling -- the list keeps growing.

Though Trump had called to lift rather than impose penalties on Russia before taking office, worn down by endless negative press coverage and surrounded by a coterie of hawkish advisers, he was brought around on the merits of sanctions before long, and has used them liberally ever since.

Goodbye INF, RIP OST

By October 2018, Trump had largely abandoned any idea of improving the relationship with Russia and, in addition to the barrage of sanctions, began shredding a series of major treaties and arms control agreements. He started with the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which had eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons -- medium-range missiles -- and removed Europe as a theater for nuclear war.

At this point in Trump's tenure, super-hawk John Bolton had assumed the position of national security advisor, encouraging the president's worst instincts and using his newfound influence to convince Trump to ditch the INF treaty. Bolton -- who helped to detonate a number of arms control pacts in previous administrations -- argued that Russia's new short-range missile had violated the treaty. While there remains some dispute over the missile's true range and whether it actually breached the agreement, Washington failed to pursue available dispute mechanisms and ignored Russian offers for talks to resolve the spat.

After the U.S. officially scrapped the agreement, it quickly began testing formerly-banned munitions. Unlike the Russian missiles, which were only said to have a range overstepping the treaty by a few miles, the U.S. began testing nuclear-capable land-based cruise missiles expressly banned under the INF.

Next came the Open Skies Treaty (OST), an idea originally floated by President Eisenhower, but which wouldn't take shape until 1992, when an agreement was struck between NATO and former Warsaw Pact nations. The agreement now has over 30 members and allows each to arrange surveillance flights over other members' territory, an important confidence-building measure in the post-Soviet world.

Trump saw matters differently, however, and turned a minor dispute over Russia's implementation of the pact into a reason to discard it altogether, again egged on by militant advisers. In late May 2020, the president declared his intent to withdraw from the nearly 30-year-old agreement, proposing nothing to replace it.

Quid Pro Quo

With the DOJ's special counsel probe into Trump-Russia collusion coming up short on both smoking-gun evidence and relevant indictments, the president's enemies began searching for new angles of attack. Following a July 2019 phone call between Trump and his newly elected Ukrainian counterpart, they soon found one.

During the call , Trump urged Zelensky to investigate a computer server he believed to be linked to Russiagate, and to look into potential corruption and nepotism on the part of former Vice President Joe Biden, who played an active role in Ukraine following the Obama-backed coup.

Less than two months later, a " whistleblower " -- a CIA officer detailed to the White House, Eric Ciaramella -- came forward with an "urgent concern" that the president had abused his office on the July call. According to his complaint , Trump threatened to withhold U.S. military aid, as well as a face-to-face meeting with Zelensky, should Kiev fail to deliver the goods on Biden, who by that point was a major contender in the 2020 race.

The same players who peddled Russiagate seized on Ciaramella's account to manufacture a whole new scandal: "Ukrainegate." Failing to squeeze an impeachment out of the Mueller probe, the Democrats did just that with the Ukraine call, insisting Trump had committed grave offenses, again conspiring with a foreign leader to meddle in a U.S. election.

At a high point during the impeachment trial, an expert called to testify by the Democrats revived George W. Bush's "fight them over there" maxim to argue for U.S. arms transfers to Ukraine, citing the Russian menace. The effort was doomed from the start, however, with a GOP-controlled Senate never likely to convict and the evidence weak for a "quid pro quo" with Zelensky. Ukrainegate, like Russiagate before it, was a failure in its stated goal, yet both served to mark the administration with claims of foreign collusion and press for more hawkish policies toward Moscow.

The End of New START?

The Obama administration scored a rare diplomatic achievement with Russia in 2010, signing the New START Treaty, a continuation of the original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty inked in the waning days of the Soviet Union. Like its first iteration, the agreement places a cap on the number of nuclear weapons and warheads deployed by each side. It featured a ten-year sunset clause, but included provisions to continue beyond its initial end date.

With the treaty set to expire in early 2021, it has become an increasingly hot topic throughout Trump's presidency. While Trump sold himself as an expert dealmaker on the campaign trail -- an artist , even -- his negotiation skills have shown lacking when it comes to working out a new deal with the Russians.

The administration has demanded that China be incorporated into any extended version of the treaty, calling on Russia to compel Beijing to the negotiating table and vastly complicating any prospect for a deal. With a nuclear arsenal around one-tenth the size of that of Russia or the U.S., China has refused to join the pact. Washington's intransigence on the issue has put the future of the treaty in limbo and largely left Russia without a negotiating partner.

A second Trump term would spell serious trouble for New START, having already shown willingness to shred the INF and Open Skies agreements. And with the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) already killed under the Bush administration, New START is one of the few remaining constraints on the planet's two largest nuclear arsenals.

Despite pursuing massive escalation with Moscow from 2018 onward, Trump-Russia conspiracy allegations never stopped pouring from newspapers and TV screens. For the Blob -- heavily invested in a narrative as fruitful as it was false -- Trump would forever be "Putin's puppet," regardless of the sanctions imposed, the landmark treaties incinerated or the deluge of warlike rhetoric.

Running for an Arms Race

As the Trump administration leads the country into the next Cold War, a renewed arms race is also in the making. The destruction of key arms control pacts by previous administrations has fed a proliferation powder keg, and the demise of New START could be the spark to set it off.

Following Bush Jr.'s termination of the ABM deal in 2002 -- wrecking a pact which placed limits on Russian and American missile defense systems to maintain the balance of mutually assured destruction -- Russia soon resumed funding for a number of strategic weapons projects, including its hypersonic missile. In his announcement of the new technology in 2018, Putin deemed the move a response to Washington's unilateral withdrawal from ABM, which also saw the U.S. develop new weapons .

Though he inked New START and campaigned on vows to pursue an end to the bomb, President Obama also helped to advance the arms build-up, embarking on a 30-year nuclear modernization project set to cost taxpayers $1.5 trillion. The Trump administration has embraced the initiative with open arms, even adding to it , as Moscow follows suit with upgrades to its own arsenal.

Moreover, Trump has opened a whole new battlefield with the creation of the US Space Force , escalated military deployments, ramped up war games targeting Russia and China and looked to reopen and expand Cold War-era bases.

In May, Trump's top arms control envoy promised to spend Russia and China into oblivion in the event of any future arms race, but one was already well underway. After withdrawing from INF, the administration began churning out previously banned nuclear-capable cruise missiles, while fielding an entire new class of low-yield nuclear weapons. Known as "tactical nukes," the smaller warheads lower the threshold for use, making nuclear conflict more likely. Meanwhile, the White House has also mulled a live bomb test -- America's first since 1992 -- though has apparently shelved the idea for now.

A Runaway Freight Train

As Trump approaches the end of his first term, the two major U.S. political parties have become locked in a permanent cycle of escalation, eternally compelled to prove who's the bigger hawk. The president put up mild resistance during his first months in office, but the relentless drumbeat of Russiagate successfully crushed any chances for improved ties with Moscow.

The Democrats refuse to give up on "Russian aggression" and see virtually no pushback from hawks across the aisle, while intelligence "leaks" continue to flow into the imperial press, fueling a whole new round of election-meddling allegations .

Likewise, Trump's campaign vows to revamp U.S.-Russian relations are long dead. His presidency counts among its accomplishments a pile of new sanctions, dozens of expelled diplomats and the demise of two major arms control treaties. For all his talk of getting along with Putin, Trump has failed to ink a single deal, de-escalate any of the ongoing strife over Syria, Ukraine or Libya, and been unable to arrange one state visit in Moscow or DC.

Nonetheless, Trump's every action is still interpreted through the lens of Russian collusion. After announcing a troop drawdown in Germany on June 5, reducing the U.S. presence by just one-third, the president was met with the now-typical swarm of baseless charges. MSNBC regular and retired general Barry McCaffrey dubbed the move "a gift to Russia," while GOP Rep. Liz Cheney said the meager troop movement placed the "cause of freedom in peril." Top Democrats in the House and Senate introduced bills to stop the withdrawal dead in its tracks, attributing the policy to Trump's "absurd affection for Vladimir Putin, a murderous dictator."

Starting as a dirty campaign trick to explain away the Democrats' election loss and jam up the new president, Russiagate is now a key driving force in the U.S. political establishment that will long outlive the age of Trump. After nearly four years, the bipartisan consensus on the need for Cold War is stronger than ever, and will endure regardless of who takes the Oval Office next.

[Jul 01, 2020] Kosovo Indictment Proves Bill Clinton s Serbian War Atrocities - Defend Democracy Press by Jim Bovard

Notable quotes:
"... Clinton remains a hero in Kosovo where a statue of him was erected in the capital, Pristina. The Guardian newspaper noted that the statue showed Clinton "with a left hand raised, a typical gesture of a leader greeting the masses. In his right hand he is holding documents engraved with the date when NATO started the bombardment of Serbia, 24 March 1999." It would have been a more accurate representation to depict Clinton standing on a pile of corpses of the women, children, and others killed in the U.S. bombing campaign. ..."
"... Bill Clinton's 1999 bombing of Serbia was as big a fraud as George W. Bush's conning this nation into attacking Iraq. The fact that Clinton and other top U.S. government officials continued to glorify Hashim Thaci despite accusations of mass murder, torture, and body trafficking is another reminder of the venality of much of America's political elite. Will Americans again be gullible the next time that Washington policymakers and their media allies concoct bullshit pretexts to blow the hell out of some hapless foreign land? ..."
Jun 25, 2020 | www.defenddemocracy.press

President Bill Clinton's favorite freedom fighter just got indicted for mass murder, torture, kidnapping, and other crimes against humanity. In 1999, the Clinton administration launched a 78-day bombing campaign that killed up to 1500 civilians in Serbia and Kosovo in what the American media proudly portrayed as a crusade against ethnic bias. That war, like most of the pretenses of U.S. foreign policy, was always a sham.

Kosovo President Hashim Thaci was charged with ten counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity by an international tribunal in The Hague in the Netherlands. It charged Thaci and nine other men with "war crimes, including murder, enforced disappearance of persons, persecution, and torture." Thaci and the other charged suspects were accused of being "criminally responsible for nearly 100 murders" and the indictment involved "hundreds of known victims of Kosovo Albanian, Serb, Roma, and other ethnicities and include political opponents."

Hashim Thaci's tawdry career illustrates how anti-terrorism is a flag of convenience for Washington policymakers. Prior to becoming Kosovo's president, Thaci was the head of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), fighting to force Serbs out of Kosovo. In 1999, the Clinton administration designated the KLA as "freedom fighters" despite their horrific past and gave them massive aid. The previous year, the State Department condemned "terrorist action by the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army." The KLA was heavily involved in drug trafficking and had close to ties to Osama bin Laden.

But arming the KLA and bombing Serbia helped Clinton portray himself as a crusader against injustice and shift public attention after his impeachment trial. Clinton was aided by many shameless members of Congress anxious to sanctify U.S. killing. Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CN) whooped that the United States and the KLA "stand for the same values and principles. Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values." And since Clinton administration officials publicly compared Serb leader Slobodan Milošević to Hitler, every decent person was obliged to applaud the bombing campaign.

Both the Serbs and ethnic Albanians committed atrocities in the bitter strife in Kosovo. But to sanctify its bombing campaign, the Clinton administration waved a magic wand and made the KLA's atrocities disappear. British professor Philip Hammond noted that the 78-day bombing campaign "was not a purely military operation: NATO also destroyed what it called 'dual-use' targets, such as factories, city bridges, and even the main television building in downtown Belgrade, in an attempt to terrorize the country into surrender."

Read also: From the very beginning: Α conscious plan to destroy Greece!

NATO repeatedly dropped cluster bombs into marketplaces, hospitals, and other civilian areas. Cluster bombs are anti-personnel devices designed to be scattered across enemy troop formations. NATO dropped more than 1,300 cluster bombs on Serbia and Kosovo and each bomb contained 208 separate bomblets that floated to earth by parachute. Bomb experts estimated that more than 10,000 unexploded bomblets were scattered around the landscape when the bombing ended and maimed children long after the ceasefire.

In the final days of the bombing campaign, the Washington Post reported that "some presidential aides and friends are describing Kosovo in Churchillian tones, as Clinton's 'finest hour.'" The Post also reported that according to one Clinton friend "what Clinton believes were the unambiguously moral motives for NATO's intervention represented a chance to soothe regrets harbored in Clinton's own conscience The friend said Clinton has at times lamented that the generation before him was able to serve in a war with a plainly noble purpose, and he feels 'almost cheated' that 'when it was his turn he didn't have the chance to be part of a moral cause.'" By Clinton's standard, slaughtering Serbs was "close enough for government work" to a "moral cause."

Shortly after the end of the 1999 bombing campaign, Clinton enunciated what his aides labeled the Clinton doctrine: "Whether within or beyond the borders of a country, if the world community has the power to stop it, we ought to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing." In reality, the Clinton doctrine was that presidents are entitled to commence bombing foreign lands based on any brazen lie that the American media will regurgitate. In reality, the lesson from bombing Serbia is that American politicians merely need to publicly recite the word "genocide" to get a license to kill.

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After the bombing ended, Clinton assured the Serbian people that the United States and NATO agreed to be peacekeepers only "with the understanding that they would protect Serbs as well as ethnic Albanians and that they would leave when peace took hold." In the subsequent months and years, American and NATO forces stood by as the KLA resumed its ethnic cleansing, slaughtering Serb civilians, bombing Serbian churches and oppressing any non-Muslims. Almost a quarter-million Serbs, Gypsies, Jews, and other minorities fled Kosovo after Mr. Clinton promised to protect them. By 2003, almost 70 percent of the Serbs living in Kosovo in 1999 had fled, and Kosovo was 95 percent ethnic Albanian.

But Thaci remained useful for U.S. policymakers. Even though he was widely condemned for oppression and corruption after taking power in Kosovo, Vice President Joe Biden hailed Thaci in 2010 as the "George Washington of Kosovo." A few months later, a Council of Europe report accused Thaci and KLA operatives of human organ trafficking. The Guardian noted that the report alleged that Thaci's inner circle "took captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a number of Serbs are said to have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market." The report stated that when "transplant surgeons" were "ready to operate, the [Serbian] captives were brought out of the 'safe house' individually, summarily executed by a KLA gunman, and their corpses transported swiftly to the operating clinic."

Despite the body trafficking charge, Thaci was a star attendee at the annual Global Initiative conference by the Clinton Foundation in 2011, 2012, and 2013, where he posed for photos with Bill Clinton. Maybe that was a perk from the $50,000 a month lobbying contract that Thaci's regime signed with The Podesta Group, co-managed by future Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, as the Daily Caller reported.

Clinton remains a hero in Kosovo where a statue of him was erected in the capital, Pristina. The Guardian newspaper noted that the statue showed Clinton "with a left hand raised, a typical gesture of a leader greeting the masses. In his right hand he is holding documents engraved with the date when NATO started the bombardment of Serbia, 24 March 1999." It would have been a more accurate representation to depict Clinton standing on a pile of corpses of the women, children, and others killed in the U.S. bombing campaign.

In 2019, Bill Clinton and his fanatically pro-bombing former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, visited Pristina, where they were "treated like rock stars" as they posed for photos with Thaci. Clinton declared, "I love this country and it will always be one of the greatest honors of my life to have stood with you against ethnic cleansing (by Serbian forces) and for freedom." Thaci awarded Clinton and Albright medals of freedom "for the liberty he brought to us and the peace to entire region." Albright has reinvented herself as a visionary warning against fascism in the Trump era. Actually, the only honorific that Albright deserves is "Butcher of Belgrade."

Clinton's war on Serbia was a Pandora's box from which the world still suffers. Because politicians and most of the media portrayed the war against Serbia as a moral triumph, it was easier for the Bush administration to justify attacking Iraq, for the Obama administration to bomb Libya, and for the Trump administration to repeatedly bomb Syria. All of those interventions sowed chaos that continues cursing the purported beneficiaries.

Bill Clinton's 1999 bombing of Serbia was as big a fraud as George W. Bush's conning this nation into attacking Iraq. The fact that Clinton and other top U.S. government officials continued to glorify Hashim Thaci despite accusations of mass murder, torture, and body trafficking is another reminder of the venality of much of America's political elite. Will Americans again be gullible the next time that Washington policymakers and their media allies concoct bullshit pretexts to blow the hell out of some hapless foreign land?

[Jun 28, 2020] https://saraacarter.com/ag-barr-reveals-durhams-probe-into-fbi-will-have-developments-by-summers-end/

Jun 28, 2020 | saraacarter.com

Bartiromo's interview with Barr on "Sunday Morning Futures," is the first time the Attorney General has given a time frame for the information. He also noted that he was surprised by the lack of public interest in Durham's investigation.

Unfortunately, in the opinion of this writer, the lack of public interest in the Durham probe may have more to do with the Justice Department's secrecy to discuss the investigation publicly and the failure – as of yet – to indict or hold many of those involved legally accountable for their actions.

Although Barr has been the most informative on the Durham investigation during his interviews, other Justice Department officials have been less than cooperative when asked about developments in the probe and therefore making it less likely to garner public interest.

Durham's investigation, however, is expanding on the evidence amassed by both Congress and Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's December report. That report revealed numerous omissions and lies in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Application on Carter Page, a short term 2016 Trump campaign volunteer.

"So that has been surprising to me, that people aren't concerned about civil liberties and the integrity of our governmental process in terms of the future of Durham's investigation," Barr said. "You know, he's pressing ahead as hard as he can. And I expect that, you know, we will have some developments hopefully before the end of the summer." Still, Barr made it clear that Durham's probe is expected to continue passed the November's election.

He noted one caveat, that depends "on who wins the election."

He also discussed with Bartiromo the unmasking of Trump campaign officials during the 2016 elections saying, "I would say it's unusual for an outgoing administration, high level officials, to be unmasking very, you know, very much in the days they're preparing to leave office. Makes you wonder what they were doing."

[Jun 25, 2020] Meanwhile...

Jun 25, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Looks like @JoeBiden and @BarackObama were complicit in framing @GenFlynn .

I can't wait for Flynn to tell all he knows about these traitors. https://t.co/JynrbnuawE

-- John Cardillo (@johncardillo) June 24, 2020

[Jun 25, 2020] Seven Big Hints AG Barr Has Dropped About Durham's Probe Of The Russia Investigators

Jun 25, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Seven Big Hints AG Barr Has Dropped About Durham's Probe Of The Russia Investigators


by Tyler Durden Wed, 06/24/2020 - 13:50 Authored by John Solomon via JustTheNews.com,

Attorney General William Barr is bringing increasing clarity to the focus of U.S. Attorney John Durham's criminal investigation into the conduct of the Russia collusion investigators.

In a series of recent interviews, the nation's chief enforcement officer has dropped some big hints about what is under investigation, who is and isn't being investigated, and what evidence uncovered by the Durham team is emerging as important.

Barr also has suggested what events in the timeline are emerging as important in the 2016-17 effort to find dirt on President Trump and his campaign and transition team.

Here are the seven most important revelations Barr has made over the last month.

1. Timetable: Durham's investigation has been slowed by the pandemic. But some action is expected by end of summer, and the probe could stretch beyond Election Day.

Barr told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that the coronavirus has slowed Durham's ability to interview witnesses and use a grand jury if needed, though he did not officially confirm there was grand jury activity in the case.

"It is a fact that there have not been grand juries in virtually all districts for a long period of time," Barr said.

But most importantly, the attorney general laid out a likely timeline for when the first actions might be taken in the case, while stressing the probe could carry beyond the election.

"In terms of the future of Durham's investigation, he's pressing ahead as hard as he can, and I expect that we will have some developments, hopefully before the end of the summer," Barr said. "But as I've said, his investigation will continue. It's not going to stop because of the election. What happens after the election may depend on who wins the election."

2. Barr believes evidence used by the FBI to justify opening an investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Moscow was very thin.

The attorney general has made clear in multiple interviews that Australian diplomat Alexander Downer's meeting with Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos at a London bar in May 2016 was a weak justification for opening Crossfire Hurricane.

Downer claimed Papadopoulos made comments about Russians possessing dirt on Hillary Clinton, and the FBI believed that was enough to predicate a counterintelligence investigation.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz agreed in his report that was enough, but found substantial evidence the FBI cheated afterwards to keep the probe going in the absence of evidence of wrongdoing.

Barr does not seem to accept the opening of the FBI probe was justified.

Papadopoulos' alleged "comment in a London wine bar" would be "a very slender reed to get law enforcement and intelligence agencies involved in investigating the campaign of one's political opponent," Barr declared Sunday.

Barr isn't the only high-profile figure to think that. Former FBI Assistant Director for Intelligence Kevin Brock has said the FBI memo opening Crossfire Hurricane did not meet the standards for opening a counter-intelligence investigation.

3. Investigators are focused on what happened before Crossfire Hurricane officially started, including when Christopher Steele first began compiling his dossier.

In multiple interviews, Barr has made clear Durham's team is examining what actions government officials and private individuals may have taken in the winter and spring of 2016 before the FBI officially opened its probe of the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016.

Perhaps the most tantalizing statement Barr has made on this came Sunday when he suggested it was important that Steele began working on his dossier before July 2016, raising the possibility that some unexplained events earlier that year may have been connected to that early Steele work.

"I understand why it is important to try to determine whether there was any activity before July, before the Papadopoulos wine bar conversation," Barr explained. "And so people are looking at that. It's significant also that the dossier was initiated before July."

4. Barr views the FBI's continuation of the Russia probe after the Steele dossier "collapsed" as an illegitimate effort to remove the president.

Barr has repeatedly cited the fact that the FBI continued to rely on the Steele dossier after the former MI6 agent's primary sub-source contradicted information in the dossier in January 2017 and March 2017 -- and failed to tell the FISA court about the problems with the repudiated evidence.

"The dossier pretty much collapsed at that point -- and yet they continued to use it as a basis for pursuing this counterintelligence investigation," Barr noted this past weekend.

The attorney general suggested such behavior supports arguments that what was really going on was an attempted coup to remove Trump from office. "It is the closest we have come to an organized effort to push a president out of office," he said.

5. There are multiple criminal investigations into leaks of classified information.

Barr made clear that Durham and others are examining multiple leaks for possible criminal violations while cautioning proving leak cases can be challenging. One of those is focused on who leaked Michael Flynn's call with the Russian ambassador.

"Leaking national defense information, unauthorized disclosure of that information is a felony," Barr said. "We have a lot of leak investigations underway."

6. Barr is concerned by the outgoing Obama administration's extensive unmasking of Americans' conversations ... but don't expect Barack Obama or Joe Biden to get in trouble.

After the recent revelation that more than three dozen Obama administration officials sought to unmask intercepted conversations of incoming Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Barr declared, "It makes you wonder what they were doing."

"It's unusual for an outgoing administration, high-level officials, to be unmasking very much in the days they're preparing to leave office," he added.

As a sign of that concern, Barr has named a U.S. attorney from Texas to assist Durham to examine the unmaskings for any illegalities.

But Barr also tamped down any expectation that the former president or vice president will be investigated, stating clearly they are not targets of the probe.

"As to President Obama and Vice President Biden, whatever their level of involvement, based on the information I have today, I don't expect Mr. Durham's work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man," the attorney general said last month. "Our concern over potential criminality is focused on others."

7. Durham is examining whether political pressures were applied during the intelligence community's assessment of Russia's intentions in 2016 election meddling. That could be bad news for former CIA chief John Brennan.

In the Obama administration's final days, Brennan, outgoing DNI James Clapper and then-FBI Director James Comey release the Intelligence Community Assessment, which declared Russia meddled in the 2016 election with hacking and Facebook ads and that Moscow's intention was to help Trump win.

The first conclusion is widely accepted, while the second is more controversial, especially now that evidence has been declassified showing Russia was feeding derogatory disinformation about Trump to Steele. Why, experts wonder, would Russia be doing that if Putin wanted Trump to win?

Barr said Durham is investigating whether any political pressure was brought to bear to come to that second conclusion. Sources have told Just the News there is some evidence that CIA analysts and others had concerns about the strength of the evidence about Russia's intentions.
play_arrow Itinerant , 1 hour ago

The first conclusion is widely accepted ... declared Russia meddled in the 2016 election with hacking and Facebook ads

And it's high time for a dose of reality.

1. There's no evidence of a hack , as CrowdStrike stated in interviews that have been released. There is a lot of evidence that it was a leak from inside the DNC premises, and that Guccifer is an Intelligence Agency persona.

2. There's no evidence that Putin (or his administration) directed any purported Russian meddling campaign.

3. There's no evidence that the Facebook ads were not click bait and were ever intentioned to cause "Division". No coherent account can be given as to what "disinformation" they were trying to spread, and why the Russian leadership would want to spread such "disinformation". In fact, "it was so sophisticated that it remained hidden in plain view". That's because the whole story is just psychological projection, based on assumptions of what the Russians would want to do (no connection to anything they've ever said). Just look at some of the examples, and you can reach no other conclusion than: Click bait.

CallOfTheWild , 3 hours ago

The Watch Pot NEVER BOILS.....WTF

Brennan
Clapper
Comey
McCabe
Strzok
Page
Ohr
Halper
Mifsud
Baker
Preistep
Yates
Rosenstein
Obama
Wray
Simpson
Clinton x2
Weissmann
Lynch
Jarrett
Rice
Fritsch
Power
McLaughlin
Ferrante

Boomer's revenge , 6 hours ago

Un acceptable. They commited a treasonous Coup d'état with impunity, insulting and ridiculing all of us as they did it. "Could smell the Trump voters at Walmart".

ComradeChe , 7 hours ago

There was genius in the "Russian Collision" narrative; they kept it up, incessantly, even as it was factually falling apart. There was no link. And still they kept at it. The result was that everyone is SICK TO DEATH of this crap. No one cares. The Trump haters gonna hate regardless-- and everyone else, whether they back the president or not, are just over it. It blew up in Pelosi's face-- but no one cares.

Now, most of America is three mortgage payments behind and they don't give a damn about anything but trying to keep their lives together. Obama, Rice, Clapper, Brennan et al pulled off the most egregious political crime in the history of the republic. Even in his wildest dreams Tricky **** Nixon couldn't get the IRS, the NSA and the CIA to do political hits for him. But Obama-- nails it. The trifecta: the IRS 'rogue agents from Cincinnati' stifle the Tea Party; the FBI/CIA jerk off the FISA Court with a bought and paid for shovel full of BS, and then use the NSA to spy on a political candidate-- and better yet, conspire with foreign intelligence services who utilize electronic surveillance within the US, so the CIA can keep its skirts clean; and lastly, the circular firing squad of the National Security council facilitates the 'unmasking' of dozens of Americans who are not terrorists, or spies but political opponents.

No this didn't happen in Guatemala. This happened in the US.

And you know what? Obama and all his minions ARE going to get away with it. Barry got away with presenting a birth certificate cobbled together on Adobe Illustrator; they didn't even bother to make a PDF out of it. It was BAM in your face, 23 different fonts on 15 different layers. So what? Hillary got away with keeping hundreds of Top Secret Codeword documents on a home made web server. So what? Then she got away with accepting a sweet &130 million payoff for the Clinton Foundation, right after she okayed the transfer of 25% of our enriched Uranium to... wait for it... Putin. And then the IC blames Trump for being a stooge of Putin.

It's too rich. If you are waiting for justice, forget it. I've seen this movie before.

Arch_Stanton , 8 hours ago

1. Timetable: Durham's investigation has been slowed by the pandemic. But some action is expected by end of summer, and the probe could stretch beyond Election Day.

There will be no action, or should I say inaction, until after the election

2. Barr believes evidence used by the FBI to justify opening an investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Moscow was very thin.

3. Investigators are focused on what happened before Crossfire Hurricane officially started, including when Christopher Steele first began compiling his dossier.

4. Barr views the FBI's continuation of the Russia probe after the Steele dossier "collapsed" as an illegitimate effort to remove the president.

This is true and we all knew this over 3 years ago.

5. There are multiple criminal investigations into leaks of classified information.

Multiple leaks? No kidding.

6. Barr is concerned by the outgoing Obama administration's extensive unmasking of Americans' conversations ... but don't expect Barack Obama or Joe Biden to get in trouble.

We are all far more than "concerned". This was a coup. Obama initiated this whole coup and Biden was in on the planning and we know it. Why do they skate?

7. Durham is examining whether political pressures were applied during the intelligence community's assessment of Russia's intentions in 2016 election meddling. That could be bad news for former CIA chief John Brennan.

Hoping it's more than news. Hoping for indictments.

This is a joke, and I'm not surprised. If Trump loses, this whole affair will be dropped and consigned to the memory hole immediately.

Chocura750 , 7 hours ago

Thin justification is enough considering the importance of the claim.

BaNNeD oN THe RuN , 8 hours ago

Perhaps the most tantalizing statement Barr has made on this came Sunday when he suggested it was important that Steele began working on his dossier before July 2016, raising the possibility that some unexplained events earlier that year may have been connected to that early Steele work.

It was reported in real time in 2016 that the Steele Dossier work was initiated at the request of rival Republican candidates (likely Jeb Bush, possibly Ted Cruz) and they handed it off to the Clinton Campaign to continue. The Bush family then supported Clinton in the election. This was a uni-party effort to keep control in the 2 families.

Gerb00 , 8 hours ago

They all skate by, no one goes to jail, they all get multi million dollar gooka dn movie deals, mr senile and mr o-*** get nobel peace prizes and shrines where the lincoln memorial used to be..

David Wooten , 8 hours ago

"...the attorney general laid out a likely timeline for when the first actions might be taken in the case, while stressing the probe could carry beyond the election."

Wrongdoings by past administrations go beyond Obiden to Bush 43 or earlier and also include most members of the Senate and a fair number in the House. They stretch from Russia to Ukraine to Libya to Syria to the UK to France to Israel to Assange, etc. They cover members of both parties in the US and back to Tony Blair in Britain and some very powerful people. They are all tied together in some way.

It will take far longer than the election to get the bottom of it and, given the anti-Trump atmosphere that prevails, Durham is unlikely to produce any unsealed indictments before the election lest they be tainted with politics, ie, helping Trump - as Ken Starr's report was tainted as undermining Clinton's election.

Those involved are so powerful that the best that can be expected is to remove them from positions of power, both in and out of government. Some these guys would rather die or bring on a nuclear war than spend years to decades in prison.

Don't hold your breath.

bumboo , 8 hours ago

Hush Hush. Durham and Barr are part of the establishment. Barr and Robert Muller are friends (attend same Bible class). One of them invited the other one to his daughter's wedding (nothing wrong). Part of the Cabal.

Durham investigated the Guantanamo tapes burning by a CIA officer and wrote the per someone's instructions. The author is assuming that his readers are fools and lazy. Sorry, those days are gone, thanks to alternate Media and citizen's journalism or empowerment. We dont have relay journalists in their rocking chair and writing superficial stuff. Did the writer address Joseph Misfud, the Maltese guy.

https://time.com/5633912/joseph-mifsud-mueller-testimony/

Durham and Barr visited him to investigate.

Dr. Bonzo , 8 hours ago

There is sufficient information in the public sphere, including inculpatory evidence that would be more than sufficient to produce indictments. The fact that Trump's AG drags his feet on this within months of the election suggests Trump continues to waffle and go soft in the knees when it matters most. In spite of talking a big game, Trump is a softie.

He might be an incredibly sophisticated media manipulator, and good for him, but I'm not really sure he understands that this burgeoning insurrection, including the complex campaign to unseat him during his presidency, constitutes an insurgency against the Constitutional Republic.

This makes the agents within the Deep State traitors, the executing agents acting in the streets insurrectionists and BLM potentially foreign agents. Trump and his team seem to think this is all just disgruntled political opposition. IT's nothing of the sort.

[Jun 25, 2020] Did Obama-Biden Lie Strzok's Newly Discovered FBI Notes Reignite Obamagate by John Solomon

Jun 24, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by John Solomon via JustTheNews.com,

The belated discovery of disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok's January 2017 notes raises troubling new questions about whether President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were coordinating efforts during their final days in office to investigate Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn -- even as the FBI wanted to shut down the case.

Investigators will need to secure testimony from Strzok, fired two years ago from the FBI, to be certain of the exact meaning and intent of his one paragraph of notes, which were made public in court on Wednesday.

But they appear to illuminate an extraordinary high-level effort by outgoing Obama-era officials during the first weekend of January to find a way to sustain a counterintelligence investigation of Flynn in the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing.

The Justice Department says the notes were written between Jan. 3-5, 2017, the very weekend the FBI agent who had investigated Flynn's ties to Russia for five months recommended the case be closed because there was "no derogatory" evidence that he committed a crime or posed a counterintelligence threat. FBI supervisors overruled the agent's recommendation.

Strzok's notes appear to quote then-FBI Director James Comey as suggesting that Flynn's intercepted calls with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak "appear legit," bolstering other recently disclosed evidence showing the bureau saw nothing wrong with Flynn's behavior.

The notes also suggest Biden -- who once claimed he had no knowledge of the Flynn probe -- raised the issue of the Logan Act, an obscure, centuries-old law, as a possible avenue for continuing to investigate Flynn.

And Strzok appears to quote Obama as suggesting the FBI assign "the right people" to pursue the case.

You can read the notes here:

These conversations, if accurately portrayed in the Strzok notes, occurred during the same three-day period in which FBI supervisors overruled their field agent's recommendation to shut down the Flynn case and pivoted toward the strategy of luring Flynn into an FBI interview where he might be caught lying.

Sidney Powell, Flynn's lawyer, laid out the potential ramifications of the notes in a court filing on Wednesday, calling the new evidence "stunning and exculpatory."

"Mr. Obama himself directed that 'the right people' investigate General Flynn. This caused former FBI Director Comey to acknowledge the obvious: General Flynn's phone calls with Ambassador Kislyak 'appear legit,'" Powell argued in her new motion.

" According to Strzok's notes, it appears that Vice President Biden personally raised the idea of the Logan Act. That became an admitted pretext to investigate General Flynn," she added.

You can read her filing here: The notes are unlikely to have a substantial impact on the outcome of Flynn's case because a three-judge appeals court panel in Washington earlier Wednesday ordered U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to immediately dismiss Flynn's prior conviction for lying to the FBI.

Even if the rebuked judge appeals the decision or the full appeals court reconsiders the case, Flynn is likely on a path to being a free and innocent man.

The real impact of the notes may be on the Justice Department's ongoing investigation of the Russia investigators, where U.S. Attorneys John Durham and Jeff Jensen are determining whether the FBI or others committed crimes in deceiving the courts or Congress about the evidence in the now-discredited Russia collusion allegations.

A former senior FBI official told Just the News that Strzok's notes about the White House meeting are a red flag that the Comey-led bureau may have been involving itself illegitimately in a political dispute between the outgoing Obama administration and incoming Trump administration.

"It was a political meeting about a policy dispute, and the bureau had no business being involved," Former Assistant Director for Intelligence Kevin Brock said. "No other FBI director would ever have attended such a meeting.

"Comey is quoted in the notes as saying the Kislyak call appeared legit. At that point he should have gotten up and left the room," Brock added.

"The FBI had no business being represented in that meeting. It did not have a counterintelligence interest any longer."

A second impact of the notes could be on the campaign trail. A few months ago, Biden claimed he was unaware of the Flynn probe as he was leaving the VP's office.

"I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn," he said.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/3Yrblo64caA

He then clarified his denial.

"I was aware that they asked for an investigation," Biden said. "But that's all I know about it, and I don't think anything else."

If Powell's interpretation of the notes is correct, Biden was knowledgeable enough to suggest a possible pretext for continued investigation, the Logan Act. And he eventually unmasked one of Flynn's intercepted phone calls a week later.

Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes told Just the News on Wednesday the newly discovered notes affirm his long-held suspicion that the Obama White House was trying to influence the FBI's Russia probe in untoward ways.

" Now we know both Obama and Biden were directly involved in planning the attack on Flynn ," Nunes said.

"The Obama administration exploited our intelligence community to spy on their political opponents and engineer bogus investigations and prosecutions of them.

"This is the single biggest abuse of power I've seen in my lifetime," he added.

[Jun 21, 2020] Senate approves subpoenas of Obama officials in Russian collusion probe - Washington Times

Jun 21, 2020 | www.washingtontimes.com

A Senate committee approved subpoenas Thursday for more than 50 mostly Obama-era officials in a dramatic escalation of the investigation into origins of the Trump-Russia collusion probe.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is wielding the subpoena power, said the move will finally put on the hot seat top officials, including former FBI Director James B. Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

"Comey and McCabe and that whole crowd -- their day is coming," Mr. Graham said.

Others targeted for subpoenas are former National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper, former CIA chief John O. Brennan, former Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates, Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and FBI officials Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, James Baker and Bill Priestap.

The panel's politically charged inquiry has the potential to rewrite the Russia collusion narrative that until recently dominated Washington and colored voters' views of the Justice Department and the Obama administration, in which presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden served as vice president.

Democrats said the investigation is a fishing expedition intended to smear President Trump's political enemies as the campaign season heats up.

"Never has a chairman devoted the full weight of this committee's resources to pursue a wholly partisan investigation after being prompted by a presidential campaign," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat and a panel member.

The committee's probe also is a response to public pressure from Trump supporters who are frustrated with the lack of accountability for top officials at the FBI and Justice Department who publicly pushed the unsubstantiated collusion accusations.

Accusations of collusion with Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election dogged Mr. Trump since he took office and fueled Democrats' charges that he occupies the Oval Office illegitimately.

Most of Mr. Trump's term was conducted under the cloud of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, which failed to dig up evidence of collusion or charge any Trump allies on charges related to conspiring with Russia.

Mr. Trump calls the Russia probe a "hoax."

His supporters think it was a political hit job orchestrated by Democrats with the help of a deep state.

In a party-line vote, Republicans on the panel granted Mr. Graham the authority to subpoena individuals for documents and testimony about the origins of the Russia probe.

Mr. Graham has the power to subpoena "any current or former executive branch official or employee involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation," the name of the FBI's investigation into alleged ties to the Trump campaign and Russia.

He also has the authority to subpoena individuals involved in the dissemination of a report by former British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled a salacious but unverified opposition-research dossier against Mr. Trump funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

Fusion GPS founder Glenn R. Simpson and Nellie Ohr are expected to receive subpoenas for their roles in commissioning and distributing the dossier.

Republicans contend that mounting evidence suggests the Russia probe was not on the up and up.

A report last year by the Justice Department inspector general found multiple errors and omissions in the FBI's application for a court order to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

The omissions, which included potentially exculpatory evidence, have raised questions about whether Mr. Page was a political target by anti-Trump officials in the FBI before and after the election.

Mr. Graham also wants to probe the case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

The Justice Department moved this year to dismiss the case after spending roughly two years prosecuting it. The department said the FBI did not have a sufficient basis to interview Flynn because it sought to close the case after failing to uncover wrongdoing.

Sen. Mazie K. Hirono, Hawaii Democrat, accused Mr. Graham of going over "ground that has already been covered."

In a bid to upend the subpoena vote, Democrats sought to add a series of amendments to compel testimony and documents from Mr. Trump's allies.

Among the individuals Democrats want to be subpoenaed are former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and Flynn.

The amendments were defeated easily in a series of party-line votes.

"The fact that you are turning down every single relevant witness tells us and tells the world this is an irrelevant investigation," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat.

Mr. Graham clapped back that Trump associates were heavily scrutinized in the Mueller probe.

"I don't understand why you would want to do the Mueller investigation all over again after we've spent 2½ years and $25 million doing it," said Mr. Graham. "I'm sorry it didn't turn out the way people liked, but it is behind us. Now we are going to look at what happened and the misconduct involved and hold people accountable."

Under committee rules, Mr. Graham cannot issue a subpoena unilaterally. The committee chairman can issue a subpoena only with the consent of the ranking member or a committee vote.

Democrats said the granting of subpoena power to one person violated the committee's bipartisan spirit. They accused Mr. Graham of trying to grant himself "unilateral subpoena authority."

"The resolution would give the chair sole authority to issue literally hundreds of subpoenas without any agreement from the ranking member of any committee to vote on any specific subpoena," said Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the committee.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted last week to authorize subpoenas from individuals associated with the Russia probe. It is not clear how the two committees will work together with similar investigations and subpoenas.


[Jun 17, 2020] Sen. Graham on FBI misconduct: On the left they only care about getting Trump

Notable quotes:
"... Graham dragging his feet again. Swamp creatures everywhere. ..."
"... No one believes "I could wear a wire" Rosenstein didn't know what he was signing ..."
"... I was a bit concerned when I heard Lindsey Graham in essence exonerate Rosenstein from any guilt. ..."
Jun 17, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, discusses the ongoing investigation into the Steele Dossier. #FoxNews


Ben Allmark , 4 days ago

Why is it Lindsay is always telling us the crimes have been committed but nobody's going to jail ? WHY

Travis Priest , 5 days ago

Graham dragging his feet again. Swamp creatures everywhere.

jim Murihiku , 4 days ago

Rosenstein knew exactly what he was doing, He's a liar. Jail time

Srikanth Paniker , 5 days ago

Lindsay Graham is weak and incompetent. He's useless despite having a powerful position.

Michael Jovich , 5 days ago

Senator "All Talk" Graham. Not sure why Hannity has this RINO on constantly.

Patton Was Right , 5 days ago

"WE DEFEATED THE WRONG ENEMY!" Now the enemy controls our media and government

Susan Swinskey , 4 days ago

No one believes "I could wear a wire" Rosenstein didn't know what he was signing

waQup , 5 days ago

I was a bit concerned when I heard Lindsey Graham in essence exonerate Rosenstein from any guilt. The investigation has only just begun. Anyone else get the feeling deals are being done. I mean Graham was in on it from the start wasn't he?

So He's obviously got some sort of immunity deal to be allowed any where near such a vitally important investigation.

So it will be interesting to see how they navigate around that one. Another big day tomorrow...I feel that General Flynn may have some interesting input a little bit further down the track. Patriots world wide. WWG1WGA.

[Jun 17, 2020] Trey Gowdy: Strzok s fingerprints are on every aspect of Russia probe

Notable quotes:
"... We know Stzrok is all over it but I fear they are looking at taking him down and sparing the other traitors. ..."
"... Strzok and Rosenstein ..the ugliest of the swamp creatures. ..."
"... Lisa Paige to Peter Strzok: "POTUS wants to know everything." ..."
Jun 10, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Valentin Casillas , 6 days ago

We need arrest to take place! The deep state needs to go down

Golden showers 4 liberals , 6 days ago

Trump didn't create the hate in the left , he simply exposed it!

Bambi Forester , 6 days ago

We are sick of hearing the crimes and no consequences. ARREST SOMEBODY ALREADY!

shep , 6 days ago

Take every last one of these treasonous DemoRats down!!

JET JET , 6 days ago

She says POSSIBLE spying, there was no possible!! THERE (WAS) SPYING AND THERE'S ((FACTS))) TO PROVE IT!!!

kerry the truth , 6 days ago

Talk talk no arrest. Do something! Arrest someone! Enough our country is literally burnning to the ground!

Candy Kang , 6 days ago

Obama was the LEAD CONSPIRATOR of this CRIME!!!

Dave Alexander , 6 days ago

Barr found out Obama & Killery masterminded this whole thing & Obama put HIS TRAITORS into the key positions.

Tony Colbourne , 6 days ago (edited)

We know Stzrok is all over it but I fear they are looking at taking him down and sparing the other traitors. Time will tell. In my opinion everyone involved was equally complicit. WWG1WGA UK

Philip McDonald , 6 days ago

Strzok and Rosenstein ..the ugliest of the swamp creatures.

NOTHING BURGER - CONFIRMED. , 6 days ago

PETER STRZOK , CREEPlEST MEME OF ALL TIME AWARD

MrAwak3 , 6 days ago

Trey you didn't do ANYTHING about it!!!! ALL TALK!!!! You were just on these committees as a gate keeper to ask the questions that would produce the pre-written responses. YOU ARE COMPROMISED! Everybody watching.... Trey Gowdy KNEW this was a hoax and DID NOTHING!

Vicki Vaught , 6 days ago

Brett isn't going to get any info out of Barr. I avoid Brett, Chris Wallace, and a few others on Fox.

william filiciello , 6 days ago

Endless investigations. When is someone gonna get arrested for an attempted overthrow of the President ?

Mark Suvanish , 6 days ago

All cops are bad -- -except Comey and crew....hmmmmmm. I gotta ponder that. 🤔

Russell Rideout , 6 days ago (edited)

Lisa Paige to Peter Strzok: "POTUS wants to know everything."

[Jun 16, 2020] Saagar Enjeti- Obamagate is real and the media can't just ignore it

They gaslighted the whole nation. Amazing achievement. In other words, they are a real criminal gang, a mafia. No questions about it. This is Nixon impeachment level staff. This are people that brought us Lybia, Syria: this senile Creepy Joe.
Jun 16, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Saagar Enjeti blasts former President Obama after it was revealed in transcripts he was the person who told then-deputy attorney general Sally Yates about Mike Flynn's intercepted phone call with the Russian ambassador, Joe Biden responds to Flynn claims on Good Morning America.

Maniachael Productions , 1 month ago

Lmao a war criminal complaining about the rule of law not being upheld

C.I.A. , 3 weeks ago

It's disgusting to me how news sources say that Obama gate isn't real.

[Jun 16, 2020] Saagar Enjeti- BOMBSHELL reveals Biden at center of Obamagate, media ignores

They gaslighted the whole nation. Amazing achievement. In other words, they are a real criminal gang, a mafia. No questions about it.
Jun 16, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Columbus1152 , 1 month ago

Dementia comes in handy at a time like this.

RayC1 , 1 month ago

Biden just described his entire political career, "I was there, but i had nothing to do with it"

Arthur Sprong , 1 month ago

He's not senile, he's getting ready to be "unfit for trial".

Charles Jannuzi , 1 month ago

Bad Brain Joe was Obomber's point man in the Ukraine coup and all the grifting and grafting that followed.

john smith , 1 month ago

"I know nothing about those moves to investigate Flynn." "These documents clearly outline that you were in a meeting at a specific time specifically about that." "OH! I'm sorry! I thought you asked if I was INVOLVED IN IT!"

Jeff Zekas , 1 month ago (edited)

The word is "entrapment" - Years ago, one of the officers in the investigations squad said to me, "How can you claim to be better than them, if you break the law to catch 'em?" - Now I understand what he was saying.

[Jun 16, 2020] Judge Sullivan created an awkward situation for the DOJ, Michael Flynn, and the Court of Appeals - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Jun 16, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

walrus , 16 June 2020 at 04:37 PM

The corrupt and despicable charade against Flynn conducted by at least the FBI and the so called courts of justice in the United States has destroyed any possible semblance of the idea that there is equal justice under the law or the laughable notion that anything remotely like a fair trial is available to anyone for any alleged offence at all.

The message contained in this prosecution and those of other Trump supporters is quite clear: any person who attempts to assist a political candidate not approved by so called liberals will be punished. Flynn is an example of what will happen to Trump backers in future.

I am amazed at the staying power of SST member Robert Willmann in even reporting this disgusting slow motion attempted lynching.

To put that another way, I now understand why suspects in the USA occasionally risk their lives by running from Police - they reason it is unlikely they will ever receive a fair trial.

The net effect of all these so called legal procedures is to destroy what little is left of America's international legal reputation that reached its highest point at the Nuremberg trials. That will not be to our advantage when, instead of shredding international treaties, we one day seek to negotiate the same.

Brian B , 16 June 2020 at 05:10 PM

The FBI is the secret police working on behalf of the interests of the oligarchs. The federal courts role is to implement and enforce the interests of the oligarchs. The Supreme Court's role is to come up with legal mumbo jumbo to justify this tyranny of the minority.

All the judges in this case (Sullivan, Wilkins, Rao) as merely proxy warriors, tools of the oligarchs. It's not coincidental they are also 'people of color'. This has been the m.o. of the oligarchs for over a hundred years. It was the Spingarn brothers (two lawyers from a rich Jewish family) who started the NAACP with their front man, the mixed race W.E.B. Du Bois. The first mission of the NAACP, and the task assigned to Du Bois, to destroy Booker T. Washington who had a large following in the black community and was advocating for more harmonious race relations. The oligarchs (Spingarns, et al.) running the NAACP needed to silence Washington because they wanted to create more racial division to gain power and subvert American culture. You can read more about this fascinating history in Catholic historian E. Michael Jones' "The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit" (Fidelity, 2008), pp. 679-715; 745-793; 831-843.

Here's a good interview where Jones touches on a lot of this in an interview with Dr. Kirk Meighoo (Indo Caribbean Diaspora News): https://youtu.be/gtdWbTkBQxk

[Jun 16, 2020] Ex-top FBI lawyer who took Steele dossier 'seriously' joins Twitter team

Jun 16, 2020 | www.washingtonexaminer.com

by Daniel Chaitin, Breaking News Editor & Jerry Dunleavy, Justice Department Reporter |

James Baker, who was general counsel for the bureau during the period surrounding the 2016 election, was welcomed by the social media giant's top lawyer Monday evening.

"Thrilled to welcome @thejimbaker to @Twitter as Deputy General Counsel. Jim is committed to our core principles of an open internet and freedom of expression, and brings experience navigating complex, global issues with a principled approach," said Twitter general counsel Sean Edgett.

"Thanks @edgett!! I'm very excited to join such a great team @Twitter doing such important work. Glad to be on board," Baker tweeted back.

Thanks @edgett !! I'm very excited to join such a great team @Twitter doing such important work. Glad to be on board. https://t.co/ypHOJNUtUD

-- Jim Baker (@thejimbaker) June 16, 2020

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/ex-top-fbi-lawyer-who-took-steele-dossier-seriously-joins-twitter

[Jun 14, 2020] FBI Knew Steele's Russia Research Connected To Clinton, Dems From Earliest Interactions

Jun 14, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

"The FBI agent who first interviewed Steele about his anti-Trump research in London on July 5, 2016 was aware immediately of a connection to Clinton..." Notes and emails that have been kept so far from Senate investigators show the FBI knew from its earliest interactions with Christopher Steele in July 2016 that his Russia research project on Donald Trump was connected to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party .

The information, so far mentioned only glancingly and in footnotes of a Justice Department report, could provide the Senate Judiciary Committee with the most powerful evidence yet to confront witnesses about why the bureau concealed the political origins of Steele's work from the FISA court.

" So far the bureau is slow-walking this stuff, " a source familiar with senators' frustrations told Just the News. "We need to see these sort of documents before we question key witnesses."

Chairman Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) is seeking a vote later this week to authorize subpoenas that would compel the Christopher Wray-led FBI to produce witnesses and outstanding documents for the committee's investigation of the Russia investigators.

The effort to acquire the original source materials began last December after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his explosive report blaming the FBI for 17 mistakes, omissions and acts of misconduct in seeking a FISA warrant against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

While the headlines since that report have mostly focused on FISA abuses, Senate investigators have also zeroed in on a handful of little-noticed passages in Horowitz's narrative that reference original FBI source documents showing what agents and supervisors knew about Steele, the former MI6 agent, and the firm that hired him, Fusion GPS.

It wasn't until late October 2017 that the public and Congress first learned that the law firm Perkins Coie, on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign, hired Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS research firm to have Steele delve into Trump's Russia connections .

And FBI officials have been vague in their explanations about when they knew Steele's research was tied to Clinton and the DNC and why they did not explicitly inform the FISA court that the Steele dossier used to secure the warrant was funded by Trump's election opponent.

But one passage and two footnotes in Horowitz's report that have largely escaped public attention suggest the FBI agent who first interviewed Steele about his anti-Trump research in London on July 5, 2016 was aware immediately of a connection to Clinton and that a separate office of the FBI passed along information from an informant by Aug. 2, 2016 that Simpson's Fusion GPS was connected to the DNC.

For instance, the agent in London contacted an Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) in the New York field office (NYFO) shortly after interviewing Steele and obtaining one of the anti-Trump memos that made up his dossier, according to information in Horowitz's report.

The agent sought advice July 13, 2016 on how to handle the sensitive election-year allegations from the supervisor in New York, where the FBI had already opened a probe of Page that would eventually be assumed by Washington headquarters.

"ASAC 1's notes from his July 13 call with Handling Agent 1 closely track the contents of Report 80, identify Simpson as a client of a law firm, and include the following: 'law firm works for the Republican party or Hillary and will use [the information described in Report 80] at some point,'" the Horowitz report stated. "ASAC 1 told us that he would not have made this notation if Handling Agent 1 had not stated it to him."

Footnote 223 in the report reveals a second line of evidence that came to the FBI from a confidential human source (CHS) suggesting the Steele-Simpson-Fusion project was tied to Democrats. That warning was immediately sent to Agent Peter Strzok, the case agent for the Crossfire Hurricane probe investigating whether Trump and Russia colluded to hijack the 2016 election.

"At approximately the same time that Handling Agent 1 was reporting information about Simpson to ASAC 1, an FBI agent from another FBI field office sent an email to his supervisor stating that he had been contacted by a former CHS who 'was contacted recently by a colleague who runs an investigative firm. The firm had been hired by two entities (the Democratic National Committee as well as another individual...not name[d]) to explore Donald J. Trump's longstanding ties to Russian entities.'"

"On or about August 2, 2016, this information was shared by a CD supervisor with the Section Chief of CD's Counterintelligence Analysis Section I (Intel Section Chief), who provided it that day to members of the Crossfire Hurricane team (then Section Chief Peter Strzok, SSA 1, and the Supervisory Intel Analyst,)" the footnote adds.

Senate investigators want to see the original emails and notes from these conversations as they plan to interrogate dozens of key witnesses in the Russia investigation about whether there was an intentional effort by he FBI to hide from the courts and Congress the flaws in their case, exculpatory evidence involving the Trump targets, and derogatory information about Steele's credibility.

In the end, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence that any Americans, including anyone associated with the Trump campaign, colluded with Russia to influence the election.

And evidence that has since emerged shows the FBI determined early on that Steele's dossier included debunked, uncorroborated information and possible Russian disinformation aimed at smearing Trump , but agents proceeded anyway with their investigation.

The FBI notes and emails from summer 2016 are consistent with recent testimony that Steele gave in a civil case in London , where he testified he told the bureau his research and the Fusion GPS project was connected to Clinton .

" I presumed it was the Clinton campaign, and Glenn Simpson had indicated that . But I was not aware of the technicality of it being the DNC that was actually the client of Perkins Coie," Steele testified in March under questioning from lawyers for Russian bankers suing over his research.

Steele confirmed during that testimony that his notes of a 2016 FBI meeting showed he told agents about the Clinton connection.

Congressional investigators have now pieced together at least five instances early in the Russia case where the FBI was warned of the political origins and motives of Steele's work but failed to fully inform the courts.

Instead, the FBI's FISA warrant application told the judge Steele was working for a person interested in possibly defeating Trump but without disclosing it was the opposition research firm specifically hired by Clinton and the DNC through their law firm to find dirt on Trump in Russia.

Senate investigators are trying to determine whether that omission was part of a larger, intentional campaign to mislead the FISA court and Congress in order to keep the Russia investigation going despite a lack of evidence supporting the collusion theory.

" Look, we've got to get to the bottom of this, to find out how they ended up with this dossier, how it was believed to be accurate, when did they know it was not accurate? " explained Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) one of the key members of the Judiciary Committee.

[Jun 12, 2020] Russia, Russia, Russia - Obama Apparatchiks Blame Moscow For America's Riots

Jun 12, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Russia, Russia, Russia - Obama Apparatchiks Blame Moscow For America's Riots by Tyler Durden Thu, 06/11/2020 - 22:45 Authored by Phillip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

If one ventures into the vast wasteland of American television it is possible to miss the truly ridiculous content that is promoted as news by the major networks. One particular feature of media-speak in the United States is the tendency of the professional reporting punditry to go seeking for someone to blame every time some development rattles the National Security plus Wall Street bubble that we all unfortunately live in. The talking heads have to such an extent sold the conclusion that China deliberately released a lethal virus to destroy western democracies that no one objects when Beijing is elevated from being a commercial competitor and political adversary to an enemy of the United States. One sometimes even sees that it is all a communist plot. Likewise, the riots taking place all across the U.S. are being milked for what it's worth by the predominantly liberal media, both to influence this year's election and to demonstrate how much the news oligarchs really love black people.

As is often the case, there are a number of inconsistencies in the narrative. If one looks at the numerous photos of the protests in many parts of the country, it is clear that most of the demonstrators are white, not black, which might suggest that even if there are significant pockets of racism in the United States there is also a strong condemnation of that fact by many white people. And this in a country that elected a black man president not once, but twice, and that black president had a cabinet that included a large number of African-Americans.

Also, to further obfuscate any understanding of what might be taking place, the media and chattering class is obsessed with finding white supremacists as instigators of at least some of the actual violence. It would be a convenient explanation for the Social Justice Warriors that proliferate in the media, though it is supported currently by little actual evidence that anyone is exploiting right-wing groups.

Simultaneously, some on the right, to include the president, are blaming legitimately dubbed domestic terrorist group Antifa , which is perhaps more plausible, though again evidence of organized instigation appears to be on the thin side. Still another source of the mayhem apparently consists of some folks getting all excited by the turmoil and breaking windows and tossing Molotov cocktails, as did two upper middle class attorneys in Brooklyn last week.

Nevertheless, the search goes on for a guilty party. Explaining the demonstrations and riots as the result of the horrible killing of a black man by police which has revulsed both black and white Americans would be too simple to satisfy the convoluted yearnings of the likes of Wolf Blitzer and Rachel Maddow.

Which brings us to Russia. How convenient is it to fall back on Russia which, together with the Chinese, is reputedly already reported to be working hard to subvert the November U.S. election. And what better way to do just that than to call on one of the empty-heads of the Barack Obama administration, whose foreign policy achievements included the destruction of a prosperous Libya and the killing of four American diplomats in Benghazi, the initiation of kinetic hostilities with Syria, the failure to achieve a reset with Russia and the assassinations of American citizens overseas without any due process. But Obama sure did talk nice and seem pleasant unlike the current occupant of the White House.

The predictable Wolf Blitzer had a recent interview with perhaps the emptiest head of all the empowered women who virtually ran the Obama White House. Susan Rice was U.N. Ambassador and later National Security Advisor under Barack Obama. Before that she was a Clinton appointee who served as Undersecretary of State for African Affairs. She is reportedly currently being considered as a possible running mate for Joe Biden as she has all the necessary qualifications being a woman and black.

While Ambassador and National Security Advisor, Rice had the reputation of being extremely abrasive . She ran into trouble when she failed to be convincing in support of the Obama administration exculpatory narrative regarding what went wrong in Benghazi when the four Americans, to include the U.S. Ambassador, were killed.

In her interview with Blitzer, Rice said:

"We have peaceful protesters focused on the very real pain and disparities that we're all wrestling with that have to be addressed, and then we have extremists who've come to try to hijack those protests and turn them into something very different. And they're probably also, I would bet based on my experience, I'm not reading the intelligence these days, but based on my experience this is right out of the Russian playbook as well. I would not be surprised to learn that they have fomented some of these extremists on both sides using social media. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they are funding it in some way, shape, or form."

It should be noted that Rice, a devout Democrat apparatchik, produced no evidence whatsoever that the Russians were or have been involved in "fomenting" the reactions to the George Floyd demonstrations and riots beyond the fact that Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden all believe that Moscow is responsible for everything. Clinton in particular hopes that some day someone will actually believe her when she claims that she lost to Trump in 2016 due to Russia. Even Robert Mueller, he of the Russiagate Inquiry, could not come up with any real evidence suggesting that the relatively low intensity meddling in the election by the Kremlin had any real impact. Nor was there any suggestion that Moscow was actually colluding with the Trump campaign, nor with its appointees, to include National Security Advisor designate Michael Flynn.

Fortunately, no one took much notice of Rice based on her "experience," or her judgement insofar as she possesses that quality. Glenn Greenwald responded :

"This is fuxxing lunacy -- conspiratorial madness of the worst kind -- but it's delivered by a Serious Obama Official and a Respected Mainstream Newscaster so it's all fine This is Infowars-level junk. Should Twitter put a 'False' label on this? Or maybe a hammer and sickle emoji?"

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova accurately described the Rice performance as a "perfect example of barefaced propaganda." She wrote on her Facebook page "Are you trying to play the Russia card again? You've been playing too long – come back to reality" instead of using "dirty methods of information manipulation" despite "having absolutely no facts to prove [the] allegations go out and face your people, look them in the eye and try telling them that they are being controlled by the Russians through YouTube and Facebook. And I will sit back and watch 'American exceptionalism' in action."

It should be assumed that the Republicans will be coming up with their own candidate for "fomenting" the riots and demonstrations. It already includes Antifa, of course, but is likely to somehow also involve the Chinese, who will undoubtedly be seen as destroying American democracy through the double whammy of a plague and race riots. Speaking at the White House, National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien warned about foreign incitement , including not only the Chinese, but also Iran and even Zimbabwe. And, oh yes, Russia.

One thing is for sure, no matter who is ultimately held accountable, no one in the Congress or White House will be taking the blame for anything.

[Jun 11, 2020] The color revolution against Trump including Flynn entrapment was all directed by President Obama -- Senator Rand Paul

Jun 11, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Rand Paul on heated Senate exchange with Dr. Fauci - YouTube

Ginette Jonas , 3 weeks ago

Asking Obama even under oath is a waste of breath. We all know he is a liar.

Matt B , 3 weeks ago

Asking obama a question and expecting a truthful answer is like asking for ice water in hell. It's never gonna happen.

[Jun 11, 2020] Trumped-Up chnges of Flynn as this was one of the cornerstone of Russiagate

Jun 11, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

"Trumped-Up": Former Judge's Flynn Filing Another Example Of "Irregularity" In The Age Of Rage by Tyler Durden Thu, 06/11/2020 - 10:59 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Retired federal judge John Gleeson was recently appointed by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to argue against dismissal of the case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and to advise him on whether the court should substitute its own charge of charge for Flynn for now claiming innocence.

I have been highly critical of Sullivan's orders and particularly the importation of third parties to make arguments that neither party supports in a criminal case.

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.390.0_en.html#goog_1316842970

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.390.0_en.html#goog_1769897594 NOW PLAYING

Flynn asks appeals court to toss criminal charges

Now Gleeson has filed a brief that confirms the worst fears that many of us had about his appointment. Gleeson assails what he called "a trumped-up accusation of government misconduct." The ultimate position advocated in Gleeson's arguments would be a nightmare for criminal defendants, criminal defense counsel and civil libertarians. Indeed, as discussed below, Gleeson was previously reversed as a judge for usurping the authority of prosecutors.

Gleeson actually makes the Red Queen in "Alice in Wonderland" look like an ACLU lawyer. After all she just called for "Sentence First–Verdict Afterward" Gleeson is dispensing with any need for verdict on perjury, just the sentence. However, since these arguments are viewed as inimical to the Trump Administration, many seem blind to the chilling implications .

In his 82-page filing Gleeson notably rejects the idea of a perjury charge, which I previously criticized as a dangerous and ridiculous suggestion despite the support from many legal analysts. He notes that such a move would be "irregular" and

"I respectfully suggest that the best response to Flynn's perjury is not to respond in kind. Ordering a defendant to show cause why he should not be held in contempt based on a perjurious effort to withdraw a guilty plea is not what judges typically do. To help restore confidence in the integrity of the judicial process, the Court should return regularity to that process."

This seems a carefully crafted way of saying that the many calls for a perjury charge are as out of line with prior cases as what these same critics allege was done by the Justice Department.

However, Gleeson is not striking an independent or principled position. Rather, he is suggesting that the Court simply treat Flynn as a perjurer, punish him as a perjurer, but not give him a trial as a perjurer. Thus, he is advocating that the court "should take Flynn's perjury into account in sentencing him on the offense to which he has already admitted guilty."

Thus, according to Gleeson, the Court should first sentence a defendant on a crime that the prosecutors no longer believe occurred in a case that prosecutors believe (and many of us have argued) was marred by their own misconduct. He would then punish the defendant further by treating his support for dismissal and claims of coercion as perjury. That according to former judge Gleeson is a return to "regularity." I have been a criminal defense attorney for decades and I have never even heard of anything like that. It is not "regular." It is ridiculous.

Gleeson himself came in for criticism in the filing by Flynn's counsel who note that the former judge appointed by Sullivan not only publicly advocated against Flynn's position but as a judge was chastised by the Second Circuit for misusing his position to grandstand in a case involving a deferred prosecution agreement. The defense cited HSBC Bank USA, N.A., 863 F.3d 125, 136 (2d Cir. 2017) where the Second Circuit reversed Gleeson for exaggerating his role in a way that "would be to turn the presumption of regularity on its head."

The similarities to the present case are notable, including arguments that Gleeson intruded upon prosecutorial discretion. The Second Circuit held:

"By sua sponte invoking its supervisory power at the outset of this case to oversee the government's entry into and implementation of the DPA, the district court impermissibly encroached on the Executive's constitutional mandate to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." U.S. Const. art. II, § 3. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the Department of Justice is entitled to a presumption of regularity -- that is, a presumption that it is lawfully discharging its duties. Though that presumption can of course be rebutted in such a way that warrants judicial intervention, it cannot be preemptively discarded based on the mere theoretical possibility of misconduct. Absent unusual circumstances not present here, a district court's role vis-à-vis a DPA is limited to arraigning the defendant, granting a speedy trial waiver if the DPA does not represent an improper attempt to circumvent the speedy trial clock, and adjudicating motions or disputes as they arise."

The Court acknowledged that there may be cases warranting great judicial involvement. However, the court found that Gleeson had acted on his own presumptions and not evidence. It also reaffirmed that there is a presumption in favor of the prosecution that he ignored:

"The district court justified its concededly "novel" exercise of supervisory power in this context by observing that "it is easy to imagine circumstances in which a deferred prosecution agreement, or the implementation of such an agreement, so transgresses the bounds of lawfulness or propriety as to warrant judicial intervention to protect the integrity of the Court." HSBC Bank USA, N.A., 2013 WL 3306161, at *6. We agree that it is not difficult to imagine such circumstances. But the problem with this reasoning is that it runs headlong into the presumption of regularity that federal courts are obliged to ascribe to prosecutorial conduct and decisionmaking. That presumption is rooted in the principles that undergird our constitutional structure. In particular, "because the United States Attorneys are charged with taking care that the laws are faithfully executed, there is a `presumption of regularity support[ing] their prosecutorial decisions and, in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, courts presume that they have properly discharged their official duties.'" United States v. Sanchez, 517 F.3d 651 , 671 (2d Cir. 2008) (alteration in original) (quoting United States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456 , 464, 116 S.Ct. 1480, 134 L.Ed.2d 687 (1996)). In resting its exercise of supervisory authority on hypothesized scenarios of egregious misconduct, the district court turned this presumption on its head. See HSBC Bank USA, N.A., 2013 WL 3306161, at *6 ("[C]onsider a situation where the current monitor needs to be replaced. What if the replacement's only qualification for the position is that he or she is an intimate acquaintance of the prosecutor proposing the appointment?" (citation omitted)).

Rather than presume "in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary" that the prosecutors administering the DPA were "properly discharg[ing] their official duties," the district court invoked its supervisory power -- and encroached on the Executive's prerogative -- based on the mere theoretical possibility that the prosecutors might one day abdicate those duties. Sanchez, 517 F.3d at 671 (internal quotation mark omitted)."

Gleeson can now argue that he found the case that he did not establish as a judge. However, his brief is filled with sweeping presumptions against the motivations and analysis of the Justice Department, even though many outsiders agree with that analysis. The Flynn case is based on statements that even the FBI agents reportedly did not believe were intentional lies. Moreover, there is a clear basis to question the materiality element to the criminal charge. People can disagree reasonably on both points, but that is the point. The Justice Department has decided that it agrees that the case is flawed in line with the analysis of various experts. The court might not agree with that interpretation and many other experts may vehemently oppose it. However, it is a legitimate legal argument that cannot be substituted by the Court for its own preferences.

None of this seems to penetrate the analysis of Gleeson who shows the same aggrandizement of judicial authority that got him reversed as a judge. He argues for a court potentially sending someone to jail when the prosecutors no longer believe he is guilty of a crime and believe that he was the victim of bias and abuse.

Imagine what that would portend for future criminal defendants who want to argue coercion and abuse. Their counsel would have to warn them that they could be sent to prison for a longer period for perjury even if the prosecutors agree with them. Moreover, Gleeson believes that they should not even be afforded a trial as perjurers, just treated as perjurers.

That is being claimed in the name of "regularity." Unfortunately, such analysis has become all too regular in this age of rage.

Here is the filing: Gleeson filing

[Jun 10, 2020] Eventually even the emperors were idiots. Some of them think they can compartmentalize competencies, so you see these absolutely castrated and chemically autistic nerds working the buttons in technical academia

Jun 10, 2020 | www.unz.com

anon8383892 , says: Show Comment June 10, 2020 at 5:53 pm GMT

@Alfa158 It won't work though. There isn't a significant generation of 'hyper-competent' people amidst a suppressed populace. Instead you get idiocracy, where even the elites show signs of mental impairment, increasingly as time goes by. The Romans were rendered idiotic by arbitrary and ruthless imperial autocracy, which scythed through families and ancient clans, leaving only careerist slaves in its wake.

Eventually even the emperors were idiots. Some of them think they can compartmentalize competencies, so you see these absolutely castrated and chemically autistic nerds working the buttons in technical academia. You can produce bureaucrats of technocracy this way, but nothing much new will come of it.

Elon Musk is not the most competent. He is the scion of a diamond magnate family if I'm not mistaken. He is a silly man, nothing against him, but most of us don't admire him all.

We feel sorry for people that have this kind of cultish infatuation with the man, his golf-carts, and space-rockets. He is complete with our own Marie Antoinette, Grimes, each an absolute clown, clown royals for a clown society. Idiocracy.

Hilarious to see Alex Jones pimping him as like a new Howard Hughes. Most of the alt press is fizzled, co-opted or neutralized in some way. Infatuation with big, great people, heroes from the heavens of the stars, is a pathology, whether it's directed at Trump or Bernie or whoever.

People need to cultivate the hero within, and generate the ground level sovereignty that could restore (from the earth and man up) a free republic. There are a lot of authority figures from the deathstar on Youtube telling us how they are patriots and are fighting back. May be. Could also be the enemy fucking with us. Really no way to know, which again, is a motivating factor for de-centralization and vesting sovereignty into free men, free communities, and up. The federal entity is necessary, but cannot hover self-sufficiently over a devastated (by corporate dictat -- for human resource extraction) populace. If the states withdraw their channeled sovereignty from the federal entity, it should collapse. Otherwise it is a foreign entity. To the extent we are ruled by a tiny cabal of vampires, we lose justification for the belief that our rulers are ours at all. Such an arrangement of power presents an attractive target (minimal points of failure) for a strategic adversarial compromise.

One reason I don't want people being anti-antifa, is I understand most of those people just want local self-governance. Food-not-bombs people mostly just want to have a nice little community garden and not be turned into slaves by the system. These are the 'anarchists'. I've met them, mostly they are not so bad. It's a lot of divide-and-conquer going on.

Apologies for the stream-of-consciousness; I've posted some of this before, just pounding on the nail.

[Jun 06, 2020] New questions about Obama s interest in Clinton probe

Now "Horrible Lisa" re-surfaced in MSNBC. Not surprising one bit. This is a deep state retirement package...
Notable quotes:
"... Barack Obama wanted to 'know everything' the FBI was 'doing' according to newly released text messages between FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page ..."
Feb 07, 2018 | www.youtube.com

Barack Obama wanted to 'know everything' the FBI was 'doing' according to newly released text messages between FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page ; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'

Rick Spiedel , 2 years ago

Slime, slime and more slime. Obama headed up the whole thing. Zero integrity there.

The leaders of the Democratic Party, Barrak Obama, Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Brazile, Chuck Schummer, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Shiff and his sisters father-in-law George Soros.

Here is what this all boils down to. Hillary Clinton email to Donna Brazile, Oct., 17, 2016. "If that f*cking ba*tard wins, we're all going to hang from nooses! You better fix this sh*t!"

[Jun 06, 2020] Lisa Page Hired By NBC And MSNBC As Legal Analyst (No, Not The Onion!) by Jonathan Turley

This is just the Deep State retirement package.
So another rabid neocon is hired by neocon MSM and instantly was interviewed by neocon Madcow, blaming Russia for the coup d'état against Trump that Obama administration with her help launched. Nothing new, nothing interesting.
Notable quotes:
"... Page testified that even by May 2017, they did not find such evidence that "it still existed in the scope of possibility that there would be literally nothing" to connect Trump and Russia. ..."
"... There was little reason to believe in this "insurance policy" given the absence of evidence. Yet, Page still viewed the effort led by Strzok as an indemnity in case of election. ..."
"... The Inspector General found that, soon after the first surveillance was ordered, FBI agents began to cast doubts on the veracity of the Steele document ..."
"... it was quickly established that no credible evidence existed to support the continuance of the investigation -- which Page called their "insurance policy." ..."
"... Page also left out her other emails including calling Trump foul names while praising Hillary Clinton and other opponents. Even if she were not involved in the ongoing controversy, her emails show her to be fervently opposed to both Trump and the Republicans. ..."
Jun 06, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Lisa Page, the former FBI lawyer who resigned in the midst of the Russian investigation scandal, has been hired a NBC and MSNBC as a legal analyst. The move continues a trend started by CNN in hiring Trump critics, including officials terminated for misconduct, to offer legal analysis on the Trump Administration. We have previously discussed the use by CNN of figures like Andrew McCabe to give legal analysis despite his being referred for possible criminal charges by the Inspector General for repeatedly lying to federal investigators. The media appears intent on fulfilling the narrative of President Trump that it is overly biased and hostile in its analysis. Indeed, it now appears a marketing plan that has subsumed the journalistic mission.

Page appeared with Rachel Maddow and began her work as the new legal analyst by discussing her own controversial work at the FBI. Page is still part of investigation by various committees and the investigation being conducted by U.S Attorney John Durham.

I have denounced President Trump for his repeated and often vicious references to Page's affair with fired FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok . There is no excuse for such personal abuse. I also do not view her emails as proof of her involvement in a deep-state conspiracy as opposed to clearly inappropriate and partisan communications for someone involved in the investigation. Indeed, Page did not appear a particularly significant figure in the investigation or even the FBI as a whole. She was primarily dragged into the controversy due to her relationship with Strzok.

However, Trump has legitimate reason to object (as he has) to this hiring as do those who expect analysis from experts without a personal stake in the ongoing investigations. It has long been an ethical rule in American journalism not to pay for interviews. Either NBC is paying for exclusive rights to Page in interviews like the one on Maddow's show or it is hiring an expert with a personal stake in these controversies to give legal analysis. Neither is a good option for a network that represented the gold standard in journalism with figures like John Chancellor, Edwin Newman, and Roger Mudd.

It is not that Page disagrees with the Administration on legal matters or these cases. It is the fact that she is personally involved in the ongoing stories and has shown intense and at times unhinged bias against Trump in communications with Strzok and others. She is the news story, or at least a significant part of it.

Andrew A. Weissmann has also been retained as a legal analyst by NBC and MSNBC. While Weissmann has been raised by Republicans as a lightening rod for his perceived partisan bias as a member of the Mueller team, he does not have the type of personal conflict or interest in these investigations. Weissmann is likely to be raised in the hearing over the next weeks into the Flynn case in terms of prosecutorial decisions. (It is worth noting that Fox hired Trey Gowdy at an analyst even though he would be commenting on matters that came before his committee in these investigations.) In terms of balance, however, the appearance of both Page and Weissmann giving analysis on the Administration's response to the protests is a bit jarring for some .

Page was an unknown attorney in the FBI before she was forced into the public eye due to her emails with Strzok. Her emails fueled the controversy over bias in the FBI. They were undeniably biased and strident including the now famous reference to the FBI investigation as "insurance" in case Trump was elected. In the email in August 2016, here's what Strzok wrote:

I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office [Andrew McCabe is the FBI deputy director and married to a Democratic Virginia State Senate candidate] for that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40

What particularly concerns me is that Page has come up recently in new disclosures in the Flynn case . In newly released document is an email from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page to former FBI special agent Peter Strzok, who played the leadership role in targeting Flynn. In the email, Page suggests that Flynn could be set up by making a passing reference to a federal law that criminalizes lies to federal investigators. She suggested to Strzok that "it would be an easy way to just casually slip that in." So this effort was not about protecting national security or learning critical intelligence. As I have noted, the email reinforces other evidence that it was about bagging Flynn for the case in the legal version of a canned trophy hunt.

It appears that, on January 4, 2017, the FBI's Washington Field Office issued a "Closing Communication" indicating that the bureau was terminating "CROSSFIRE RAZOR" -- the newly disclosed codename for the investigation of Flynn. That is when Strzok intervened. The FBI had investigated Flynn and various databases and determined that "no derogatory information was identified in FBI holdings." Due to this conclusion, the Washington Field Office concluded that Flynn "was no longer a viable candidate as part of the larger CROSSFIRE HURRICANE umbrella case." On that same day, however, fired FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok instructed the FBI case manager handling CROSSFIRE RAZOR to keep the investigation open, telling him "Hey don't close RAZOR." The FBI official replied, "Okay." Strzok then confirmed again, "Still open right? And you're the case agent? Going to send you [REDACTED] for the file." The FBI official confirmed: "I have not closed it Still open." Strzok responded "Rgr. I couldn't raise [REDACTED] earlier. Pls keep it open for now."

Strzok also texted Page:

"Razor still open. :@ but serendipitously good, I guess. You want those chips and Oreos?" Page replied "Phew. But yeah that's amazing that he is still open. Good, I guess."

Strzok replied "Yeah, our utter incompetence actually helps us. 20% of the time, I'm guessing :)"

Page will be the focus of much of the upcoming inquiries both in Congress and the Justice Department as will CNN's legal analyst Andrew McCabe.

In her Maddow segment, Page attempts to defuse the "insurance policy" email as all part of her commitment to protecting the nation, not her repeatedly stated hatred for Trump. In what is now a signature for MSNBC, Maddow did not ask a single probative question but actually helped her frame the response. Even in echo journalistic circles, the echo between the two was deafening.

Page explained"

"It's an analogy. First of all, it's not my text, so I'm sort of interpreting what I believed he meant back three years ago, but we're using an analogy. We're talking about whether or not we should take certain investigative steps or not based on the likelihood that he's going to be president or not."

You have to keep in mind if President Trump doesn't become president, the national-security risk, if there is somebody in his campaign associated with Russia, plummets. You're not so worried about what Russia's doing vis-à-vis a member of his campaign if he's not president because you're not going to have access to classified information, you're not going to have access to sources and methods in our national-security apparatus. So, the 'insurance policy' was an analogy. It's like an insurance policy when you're 40. You don't expect to die when you're 40, yet you still have an insurance policy."

Maddow then decided to better frame the spin:

"So, don't just hope that he's not going to be elected and therefore not press forward with the investigation hoping, but rather press forward with the investigation just in case he does get in there."

Page simply responds " Exactly ."

Well, not exactly.

Page is leaving out that, as new documents show, there never was credible evidence of any Russian collusion. Recently, the Congress unsealed testimony from a long line of Obama officials who denied ever seeing such evidence, including some who publicly suggested that they had .

Indeed, Page testified that even by May 2017, they did not find such evidence that "it still existed in the scope of possibility that there would be literally nothing" to connect Trump and Russia.

There was little reason to believe in this "insurance policy" given the absence of evidence. Yet, Page still viewed the effort led by Strzok as an indemnity in case of election.

The Inspector General found that, soon after the first surveillance was ordered, FBI agents began to cast doubts on the veracity of the Steele document and suggested it might be disinformation from Russian intelligence. The IG said that, due to the relatively low standard required for a FISA application, he could not say that the original application was invalid but that it was quickly established that no credible evidence existed to support the continuance of the investigation -- which Page called their "insurance policy."

Page also left out her other emails including calling Trump foul names while praising Hillary Clinton and other opponents. Even if she were not involved in the ongoing controversy, her emails show her to be fervently opposed to both Trump and the Republicans.

Bias however has become the coin of the realm for some networks. Why have echo journalism when you can have an analyst simply repeat her position directly? For viewers who become irate at the appearance of opposing views ( as vividly demonstrated in the recent apology of the New York Times for publishing a conservative opinion column ), having a vehemently biased and personally invested analyst is reassuring. It is not like Page will suddenly blurt out a defense of Flynn or Trump or others in the Administration.

With Page, NBC has crossed the Rubicon and left its objectivity scattered on the far bank.

we_the_people, 11 minutes ago (Edited)

Nothing says professional journalism like hiring a dirty whore who was an active participant in a coup to overthrow a duly elected President!

The level of insanity is truly amazing!

Heroism, 14 minutes ago

The MSM gets more Orwellian by the day, and today is like tomorrow.

More proof that corruption and deceit pay, big time. Surely, at some point viewers and voters

will say, "Enough!" and hit these purveyors of lies where it hurts--in the ratings and pocketbooks. Meanwhile,

the people will just willingly suffer..............

[Jun 06, 2020] Somebody Cooked Up The Plot The Hunt For The Origins Of The Russia Collusion Narrative

Jun 06, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

"Somebody Cooked Up The Plot": The Hunt For The Origins Of The Russia Collusion Narrative by Tyler Durden Fri, 06/05/2020 - 22:40 Authored by John Solomon via JustTheNews.com,

Hollywood once gave us the Cold War thriller called "The Hunt for Red October ." And now the U.S. Senate and its Republican committee chairmen in Washington have launched a different sort of hunt made for the movies.

Armed with subpoenas, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., want to interrogate a slew of Obama-era intelligence and law enforcement officials hoping to identify who invented and sustained the bogus Russia collusion narrative that hampered Donald Trump's early presidency.

And while Graham and Johnson aren't exactly Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin, they and their GOP cohorts have a theory worthy of a Tom Clancy novel-turned-movie: The Russia collusion investigation was really a plot by an outgoing administration to thwart the new president.

"What we had was a very quiet insurrection that took place," Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the Tennessee Republican, told Just the News on Thursday as she described the theory of Senate investigators. "And there were probably dozens of people at DOJ and FBI that knew what was going on.

"But they hate Donald Trump so much that they were willing to work under the cloak of law and try to use that to shield them so that they could take an action on their disgust," she added. "They wanted to prohibit him from being president. And when he won, they wanted to render him ineffective at doing his job."

For much of the last two years, the exact theory that congressional Republicans held about the bungled, corrupt Russia probe -- where collusion between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin was ultimately disproven and FBI misconduct was confirmed -- was always evolving.

But after explosive testimony this week from former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who openly accused the FBI of keeping him in the dark about flaws, failures and exculpatory evidence in the case, the GOP believes it may prove the Russia case was a conspiracy to use the most powerful law enforcement and intelligence tools in America to harm Trump.

Two years of declassified memos are now in evidence that show:

  • The FBI was warned before it used Christopher Steele's dossier as evidence to target the Trump campaign with a FISA warrant that the former British spy might be the target of Russian disinformation, that he despised Trump and that he was being paid to help Hillary Clinton's campaign. But agents proceeded anyway.
  • The bureau was told by the CIA that its primary target, Trump adviser Carter Page, wasn't a Russian spy but rather a CIA asset. But it hid that evidence from the DOJ and courts, even falsifying a document to keep the secret.
  • The FBI opened a case on Trump adviser George Papadopoulos on the suspicion he might arrange Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton but quickly determined he didn't have the Russian contacts to pull it off. But the case kept going.
  • The FBI intercepted conversations between its informants and Papadopoulos and Page showing the two men made numerous statements of innocence, and kept that evidence from the DOJ and the courts.
  • The FBI investigated Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn for five months and concluded there was no derogatory evidence he committed a crime or posed an intelligence threat and recommended closing the case. But higher-ups overruled the decision and proceeded to interview Flynn.
  • The FBI and DOJ both knew by August 2017 there was no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion but allowed another 18 months of investigation to persist without announcing the president was innocent.

That is just a handful of the key evidentiary anchors of the storyline Republicans have developed. Now they want to know who helped carry out each of these acts.

"There are millions of Americans pretty upset about this," Graham said this week. "There are people on our side of the aisle who believe this investigation, Crossfire Hurricane, was one of the most corrupt, biased criminal investigations in the history of the FBI. And we'd like to see something done about it ."

Graham tried to take action to approve 50-plus subpoenas from the Senate Judiciary Committee to witnesses on Thursday but was forced to delay a week.

Johnson, meanwhile, successfully secured about three dozen subpoenas to get documents and interviews with key witnesses from his Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Evidence is growing, Johnson said, that there was not a "peaceful and cooperative" transition between the Obama and Trump administrations in 2017.

"The conduct we know that occurred during the transition should concern everyone and absolutely warrants further investigation," he said.

With Rosenstein's testimony now behind them, the senators have some lofty targets for interviews or testimony going forward, including fired FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, ex-CIA Director John Brennan, and the former chiefs of staff for President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

Blackburn said during an interview with the John Solomon Reports podcast that the goal of the subpoenas and witnesses was simple: to identify and punish the cast of characters who sustained a Russia collusion narrative that was never supported by the evidence.

"Somebody cooked up the plot," she explained.

"Somebody gave the go-ahead to order, to implement it. Somebody did the dirty work and carried it out -- and probably a lot of somebodies. And what frustrates the American people is that nobody has been held accountable.

"Nobody has been indicted. Nobody has been charged, and they're all getting major book deals and are profiting by what is criminal activity, if you look at the statutes that are on the book, and if you say we're going to abide by the rule of law and be a nation of laws."

For Blackburn, identifying and punishing those responsible is essential for two goals: to deter anyone in the future from abusing the FBI and FISA process again and to ensure Americans there isn't a two-tiered system of justice in America.

"I think when you Google [Russia collusion] in future years, you're going to see a screenshot of this cast of characters that cooked this up, because it is the ultimate plot," Blackburn said.

[Jun 06, 2020] MSNBC hires controversial ex-FBI lawyer Lisa Page as legal analyst

Jun 06, 2020 | www.foxnews.com

MSNBC announced on Friday that it has hired former FBI lawyer Lisa Page as an NBC News and MSNBC national security and legal analyst.

On Friday night, President Trump blasted MSNBC's latest hiring decision.

"You must be kidding??? This is a total disgrace!" Trump tweeted.

Page made her debut as an MSNBC analyst during "Deadline: White House" alongside former Mueller probe prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who appears to have been rehired by the network after they severed ties after it was announced he was hosting a Biden fundraiser, which was ultimately canceled.

Both Page and Weissmann offered legal analysis on the ongoing feud between President Trump and Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser over the presence of outside troops.

BROADCAST NETS SPEND OVER 700 MINUTES ON GEORGE FLOYD PROTESTS, 5 MINUTES ON RIOT DEATHS

Page is best known for her publicized text exchanges with her lover, ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok, which revealed extreme animosity towards Trump during the 2016 election and created the perception that their political views fueled the Russia investigation.

The texts that sounded the alarm for GOP lawmakers was Strzok's reference to an "insurance policy" that was discussed at Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe's office. Page denied that meant the FBI had plotted to remove Trump if he won the election.

Last December, Page broke her silence and made her television debut on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show," where she was asked about the "insurance policy" text.

NY TIMES EDITOR BARI WEISS SAYS THERE'S A 'CIVIL WAR' WITHIN PAPER AMID TOM COTTON UPROAR

"It's an analogy," Page explained. "First of all, it's not my text, so I'm sort of interpreting what I believed he meant back three years ago, but we're using an analogy. We're talking about whether or not we should take certain investigative steps or not based on the likelihood that he's going to be president or not."

She continued, "You have to keep in mind ... if President Trump doesn't become president, the national-security risk, if there is somebody in his campaign associated with Russia, plummets. You're not so worried about what Russia's doing vis-à-vis a member of his campaign if he's not president because you're not going to have access to classified information, you're not going to have access to sources and methods in our national-security apparatus. So, the 'insurance policy' was an anology. It's like an insurance policy when you're 40. You don't expect to die when you're 40, yet you still have an insurance policy."

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow chimed in, "So, don't just hope that he's not going to be elected and therefore not press forward with the investigation hoping, but rather press forward with the investigation just in case he does get in there."

"Exactly," Page replied.

... ... ...

Fox News' Brian Flood contributed to this report.

[Jun 06, 2020] The Worse the Better Why Antifa Wants Trump to Win by James Pinkerton

Jun 04, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

many thoughtful observers on the right -- including Ross Douthat , Rod Dreher , and Dan McCarthy -- have pointed out that the current protesting and rioting is likely to help Donald Trump and the Republicans. That is, the ongoing violence, fomented by leftist elements, including Black Lives Matter and Antifa, could boomerang against Joe Biden and his Democrats.

However, the planted assumption here is that the vandals and looters want Joe Biden to win. And that's not so obvious. Indeed, maybe the truth is just the reverse.

To be sure, the protesters and looters all hate Donald Trump. And yet actions speak louder than words, and their actions on the street suggest a kind of anti-matter affection for the Bad Orange Man. That is, each act of violence obscures the memory of George Floyd, who died at the knee of a Minneapolis policeman, and raises the prospect of a national backlash against both peaceful protestors and violent looters, offering a ray of hope for Trump.

Indeed, Douthat quotes Princeton political scientist Omar Wasow, whose research shows that back in the 1960s, peaceful civil rights protests helped the Democrats, while violent protests (also known as riots) hurt the Democrats. In Wasow's words, "proximity to black-led nonviolent protests increased white Democratic vote-share whereas proximity to black-led violent protests caused substantively important declines." And that's how Republican Richard Nixon defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey in 1968.

We might add that Humphrey was a lot like Biden. Both were gabby senators turned vice presidents, regarded as reliable liberals, not as hard-edged leftists.

So now we're starting to see where Biden, a pillar of the smug liberal establishment -- he once told a group of donors that if he's elected, "nothing would fundamentally change" -- veers away from the far-left ideologues amidst the mobs.

Let's let Andy Ngo –who has shed blood , literally, while chronicling bullyboy leftists -- define the ideology of Antifa and Black Lives Matter: "At its core, BLM is a revolutionary Marxist ideology. Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, BLM's founders, are self-identified Marxists who make no secret of their worship of communist terrorists and fugitives, like Assata Shakur. They want the abolition of law enforcement and capitalism. They want regime change and the end of the rule of law. Antifa has partnered with Black Lives Matter, for now, to help accelerate the breakdown of society."

We can observe that by "regime change," these revolutionary leftists don't mean replacing Trump with Biden -- they mean replacing capitalism and the Constitution. In the meantime, if one looks at a Twitter feed identified by Ngo as an Antifa hub, It's Going Down , one sees plenty of anti-Trump rhetoric, along with general hard leftism, but nothing in support of Biden.

However, here's something interesting: The Biden campaign shows no small degree of support for the street radicals. As Reuters reported on May 30,

"At least 13 Biden campaign staff members posted on Twitter on Friday and Saturday that they made donations to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which opposes the practice of cash bail, or making people pay to avoid pre-trial imprisonment. The group uses donations to pay bail fees in Minneapolis."

We might observe that these 13 employees posted their pro-rioter sympathies on Twitter; in other words, not only did they make no effort to hide their donations, but they also actively bragged about them.

It could be argued, of course, that these are just 13 vanguard employees out of a campaign staff that numbers in the hundreds, maybe even thousands. And yet as the Reuters piece adds, Team Biden is not practicing political distancing from its in-house radicals: "Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement to Reuters that the former vice president opposes the institution of cash bail as a 'modern day debtors prison.'"

When pressed by Reuters -- which is not exactly Fox News in its editorial stance -- the official spox for Middle Class Joe was unwilling to say more: "The campaign declined to answer questions on whether the donations were coordinated within the campaign, underscoring the politically thorny nature of the sometimes violent protests."

So we can see: The Biden campaign is trying to maintain its equipoise between liberals and mobs, even as the former is bleeding into the latter. Indeed, a look at Biden's Twitter feed shows the same port-side balancing act. On May 30, for instance, he tweeted , "If we are complacent, if we are silent, we are complicit in perpetuating these cycles of violence. None of us can turn away. We all have an obligation to speak out."

There's enough ambiguity here, as well as in his other tweets, to leave everyone parsing, and guessing, as to what, exactly, Biden is saying -- except, as he said on June 2, that he opposes the use of chokeholds to restrain violent suspects, and also opposes more equipment for the police. The only other thing we know for sure is that he hasn't tweeted an iota of specific sympathy for the people other than George Floyd who have died in the recent violence. One such is Patrick Underwood , an African American employee of the Federal Protective Service; he was shot and killed in Oakland, Calif. on May 29.

Yet while the Biden campaign attempts to keep its relationship with Antifa and its ilk fuzzy, other Democrats have made themselves clear. For instance, in 2018, then-Congressman Keith Ellison tweeted out a photograph of himself holding a copy of a book, Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, which the radical-chic types at The New Yorker described as "A how-to for would-be activists, and a record of advice from anti-Fascist organizers past and present." Ellison is now the attorney general for the state of Minnesota.

And on May 31, Ellison's son, Jeremiah, a Minneapolis city councilman, tweeted , "I hereby declare, officially, my support for ANTIFA."

Still, if the Democrats can't quite quit Antifa, most are smart enough to recognize the danger of being too closely associated with hooligans and radicals. Moreover, they need some theory of the case they wish to make, which is that they loudly support the protests, even as they mumble about the violence.

And Democrats have found their favored argument -- the one that conveniently takes them off the hook. Indeed, it's an argument they increasingly deploy to explain everything bad that happens: The Russians did it.

Thus on May 31, former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice said on CNN of the tumult, "In my experience, this is right out of the Russian playbook."

We might allow that it's possible, even probable, that the Russian government has been taking delight in this spate of violence in America. And it's similarly probable that the governments of China, Iran, and Venezuela, too, have been pleased, to say nothing of varying portions of the public in every country. And so sure, more than a few tweets and Facebook posts have probably resulted -- after all, stories ripping the U.S. were right there, for instance, on the front page of China's Global Times .

Still, it's ridiculous to think that hundreds of thousands -- maybe millions -- of Americans are taking their cues from a foreign power; we've got plenty of home-grown radicalism and anger.

Yet even so, the Democrats have persisted in their Russia-dunnit narrative, because it serves their political, and perhaps psychological, need -- the need to externalize criminal behavior. In other words, don't blame us for the killings and lootings -- blame Moscow.

Okay, so back to Antifa and Black Lives Matter. The left wing of the Democratic Party -- including elements within the Biden campaign -- might like them, but there's no evidence that they like Democrats back.

Indeed, if the violence keeps up, it will become obvious that the leftist radicals are not trying to help Biden. To put it another way, the rads would become the objective allies (a political science term connoting an ironic congruence of interest) of Trump.

To be sure, right now, Trump is running five or six points behind Biden in the RealClearPolitics polling average . And yet, just as Dreher, Douthat, and McCarthy suggest, if the violence continues and Trump goes firm while Biden stays mushy, that could change.

Indeed, as we think of genuine radicalism, we would do well to look beyond the parochial confines of American politics, Democrat vs. Republican. Instead, we might ponder the epic panorama of leftist history, which offers radicals so much more inspiration than historically centrist America.

For instance, we might look to Russia. But not to the Russia of Vladimir Putin , but rather, to the Russia of Vladimir Lenin .

In the early 20th century, Lenin's Bolsheviks, awaiting their revolutionary moment, operated according to a simple slogan: "The worse the better." That is, the enemy of Bolshevism was incremental reform, or progress of any kind; the reds wanted conditions to get so bad as to "justify" a communist revolution. And that's what Lenin and his comrades got in October 1917, when they seized power in the midst of the calamities of World War One.

Yes, of course, the communists made conditions worse, not better, for ordinary Russians. And yet things weren't worse for Lenin and his Bolsheviks -- they were now in power. So today, that's the sort of dream that inspires Antifa radicals.

To be sure, an America dominated by Antifa and Black Lives Matter is a distant prospect. But radicals figure that four more years of Trump in the White House will move the nation to even higher levels of chaos -- and thus move them closer to power.

With all that in prospect for radicals -- that is, the worse, the better -- the prospect of Joe Biden losing this year is a small price to pay. Actually, for them, it's no price at all.

In the meantime, for America, there is no better. Only worse.

[Jun 03, 2020] The Senate Should Focus On What The Flynn Transcripts Do Not Contain... Starting With A Crime

Jun 03, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

The Senate Should Focus On What The Flynn Transcripts Do Not Contain... Starting With A Crime by Tyler Durden Tue, 06/02/2020 - 22:45 Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Yesterday, the attorney hired by Judge Emmet Sullivan responded on his behalf to defend his controversial orders in the case to invite third parties to argue the merits of the motion to dismiss as well as raising his option to substitute his own criminal charge of perjury against Flynn. The Justice Department responded with a 45-page filing to a three-judge appeals court panel.

The attention will now focus on the appearance tomorrow of former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the Senate. For me, the most pertinent question is why this investigation continued past December and seemed to become to a search for a crime rather than the investigation of any crime or collusion with Russia.

"Remember Ambassador, you're not talking to a diplomat, you're talking to a soldier."

When President Trump 's incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn , said those words to then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, he also spoke to American intelligence agents listening in on the call. For three years, congressional Democrats have assured us Flynn's calls to Kislyak were so disturbing that they set off alarms in the closing days of the Obama administration.

They were right. The newly released transcripts of Flynn's calls are deeply disturbing -- not for their evidence of criminality or collusion but for the total absence of such evidence. The transcripts, declassified Friday, strongly support new investigations by both the Justice Department and by Congress, starting with next week's Senate testimony by former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

It turns out Flynn's calls are not just predictable but even commendable at points. When the Obama administration hit the Russians with sanctions just before leaving office, the incoming Trump administration sought to avoid a major conflict at the very start of its term. Flynn asked the Russian to focus on "common enemies" in order to seek cooperation in the Middle East. The calls covered a variety of issues, including the sanctions.

What was not discussed was any quid pro quo or anything untoward or unlawful. Flynn stated what was already known to be Trump policy in seeking a new path with Russia. Flynn did not offer to remove sanctions but, rather, encouraged the Russians to respond in a reciprocal, commensurate manner if they felt they had to respond.

The calls, and Flynn's identity, were leaked by as many as nine officials as the Obama administration left office -- a serious federal crime, given their classified status . The most chilling aspect of the transcripts, however, is the lack of anything chilling in the calls themselves. Flynn is direct with Kislyak in trying to tone down the rhetoric and avoid retaliatory moves. He told Kislyak, "l am a very practical guy, and it's about solutions. It's about very practical solutions that we're -- that we need to come up with here." Flynn said he understood the Russians might wish to retaliate for the Obama sanctions but encouraged them not to escalate the conflict just as the Trump administration took office.

Kislyak later spoke with Flynn again and confirmed that Moscow agreed to tone down the conflict in the practical approach laid out by Flynn. The media has focused on Flynn's later denial of discussing sanctions; the transcripts confirm he did indeed discuss sanctions. However, the Justice Department has not sought to dismiss criminal charges against him because he told the truth but because his statements did not meet a key element of materiality for the crime and were the result of troubling actions by high-ranking officials.

The real question is why the FBI continued to investigate Flynn in the absence of any crime or evidence of collusion. In December 2016, investigators had found no evidence of any crime by Flynn. They wanted to shut down the investigation; they were overruled by superiors, including FBI special agent Peter Strzok, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Director James Comey. Strzok told the investigators to keep the case alive, and McCabe is described as "cutting off" another high-ranking official who questioned the basis for continuing to investigate Flynn. All three officials were later fired, and all three were later found by career officials to have engaged in serious misconduct as part of the Russia investigation.

Recently disclosed information revealed that Comey and President Obama discussed using the Logan Act as a pretense for a criminal charge. The Logan Act criminalizes private negotiations with foreign governments; it is widely viewed as unconstitutional and has never been used successfully against any U.S. citizen since the earliest days of the Republic. Its use against the incoming national security adviser would have been absurd. Yet, that unconstitutional crime was the only crime Comey could come up with, long before there was a false statement by Flynn regarding his calls.

Not until February 2017 did Comey circumvent long-standing protocols and order an interview with Flynn. Comey later bragged that he "probably wouldn't have gotten away with it" in other administrations, but he sent "a couple guys over" to question Flynn, who was settling into his new office as national security adviser. We learned recently that Strzok discussed trying to get Flynn to give false or misleading information in that interview, to enable a criminal charge, and that FBI lawyer Lisa Page suggested agents "just casually slip" in a reference to the criminal provision for lying and then get Flynn to slip up on the details.

Flynn did slip up. While investigators said they were not convinced he intentionally lied, he gave a false statement. Later, special counsel Robert Mueller charged Flynn with that false statement, to pressure him into cooperating; Flynn fought the case into virtual bankruptcy but agreed to plead guilty when Mueller threatened to prosecute his son, too.

The newly released transcripts reveal the lack of a foundation for that charge. Courts have held that the materiality requirement for such a charge requires that misstatements be linked to the particular "subject of the investigation." The Justice Department found that the false statement in February 2017 was not material "to any viable counterintelligence investigation -- or any investigation, for that matter -- initiated by the FBI." In other words, by that time, these FBI officials had no crime under investigation but were, instead, looking for a crime. The question is: Why?

So the transcripts confirm there never was a scintilla of criminal conduct or evidence of collusion against Flynn before or during these calls. Indeed, there was no viable criminal investigation to speak of when Comey sent "a couple guys over" to entrap Flynn; they already had the transcripts and the knowledge that Flynn had done nothing wrong. Nevertheless, facing the release of these transcripts, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) bizarrely maintained that "Flynn posed a severe counterintelligence risk" because he could be blackmailed over his false statement.

Putting aside the lack of prior evidence of criminality, Schiff ignores that there were transcripts to prevent such blackmail. Indeed, in the interview, Flynn indicated he assumed there was a transcript, and leaked media reports indicated that various officials were familiar with the content of the calls. The key to blackmail would have been for the Russians to have information that others did not have.

Ironically, in his calls with Kislyak, Flynn expressly sought a more frank, honest relationship with Russia. He told Kislyak "we have to stop talking past each other on -- so that means that we have to understand exactly what it is that we want to try to achieve, okay?" That is a question that should now be directed at the FBI, to understand what it was trying to achieve by continuing an investigation long after it ran out of crimes to investigate.

[Jun 02, 2020] Susan Rice Suggests Russians Fomented Floyd Protests, Violence Across U.S. Obama s former national security adviser offered no evidence for her bizarre claim by Barbara Boland

So one of key players of Russiagate gaslighting and Flynn entrapment trying the same dirty trick again. Nice...
Notable quotes:
"... "We have peaceful protesters focused on the very real pain and disparities that we're all wrestling with that have to be addressed, and then we have extremists who've come to try to hijack those protests and turn them into something very different. And they're probably also, I would bet based on my experience, I'm not reading the intelligence these days, but based on my experience this is right out of the Russian playbook as well." ..."
"... "I would not be surprised to learn that they have fomented some of these extremists on both sides using social media. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they are funding it in some way, shape, or form." ..."
Jun 01, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

President Barack Obama's former national security adviser Susan Rice suggested without evidence that the Russians could be behind the violent demonstrations that have taken place across the U.S. following the death of George Floyd.

Speaking to CNN's Wolf Blitzer Sunday, Rice said:

"We have peaceful protesters focused on the very real pain and disparities that we're all wrestling with that have to be addressed, and then we have extremists who've come to try to hijack those protests and turn them into something very different. And they're probably also, I would bet based on my experience, I'm not reading the intelligence these days, but based on my experience this is right out of the Russian playbook as well."

"I would not be surprised to learn that they have fomented some of these extremists on both sides using social media. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they are funding it in some way, shape, or form."

Rice admits she's not reading the intelligence anymore, so what makes her think the Russians are behind this?

She doesn't offer much more in the way of evidence for her assertion, other than that the Russians are the Democrats' always-present bogeyman, ever ready from behind their poorly translated social media posts to unleash mayhem upon the U.S.

Ever since the election of President Donald Trump, Democrats have blamed Russians for the outcome of the 2016 election.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller found evidence that Russian-linked accounts spent a small amount of money placing social media ads for the purpose of influencing the 2016 election, but there's nothing to suggest their efforts were successful. The Department of Justice abruptly dropped its prosecution of a Russian-based troll farm, days before trial. Mueller also did not find evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia during the 2016 election.

Although the claims of Russian "collusion" in the 2016 election were eventually found to be nearly totally baseless, Rice's new narrative, that Russians support 2020's post-Floyd rioting, appears to be even more fact-threadbare.

Rice's claim drew criticism from across the political spectrum.

Eoin Higgens, a senior editor at Common Dreams, tweeted "you cannot make this sh– up. F -- - deranged" while former U.S. attorney Andrew McCarthy tweeted "there she goes again."

There's a reason Rice's claim was not taken seriously -- besides the lack of evidence for the Russian meddling narrative that has dominated the nation's political life since 2016, there's also the sheer ineptitude of the actual Russian trolling and ads themselves.

Just look at this ad the Russians funded from the 2016 election cycle for a taste of how convincing those Russians and their social media campaigns can be:


Feral Finster 19 hours ago

Predictable as a stopped clock.
Bureaucrat 19 hours ago • edited
I haven't seen condemnation across the political spectrum. There are a few hard-left progressives like Aaron Mate, Matt Taibbi, and Glenn Greenwald of course, but they have always hated the RussiaGate conspiracy. I won't be holding my breath for any of the #Resistance puppets castigate Rice. They can't, because #RussiaGate is foundational to their existence.
Connecticut Farmer Bureaucrat 2 hours ago
"...#RussiaGate is foundational to their existence."

It's the only hat rack that they have, otherwise they would be left with having to blame themselves for running the wrong horse in 2016.

Scroop Moth 18 hours ago
Y'all are really confusing me! During the civil rights marches, conservatives warned people that the "agitators" were Russian tools. Now, you say that's crazy talk!.

Rice asserts that civic agitation is ". . .right out of the Russian playbook. . ." Let's presume she's had a peek into the Russia playbook. Her statement can be falsified by the good fact checkers at this website!

Speaking for myself, I wouldn't be more surprised than Rice to learn that Russia is still in the outside agitator business. Just a suggestion, of course. Someone as patriotic as Rice really should check it out.

Connecticut Farmer Scroop Moth 2 hours ago
"Russia is still in the outside agitator business."

So is the United States (check out the Russian election of 1996). We're not as good as the Russians though.

Gerald Arcuri 17 hours ago
Why would anyone listen to what Susan Rice has to say about matters of national security?
Alex (the one that likes Ike) 17 hours ago
The saddest thing is that she's been too lazy to come up even with the most jury-rigged conspiracy theory as to why Russians would need it, despite the fact that emotional reaction-oriented rhetorical turds to... sculpture such a theory (albeit a very debunkable one) are floating on the surface. A most deplorable intellectual sloth. What to expect from neolibs/neocons, though? They're always like that. Say some folderol - and then go hiding in the kind Grandpa Bolton's venerable moustɑche.
Timothy Herring 16 hours ago
Wild speculation needs no evidence.
MPC Timothy Herring 15 hours ago
People like her are about to get their due, by being baselessly accused of being Chinese agents.
AdmBenson 13 hours ago
I don't know which idea is more laughable - Black Americans are so lacking in agency that they aren't even responsible for their own protests, or, the Russians are so diabolical that they can turn anyone and everyone into the Manchurian Candidate.

More likely, Susan Rice can't admit that her woke ideology has limitations. She needs a scapegoat so badly that she'll babble any nonsense to accuse one. Hard to believe she was once the National Security Adviser.

ZizaNiam 12 hours ago
I read on a libertarian oriented forum that the current protests are actually being done by the Chinese. Apparently, the Soviets (Russians) instigated the riots in the late 60s.
Slappyhappy 9 hours ago
Where are all the stars you ask" afterwards they will come out with concerts on TV, speeches big speeches that they real do care you hear me, PC BS they will look tragic this time, all the makeup in the world won;t hide their deception, arrogance, utter idiocy in White Towers.
JPH 4 hours ago
Transcripts of under oath statements before the House Intelligence committee revealed neither Susan Rice nor other Obama administration officials had any evidence of Russian meddling in 2016. Of course all proceeded with spreading baseless inuendo for years before and afterwards.

So if not under oath anything Susan Rice alleges is simply not worth listening to.

Miamijac 2 hours ago
civic agitation is ". . .right out of the Russian playbook. . ." Were they responsible for the Boston Tea Party too?
Wallstreet Panic 2 hours ago
Seems like so many presidents have been led into terrible foreign policy decisions by their Blob advisors...Obama by Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Hillary; Dubya by Cheney and Rumsfield; Carter by Zbiggy, Ford and Nixon (both who should have known better) by Kissinger.
L RNY 2 hours ago
Susan Rice is more ignorant and has far lower intelligence than I ever suspected or she is playing politics and lying. The Russians have no motive. The Russians have no hand to play. The Chinese who have bribed a long list of democratic politicians have a very significant motive and a major hand to play in fomenting riots and race animosity...as a means to influence the November election away from Trump to Biden.

[Jun 01, 2020] More Evidence of the Fraud Against General Michael Flynn by Larry C Johnson

Highly recommended!
Looks like regular consultation between Russians and incoming administration to me. Also it was lame duck President who unilaterally decided to up his ante against Russians (criminally gaslighting the US public), expelled Russian diplomats to make the gaslighting more plausible, and seized Russian diplomatic property in violation of international norms. It was Obama who unleashed FBI dogs like Strzok and McCabe on Trump.
Russia later retaliated in a very modest way without seizing any US property, they just cut the level of the USA diplomatic personnel in Russia to the level of Russian personnel in the USA.
Notable quotes:
"... To summarize--a total of eight different calls between Kislyak and Flynn were recorded between December 22, 2016 and January 19, 2017. Five of the eight calls were initiated by Ambassador Kislyak -- Mike Flynn only called Kislyak three times and two of those were in response to calls from Kislyak, who requested a call back or left a message. ..."
Jun 01, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

More Evidence of the Fraud Against General Michael Flynn by Larry C Johnson

I never ceased to be amazed at the dishonesty and laziness of the media when it comes to reporting anything about Michael Flynn and the astonishing miscarriage of justice in bringing charges against him. The documents declassified and released by the DNI last Friday exonerate General Flynn and expose the FBI and the Mueller team as gargantuan liars. Even though Friday's release of the declassified summaries and transcripts was overshadowed quickly by rioting in Minnesota (you know, if it bleeds and burns it is the lede), the documents reveal General Flynn as the consummate professional keen on serving his country and the Russian Ambassador as disgusted by the petulance and arrogance of the Obama administration.

The declassified material released by newly installed Director for National Intelligence actually consists of two different sets of documents--First, there are five summaries of conversations for 22, 23, 29 (two on the 29th) December 2016 and 5 January. Second, there are the full transcripts of the conversations for December 23, December 29, December 31 in 2016 and January 12 and January 19, 2017.

To summarize--a total of eight different calls between Kislyak and Flynn were recorded between December 22, 2016 and January 19, 2017. Five of the eight calls were initiated by Ambassador Kislyak -- Mike Flynn only called Kislyak three times and two of those were in response to calls from Kislyak, who requested a call back or left a message.

Here are the specifics of those calls.

  • December 22, 2016--This call apparently was made by Michael Flynn to the Russians, responding to a request from President-elect Trump to ask Russia not to support the Egyptian UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel. (Note--Flynn make calls to most members of the UN Security Council).
  • December 23, 2016--Ambassador Kislyak calls Michael Flynn to report on his conversation with President Putin regarding the previous day's request. Michael Flynn emphasizes to Kislyak that the mutual goal is/should be stability in the Middle East. Flynn tells Kislyak, "We will not achieve stability in the Middle East without working with each other against this radical Islamist crowd." Kislyak remarks, "responding to your telephone call, and our conversations we will try to help to postpone the vote and to allow for consultations."
  • December 29, 2016--Kislyak calls Flynn and leaves a simple message, "need to talk."
  • December 29, 2016--Michael Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call. First, Kislyak wants to discuss the Middle East policy. The Russians want to convey to the President-elect that the Russians will not be supporting the American colleagues at the Security Council. Flynn says it is good. Second, the Russians are very interested with working with the President-elect's team to help the peace process in Syria. Thirdly, the Kremlin would like to . . . have a first conversation on January 21 rst between the presidents. Putin's idea is to congratulate Trump and discuss issues. . . . Flynn tells Kislyak: Do not allow this administration to box us in right now! . . . . depending on what actions the Obama Administrations takes over this current issue of the cyber stuff, . . . they're gonna dismiss some number of Russians out of the country, I understand all that . . . I know you have to have some sort of action, but to only make it reciprocal; don't go any further than you have to because I don't want us to get into something that have to escalate to tit-for-tat. . . . I really do not want us to get into the situation where we everybody goes back and forth and everybody had to be a tough guy here. We don't need that right now. We need cool heads to prevail. And we need to be very steady about what we are going to do because we have absolutely a common threat in the Middle East.
  • December 31, 2016--Russian Ambassador Kislyak calls General Flynn. Kislyak tells Flynn, "And I just wanted to tell you that we found that these actions [were] targeted not only against Russia, but also against the president elect. . . . and with all our rights to respond we have decided not to act now because, its because people are dissatisfied with the lost . . . elections and, and its very deplorable. . . . Flynn responds, "we are not going to agree on everything, you know that, but, but I think that we have a lot of things in common. A lot. And we have to figure out how, how to achieve those things, . . .and be smart about it and keep the temperature down globally, as well as not just here in the United States and also over in Russia.
  • January 5, 2017--Lt. General Mike FLYNN phones Ambassador Sergey KISLYAK to express his condolences on the death of GRU Director Igor SERGUN, who died unexpectedly today from unknown causes.
  • January 12, 2017--Mike Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call and discusses possible conference on Syria in Astana.
  • January 19, 2017--Kislyak leaves voicemail for Flynn, inquiring about scheduling of a phone call between Putin and Trump after the inauguration.

Alan , 30 May 2020 at 09:44 PM

This is also very interesting:

"Before General Flynn's voce message turns on, there is an open line, barely audible chat.
Someone asks Chernyshev, "Which agency are we talking about?" Chernyshev asks as to
confirm if he understands the question and responds in the same time: "Which Agency hackers
did the hacking? Believe me, Americans did hacked this all."

Petrel , 30 May 2020 at 10:56 PM
The full exchange between General Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak throws much light on the subsequent Sunday morning mis-speaking by the Vice-President Pence.

From the first telephone call, Flynn tells Kislyak that President-elect Trump will only be inaugurated 3-weeks hence. Therefore Trump in late-December cannot formally make foreign policy decisions immediately.

In a later exchange about Russia's proposed Astana Peace Conference to de-escalate ISIS activity In Syria, Flynn responds that Russia has Trump's backing to begin preparations with the Syrians, Turks et al. On his part, Flynn will begin pencilling-in who would be on a future US delegation.

It goes without saying that Vice President-elect Pence, during this period had a full-time job marshaling the Transition and may not have been in the loop on these tentative Russian peace initiatives. When asked on a Sunday morning talk show, Pence could correctly say President Trump had no "official communications" with the Kremlin. But to later trash & demand Flynn's dismissal for "lying to him" about the informal phone calls was inappropriate.

Pence could easily have told Americans that President-elect Trump was establishing informal relations, through multiple phone calls, with world leaders and he, Pence, was not party to all of them. No one in the fledgling Trump Administration was lying to him.

anon , 31 May 2020 at 12:25 AM
Hi Larry.why not tackle this knot from the Russian end.Russia has been fighting in Syria since jisr al shugour massacre in the groves.There naval base on the med was threatened and Gazprom stood to lose control of energy resources flowing out of the me too Europe.That has now been achieved.Not only that but Wagner group are in Libyan with Russian air support.From that point of view what was Flynn's role in this
Mathias Alexander , 31 May 2020 at 02:50 AM
" amazed at the dishonesty and laziness of the media". Dishonesty and laziness are the norm in the media.
English Outsider , 31 May 2020 at 06:06 AM

That was one superb summary.

I wonder sometimes whether the new administration, from Trump downwards, realised just what they were up against after that unexpected election victory.

h , 31 May 2020 at 12:02 PM
Time will tell but something tells me the release of the Kislyak-Flynn transcripts/FBI cuts is also related to Boente's forced resignation. Here's sundance's take - it's a long read btw - https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/30/boom-dana-boente-removed-fbi-chief-legal-counsel-forced-to-resign/

And yes, the hacking comment is fascinating on so many levels. It's just kinda left hanging out there all by itself, eh?

And a quick off-topic thank you to the Col for posting the Lara Logan clip. All efforts hunting for it yesterday failed. She nailed it.

JerseyJeffersonian , 31 May 2020 at 01:15 PM
English Outsider,

Yes, I think that evidence thus far revealed suggests that the sedition was far along, and this even before Trump's victory - an insurance policy, if you will, and way beyond any opposition research, as much of the "information", if not at root fabricated, was otherwise illegally gathered.

And immediate that election victory, things went into overdrive as the seditionists' panicked, doubling and tripling down on their illegal actions to frame a projected impeachment narrative as their next tactic. I hesitate to call it their next strategy, as it was too knee jerk to be characterized in that fashion.

So, no, I think that the new Trump administration had little idea of just how this transition of administration was, counter to most prior precedents, planned to be undermined with the full intent to invalidate the election of President Trump, and if possible, to overturn it .

This was sedition on multiple levels, crimes deliberately embarked upon to destroy the Constitution and the Republic by any means that these traitors deemed efficacious.

May they all rot in Hell.

blue peacock , 31 May 2020 at 04:48 PM
Petrel,

I believe Trump knew he was being spied on as Adm. Rogers informed him and thereafter he moved his transition organization away from Trump Tower.

In any case why did Trump throw Flynn under the bus? In hindsight that was a huge mistake. Another huge mistake in hindsight was not cleaning house at the DOJ, FBI and the intel agencies early. That allowed Rosenstein and Wray to get Mueller going and created the pretext of the investigation to bury all the incriminating evidence. Trump never declassified anything himself which he could have and broke open the plot. He then gave Barr all classification authority who sat on it for a year. Look how fast Ric Grenell declassified stuff. There was no "sources & methods" the usual false justification.

It is unconscionable how severely Flynn was screwed over. Why is Wray still there? How many of the plotter cohort still remain?

[Jun 01, 2020] More Evidence of the Fraud Against General Michael Flynn by Larry C Johnson

Highly recommended!
Looks like regular consultation between Russians and incoming administration to me. Also it was lame duck President who unilaterally decided to up his ante against Russians (criminally gaslighting the US public), expelled Russian diplomats to make the gaslighting more plausible, and seized Russian diplomatic property in violation of international norms. It was Obama who unleashed FBI dogs like Strzok and McCabe on Trump.
Russia later retaliated in a very modest way without seizing any US property, they just cut the level of the USA diplomatic personnel in Russia to the level of Russian personnel in the USA.
Jun 01, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

More Evidence of the Fraud Against General Michael Flynn by Larry C Johnson

I never ceased to be amazed at the dishonesty and laziness of the media when it comes to reporting anything about Michael Flynn and the astonishing miscarriage of justice in bringing charges against him. The documents declassified and released by the DNI last Friday exonerate General Flynn and expose the FBI and the Mueller team as gargantuan liars. Even though Friday's release of the declassified summaries and transcripts was overshadowed quickly by rioting in Minnesota (you know, if it bleeds and burns it is the lede), the documents reveal General Flynn as the consummate professional keen on serving his country and the Russian Ambassador as disgusted by the petulance and arrogance of the Obama administration.

The declassified material released by newly installed Director for National Intelligence actually consists of two different sets of documents--First, there are five summaries of conversations for 22, 23, 29 (two on the 29th) December 2016 and 5 January. Second, there are the full transcripts of the conversations for December 23, December 29, December 31 in 2016 and January 12 and January 19, 2017.

To summarize--a total of eight different calls between Kislyak and Flynn were recorded between December 22, 2016 and January 19, 2017. Five of the eight calls were initiated by Ambassador Kislyak -- Mike Flynn only called Kislyak three times and two of those were in response to calls from Kislyak, who requested a call back or left a message.

Here are the specifics of those calls.

  • December 22, 2016--This call apparently was made by Michael Flynn to the Russians, responding to a request from President-elect Trump to ask Russia not to support the Egyptian UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel. (Note--Flynn make calls to most members of the UN Security Council).
  • December 23, 2016--Ambassador Kislyak calls Michael Flynn to report on his conversation with President Putin regarding the previous day's request. Michael Flynn emphasizes to Kislyak that the mutual goal is/should be stability in the Middle East. Flynn tells Kislyak, "We will not achieve stability in the Middle East without working with each other against this radical Islamist crowd." Kislyak remarks, "responding to your telephone call, and our conversations we will try to help to postpone the vote and to allow for consultations."
  • December 29, 2016--Kislyak calls Flynn and leaves a simple message, "need to talk."
  • December 29, 2016--Michael Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call. First, Kislyak wants to discuss the Middle East policy. The Russians want to convey to the President-elect that the Russians will not be supporting the American colleagues at the Security Council. Flynn says it is good. Second, the Russians are very interested with working with the President-elect's team to help the peace process in Syria. Thirdly, the Kremlin would like to . . . have a first conversation on January 21 rst between the presidents. Putin's idea is to congratulate Trump and discuss issues. . . . Flynn tells Kislyak: Do not allow this administration to box us in right now! . . . . depending on what actions the Obama Administrations takes over this current issue of the cyber stuff, . . . they're gonna dismiss some number of Russians out of the country, I understand all that . . . I know you have to have some sort of action, but to only make it reciprocal; don't go any further than you have to because I don't want us to get into something that have to escalate to tit-for-tat. . . . I really do not want us to get into the situation where we everybody goes back and forth and everybody had to be a tough guy here. We don't need that right now. We need cool heads to prevail. And we need to be very steady about what we are going to do because we have absolutely a common threat in the Middle East.
  • December 31, 2016--Russian Ambassador Kislyak calls General Flynn. Kislyak tells Flynn, "And I just wanted to tell you that we found that these actions [were] targeted not only against Russia, but also against the president elect. . . . and with all our rights to respond we have decided not to act now because, its because people are dissatisfied with the lost . . . elections and, and its very deplorable. . . . Flynn responds, "we are not going to agree on everything, you know that, but, but I think that we have a lot of things in common. A lot. And we have to figure out how, how to achieve those things, . . .and be smart about it and keep the temperature down globally, as well as not just here in the United States and also over in Russia.
  • January 5, 2017--Lt. General Mike FLYNN phones Ambassador Sergey KISLYAK to express his condolences on the death of GRU Director Igor SERGUN, who died unexpectedly today from unknown causes.
  • January 12, 2017--Mike Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call and discusses possible conference on Syria in Astana.
  • January 19, 2017--Kislyak leaves voicemail for Flynn, inquiring about scheduling of a phone call between Putin and Trump after the inauguration.

Alan , 30 May 2020 at 09:44 PM

This is also very interesting:

"Before General Flynn's voce message turns on, there is an open line, barely audible chat.
Someone asks Chernyshev, "Which agency are we talking about?" Chernyshev asks as to
confirm if he understands the question and responds in the same time: "Which Agency hackers
did the hacking? Believe me, Americans did hacked this all."

Petrel , 30 May 2020 at 10:56 PM
The full exchange between General Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak throws much light on the subsequent Sunday morning mis-speaking by the Vice-President Pence.

From the first telephone call, Flynn tells Kislyak that President-elect Trump will only be inaugurated 3-weeks hence. Therefore Trump in late-December cannot formally make foreign policy decisions immediately.

In a later exchange about Russia's proposed Astana Peace Conference to de-escalate ISIS activity In Syria, Flynn responds that Russia has Trump's backing to begin preparations with the Syrians, Turks et al. On his part, Flynn will begin pencilling-in who would be on a future US delegation.

It goes without saying that Vice President-elect Pence, during this period had a full-time job marshaling the Transition and may not have been in the loop on these tentative Russian peace initiatives. When asked on a Sunday morning talk show, Pence could correctly say President Trump had no "official communications" with the Kremlin. But to later trash & demand Flynn's dismissal for "lying to him" about the informal phone calls was inappropriate.

Pence could easily have told Americans that President-elect Trump was establishing informal relations, through multiple phone calls, with world leaders and he, Pence, was not party to all of them. No one in the fledgling Trump Administration was lying to him.

anon , 31 May 2020 at 12:25 AM
Hi Larry.why not tackle this knot from the Russian end.Russia has been fighting in Syria since jisr al shugour massacre in the groves.There naval base on the med was threatened and Gazprom stood to lose control of energy resources flowing out of the me too Europe.That has now been achieved.Not only that but Wagner group are in Libyan with Russian air support.From that point of view what was Flynn's role in this
Mathias Alexander , 31 May 2020 at 02:50 AM
" amazed at the dishonesty and laziness of the media". Dishonesty and laziness are the norm in the media.
English Outsider , 31 May 2020 at 06:06 AM

That was one superb summary.

I wonder sometimes whether the new administration, from Trump downwards, realised just what they were up against after that unexpected election victory.

h , 31 May 2020 at 12:02 PM
Time will tell but something tells me the release of the Kislyak-Flynn transcripts/FBI cuts is also related to Boente's forced resignation. Here's sundance's take - it's a long read btw - https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/30/boom-dana-boente-removed-fbi-chief-legal-counsel-forced-to-resign/

And yes, the hacking comment is fascinating on so many levels. It's just kinda left hanging out there all by itself, eh?

And a quick off-topic thank you to the Col for posting the Lara Logan clip. All efforts hunting for it yesterday failed. She nailed it.

JerseyJeffersonian , 31 May 2020 at 01:15 PM
English Outsider,

Yes, I think that evidence thus far revealed suggests that the sedition was far along, and this even before Trump's victory - an insurance policy, if you will, and way beyond any opposition research, as much of the "information", if not at root fabricated, was otherwise illegally gathered.

And immediate that election victory, things went into overdrive as the seditionists' panicked, doubling and tripling down on their illegal actions to frame a projected impeachment narrative as their next tactic. I hesitate to call it their next strategy, as it was too knee jerk to be characterized in that fashion.

So, no, I think that the new Trump administration had little idea of just how this transition of administration was, counter to most prior precedents, planned to be undermined with the full intent to invalidate the election of President Trump, and if possible, to overturn it .

This was sedition on multiple levels, crimes deliberately embarked upon to destroy the Constitution and the Republic by any means that these traitors deemed efficacious.

May they all rot in Hell.

blue peacock , 31 May 2020 at 04:48 PM
Petrel,

I believe Trump knew he was being spied on as Adm. Rogers informed him and thereafter he moved his transition organization away from Trump Tower.

In any case why did Trump throw Flynn under the bus? In hindsight that was a huge mistake. Another huge mistake in hindsight was not cleaning house at the DOJ, FBI and the intel agencies early. That allowed Rosenstein and Wray to get Mueller going and created the pretext of the investigation to bury all the incriminating evidence. Trump never declassified anything himself which he could have and broke open the plot. He then gave Barr all classification authority who sat on it for a year. Look how fast Ric Grenell declassified stuff. There was no "sources & methods" the usual false justification.

It is unconscionable how severely Flynn was screwed over. Why is Wray still there? How many of the plotter cohort still remain?

[Jun 01, 2020] Documentary Evidence of the Fraud Against General Michael Flynn by Larry C Johnson

This is just another confirmation of the feeling that the USA political elite is not only split, but has been on the downward spiral for some time
May 30, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com
I never ceased to be amazed at the dishonesty and laziness of the media when it comes to reporting anything about Michael Flynn and the astonishing miscarriage of justice in bringing charges against him. The documents declassified and released by the DNI last Friday exonerate General Flynn and expose the FBI and the Mueller team as gargantuan liars. Even though Friday's release of the declassified summaries and transcripts was overshadowed quickly by rioting in Minnesota (you know, if it bleeds and burns it is the lede), the documents reveal General Flynn as the consummate professional keen on serving his country and the Russian Ambassador as disgusted by the petulance and arrogance of the Obama administration.

The declassified material released by newly installed Director for National Intelligence actually consists of two different sets of documents--First, there are five summaries of conversations for 22, 23, 29 (two on the 29th) December 2016 and 5 January. Second, there are the full transcripts of the conversations for December 23, December 29, December 31 in 2016 and January 12 and January 19, 2017.

To summarize--a total of eight different calls between Kislyak and Flynn were recorded between December 22, 2016 and January 19, 2017. Five of the eight calls were initiated by Ambassador Kislyak--Mike Flynn only called Kislyak three times and two of those were in response to calls from Kislyak, who requested a call back or left a message.

Here are the specifics of those calls.

December 22, 2016--This call apparently was made by Michael Flynn to the Russians, responding to a request from President-elect Trump to ask Russia to not support the Egyptian UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel. (Note--Flynn made calls to most members of the UN Security Council).

December 23, 2016--Ambassador Kislyak calls Michael Flynn to report on his conversation with President Putin regarding the previous day's request. Michael Flynn emphasizes to Kislyak that the mutual goal is/should be stability in the Middle East. Flynn tells Kislyak, "We will not achieve stability in the Middle East without working with each other against this radical Islamist crowd." Kislyak remarks, "responding to your telephone call, and our conversations we will try to help to postpone the vote and to allow for consultations."

December 29, 2016--Kislyak calls Flynn and leaves a simple message, "need to talk."

December 29, 2016--Michael Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call.

First, Kislyak wants to discuss the Middle East policy. The Russians want to convey to the President-elect that the Russians will not be supporting the American colleagues at the Security Council. Flynn says it is good.

Second, the Russians are very interesting with working with the President-elect's team to help the peace process in Syria.

Third, the Kremlin would like to . . . have a first conversation on January 21st between the presidents. Putin's idea is to congratulate Trump and discuss issues. . . . Flynn tells Kislyak: Do not allow this administration to box us in right now! . . . . depending on what actions the Obama Administrations takes over this current issue of the cyber stuff, . . . they're gonna dismiss some number of Russians out of the country, I understand all that . . . I know you have to have some sort of action, but to only make it reciprocal; don't go any further than you have to because I don't want us to get into something that have to escalate to tit-for-tat. . . . I really do not want us to get into the situation where we everybody goes back and forth and everybody had to be a tough guy here. We don't need that right now. We need cool heads to prevail. And we need to be very steady about what we are going to do because we have absolutely a common threat in the Middle East.

December 31, 2016--Russian Ambassador Kislyak calls General Flynn. Kislyak tells Flynn, "And I just wanted to tell you that we found that these actions [were] targeted not only against Russia, but also against the president elect. . . . and with all our rights to responds we have decided not to act now because, its because the Obama people are dissatisfied that they lost the elections and, and its very deplorable. . . . Flynn responded, "we are not going to agree on everything, you know that, but I think that we have a lot of things in common. A lot. And we have to figure out how to achieve those things, . . .and be smart about it and keep the temperature down globally, as well as not just here in the United States and also over in Russia.

January 5, 2017--Lt. General Mike FLYNN phones Ambassador Sergey KISLYAK to express his condolences on the death of GRU Director Igor SERGUN, who died unexpectedly today from unknown causes.

January 12, 2017--Mike Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call and discusses possible conference on Syria in Astana, Kazakstan.

January 19, 2017--Kislyak leaves voicemail for Flynn, inquiring about scheduling of a phone call between Putin and Trump after the inauguration.

Now, let us take a new look at the Mueller team's Statement of Offense . The Mueller team got a key fact wrong. According to the Statement of Offense:

b. On or about December 28, 2016, the Russian Ambassador contacted FLYNN.

Nope. The date was 29 December 2016. Screwing up a date is not an end-of-the-world mistake, but it is inexcusable nonetheless.

Let me remind you what Michael Flynn told FBI Agents Strzok and Pientka when they asked if he "might have asked Kislyak not to escalate the situation, to keep the Russian response reciprocal." Flynn said, according to the second draft of the FBI 302 recounting the conversation, "NOT REALLY, I DON'T REMEMBER."

You can read for yourself Flynn's entire exchange with Kislyak. It covered a variety of topics. It was not the only issue Flynn was dealing with as the incoming National Security Advisor. He had lots of conversations, not only with Kislyak, but with other diplomats from other countries. The fact that he did not precisely remember what he said to Kislyak should not be surprising.

The real question is why did the FBI withhold the transcript of this conversation? They could have said, "here is the transcript of your conversation with Ambassador Kislyak, is that an accurate account?" But they did not. I defy any of you to recall with 100% accuracy a conversation you had with someone almost a month earlier.

The most fascinating revelation from this transcripts is Ambassador Kislyak stating that Russia was aware of the Obama Administration's efforts to portray normal diplomatic contacts between Moscow and the Trump campaign as something nefarious and that Obama was targeting Trump. Kislyak said:

"And I just wanted to tell you that we found that these actions [were] targeted not only against Russia, but also against the president elect."

Kislyak and his bosses understood perfectly that the Obama team was attempting a silent coup and were willing to risk conflict with Russia in order to sell that lie. This is beyond outrageous on the part of Obama and his crew of white collared criminals. It is sedition. It is treason.

No honest person can read these transcripts without acknowledging that Flynn spoke as a diplomat intent on serving the interests of America. He was not engaged in treachery, as alleged by the corrupt Judge Emmett Sullivan. In fact, Flynn held his tongue with regard to the Obama crew. He could have trashed them and spoke ill of them. But he did not.

These transcripts show Flynn as a man of honor. A genuine professional. They also expose the fraud perpetrated on the American public by an FBI and Special Prosecutor intent on smearing Flynn as acting on behalf of the Russians. Michael Flynn did no such thing.


Alan , 30 May 2020 at 09:44 PM

This is also very interesting:

"Before General Flynn's voce message turns on, there is an open line, barely audible chat.
Someone asks Chernyshev, "Which agency are we talking about?" Chernyshev asks as to
confirm if he understands the question and responds in the same time: "Which Agency hackers
did the hacking? Believe me, Americans did hacked this all."

Petrel , 30 May 2020 at 10:56 PM
The full exchange between General Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak throws much light on the subsequent Sunday morning mis-speaking by the Vice-President Pence.

From the first telephone call, Flynn tells Kislyak that President-elect Trump will only be inaugurated 3-weeks hence. Therefore Trump in late-December cannot formally make foreign policy decisions immediately.

In a later exchange about Russia's proposed Astana Peace Conference to de-escalate ISIS activity In Syria, Flynn responds that Russia has Trump's backing to begin preparations with the Syrians, Turks et al. On his part, Flynn will begin pencilling-in who would be on a future US delegation.

It goes without saying that Vice President-elect Pence, during this period had a full-time job marshaling the Transition and may not have been in the loop on these tentative Russian peace initiatives. When asked on a Sunday morning talk show, Pence could correctly say President Trump had no "official communications" with the Kremlin. But to later trash & demand Flynn's dismissal for "lying to him" about the informal phone calls was inappropriate.

Pence could easily have told Americans that President-elect Trump was establishing informal relations, through multiple phone calls, with world leaders and he, Pence, was not party to all of them. No one in the fledgling Trump Administration was lying to him.

anon , 31 May 2020 at 12:25 AM
Hi Larry.why not tackle this knot from the Russian end.Russia has been fighting in Syria since jisr al shugour massacre in the groves.There naval base on the med was threatened and Gazprom stood to lose control of energy resources flowing out of the me too Europe.That has now been achieved.Not only that but Wagner group are in Libyan with Russian air support.From that point of view what was Flynn's role in this

[May 31, 2020] Both exclusion of Russian diplomats and the political assassination of Gen. Flynn were parts of a plot to prevent the shifting from a pro-China/anti-Russia policy to a pro-Russia/China-as-actual-competitor policy under a DJT presidency.

May 31, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

NemesisCalling , May 31 2020 18:08 utc | 32

Another is the political assassination of Gen. Flynn. There was indeed a coordinated conspiracy to find a scapegoat to prevent the shifting from a pro-China/anti-Russia policy to a pro-Russia/China-as-actual-competitor policy under a DJT presidency.

If you think none of the above carry any weight and you could play a game of shuttlecock with them not caring which is brought forth, then you might think along Jackrabbit's lines that the DJT-phenomenon is complete bullshit.

I would argue that the line that DJT is some working-class hero is probably bullshit, but when it comes to two warring factions of elites fighting over the direction of America, the struggle right now is very real.

[May 31, 2020] Russiagate is a clash between the old-guard/money represented currently by Trump and allied with him anti-globalist nationalists, and, on the other side, garden-variety globalists and neolibs including the new-money represented by big-tech billionaires, investment banks, private equity, CIA, the State Department and a part of MIC as well as the dominant in Democratic party Clinton wing

Notable quotes:
"... What is happening now is the exact same thing as Hong Kong. In any given instance of mass revolt, you have two warring factions, usually funded at the top by diametrically opposed elites. ..."
"... In Hong Kong, it is pro-western, old-guard/money versus Chinese new-guard. ..."
"... Look at the degree of organization (or lack thereof) which was able to politically assassinate Gen. Flynn! You had the dem establishment and billionaires like the Clintons, Obama-faction sycophants all the way up to the top. ..."
May 31, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

NemesisCalling , May 31 2020 17:45 utc | 26

@ vk 23

You are completely wrong, of course. What is happening now is the exact same thing as Hong Kong. In any given instance of mass revolt, you have two warring factions, usually funded at the top by diametrically opposed elites.

In Hong Kong, it is pro-western, old-guard/money versus Chinese new-guard. In America, we have the old-guard/money represented currently by the DJT-phenomenon, meaning Anti-globalist nationalists, and, on the other side, you have new-money internationalists and neolibs represented by billionaires, big-tech, the democratic party and garden-variety globalists.

Look at the degree of organization (or lack thereof) which was able to politically assassinate Gen. Flynn! You had the dem establishment and billionaires like the Clintons, Obama-faction sycophants all the way up to the top.

You think that this event is entirely grassroots? Give me a f*cking break, vk. You are such a blatantly obvious Chinese shill, no doubt probably employed by globalist entities, that the fact you are unable to employ an effective and probable analysis on these current "protests" reaffirm to me exactly what you are and what you stand for.


Blue Dotterel , May 31 2020 17:55 utc | 27

@NemesisCalling | May 31 2020 17:45 utc | 26

You could also have the same oligarchs funding both sides in a divide and conquer strategy. This is a common strategy that has been used in Turkey among others in the runup to the 1980 coup. It was also used by the US and Israel in their funding of both sides in the Iran/Iraq war in the 80s.

In the former it was used to ramp up violence to justify a military coup. That is very probable here, except that martial law might be the objective. Similar to the Iran/Iraq, the stoking of violence between liberals and conservatives may simply be to wear them out for when the economy truly tanks to justify in the minds of the sheeple a greater oppression of demonstrations in future.

Abe , May 31 2020 18:05 utc | 30
US is becoming like Israel even more. Considering same people rule both countries, and same people train cops in both of them, is it surprising 99%-ers in US are becoming treated like Palestinians?

[May 30, 2020] Obama possibly wanted a hot Russians confrontation incident to land on Trump Desk the same day Obama moved out and Trump moved in

Margot Cleveland ( @ProfMJCleveland ) "What Flynn didn't say is treason, but Obama saying he'll have more flexibility after the election is diplomacy. "
May 30, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Margot Cleveland @ProfMJCleveland
What Flynn didn't say is treason, but Obama saying he'll have more flexibility after the election is diplomacy.

Deap , 30 May 2020 at 01:51 AM

Some of the key parts of their conversation, with commentary, are in this Twitter thread from Margot Cleveland:
https://mobile.twitter.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1266483118099378176

Posted by: Keith Harbaugh | 29 May 2020 at 09:06 PM

Scenario: Obama wanted a hot Russians confrontation incident to land on the Resolute Desk the same day Obama moved out and Trump moved in. But the Russians did not take Obama's bait after expelling the Russians for" election interference"..

Why not - something is up - snoop on Flynn to find out - is Trump cutting a side deal with Putin, and/or violating the Logan Act - gotcha either way, So Obama thinks. Which was never his strong suit.

Marc b. , 30 May 2020 at 10:59 AM
So Flynn is gone and who benefits? The Israelis got their capitol and the word 'occupied' decoupled from territories, which they didn't need Flynn for, and the common enemy policy against ISIS and Astana/Syria peace plan are both dead.

[May 29, 2020] Andrew Weisdman, the attack dog of Mueller investigation, fundraiser links Creepy Joe to Russiagate and Mueller

May 29, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

The Biden campaign has quietly canceled a fundraiser headlined by Andrew Weissman - former special counsel Robert Mueller's 'attack dog' lawyer who hand-picked the so-called '13 angry Democrats.'

Weissman, who attended Hillary Clinton's election night party in 2016, donated to Obama and the DNC, yet somehow conducted an unbiased investigation that turned up snake-eyes, was set to do a June 2 "fireside chat" with Biden , according to the WSJ , which notes that the fundraiser was pulled right after it was posted late last week - shortly after the Trump campaign began to latch onto it.

Yes, there's more value in keeping the lie going that the mueller special counsel hasn't already been established beyond any doubt as a fraudulent and deeply unethical partisan takedown scheme against Trump https://t.co/5wuFYpgggr https://t.co/mxaHomTaQO

-- Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) May 29, 2020

Weissman - known as the "architect" of the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort - notably reached out to a Ukrainian oligarch for dirt on Trump and his team days after FBI agent Peter Strzok texted "There's no big there there" regarding the Trump investigation in exchange for 'resolving the Firtash case' in Chicago, in which he was charged in 2014 with corruption and bribery linked to a US aerospace deal.

According to investigative journalist John Solomon, Firtash turned down Weissman's offer because he didn't have credible information or evidence against Trump , Manafort, or anyone else.

[May 28, 2020] AG Barr Asks Kavanaugh-Connected US Attorney To Probe Obamagate 'Unmaskings'

May 28, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

US Attorney for West Texas John Bash has been asked by AG Bill Bar to review the Obama administration's 'unmasking' practices from before and after the 2016 presidential election, according Fox News , citing the DOJ.

Meanwhile, DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec told Fox News ' "Hannity" on Wednesday that US Attorney John Durham is also looking into the "unmasking," but that Bash has been assigned to dig deeper .

"Unmasking inherently isn't wrong, but certainly, the frequency, the motivation and the reasoning behind unmasking can be problematic, and when you're looking at unmasking as part of a broader investigation-- like John Durham's investigation-- looking specifically at who was unmasking whom, can add a lot to our understanding about motivation and big picture events," said Kupec.

Unmasking is a tool frequently used during the course of intelligence work and occurs after U.S. citizens' conversations are incidentally picked up in conversations with foreign officials who are being monitored by the intelligence community. The U.S. citizens' identities are supposed to be protected if their participation is incidental and no wrongdoing is suspected. However, officials can determine the U.S. citizens' names through a process that is supposed to safeguard their rights . In the typical process, when officials are requesting the unmasking of an American, they do not necessarily know the identity of the person in advance.

Republicans became highly suspicious of the number of unmasking requests made by the Obama administration concerning Flynn, and have questioned whether other Trump associates were singled out. - Fox News

In short, Bash - a trusted operator within the Trump administration - will dig even deeper into the Obama administration's use of unmasking against its political opponents.

[May 28, 2020] These FBI Docs Put Barack Obama In The Middle Of The 'Obamagate' Narrative

Looks like Strzok and Page played larger role in Obamagate/Russiagate then it was assumed initially
Notable quotes:
"... Just 17 days before President Trump took office in January 2017, then-FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok texted bureau lawyer Lisa Page, his mistress, to express concern about sharing sensitive Russia probe evidence with the departing Obama White House. ..."
"... Strzok related Priestap's concerns about the potential the evidence would be politically weaponized if outgoing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper shared the intercept cuts with the White House and President Obama, a well-known Flynn critic. ..."
"... "He, like us, is concerned with over sharing," Strzok texted Page on Jan. 3, 2017, relating his conversation with Priestap. ..."
"... The investigators are trying to determine whether Obama's well-known disdain for Flynn, a career military intelligence officer, influenced the decision by the FBI leadership to reject its own agent's recommendation to shut down a probe of Flynn in January 2017 and instead pursue an interview where agents might catch him in a lie. ..."
"... "The evidence connecting President Obama to the Flynn operation is getting stronger," one investigator with direct knowledge told me. ..."
"... Former Whitewater Independent Counsel Robert Ray said Friday that the Flynn matter was at the very least a "political scandal of the highest order" and could involve criminal charges if evidence emerges that officials lied or withheld documents to cover up what happened. ..."
"... "I imagine there are people who are in the know who may well have knowingly withheld information from the court and from defense counsel in connection with the Michael Flynn prosecution," Ray told Fox News . ..."
"... April 2014: Flynn is forced out as the chief of DIA by Obama after clashing with the administration over the Syrian civil war, the rise of ISIS, and other policies. The Obama administration blames his management style for the departure. ..."
"... Jan. 3, 2017: Strzok and Page engage in the text messages about Obama's daily briefing and the concerns about giving the Flynn intercept cuts to the White House. ..."
"... Jan. 4, 2017: Lead agent in Flynn Crossfire Razor probe prepares closing memo recommending the case be shut down for lack of derogatory evidence. Strzok texts agent asking him to stop the closing memo because the "7th floor" leadership of the FBI is now involved. ..."
"... Jan. 5, 2017: Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates attends Russia briefing with Obama at the White House and is stunned to learn Obama already knows about the Flynn-Kislyak intercept . Then-FBI Director James Comey claims Clapper told the president, but Clapper has denied telling Obama. ..."
"... Investigators are trying to determine whether Obama asked for the Flynn intercept or it was offered to him and by whom. They also want to know how many times Comey and Obama talked about Flynn in December 2016 and January 2017. ..."
"... "We need to determine what motivated the FBI on Jan. 4, 2017 to overrule its own agent who believed Flynn was innocent and the probe should be closed," one investigator said. ..."
"... Obama weaponized everything he could, ..."
"... The idea that Obama was the center of anything is misdirection. The 'deep state,' as much as I loathe the term, is nothing but State clerks bent by their sense of self importance, venality in the adherence to 'rules,' and motivated by either their greed or their indignation that their status position is merely relative. ..."
"... The Flynn persecution is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption, illegal surveillance, perjury, money laundering, skimming and sedition. ..."
"... One can only imagine all the times Obama weaponized the intelligence agencies against his political opponents that will never be exposed ..."
"... John and Sarah Carter have knocked it out of the park since the Obama attempted coup started. ..."
"... In Watergate, the underlying crime was "Nixon spied on the Democrats". Everything else was just a question of who did what, and how much. ..."
"... How come there's never any mention of "London Collusion", as if UK interference in U.S. politics and society is quite alright -- even when it's highly detrimental? ..."
"... Brennan went over and met with MI-6 right about the time that Trump announced his candidacy. I think the whole Russia-Collusion thing was their idea and they put Brennan on to it. Set it all up for him, complete with a diagram so he wouldn't **** it up. That's what MI-6 does. ..."
"... MI-6, like Christopher Steele, hated Trump because they BADLY want World Government. Have been sabotaging Brexit for years. ..."
"... It's easier for me to imagine Obama as puppet than a ringleader. He always seemed to be a fake, manufactured sort of person. As if he was focus-group-tested and approved. ..."
May 28, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by John Solomon via JustTheNews.com,

Agents fretted sharing Flynn intel with departing Obama White House would become fodder for 'partisan axes to grind.'

Just 17 days before President Trump took office in January 2017, then-FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok texted bureau lawyer Lisa Page, his mistress, to express concern about sharing sensitive Russia probe evidence with the departing Obama White House.

Strzok had just engaged in a conversation with his boss, then-FBI Assistant Director William Priestap, about evidence from the investigation of incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, codenamed Crossfire Razor, or "CR" for short.

The evidence in question were so-called "tech cuts" from intercepted conversations between Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to the texts and interviews with officials familiar with the conversations.

Strzok related Priestap's concerns about the potential the evidence would be politically weaponized if outgoing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper shared the intercept cuts with the White House and President Obama, a well-known Flynn critic.

"He, like us, is concerned with over sharing," Strzok texted Page on Jan. 3, 2017, relating his conversation with Priestap.

"Doesn't want Clapper giving CR cuts to WH. All political, just shows our hand and potentially makes enemies."

Page seemed less concerned, knowing that the FBI was set in three days to release its initial assessment of Russian interference in the U.S. election.

"Yeah, but keep in mind we were going to put that in the doc on Friday, with potentially larger distribution than just the DNI," Page texted back.

Strzok responded, "The question is should we, particularly to the entirety of the lame duck usic [U.S Intelligence Community] with partisan axes to grind."

That same day Strzok and Page also discussed in text messages a drama involving one of the Presidential Daily Briefings for Obama.

"Did you follow the drama of the PDB last week?" Strzok asked.

"Yup. Don't know how it ended though," Page responded.

"They didn't include any of it, and Bill [Priestap] didn't want to dissent," Strzok added.

"Wow, Bill should make sure [Deputy Director] Andy [McCabe] knows about that since he was consulted numerous times about whether to include the reporting," Page suggested.

You can see the text messages recovered from Strzok's phone here.

The text messages, which were never released to the public by the FBI but were provided to this reporter in September 2018, have taken on much more significance to both federal and congressional investigators in recent weeks as the Justice Department has requested that Flynn's conviction be thrown out and his charges of lying to the FBI about Kislyak dismissed.

U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen of Missouri (special prosecutor for DOJ), the FBI inspection division, three Senate committees and House Republicans are all investigating the handling of Flynn's case and whether any crimes were committed or political influence exerted.

The investigators are trying to determine whether Obama's well-known disdain for Flynn, a career military intelligence officer, influenced the decision by the FBI leadership to reject its own agent's recommendation to shut down a probe of Flynn in January 2017 and instead pursue an interview where agents might catch him in a lie.

They also want to know whether the conversation about the PDB involved Flynn and "reporting" the FBI had gathered by early January 2017 showing the incoming national security adviser was neither a counterintelligence nor a criminal threat.

"The evidence connecting President Obama to the Flynn operation is getting stronger," one investigator with direct knowledge told me.

"The bureau knew it did not have evidence to justify that Flynn was either a criminal or counterintelligence threat and should have shut the case down. But the perception that Obama and his team would not be happy with that outcome may have driven the FBI to keep the probe open without justification and to pivot to an interview that left some agents worried involved entrapment or a perjury trap."

The investigator said more interviews will need to be done to determine exactly what role Obama's perception of Flynn played in the FBI's decision making.

Recently declassified evidence show a total of 39 outgoing Obama administration officials sought to unmask Flynn's name in intelligence interviews between Election Day 2016 and Inauguration Day 2017, signaling a keen interest in Flynn's overseas calls.

Former Whitewater Independent Counsel Robert Ray said Friday that the Flynn matter was at the very least a "political scandal of the highest order" and could involve criminal charges if evidence emerges that officials lied or withheld documents to cover up what happened.

"I imagine there are people who are in the know who may well have knowingly withheld information from the court and from defense counsel in connection with the Michael Flynn prosecution," Ray told Fox News .

"If it turns out that that can be proved, then there are going to be referrals and potential false statements, and/or perjury prosecutions to hold those, particularly those in positions of authority, accountable," he added.

Investigators have created the following timeline of key events through documents produced piecemeal by the FBI over two years:

  • April 2014: Flynn is forced out as the chief of DIA by Obama after clashing with the administration over the Syrian civil war, the rise of ISIS, and other policies. The Obama administration blames his management style for the departure.
  • July 31, 2016: FBI opens Crossfire Hurricane probe into possible ties between Trump campaign and Russia, focused on Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. Flynn is not an initial target of that probe.
  • Aug. 15, 2016: Strzok and Page engage in their infamous text exchange about having an insurance policy just in case Trump should be elected. "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40," one text reads.
  • Aug. 16, 2016: FBI opens a sub-case under the Crossfire Hurricane umbrella codenamed Crossfire Razor focused on whether Flynn was wittingly or unwittingly engaged in inappropriate Russian contact.
  • Aug. 17, 2016: FBI and DNI provide Trump and Flynn first briefing after winning the nomination, including on Russia. FBI slips in an agent posing as an assistant for the briefing to secretly get a read on Flynn for the new investigation, according to the Justice Department inspector general report on Russia case. "SSA 1 told us that the briefing provided him 'the opportunity to gain assessment and possibly some level of familiarity with [Flynn]. So, should we get to the point where we need to do a subject interview ... would have that to fall back on,'" the IG report said.
  • Sept, 2, 2016: While preparing a talking points memo for Obama ahead of a conversation with Russian leader Vladimir Putin involving Russian election interference, Page texts Strzok that Obama wants to be read-in on everything the FBI is doing on the Russia collusion case. "POTUS wants to know everything we're doing," Page texted.
  • Sept. 5, 2016: During an international summit in China, Obama meets face-to-face with Putin and tells him to "cut it out" with election meddling.
  • Nov. 10, 2016: Two days after Trump won the election, the president-elect meets with Obama at the White House and the outgoing president encourages the incoming president not to hire Flynn as an adviser.
  • Jan. 3, 2017: Strzok and Page engage in the text messages about Obama's daily briefing and the concerns about giving the Flynn intercept cuts to the White House.
  • Jan. 4, 2017: Lead agent in Flynn Crossfire Razor probe prepares closing memo recommending the case be shut down for lack of derogatory evidence. Strzok texts agent asking him to stop the closing memo because the "7th floor" leadership of the FBI is now involved.
  • Jan. 5, 2017: Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates attends Russia briefing with Obama at the White House and is stunned to learn Obama already knows about the Flynn-Kislyak intercept . Then-FBI Director James Comey claims Clapper told the president, but Clapper has denied telling Obama.
  • Jan. 5–23, 2017: FBI prepares to conduct an interview of Flynn. The discussions lead Priestap, the assistant director, to openly question in his handwritten notes whether the bureau was "playing games" and trying to get Flynn to lie so "we can prosecute him or get him fired."
  • Jan. 24, 2017: FBI conducts interview with Flynn.

Investigators are trying to determine whether Obama asked for the Flynn intercept or it was offered to him and by whom. They also want to know how many times Comey and Obama talked about Flynn in December 2016 and January 2017.

"We need to determine what motivated the FBI on Jan. 4, 2017 to overrule its own agent who believed Flynn was innocent and the probe should be closed," one investigator said.


arrowrod , 26 minutes ago

Grenell comes in for a month, releases a **** load of "secret poop", then is replaced.

President Trump should fire the head of the FBI and replace with Grenell. I know, too easy.

"Expletive deleted", (I'm looking for new cuss words) the FBI and DOJ appear to be a bunch of stumble bum hacks, yet continue to get away with murder.

Schiff, lied and lied, but had immunity, because anything said on the house floor is safe from prosecution. Yet, GOP congress critters didn't go on the house floor and read the transcript from the testimony of the various liars.

"Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God."-ThomasJefferson , 3 hours ago

Obama weaponized everything he could, including race, gender, religion, truth, law enforcement, judiciary, news industry, intelligence community, international allies and foes.

The most corrupt administration in the history of the republic. The abuse of power is mind numbing.

Only one way to rectify the damage the Obama administration has done to the USA is to systematically undo every single thing they touched.

Decimus Lunius Luvenalis , 3 hours ago

The idea that Obama was the center of anything is misdirection. The 'deep state,' as much as I loathe the term, is nothing but State clerks bent by their sense of self importance, venality in the adherence to 'rules,' and motivated by either their greed or their indignation that their status position is merely relative.

Soloamber , 3 hours ago

The motive was to get Flynn fired and lay the ground work to impeach Trump . The problem is Flynn actually did nothing wrong but he was targeted , framed , and blackmailed into claiming he lied over nothing illegal .

They destroyed his reputation , they financially ruined him and once they did that the sleazy prosecutors ran like rabbits . The judge is so in the bag , he bullied Flynn with implied threats about treason . The Judge is going to get absolutely fragged . Delay delay delay but the jig is up .

DOJ says case dropped and the Judge wants to play prosecutor . The Judge should be investigated along with the other criminals who framed Flynn . Who is the judge tied to ? Gee I wonder .

Nature_Boy_Wooooo , 4 hours ago

"As long as I'm alive the Republican party won't let anything happen to you."

"Thanks John McCain!......now let's set the trap."

"Let's do it Barry."

THORAX , 4 hours ago

The Flynn persecution is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption, illegal surveillance, perjury, money laundering, skimming and sedition.

subgen , 4 hours ago

One can only imagine all the times Obama weaponized the intelligence agencies against his political opponents that will never be exposed

sborovay07 , 5 hours ago

John and Sarah Carter have knocked it out of the park since the Obama attempted coup started. CNN should give their fake Pulitzers too the two reporters who told the truth. It been like the tree that falls in the forest. However, once the arrests start more people will see the tree that fell. These treasonists need to pay for their crimes Bigly.

Omni Consumer Product , 4 hours ago

There's too much spookology here for a jury - much less the public - to decipher.

You need a smoking gun, like a tape of Obama saying "I want General Flynn assassinated because Orange Man Bad".

In Watergate, the underlying crime was "Nixon spied on the Democrats". Everything else was just a question of who did what, and how much.

That's what is need here to swell the mass of public opinion. Of course, leftwing true believers of "the Resistance" will never accept it, but that is what is needed to convince the significant minority of more centrist Americans who haven't made a final decision yet.

Lux , 5 hours ago

How come there's never any mention of "London Collusion", as if UK interference in U.S. politics and society is quite alright -- even when it's highly detrimental?

fackbankz , 5 hours ago

The Crown took us over in 1913. We're just the muscle.

Lord Raglan , 5 hours ago

Brennan went over and met with MI-6 right about the time that Trump announced his candidacy. I think the whole Russia-Collusion thing was their idea and they put Brennan on to it. Set it all up for him, complete with a diagram so he wouldn't **** it up. That's what MI-6 does.

MI-6, like Christopher Steele, hated Trump because they BADLY want World Government. Have been sabotaging Brexit for years.

Brennan's just not smart or creative enough to have figured out the Hoax on his own. He's certainly corrupt enough.

flashmansbroker , 4 hours ago

More likely, the Brits were asked to do a favor.

Steele Hammorhands , 5 hours ago

It's easier for me to imagine Obama as puppet than a ringleader. He always seemed to be a fake, manufactured sort of person. As if he was focus-group-tested and approved.

Side Note: Does anyone remember when Obama referred to himself as "the first US president from Kenya" and then laughed about it?

The First Sitting American President to Come From Kenya

[May 27, 2020] Brennan ears over Guccifer 2.0 mask -- CIA is the most probable origin of Gussifer 2.0

If DNC was hack not a leak, then NSA would have all information about the hack.
May 27, 2020 | consortiumnews.com

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j1qOs0dE4I


P. Michael Garber , May 26, 2020 at 22:21

I'm afraid it won't matter how thorough the alternative media debunking of Russiagate becomes – as long as mainstream media sticks to the story, the neoliberal majority will too, because it is like catnip to them, absolving responsibility for the defeat, casting Clinton as the victim of an evil foreign despot, and delegitimizing Trump. Truth is tossed to the wind by this freight train of powerful interests.

I have little hope Barr and Durham will indict anyone high level.

Ray twice mentioned something about Sanders getting hosed again in the 2020 primary. I thought it seemed weird how suddenly the primary was declared "over." If there is evidence of DNC shenanigans in 2020, that would be a very interesting and timely topic.

Mark McCarty , May 25, 2020 at 21:25

On June 12, Assange announces Wikileaks will soon be releasing "emails pertinent to Hillary". On June 14th, Crowdstrike announces: someone, probably the Russians, has hacked the DNC and taken a Trump opposition research document; the very next day, G2.0 makes his first public appearance and posts the DNC's Trump oppo research document, with "Russian fingerprints" intentionally implanted in its metadata. (We now know that he had actually acquired this from PODESTA's emails, where it appears as an attachment – oops!) Moreover, G2.0 announces that he was the source of the "emails pertinent to Hillary" – DNC emails – that Assange was planning to release.

This strongly suggests that the G2.0 persona was working in collusion with Crowdstrike to perpetrate the hoax that the GRU had hacked the DNC to provide their emails to Wikileaks. Consistent with this, multiple cyberanalyses point to G2.0 working at various points In the Eastern, Central, and Western US time zones. (A mere coincidence that the DNC is in the eastern zone, and that Crowdstrike has offices in the central and western zones?)

If Crowdstrike honestly believed that the DNC had been hacked by the GRU, would there have been any need for them to perpetrate this fraud?

It is therefore reasonable to suspect, as Ray McGovern has long postulated, that Crowdstrike may have FAKED a GRU hack, to slander Russia and Assange, while distracting attention from the content of the released emails.

As far as we know, the only "evidence" that Crowdstrike has for GRU being the perpetrator of the alleged hack is the presence of "Fancy Bear" malware on the DNC server. But as cyberanalysts Jeffrey Carr and George Eliason have pointed out, this software is also possessed by Ukrainian hackers working in concert with Russian traitors and the Atlantic Council – with which the founders of Crowdstrike are allied.

Here's a key question: When Assange announced the impending release of "emails pertinent to Hillary" on June 12, how did Crowdstrike and G2.0 immediately know he was referring to DNC emails? Many people – I, for example – suspected he was referring to her deleted Secretary of State emails.

Here's a reasonable hypothesis – Our intelligence agencies were monitoring all communications with Wikileaks. If so, they could have picked up the communications between SR and Wikileaks that Sy Hersh's FBI source described. They then alerted the DNC that their emails were about to leaked to Wikileaks. The DNC then contacted Crowdstrike, which arranged for a "Fancy Bear hack" of the DNC servers. Notably, cyberanalysts have determined that about 2/3 of the Fancy Bear malware found on the DNC servers had been compiled AFTER the date that Crowdstrike was brought in to "roust the hackers".

Of course, this elaborate hoax would have come to grief if the actual leaker had come forward. Which might have had something to do with the subsequent "botched robbery" in which SR was slain.

Tim , May 25, 2020 at 20:33

How does the murder of the DNC staffer fit in?

Linda Wood , May 26, 2020 at 23:00

DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered on July 10, 2016, amid contoversy over who provided DNC emails to Wikileaks and over a pending lawsuit concerning voter suppression during the 2016 primaries. Wikileaks offered a $20,000 reward for information about his murder, leading some to believe he was their source for the DNC emails. He was reported to have been a potential witness in the voter suppression lawsuit filed the day after his death.

mockingbirdpaper (dot) com/content/local-activist-files-suit-access-exit-polling-data-dead-witness-blocks-path-truth

[May 27, 2020] Obama/Brennan duo via Peter Strzok initiated anti-Trump witch hunt starting #Obamagate. Republicans supported this witch hunt. Trey Gowdy proved to be one of them and as such is a part of Obamagate scandal by Thomas Farnan

Obama ears protrude above this whole revaval of McCarthysim. he should end like the senator McCarthy -- disgraced. And the damage caused by RussiaGate was already done and is irrevocable.
May 27, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Trump's Keyboard Warriors Get The Story While The Legacy Media Ignores #Obamagate Zero Hedge

Submitted by Thomas Farnan

CrowdStrike – the forensic investigation firm hired by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to inspect its computer servers in 2016 – admitted to Congressional investigators as early as 2017 that it had no direct evidence of Russian hacking, recently declassified documents show.

CrowdStrike's president Shawn Henry testified, "There's not evidence that [documents and emails] were actually exfiltrated [from the DNC servers]. There's circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated." This was a crucial revelation because the thousand ships of Russiagate launched upon the positive assertion that CrowdStrike had definitely proven a Russian hack. This sworn admission has been hidden from the public for over two years, and subsequent commentary has focused on that singular outrage.

The next deductive step, though, leads to an equally crucial point: Circumstantial evidence of Russian hacking is itself flimsy and collapses when not propped up by a claim of conclusive forensic testing.

THE COVER UP.

On March 19, 2016, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, surrendered his emails to an unknown entity in a "spear phishing" scam. This has been called a "hack," but it was not. Instead, it is was the sort of flim-flam hustle that happens to gullible dupes on the internet.

The content of the emails was beyond embarrassing. They showed election fraud and coordination with the media against the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. The DNC and the Clinton campaign needed a cover story.

There already existed in Washington brooding suspicion that Vladimir Putin was working to influence elections in the West. The DNC and the Clinton campaign set out to retrofit that supposition to explain the emails.

On January 16, 2016, a silk-stocking Washington D.C. think tank, The Atlantic Council (remember that name), had issued a dispatch under the banner headline: "US Intelligence Agencies to Investigate Russia's Infiltration of European Political Parties."

The lede was concise: "American intelligence agencies are to conduct a major investigation into how the Kremlin is infiltrating political parties in Europe, it can be revealed."

There followed a series of pull quotes from an article that appeared in the The Telegraph , including that "James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence" was investigating whether right wing political movements in Europe were sourced in "Russian meddling."

The dispatch spoke of "A dossier" that revealed "Russian influence operations" in Europe. This was the first time trippy words like "Russian meddling" and "dossier" would appear together in the American lexicon.

Most importantly, the piece revealed the Obama administration was spying on conservative European political parties. This means, almost necessarily under the Five Eyes Agreement , foreign agents were returning the favor and spying on the Trump campaign.

Blaming Russia would be a handy way to deal with the Podesta emails. The problem was the technologically impossibility of identifying the perpetrator in a phishing scheme. The only way to associate Putin with the emails was circumstantially. The DNC retained CrowdStrike to provide assistance.

On June 12, 2016, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced : "We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton . . . We have emails pending publication."

Two days later, CrowdStrike fed the Washington Post a story , headlined, "Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump."

The improbable tale was that the Russians had hacked the DNC computer servers and got away with some opposition research on Trump. The article quoted CrowdStrike's chief technology officer and co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, who also happens to be a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

The next day, a new blog – Guccifer 2.0 – appeared on the internet and announced:

Worldwide known cyber security company CrowdStrike announced that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers had been hacked by "sophisticated" hacker groups.

I'm very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly))) But in fact, it was easy, very easy.

Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton's and other Democrats' mail servers. But he certainly wasn't the last. No wonder any other hacker could easily get access to the DNC's servers.

Shame on CrowdStrike: Do you think I've been in the DNC's networks for almost a year and saved only 2 documents? Do you really believe it?

Here are just a few docs from many thousands I extracted when hacking into DNC's network.

Guccifer 2.0 posted hundreds of pages of Trump opposition research allegedly hacked from the DNC and emailed copies to Gawker and The Smoking Gun . In raw form, the opposition research was one of the documents obtained in the Podesta emails, with a notable difference: It was widely reported the document now contained " Russian fingerprints ."

The document had been cut and pasted into a separate Russian Word template that yielded an abundance of Russian "error "messages . In the document's metadata was the name of the Russian secret police founder, Felix Dzerzhinsky, written in the Russian language. The three-parenthesis formulation from the original post ")))" is the Russian version of a smiley face used commonly on social media. In addition, the blog's author deliberately used a Russian VPN service visible in its emails even though there would have been many options to hide national affiliation.

CrowdStrike would later test the computers and declare this to be the work of sophisticated Russian spies. Alperovitch described it as, " skilled operational tradecraft ."

There is nothing skilled, though, in ham-handedly disclosing a Russian identity on the internet when trying to hide it. The more reasonable inference is that this was a set-up. It certainly looks like Guccifer 2.0 suddenly appeared in coordination with the Washington Post 's article that appeared the previous day.

THE FRAME UP.

Knowing as we now do that CrowdStrike never corroborated a hack by forensic analysis, the reasonable inference is that somebody was trying to frame Russia. Most likely, the entities that spent three years falsely leading the world to believe that direct evidence of a hack existed – CrowdStrike and the DNC – were the ones involved in the frame-up.

Lending weight to this theory: at the same moment CrowdStrike was raising a false Russian flag, a different entity, Fusion GPS – also paid by the DNC – was inventing a phony dossier that ridiculously connected Trump to Russia.

Somehow, the ruse worked.

Rather than report the content of the incriminating emails, the watchdog press instead reported CrowdStrike's bad explanation: that Putin-did-it.

Incredibly, Trump was placed on the defensive for email leaks that showed his opponent fixing the primaries. His campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was forced to resign because a fake ledger suddenly appeared out of Ukraine connecting him to Russia.

Trump protested by stating the obvious: the federal government has "no idea" who was behind the hacks. The FBI and CIA called him a liar, issuing a " Joint Statement " that cited Guccifer 2.0, suggesting 17 intelligence agencies agree that it was the Russians.

Hillary Clinton took advantage of this "intelligence assessment" in the October debate to portray Trump as Putin's stooge"

"We have 17, 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyber-attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin. And they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing," said Clinton.

The media's fact checkers excoriated Trump for lying. This was the ultimate campaign dirty trick: a joint operation by the intelligence agencies and the media against a political candidate. It has since been learned that the "17 intelligence agencies" claptrap was always false . Those responsible for the exaggeration were James Clapper, James Comey and John Brennan.

Somehow, Trump won anyway.

Those who assert that it is a "conspiracy theory" to say that CrowdStrike would fabricate the results of computer forensic testing to create a false Russian flag should know that it was caught doing exactly that around the time it was inspecting the DNC computers.

On Dec. 22, 2016, CrowdStrike caused an international stir when it claimed to have uncovered evidence that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery computer app to help pro-Russian separatists. Voice of America later determined the claim was false , and CrowdStrike retracted its finding. Ukraine's Ministry of Defense was forced to eat crow and admit that the hacking never happened. If you wanted a computer testing firm to fabricate a Russian hack for political reasons in 2016, CrowdStrike was who you went out and hired.

Perhaps most insidiously, the Obama administration played the phony Russian interference card during the transition to try to end Trump's presidency before it started. As I wrote in December 2017:

Michael Flynn was indicted for a conversation he had with the Russian ambassador on December 28, 2016, seven weeks after the election.

That was the day after the outgoing president expelled 35 Russian diplomats -- including gardeners and chauffeurs -- for interfering in the election. Yes, that really happened.

The Obama administration had wiretapped Flynn's conversation with the ambassador, hoping to find him saying something they could use to support their wild story about collusion.

The outrage, for some reason, is not that an outgoing administration was using wiretaps to listen in on a successor's transition. It is that Flynn might have signaled to the Russians that the Trump administration would have a different approach to foreign policy.

How dare Trump presume to tell an armed nuclear state to stand down because everyone in Washington was in a state of psychological denial that he was elected?

Let's establish one thing early here: It is okay for an incoming administration to communicate its foreign policy preferences during a transition even if they differ from the lame duck administration .

.If anything, Flynn was too reserved in his conversation with the Russian ambassador. He should have said, "President-elect Trump believes this Russian collusion thing is a fantasy and these sanctions will be lifted on his first day in office."

That would have been perfectly legal. It also happens to be what FBI Director Comey and the rest were hoping Flynn would do. They wanted to get a Trump official on tape making an accommodation to the Russians.

The accommodation would then be cited to suggest a quid pro quo that proved the nonexistent collusion. Instead, Flynn was uncharacteristically noncommittal in his conversation with the ambassador. Drat!

They did have a transcript of what he said, though. This is where the tin-pot dictator behavior of Comey is fully displayed. He invited Flynn to be interviewed by the FBI, supposedly about Russian collusion to steal the election.

If you're Flynn, you say, "Sure, I want to tell you 15 different ways that there was no collusion and when do you want to meet."

What Flynn did not know was that the purpose of the interview had nothing to do with the election. It would be a test pitting Flynn's memory against the transcript.

Think about that for a moment. Comey did not need to ask Flynn what was said in the conversation with the ambassador -- he had a transcript. The only reason to ask Flynn about it was to cross him up.

That is the politicization of the FBI. It is everything Trump supporters rail against when they implore him to drain the swamp. The inescapable conclusion is that the FBI set a trap for the incoming national security advisor to affect the foreign policy of the newly elected president.

Flynn made the mistake of not being altogether clear about what he had discussed with the ambassador. In his defense, he did not believe he was sitting there to tell the FBI how the Trump administration was dealing with Russia going forward. The conversation was supposed to be about the election.

He certainly did not think the FBI would unmask his comments in a FISA wiretap and compare them to his answers. That would be illegal.

Exhibit 5 to the DOJ's recent Motion to Dismiss the Flynn indictment confirms the Obama administration's bad faith in listening in on his conversation with the ambassador. The plotters admit , essentially, that they looked at the transcript to see whether Flynn said anything that caused Russia to stand-down. Had General Flynn promised to lift the sanctions, the Obama administration would have claimed it was the pro quo that went with the quid of Putin's interference.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/KeSHRR5bMr0

After Trump's inauguration, the FBI and Justice Department launched a special counsel investigation that accepted, as a given, CrowdStrike's dubious conclusion that Russia had interfered in the election. The only remaining question was whether Trump himself colluded in the interference. There followed a two-year inquiry that did massive political damage to Trump and the movement that put him in office.

Tucker Carlson rightly made Trey Gowdy squirm recently for Republican acquiescence in the shoddy underpinnings of the Russia hoax. It was not only Gowdy, though. Establishment politicians and pundits have been all too willing for years to wallow in fabricated Russian intrigue , at the expense of the Trump presidency.

This perfectly illustrates Republican perfidy: Gifted with undeserved victory in a generational realignment that they were dragged to kicking and screaming, they proceed to question its source and validity. Because if Trump was a product of KGB- esque intrigue, then Hillary was a victim of meddling. Trump was a hapless beneficiary. The deplorables were not only racist losers, they were also Putin's unwitting stooges.

As I first noted in December 2016, the Washington establishment deliberately set out to fan Russian anxiety to conduct war against the Trump administration. Perhaps it is time to admit that those of us chided as " crazies " who doubted Russian interference – including Trump himself – were right all along.

In the after-action assessment of what went wrong, it should be noted that non-insiders are the ones who have called this from the beginning, in places like here , here , here , here , and here . That is partly what the president means when he Tweets support for his " keyboard warriors ." As Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany pointed out on Friday, the White House press corps has completely missed the story.

Thank you to all of my great Keyboard Warriors. You are better, and far more brilliant, than anyone on Madison Avenue (Ad Agencies). There is nobody like you!

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 15, 2020

This scandal is huge, much bigger than Watergate, and compromising in its resolution is destructive. If Republicans continue to stupidly concede phony Russian intrigue , the plotters will say they were justified to investigate it.

The recent CrowdStrike testimony drop ended any chance at middle ground. This was a rank political operation and indicting a few FBI agents is not going to resolve anything.

CrowdStrike's circumstantial evidence that launched this probe is ridiculous. We'll soon know if the Durham investigation has the will to defy powerful insiders of both parties and say so.

[May 26, 2020] Saagar Enjeti EXPOSES Russiagate Liar's Dem Candidacy -- Evelyn Farkas

Fantastic interview. all Obama gang should be prosecuted for their attempt of coup d'état. Farkas behaviors looks like standard operating procecure for the neocon scum
That an effective but dirty trick on the part of this neocon prostitute Evelyn Farkas : "Putin want me to lose, send me some money"
May 26, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Steve Conrad , 1 week ago

Farkas is running primarily for the same reason that Andy mccabes wife ran - so she can pick up her payment from the dnc in the form of campaign contributions. It's money laundering

Clinton Flynn , 1 week ago

Farkas is so toxic her eyes are trying to escape.

Greg James , 1 week ago

Will Mika have her back on and ask Farkas why she lied to her, and made her look like a fool?

Haters WannaHate , 1 week ago

Calling Russia-gaters conspiracy theorists is an insult to conspiracy theorists.

J Rosa , 1 week ago

Call these Russian haters Xenophobic and see their denials.

None , 1 week ago (edited)

Boom 12:03 Yes Saagar, that's what I was hollering! This is far more insidious. There was NO ONE in power that believed birtherism whereas the entire National Security apparatus pushed this bogus coup on the President. The NSA, CIA, FBI, and media were all complicit. Do not let Krystal get away with a false equivalence. She is bullshitting. Chuck Schumer even threatened Trump on national television saying that the intelligence agencies have six ways til Sunday to take you down.

George Johnson , 1 week ago

Military Industrial Complex Media only propagandizes.

Rene Flores, Sr. , 1 week ago

Obamagate is no longer a conspiracy theory. If you still believe it is you need new news sources

Chris Opall , 1 week ago

"Full service economy". Krystal nailed it.

Brian Malone , 1 week ago (edited)

The bottom line is millions brainwashed Democrats believe her, so it is as good as the truth.

charlie brown , 1 week ago

"Panties on fire" Farkas's nose grew 8 inches on my screen. DNC and lame left media are serial fairy tale story tellers.

JD PartyHat , 1 week ago

obama is evil because of his pushing american imperialism.

Tim Brady , 1 week ago (edited)

I wish Farcas had spent a bit more time talking on MSNBC , I'm sure she would have coughed up more material. I would also like to see her texts and phone calls received after that a appearance, I'm sure some Obama people were pulling their hair out as she was spilling the whole scenario and called her immediately after.

M , 6 days ago

I think Saagar is fantastic. He's like a softcore version of Tucker Carlson.

Cynthia Johnson , 1 week ago

Russiagate was built on the willingness of a lot of people to believe the worst about Trump. That's it. Which honestly says more about the narrow-mindedness of Trump haters than it does about Trump himself. Whatever Trump is or isn't, and I'm no Trump supporter though I never got seduced into hating him, the one truth to come out of this is that his haters don't care about evidence, or the rule of law, or even common sense.

Hav G Reso HGR , 1 week ago

So if Farkas says she was raped, someone will say "believe all women". BS.

Michael , 1 week ago

If Russian interference was as de-stabilizing to our democracy as these people would have led us to believe, then, how de-stabilizing would carelessly weaponizing it potentially be? These people have no place in government or any form of public discourse. They are a malignancy.

[May 24, 2020] Guccifer 2.0 was always John Brennan 1.0

Highly recommended!
Images deleted.
False flag operation by CIA or CrowdStrike as CIA constructor: CIA ears protrude above Gussifer 2.0 hat.
Notable quotes:
"... Guccifer 2.0 fabricated evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC (using files that were really Podesta attachments) . ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0’s Russian breadcrumbs mostly came from deliberate processes & needless editing of documents . ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0’s Russian communications signals came from the persona choosing to use a proxy server in Moscow and choosing to use a Russian VPN service as end-points (and they used an email service that forwards the sender’s IP address, which made identifying that signal a relatively trivial task.) ..."
"... A considerable volume of evidence pointed at Guccifer 2.0’s activities being in American timezones (twice as many types of indicators were found pointing at Guccifer 2.0’s activities being in American timezones than anywhere else). ..."
"... The American timezones were incidental to other activities (eg. blogging , social media , emailing a journalist , archiving files , etc) and some of these were recorded independently by service providers. ..."
"... A couple of pieces of evidence with Russian indicators present had accompanying locale indicators that contradicted this which suggested the devices used hadn’t been properly set up for use in Russia (or Romania) but may have been suitable for other countries (including America) . ..."
"... On the same day that Guccifer 2.0 was plastering Russian breadcrumbs on documents through a deliberate process, choosing to use Russian-themed end-points and fabricating evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC, the operation attributed itself to WikiLeaks. ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0 chose to use insecure communications to ask WikiLeaks to confirm receipt of “DNC emails” on July 6, 2016. Confirmation of this was not provided at that time but WikiLeaks did confirm receipt of a “1gb or so” archive on July 18, 2016. ..."
"... The alleged GRU officer we are told was part of an operation to deflect from Russian culpability suggested that Assange “may be connected with Russians”. ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0 fabricated evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC, covered itself (and its files) in what were essentially a collection of “Made In Russia” labels through deliberate processes and decisions made by the persona, and, then, it attributed itself to WikiLeaks with a claim that was contradicted by subsequent communications between both parties. ..."
"... While we are expected to accept that Guccifer 2.0’s efforts between July 6 and July 18 were a sincere effort to get leaks to WikiLeaks, considering everything we now know about the persona, it seems fair to question whether Guccifer 2.0’s intentions towards WikiLeaks may have instead been malicious. ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0 was always John Brennan 1.0 ..."
"... Was Guccifer II part of the Stefan Halper organization that lured Papadopoulos and maliciously maligned others? ..."
"... I believe Guccifer 2.0 was created by the CIA to falsely pin blame on the Russians for info that Seth Rich gave to WikiLeaks. Read for yourself: http://g-2.space/ ..."
May 24, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Tim Leonard via ConsortiumNews.com,

Why would an alleged GRU officer - supposedly part of an operation to deflect Russian culpability - suggest that Assange “may be connected with Russians?”

In December, I reported on digital forensics evidence relating to Guccifer 2.0 and highlighted several key points about the mysterious persona that Special Counsel Robert Mueller claims was a front for Russian intelligence to leak Democratic Party emails to WikiLeaks:

On the same day that Guccifer 2.0 was plastering Russian breadcrumbs on documents through a deliberate process, choosing to use Russian-themed end-points and fabricating evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC, the operation attributed itself to WikiLeaks.

This article questions what Guccifer 2.0’s intentions were in relation to WikiLeaks in the context of what has been discovered by independent researchers during the past three years.

Timing

On June 12, 2016, in an interview with ITV’s Robert Peston, Julian Assange confirmed that WikiLeaks had emails relating to Hillary Clinton that the organization intended to publish. This announcement was prior to any reported contact with Guccifer 2.0 (or with DCLeaks).

On June 14, 2016, an article was published in The Washington Post citing statements from two CrowdStrike executives alleging that Russian intelligence hacked the DNC and stole opposition research on Trump. It was apparent that the statements had been made in the 48 hours prior to publication as they referenced claims of kicking hackers off the DNC network on the weekend just passed (June 11-12, 2016).

On that same date, June 14, DCLeaks contacted WikiLeaks via Twitter DM and for some reason suggested that both parties coordinate their releases of leaks. (It doesn’t appear that WikiLeaks responded until September 2016).

On June 15, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 appeared for the first time. He fabricated evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC (using material that wasn’t from the DNC), used a proxy in Moscow to carry out searches (for mostly English language terms including a grammatically incorrect and uncommon phrase that the persona would use in its first blog post) and used a Russian VPN service to share the fabricated evidence with reporters. All of this combined conveniently to provide false corroboration for several claims made by CrowdStrike executives that were published just one day earlier in The Washington Post.

[CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry testified under oath behind closed doors on Dec. 5, 2017 to the U.S. House intelligence committee that his company had no evidence that Russian actors removed anything from the DNC servers. This testimony was only released earlier this month.]

First Claim Versus First Contact

On the day it emerged, the Guccifer 2.0 operation stated that it had given material to WikiLeaks and asserted that the organization would publish that material soon:

By stating that WikiLeaks would “publish them soon” the Guccifer 2.0 operation implied that it had received confirmation of intent to publish.

However, the earliest recorded communication between Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks didn’t occur until a week later (June 22, 2016) when WikiLeaks reached out to Guccifer 2.0 and suggested that the persona send any new material to them rather than doing what it was doing:

[Excerpt from Special Counsel Mueller’s report. Note: “stolen from the DNC” is an editorial insert by the special counsel.]

If WikiLeaks had already received material and confirmed intent to publish prior to this direct message, why would they then suggest what they did when they did? WikiLeaks says it had no prior contact with Guccifer 2.0 despite what Guccifer 2.0 had claimed.

Needing To Know What WikiLeaks Had

Fortunately, information that gives more insight into communications on June 22, 2016 was made available on April 29, 2020 via a release of the Roger Stone arrest warrant application.

Here is the full conversation on that date (according to the application):

@WikiLeaks: Do you have secure communications?

@WikiLeaks: Send any new material here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing. No other media will release the full material.

@GUCCIFER_2: what can u suggest for a secure connection? Soft, keys, etc? I’m ready to cooperate with you, but I need to know what’s in your archive 80gb? Are there only HRC emails? Or some other docs? Are there any DNC docs? If it’s not secret when you are going to release it?

@WikiLeaks: You can send us a message in a .txt file here [link redacted]

@GUCCIFER_2: do you have GPG?

Why would Guccifer 2.0 need to know what material WikiLeaks already had? Certainly, if it were anything Guccifer 2.0 had sent (or the GRU had sent) he wouldn’t have had reason to inquire.

The more complete DM details provided here also suggest that both parties had not yet established secure communications.

Further communications were reported to have taken place on June 24, 2016:

@GUCCIFER_2: How can we chat? Do u have jabber or something like that?

@WikiLeaks: Yes, we have everything. We’ve been busy celebrating Brexit. You can also email an encrypted message to [email protected]. They key is here.

and June 27, 2016:

@GUCCIFER_2: Hi, i’ve just sent you an email with a text message encrypted and an open key.

@WikiLeaks: Thanks.

@GUCCIFER_2: waiting for ur response. I send u some interesting piece.

Guccifer 2.0 said he needed to know what was in the 88GB ‘insurance’ archive that WikiLeaks had posted on June 16, 2016 and it’s clear that, at this stage, secure communications had not been established between both parties (which would seem to rule out the possibility of encrypted communications prior to June 15, 2016, making Guccifer 2.0’s initial claims about WikiLeaks even more doubtful).

Claims DCLeaks Is A Sub-Project Of WikiLeaks

On June 27, 2016, in an email chain to the Smoking Gun (exposing Guccifer 2.0 apparently being in the Central US timezone), Guccifer 2.0 claimed that DCLeaks was a “sub-project” of WikiLeaks.

There’s no evidence to support this. “Envoy le” is also a mistake as standard French emails read: “Envoye le.” Claims allegedly made by Guccifer 2.0 in a Twitter DM to DCLeaks on September 15, 2016 suggest that he knew this was nonsense:

There was no evidence of WikiLeaks mentioning this to Guccifer 2.0 nor any reason for why WikiLeaks couldn’t just send a DM to DCLeaks themselves if they had wanted to.

(It should also be noted that this Twitter DM activity between DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 is alleged by Mueller to be communications between officers within the same unit of the GRU, who, for some unknown reason, decided to use Twitter DMs to relay such information rather than just communicate face to face or securely via their own local network.)

Guccifer 2.0 lied about DCLeaks being a sub-project of WikiLeaks and then, over two months later, was seen trying to encourage DCLeaks to communicate with WikiLeaks by relaying an alleged request from WikiLeaks that there is no record of WikiLeaks ever making (and which WikiLeaks could have done themselves, directly, if they had wanted to).

The ‘About 1GB’ / ‘1Gb or So’ Archive

On July 4, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 contacted WikiLeaks:

@GUCCIFER_2: hi there, check up r email, waiting for reply.

This was followed up on July 6, 2016 with the following conversation:

@GUCCIFER_2: have you received my parcel?

@WikiLeaks: Not unless it was very recent. [we haven’ t checked in 24h].

@GUCCIFER_2: I sent it yesterday, an archive of about 1 gb. via [website link]. and check your email.

@WikiLeaks: Wil[l] check, thanks.

@GUCCIFER_2: let me know the results.

@WikiLeaks: Please don’t make anything you send to us public. It’s a lot of work to go through it and the impact is severely reduced if we are not the first to publish.

@GUCCIFER_2: agreed. How much time will it take?

@WikiLeaks: likely sometime today.

@GUCCIFER_2: will u announce a publication? and what about 3 docs sent u earlier?

@WikiLeaks: I don’t believe we received them. Nothing on ‘Brexit’ for example.

@GUCCIFER_2: wow. have you checked ur mail?

@WikiLeaks: At least not as of 4 days ago . . . . For security reasons mail cannot be checked for some hours.

@GUCCIFER_2: fuck, sent 4 docs on brexit on jun 29, an archive in gpg ur submission form is too fucking slow, spent the whole day uploading 1 gb.

@WikiLeaks: We can arrange servers 100x as fast. The speed restrictions are to anonymise the path. Just ask for custom fast upload point in an email.

@GUCCIFER_2: will u be able to check ur email?

@WikiLeaks: We’re best with very large data sets. e.g. 200gb. these prove themselves since they’re too big to fake.

@GUCCIFER_2: or shall I send brexit docs via submission once again?

@WikiLeaks: to be safe, send via [web link]

@GUCCIFER_2: can u confirm u received dnc emails?

@WikiLeaks: for security reasons we can’ t confirm what we’ve received here. e.g., in case your account has been taken over by us intelligence and is probing to see what we have.

@GUCCIFER_2: then send me an encrypted email.

@WikiLeaks: we can do that. but the security people are in another time zone so it will need to wait some hours.

@WikiLeaks: what do you think about the FBl’ s failure to charge? To our mind the clinton foundation investigation has always been the more serious. we would be very interested in all the emails/docs from there. She set up quite a lot of front companies. e.g in sweden.

@GUCCIFER_2: ok, i’ll be waiting for confirmation. as for investigation, they have everything settled, or else I don’t know how to explain that they found a hundred classified docs but fail to charge her.

@WikiLeaks: She’s too powerful to charge at least without something stronger. s far as we know, the investigation into the clinton foundation remains open e hear the FBI are unhappy with Loretta Lynch over meeting Bill, because he’s a target in that investigation.

@GUCCIFER_2: do you have any info about marcel lazar? There’ve been a lot of rumors of late.

@WikiLeaks: the death? [A] fake story.

@WikiLeaks: His 2013 screen shots of Max Blumenthal’s inbox prove that Hillary secretly deleted at least one email about Libya that was meant to be handed over to Congress. So we were very interested in his co-operation with the FBI.

@GUCCIFER_2: some dirty games behind the scenes believe Can you send me an email now?

@WikiLeaks: No; we have not been able to activate the people who handle it. Still trying.

@GUCCIFER_2: what about tor submission? [W]ill u receive a doc now?

@WikiLeaks: We will get everything sent on [weblink].” [A]s long as you see \”upload succseful\” at the end. [I]f you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after.

@GUCCIFER_2: ok. I see.

@WikiLeaks: [W]e think the public interest is greatest now and in early october.

@GUCCIFER_2: do u think a lot of people will attend bernie fans rally in philly? Will it affect the dnc anyhow?

@WikiLeaks: bernie is trying to make his own faction leading up to the DNC. [S]o he can push for concessions (positions/policies) or, at the outside, if hillary has a stroke, is arrested etc, he can take over the nomination. [T]he question is this: can bemies supporters+staff keep their coherency until then (and after). [O]r will they dis[s]olve into hillary’ s camp? [P]resently many of them are looking to damage hilary [sic] inorder [sic] to increase their unity and bargaining power at the DNC. Doubt one rally is going to be that significant in the bigger scheme. [I]t seems many of them will vote for hillary just to prevent trump from winning.

@GUCCIFER_2: sent brexit docs successfully.

@WikiLeaks: :))).

@WikiLeaks: we think trump has only about a 25% chance of winning against hillary so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting.

@GUCCIFER_2: so it is.

@WikiLeaks: also, it’ s important to consider what type of president hillary might be. If bernie and trump retain their groups past 2016 in significant number, then they are a restraining force on hillary.

[Note: This was over a week after the Brexit referendum had taken place, so this will not have had any impact on the results of that. It also doesn’t appear that WikiLeaks released any Brexit content around this time.]

On July 14, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 sent an email to WikiLeaks, this was covered in the Mueller report:

It should be noted that while the attachment sent was encrypted, the email wasn’t and both the email contents and name of the file were readable.

The persona then opted, once again, for insecure communications via Twitter DMs:

@GUCCIFER_2: ping. Check ur email. sent u a link to a big archive and a pass.

@WikiLeaks: great, thanks; can’t check until tomorrow though.

On July 17, 2016, the persona contacted WikiLeaks again:

@GUCCIFER_2: what bout now?

On July 18, 2016, WikiLeaks responded and more was discussed:

@WikiLeaks: have the 1 Gb or so archive.

@GUCCIFER_2: have u managed to extract the files?

@WikiLeaks: yes. turkey coup has delayed us a couple of days. [O]therwise all ready[.]

@GUCCIFER_2: so when r u about to make a release?

@WikiLeaks: this week. [D]o you have any bigger datasets? [D]id you get our fast transfer details?

@GUCCIFER_2: i’ll check it. did u send it via email?

@WikiLeaks: yes.

@GUCCIFER_2: to [web link]. [I] got nothing.

@WikiLeaks: check your other mail? this was over a week ago.

@GUCCIFER_2:oh, that one, yeah, [I] got it.

@WikiLeaks: great. [D]id it work?

@GUCCIFER_2:[I] haven’ t tried yet.

@WikiLeaks: Oh. We arranged that server just for that purpose. Nothing bigger?

@GUCCIFER_2: let’s move step by step, u have released nothing of what [I] sent u yet.

@WikiLeaks: How about you transfer it all to us encrypted. [T]hen when you are happy, you give us the decrypt key. [T]his way we can move much faster. (A]lso it is protective for you if we already have everything because then there is no point in trying to shut you up.

@GUCCIFER_2: ok, i’ll ponder it

Again, we see a reference to the file being approximately one gigabyte in size.

Guccifer 2.0’s “so when r u about to make a release?” seems to be a question about his files. However, it could have been inferred as generally relating to what WikiLeaks had or even material relating to the “Turkey Coup” that WikiLeaks had mentioned in the previous sentence and that were published by the following day (July 19, 2016).

The way this is reported in the Mueller report, though, prevented this potential ambiguity being known (by not citing the exact question that Guccifer 2.0 had asked and the context immediately preceding it.

Four days later, WikiLeaks published the DNC emails.

Later that same day, Guccifer 2.0 tweeted: “@wikileaks published #DNCHack docs I’d given them!!!”.

Guccifer 2.0 chose to use insecure communications to ask WikiLeaks to confirm receipt of “DNC emails” on July 6, 2016. Confirmation of this was not provided at that time but WikiLeaks did confirm receipt of a “1gb or so” archive on July 18, 2016.

Guccifer 2.0’s emails to WikiLeaks were also sent insecurely.

We cannot be certain that WikiLeaks statement about making a release was in relation to Guccifer 2.0’s material and there is even a possibility that this could have been in reference to the Erdogan leaks published by WikiLeaks on July 19, 2016.

Ulterior Motives?

While the above seems troubling there are a few points worth considering:

  • There is a considerable volume of evidence that contradicts the premise of Guccifer 2.0 being a GRU operation.
  • The persona lied about WikiLeaks and even stated that Assange “may be connected with Russians”.
  • Guccifer 2.0’s initial claim about sending WikiLeaks material (and that they would publish it soon) appears to have been made without justification and seems to be contradicted by subsequent communications from WikiLeaks.
  • If the archive was “about 1GB” (as Guccifer 2.0 describes it) then it would be too small to have been all of the DNC’s emails (as these, compressed, came to 1.8GB-2GB depending on compression method used, which, regardless, would be “about 2GB” not “about 1GB”). If we assume that these were DNC emails, where did the rest of them come from?
  • Assange has maintained that WikiLeaks didn’t publish the material that Guccifer 2.0 had sent to them. Of course, Assange could just be lying about that but there are some other possibilities to consider. If true, there is always a possibility that Guccifer 2.0 could have sent them material they had already received from another source or other emails from the DNC that they didn’t release (Guccifer 2.0 had access to a lot of content relating to the DNC and Democratic party and the persona also offered emails of Democratic staffers to Emma Best, a self-described journalist, activist and ex-hacker, the month after WikiLeaks published the DNC emails, which, logically, must have been different emails to still have any value at that point in time).
  • On July 6, 2016, the same day that Guccifer 2.0 was trying to get WikiLeaks to confirm receipt of DNC emails (and on which Guccifer 2.0 agreed not to publish material he had sent them), the persona posted a series of files to his blog that were exclusively DNC email attachments.
  • It doesn’t appear any further communications were reported between the parties following the July 18, 2016 communications despite Guccifer 2.0 tweeting on August 12, 2016: “I’ll send the major trove of the #DCCC materials and emails to #wikileaks keep following…” and, apparently, stating this to The Hill too.
  • As there are no further communications reported beyond this point it’s fair to question whether getting confirmation of receipt of the archive was the primary objective for Guccifer 2.0 here.
  • Even though WikiLeaks offered Guccifer 2.0 a fast server for large uploads, the persona later suggested he needed to find a resource for publishing a large amount of data.
  • Despite later claiming he would send (or had sent) DCCC content to WikiLeaks, WikiLeaks never published such content and there doesn’t appear to be any record of any attempt to send this material to WikiLeaks.
  • Digital forensics evidence places Guccifer 2.0 in the Eastern (US) timezone on July 6, 2016, the day on which he was trying to get WikiLeaks to confirm receipt of DNC emails.

Considering all of this and the fact Guccifer 2.0 effectively covered itself in “Made In Russia” labels (by plastering files in Russian metadata and choosing to use a Russian VPN service and a proxy in Moscow for it’s activities) on the same day it first attributed itself to WikiLeaks, it’s fair to suspect that Guccifer 2.0 had malicious intent towards WikiLeaks from the outset.

If this was the case, Guccifer 2.0 may have known about the DNC emails by June 30, 2016 as this is when the persona first started publishing attachments from those emails.

Seth Rich Mentioned By Both Parties

WikiLeaks Offers Reward

On August 9, 2016, WikiLeaks tweeted:

In an interview with Nieuwsuur that was posted the same day, Julian Assange explained that the reward was for a DNC staffer who he said had been “shot in the back, murdered”. When the interviewer suggested it was a robbery Assange disputed it and stated that there were no findings.

When the interviewer asked if Seth Rich was a source, Assange stated, “We don’t comment on who our sources are”.

When pressed to explain WikiLeaks actions, Assange stated that the reward was being offered because WikiLeaks‘ sources were concerned by the incident. He also stated that WikiLeaks were investigating.

Speculation and theories about Seth Rich being a source for WikiLeaks soon propagated to several sites and across social media.

Guccifer 2.0 Claims Seth Rich As His Source

On August 25, 2016, approximately three weeks after the reward was offered, Julian Assange was due to be interviewed on Fox News on the topic of Seth Rich.

On that same day, in a DM conversation with the actress Robbin Young, Guccifer 2.0 claimed that Seth was his source (despite previously claiming he obtained his material by hacking the DNC).

Why did Guccifer 2.0 feel the need to attribute itself to Seth at this time?

[Note: I am not advocating for any theory and am simply reporting on Guccifer 2.0’s effort to attribute itself to Seth Rich following the propagation of Rich-WikiLeaks association theories online.]

Special Counsel Claims

In Spring, 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was named to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. general election, delivered his final report.

It claimed:

Guccifer 2.0 contradicted his own hacking claims to allege that Seth Rich was his source and did so on the same day that Julian Assange was due to be interviewed by Fox News (in relation to Seth Rich).

No communications between Guccifer 2.0 and Seth Rich have ever been reported.

Suggesting Assange Connected To Russians

In the same conversation Guccifer 2.0 had with Robbin Young where Rich’s name is mentioned (on August 25, 2016), the persona also provided a very interesting response to Young mentioning “Julian” (in reference to Julian Assange):

The alleged GRU officer we are told was part of an operation to deflect from Russian culpability suggested that Assange “may be connected with Russians”.

Guccifer 2.0’s Mentions of WikiLeaks and Assange

Guccifer 2.0 mentioned WikiLeaks or associated himself with their output on several occasions:

  1. June 15, 2016: claiming to have sent WikiLeaks material on his blog.
  2. June 27, 2016: when he claimed DCLeaks was a sub-project of WikiLeaks.
  3. July 13, 2016: Joe Uchill of The Hill reported that Guccifer 2.0 had contacted the publication and stated: “The press gradually forget about me, [W]ikileaks is playing for time and have some more docs.”
  4. July 22nd, 2016: claimed credit when WikiLeaks published the DNC leaks.
  5. August 12, 2016: It was reported in The Hill that Guccifer 2.0 had released material to the publication. They reported: “The documents released to The Hill are only the first section of a much larger cache. The bulk, the hacker said, will be released on WikiLeaks.”
  6. August 12, 2016: Tweeted that he would “send the major trove of the #DCCC materials and emails to #wikileaks“.
  7. September 15, 2016: telling DCLeaks that WikiLeaks wanted to get in contact with them.
  8. October 4, 2016: Congratulating WikiLeaks on their 10th anniversary via its blog. Also states: “Julian, you are really cool! Stay safe and sound!”. (This was the same day on which Guccifer 2.0 published his “Clinton Foundation” files that were clearly not from the Clinton Foundation.)
  9. October 17, 2016: via Twitter, stating “i’m here and ready for new releases. already changed my location thanks @wikileaks for a good job!”

Guccifer 2.0 also made some statements in response to WikiLeaks or Assange being mentioned:

  1. June 17, 2016: in response to The Smoking Gun asking if Assange would publish the same material it was publishing, Guccifer 2.0 stated: “I gave WikiLeaks the greater part of the files, but saved some for myself,”
  2. August 22, 2016: in response to Raphael Satter suggesting that Guccifer 2.0 send leaks to WikiLeaks, the persona stated: “I gave wikileaks a greater part of docs”.
  3. August 25, 2016: in response to Julian Assange’s name being mentioned in a conversation with Robbin Young, Guccifer 2.0 stated: “he may be connected with Russians”.
  4. October 18, 2016: a BBC reported asked Guccifer 2.0 if he was upset that WikiLeaks had “stole his thunder” and “do you still support Assange?”. Guccifer 2.0 responded: “i’m glad, together we’ll make America great again.”.

Guccifer 2.0 fabricated evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC, covered itself (and its files) in what were essentially a collection of “Made In Russia” labels through deliberate processes and decisions made by the persona, and, then, it attributed itself to WikiLeaks with a claim that was contradicted by subsequent communications between both parties.

Guccifer 2.0 then went on to lie about WikiLeaks, contradicted its own hacking claims to attribute itself to Seth Rich and even alleged that Julian Assange “may be connected with Russians”.

While we are expected to accept that Guccifer 2.0’s efforts between July 6 and July 18 were a sincere effort to get leaks to WikiLeaks, considering everything we now know about the persona, it seems fair to question whether Guccifer 2.0’s intentions towards WikiLeaks may have instead been malicious.


xxx 2 minutes ago (Edited)

Everything involving the Russian hoax was set up by the Deep States around the world. Implicate, discredit and destroy all those like Rich, Assange, Flynn and those who knew the truth. Kill the messenger....literally.

xxx 10 minutes ago

here's what really happened:

an American hacker breached Podesta's gmail on March 13 2016 and then uploaded it to Wikileaks via Tor sometime between April and May.

the NSA and CIA have hacked into Wikileaks' Tor file server to watch for new leaks to stay ahead of them to prepare. they saw Podesta's emails leaked and launched a counter infowar operation.

Brennan's CIA created the Guccifer 2.0 persona, with phony Russian metadata artifacts, using digital forgery techniques seen in Vault7. Crowdstrike was already on the premises of DNC since 2015, with their overly expensive security scanner watching the DNC network. Crowdstrike had access to any DNC files they wanted. CIA, FBI and Crowdstrike colluded to create a fake leak of DNC docs through their Guccifer 2.0 cutout. they didn't leak any docs of high importance, which is why we never saw any smoking guns from DNC leaks or DCLeaks.

you have to remember, the whole point of this CIAFBINSA operation has nothing to do with Hillary or Trump or influencing the election. the point was to fabricate criminal evidence to use against Assange to finally arrest him and extradite him as well as smear Wikileaks ahead of the looming leak of Podesta's emails.

if CIAFBINSA can frame Assange and Wikileaks as being criminal hackers and/or Russian assets ahead of the Podesta leaks, then they can craft a narrative for the MSM to ignore or distrust most of the Podesta emails. and that is exactly what happened, such as when Chris Cuomo said on CNN that it was illegal for you to read Wikileaks, but not CNN, so you should let CNN tell you what to think about Wikileaks instead of looking at evidence yourself.

this explains why Guccifer 2.0 was so sloppy leaving a trail of Twitter DMs to incriminate himself and Assange along with him.

if this CIAFBINSA entrapment/frame operation ever leaks, it will guarantee the freedom of Assange.

xxx 11 minutes ago

According to Wikipedia, "Guccifer" is Marcel Lazar Lehel, a Rumanian born in 1972, but "Guccifer 2.0" is someone else entirely.

Is that so?

xxx 20 minutes ago (Edited)

The guy from Cyrptome always asserted Assange was some type of deep state puppet, that he was connected somehow. This wouldn't be news to me and its probably why he was scared as hell. The guy is as good as dead, like S. Hussein. Seth Rich was just a puppet that got caught in the wrong game. He was expendable obviously too because well he had a big mouth, he was expendable from the beginning. Somebody mapped this whole **** out, thats for sure.

xxx 28 minutes ago

I am sick and tired of these Deep State and CIA-linked operations trying to put a wrench in the prosecution of people who were engaged in a coup d'etat.

xxx 29 minutes ago

********

xxx 33 minutes ago

At this point what difference does it make? We are all convinced since 2016. It is not going to convince the TDS cases roaming the wilderness.

No arrests, no subpoenas, no warrants, no barging in at 3 am, no perp walks, no tv glare...

Pres. Trump is playing a very risky game. Arrest now, or regret later. And you won't have much time to regret.

The swamp is dark, smelly and deep,

And it has grudges to keep.

xxx 37 minutes ago

Meanwhile- Guccifer 1.0 is still?

- In prison?

- Released?

- 48 month sentence in 2016. Obv no good behavior.

Nice article. Brennan is the dolt he appears.

xxx 41 minutes ago

+1,000 on the investigative work and analyzing it.

Sadly, none of the guilty are in jail. Instead. Assange sits there rotting away.

xxx 44 minutes ago

Why would an alleged GRU officer - supposedly part of an operation to deflect Russian culpability - suggest that Assange "may be connected with Russians?"

Because the AXIS powers of the CIA, Brit secret police and Israeli secret police pay for the campaign to tie Assange to the Russians...

xxx 45 minutes ago

@realDonaldTrump

A lot of interest in this story about Psycho Joe Scarborough. So a young marathon runner just happened to faint in his office, hit her head on his desk, & die? I would think there is a lot more to this story than that? An affair? What about the so-called investigator? Read story!

xxx 45 minutes ago

Why make it harder than it is? Guccifer II = Crowdstrike

xxx 51 minutes ago

Guccifer 2.0 was always John Brennan 1.0

xxx 58 minutes ago (Edited)

Was Guccifer II part of the Stefan Halper organization that lured Papadopoulos and maliciously maligned others?

xxx 1 hour ago

"His name was Seth Rich." The unofficial motto of ZeroHedge...

xxx 1 hour ago

James Guccifer Clapper.

xxx 1 hour ago

Mossad. And their subsidiary CIA.

xxx 1 hour ago

Crowd Strike CEO'S admission under oath that they had no evidence the DNC was hacked by the Russians should make the Russian Hoax predicate abundantly clear.

Justice for Seth Rich!

xxx 1 hour ago

Any influence Assange had on the election was so small that it wouldn't move the needle either way. The real influence and election tampering in the US has always come from the scores of lobbyists and their massive donations that fund the candidates election runs coupled with the wildly inaccurate and agenda driven collusive effort by the MSM. Anyone pointing fingers at the Russians is beyond blind to the unparalleled influence and power these entities have on swaying American minds.

xxx 1 hour ago

ObamaGate.

xxx 1 hour ago (Edited)

Uugh ONCE AGAIN... 4chan already proved guccifer 2.0 was a larp, and the files were not "hacked", they were leaked by Seth Rich. The metadata from the guccifer files is different from the metadata that came from the seth rich files. The dumb fuckers thought they were smart by modifying the author name of the files to make it look like it came from a russian source. They were so ******* inept, they must have forgot (or not have known) to modify the unique 16 digit hex key assigned to the author of the files when they were created..... The ones that seth rich copied had the system administrators name (Warren Flood) as the author and the 16 digit hex key from both file sources were the same - the one assigned to warren flood.

Really sloppy larp!!!

xxx 1 hour ago

This link has all the detail to show Guccifer 2.0 was not Russia. I believe Guccifer 2.0 was created by the CIA to falsely pin blame on the Russians for info that Seth Rich gave to WikiLeaks. Read for yourself: http://g-2.space/

xxx 1 hour ago

This is what people are. Now the species has more power than it can control and that it knows what to do with.

What do you think the result will be?

As for these games of Secret - it's more game than anything truly significant. The significant exists in the bunkers, with the mobile units, in the submarines. Et. al.

But this is a game in which some of the players die - or wish they were dead.

xxx 1 hour ago

And.....?

Public figures and political parties warrant public scrutiny. And didn't his expose in their own words expose the democrats, the mass media, the bureaucracy to the corrupt frauds that they are?

xxx 1 hour ago

Other than the fact that they didn't steal the emails (unless you believe whistleblowers are thief's, one mans source is another mans thief, it's all about who's ox is being gored and you love "leaks" don't you? As long as they work in your favor. Stop with the piety.

xxx 15 minutes ago

That's not the story at all. Did you just read this article?

The democrats were super duper corrupt (before all of this).

They fucked around to ice Bernie out of the primary.

A young staffer Seth Rich knew it and didn't like it. He made the decision to leak the info to the most reputable org for leaks in the world Wikileaks.

IF the DNC had been playing fair, Seth Rich wouldn't have felt the need to leak.

So, the democrats did it to themselves.

And then they created Russiagate to cover it all up.

And murdered a young brave man ... as we know.

xxx 1 hour ago

Assange, another problem Trump failed to fix.

xxx 1 hour ago

Sounds like it came from the same source as the Trump dossier ... MI5.

[May 24, 2020] Obamagate as the reaction of managerial class neoliberals on the crisis of neoliberalism

Highly recommended!
May 24, 2020 | angrybearblog.com

likbez , May 24, 2020 8:22 pm

While Flynn is a questionable figure with his Iran warmongering and the former tenure as a Turkey lobbyist, it is important to understand that in Kislyak call he mainly played the role of Israel lobbyist. This important fact was carefully swiped under the carpet by FBI honchos.

Only the second and less important part of the call (the request to Russia to postpone the reaction after the Obama expulsion of diplomats) was related to Russia. Not sure it was necessary: Russia probably understood that this was a provocation and would wait for the dust to settle in any case. Revenge is a dish that is better served cold. Later Russia used this as a pretext to equalize the number of US diplomats in Russia with the number of Russian diplomat in the USA which was a knockdown for any color revolution plans in this country: people with the knowledge of the country and connections to its neoliberal fifth column were sent packing.

But Russian neoliberal compradors were decimated earlier after EuroMaydan in Kiev, so this was actually a service to the USA allowing to save the USA same money (as Trump acknowledged)

Also strange how former chief of DIA fell victim of such a crude trap administered by a second, if nor third rate person -- Strzok. Looks like he was already on the hook and, as such, defenseless for his Turkey lobbing efforts. Which makes Comey-McCabe attempt to entrap him look like a shooing fish in the tank.

Note to managerial class neoliberals (PMC). Your Russiagate stance is to be expected and has nothing to do with virtue.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/22/why-russiagate-still-matters/

it was the urban and suburban PMC that gets its news from the establishment press -- the New York Times, Washington Post and NPR, that believed and supported the story.

[May 24, 2020] Guccifer 2.0's Hidden Agenda : looks like Gussifer 2.0 was a false flag operation designed to smear WikiLeaks and distract from the content of the stolen by Seth Rich or some other insider DNC emails

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... With the entirety of Russigate finally collapsing under the enormous weight and stench of its own BS, the picture that is beginning to emerge for me is one of an insider deep-state psy-op designed to cover for the crimes committed by the DNC, the Clinton Foundation and the 2016 Hillary campaign; kill for the foreseeable future any progressive threat to the neo-liberal world order; and take down a president that the bipartisan DC and corporate media elite fear and loathe. And why do they fear him? Because he is free to call them out on certain aspects of their criminality and corruption, and has. ..."
"... Hubris, cynicism and a basic belief in the stupidity of the US public all seem to have played a part in all this, enabled by a corporate media with a profit motive and a business model that depends on duping the masses. ..."
"... Anyone who still believes in democracy in the USA has his head in the sand (or someplace a lot smellier). ..."
"... The corruption in the USA is wide and deep and trump is NOT draining the swamp. ..."
"... A further point: the Mueller report insinuates that G2.0 had transferred the DNC emails to Wikileaks as of July 18th, and Wikileaks then published them on July 22nd. This is absurd for two reasons: There is no way in hell that Wikileaks could have processed the entire volume of those emails and attachments to insure their complete authenticity in 4 days. ..."
"... Indeed, when Crowdstrike's Shawn Henry had been chief of counterintelligence under Robert Mueller, he had tried to set Assange up by sending Wikileaks fraudulent material; fortunately, Wikileaks was too careful to take the bait. ..."
May 24, 2020 | consortiumnews.com

Daniel P , May 23, 2020 at 13:34

Fascinating, important and ultimately deeply disturbing. This is why I come to Consortium News.

With the entirety of Russigate finally collapsing under the enormous weight and stench of its own BS, the picture that is beginning to emerge for me is one of an insider deep-state psy-op designed to cover for the crimes committed by the DNC, the Clinton Foundation and the 2016 Hillary campaign; kill for the foreseeable future any progressive threat to the neo-liberal world order; and take down a president that the bipartisan DC and corporate media elite fear and loathe. And why do they fear him? Because he is free to call them out on certain aspects of their criminality and corruption, and has.

Hubris, cynicism and a basic belief in the stupidity of the US public all seem to have played a part in all this, enabled by a corporate media with a profit motive and a business model that depends on duping the masses.

Anonymous , May 22, 2020 at 12:01

These convos alone look like a script kiddie on IRC doing their low functioning version of sock puppetry. Didn't know anyone at all fell for that

Ash , May 22, 2020 at 17:21

Because smooth liars in expensive suits told them it was true in their authoritative TV voices? Sadly they don't even really need to try hard anymore, as people will evidently believe anything they're told.

Bob Herrschaft , May 22, 2020 at 12:00

The article goes a long way toward congealing evidence that Guccifer 2.0 was a shill meant to implicate Wikileaks in a Russian hack. The insinuation about Assange's Russian connection was over the top if Guccifer 2.0 was supposed to be a GRU agent and the mention of Seth Rich only contradicts his claims.

OlyaPola , May 22, 2020 at 10:40

Spectacles are popular.Although less popular, the framing and derivations of plausible belief are of more significance; hence the cloak of plausible denial over under-garments of plausible belief, in facilitation of revolutions of immersion in spectacles facilitating spectacles' popularity.

Some promoters of spectacles believe that the benefits of spectacles accrue solely to themselves, and when expectations appear to vary from outcomes, they resort to one-trick-ponyness illuminated by peering in the mirror.

Skip Scott , May 22, 2020 at 08:35

This is a great article. I think the most obvious conclusion is that Guccifer 2.0 was a creation to smear wikileaks and distract from the CONTENT of the DNC emails. The MSM spent the next 3 years obsessed by RussiaGate, and spent virtually no effort on the DNC and Hillary's collusion in subverting the Sander's campaign, among other crimes.

I think back to how many of my friends were obsessed with Rachel Madcow during this period, and how she and the rest of the MSM served the Empire with their propaganda campaign. Meanwhile, Julian is still in Belmarsh as the head of a "non-state hostile intelligence service," the Hillary camp still runs the DNC and successfully sabotaged Bernie yet again (along with Tulsi), and the public gets to choose between corporate sponsored warmonger from column A or B in 2020.

Anyone who still believes in democracy in the USA has his head in the sand (or someplace a lot smellier).

Guy , May 22, 2020 at 12:19

Totally agree .The corruption in the USA is wide and deep and trump is NOT draining the swamp.

Cal Lash , May 22, 2020 at 01:20

I take it the mentioned time zones are consistent with Langley.

treeinanotherlife , May 22, 2020 at 00:34

"Are there only HRC emails? Or some other docs? Are there any DNC docs?"

G2 is fishing to see if Wiki has DNC docs. Does not say "any DNC docs I sent you". And like most at time thought Assange's "related to hillary" phrase likely (hopefully for some) meant Hillary's missing private server emails. For certain G2 is not an FBI agent>s/he knows difference between HRC and DNC emails.

Thank you for fantastic work.

Mark McCarty , May 21, 2020 at 22:24

A further point: the Mueller report insinuates that G2.0 had transferred the DNC emails to Wikileaks as of July 18th, and Wikileaks then published them on July 22nd. This is absurd for two reasons: There is no way in hell that Wikileaks could have processed the entire volume of those emails and attachments to insure their complete authenticity in 4 days.

Indeed, it is reasonable to expect that Wikileaks had been processing those emails since at least June 12, when Assange announced their impending publication. (I recall waiting expectantly for a number of weeks as Wikileaks processed the Podesta emails.) Wikileaks was well aware that, if a single one of the DNC emails they released had been proved to have been fraudulent, their reputation would have been toast. Indeed, when Crowdstrike's Shawn Henry had been chief of counterintelligence under Robert Mueller, he had tried to set Assange up by sending Wikileaks fraudulent material; fortunately, Wikileaks was too careful to take the bait.

Secondly, it is inconceivable that a journalist as careful as Julian would, on June 12th, have announced the impending publication of documents he hadn't even seen yet. And of course there is no record of G2.0 having had any contact with Wikileaks prior to that date.

It is a great pleasure to see "Adam Carter"'s work at long last appear in such a distinguished venue as Consortium News. It does credit to them both.

Skip Edwards , May 22, 2020 at 12:33

How can we expect justice when there is no justification for what is being done by the US and British governments to Julian Assange!

[May 23, 2020] The irony of Brenana behaviour: the former CIA Director shouting every other day that the duly elected POTUS is treasonous and much be removed from office by any means necessary. The pot calling the kettle black

May 23, 2020 | www.unz.com

BL , says: Show Comment May 23, 2020 at 1:51 pm GMT

@Realist Quite right. I should have written that sentence differently in that by "like Brennan," I meant an individual allowed to rise by obtaining compromising information on everyone, most especially his intelligence colleagues.

Our system abhors such an arrogation of power or at least it used to. Not to put too fine a point on it but that's what happens when you construct a surveillance state and then turn it over to filth like Brennan.

This really isn't very complicated. It's utterly untenable in our great republic to have the former CIA Director shouting every other day that the duly elected POTUS is treasonous and much be removed from office by any means necessary.

It's impossible to overstate how serious this situation is when those who are needed on the side of our republic and legitimate constitutional authority are distracting with squeaks about Michael Ledeen's daughter no less.

I'm not laying this all at Brennan's door. Like Beria, his presence at the pinnacle of power was more symptom than cause. He's no evil genius which, when you think about it, makes the continued craven obedience to him by Democrats, RINO Republicans, Allied Media and, yes, most who were in the IC, that much more pathetic.

[May 23, 2020] "Obamagate" claims spark new round in internal US political warfare by Patrick Martin

May 23, 2020 | www.wsws.org

A second Senate panel, the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, is working on a similar timetable, with plans to issue a report before the November 3 presidential vote. It began Thursday to discuss subpoenas of former top Obama administration and national security officials, with a vote set for June 4 to give Graham broad subpoena power.

Graham has suggested he will call, among others, former FBI Director James Comey, his former deputy Andrew McCabe, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. At least initially, Graham has downplayed calls by Trump for issuing subpoenas to Obama and Biden.

The initial focus of the Judiciary Committee will be the case of retired General Michael Flynn, who resigned in February 2017 as Trump's national security adviser and later pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak.

Over the past month, the Flynn case has become the war cry of Trump and his ultra-right backers at Breitbart News, Fox News and among congressional Republicans. They claim that Flynn was the victim of a "perjury trap" set up by Comey at the instigation of Obama and Biden to disrupt the incoming Trump administration.

Attorney General William Barr intervened to quash the sentencing of Flynn on perjury charges, taking the unprecedented action of dropping prosecution on charges to which Flynn had twice pled guilty before a federal judge. That judge, Emmett Sullivan, is now considering whether to allow the dropping of the charges and has asked for outside groups to file friend-of-the-court pleadings on the question.

The Senate investigations accelerated after a Tuesday meeting between Trump and leading Senate Republicans, at which he demanded they "get tough" against the Democrats by issuing subpoenas and holding televised hearings during the summer.

On the same day, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell abandoned his previous reluctance to hold such hearings, declaring that the Obama administration had used "the awesome power of the federal government to pry into their political rivals."

"An American citizen's campaign for the American presidency was treated like a hostile foreign power by our own law enforcement," he said, "in part because a Democrat-led executive branch manipulated documents, hid contrary evidence, and made a DNC-funded dossier a launchpad for an investigation."

... ... ...

The fall election campaign sparked an internal conflict within the FBI between pro-Trump and pro-Clinton factions. On October 7, the "intelligence community" issued a warning that Russia was seeking to intervene in the election on behalf of Trump. Then, on October 29, Comey released his notorious letter to Congress announcing the reopening of the FBI's investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. This unprecedented action, in violation of Justice Department rules against interfering with an election, arguably tipped the outcome to Trump, given his narrow margins in industrial states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

After Trump's surprise election victory, the attention of the intelligence agencies and the Obama administration shifted to Flynn, Trump's top foreign policy aide and his choice to become White House national security adviser. Obama warned Trump against naming Flynn, who had been fired in 2014 as part of an internal conflict within the intelligence establishment, with Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan pressing for his dismissal.

On December 29, 2016, Obama imposed stiff diplomatic sanctions on the Russian government, expelling a large number of its representatives in the United States on the spurious grounds that he was "retaliating" for Russian interference in the US presidential election. In fact, there has never been any evidence that Russian actions consisted of anything more than purchasing a few Facebook ads, for less than $100,000, trivial in comparison to the $5 billion expended by the campaigns for Trump and Clinton.

Immediately after Obama's announcement of sanctions, Flynn called the Russian ambassador to the United States, Kislyak, to urge the Putin government not to respond in kind, assuring him that the incoming Trump administration would review the matter afresh. Such contacts are routine during any transition between outgoing and incoming US administrations, but Flynn apparently considered the content of the discussions to be politically embarrassing and lied about them when interviewed by FBI agents.

On January 5, 2017, Obama and his closest aides were briefed by the intelligence agencies on the anti-Russia investigation, on the eve of a similar briefing delivered to President-elect Trump in New York City. It appears that Obama was less enthusiastic about the targeting of Flynn than the security chiefs, including Clapper and Comey, and Flynn continued to receive full briefings from the outgoing national security adviser, Susan Rice.

On January 12, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, a regular conduit for the intelligence agencies, made public the December 29 Flynn-Kislyak phone call, touching off the chain of events that led to Flynn's firing a month later. It is perhaps ironic, in view of the current "Obamagate" campaign, that Ignatius voiced the then-common view in the "intelligence community" that Obama was dragging his feet on the anti-Russia campaign. His column was headlined, "Why Did Obama Dawdle on Russian Hacking?"

These apparently tactical differences led Comey to send FBI agents to the White House on January 24, 2017 to interview Flynn about his conversations with Kislyak without notifying the Department of Justice, in violation of the usual protocol, because Acting Attorney General Sally Yates reportedly shared Obama's concern that too direct an attack on Flynn and Trump might backfire.

Besides the various Senate investigations, the Department of Justice is conducting its own review of the origins of the Russia investigation, which led ultimately to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. This review, headed by US Attorney John Durham, is expected to include testimony under oath from the same set of former Obama aides who are to be subpoenaed by the Senate.

[May 22, 2020] Wray's Review Of FBI's Flynn Probe Is The Fox Guarding The Hen House

May 22, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Wray's Review Of FBI's Flynn Probe "Is The Fox Guarding The Hen House" by Tyler Durden Fri, 05/22/2020 - 20:05 Authored by Sara Carter,

FBI Director Christopher Wray announced Friday that he has ordered the bureau to conduct an internal review of its handling of the probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn , which has led to his years long battle in federal court.

It's like the fox guarding the hen house.

Wray's decision to investigate also comes late. The bureau's probe only comes after numerous revelations that former senior FBI officials and agents involved in Flynn's case allegedly engaged in misconduct to target the three star general, who became President Donald Trump's most trusted campaign advisor.

Despite all these revelations, Wray has promised that the bureau will examine whether any employees engaged in misconduct during the court of the investigation and "evaluate whether any improvements in FBI policies and procedures need to be made." Based on what we know, how can we trust an unbiased investigation from the very bureau that targeted Flynn.

Let me put it to you this way, over the past year Wray has failed to cooperate with congressional investigations. In fact, many Republican lawmakers have called him out publicly on the lack of cooperation saying, he cares more about protecting the bureaucracy than exposing and resolving the culture of corruption within the bureau.

Wray's Friday announcement, is in my opinion, a ruse to get lawmakers off his back.

How can we trust that Wray's internal investigation will expose what actually happened in the case of Flynn, or any of the other Trump campaign officials that were targeted by the former Obama administration's intelligence and law enforcement apparatus.

It's Wray's FBI that continues to battle all the Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act requests regarding the investigation into Flynn, along with any requests that would expose information on the Russia hoax investigation. One in particular, is the request to obtain all the text messages and emails sent and received by former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

The FBI defended itself in its Friday announcement saying that in addition to its own internal review, it has already cooperated with other inquiries assigned by Attorney General William Barr. But still Wray has not approved subpoena's for employees and others that lawmakers want to interview behind closed doors in Congress.

The recent documented discoveries by the Department of Justice make it all the more imperative that an outside review of the FBI's handling of Flynn's case is required. Those documents, which shed light on the actions by the bureau against Flynn, led to the DOJ's decision to drop all charges against him. It was, after all, DOJ Attorney Jeffery Jensen who discovered the FBI documents regarding Flynn that have aided his defense attorney Sidney Powell in getting the truth out to they American people.

Powell, like me, doesn't believe an internal review is appropriate.

"Wow? And how is he going to investigate himself," she questioned in a Tweet. "And how could anyone trust it? FBI Director Wray opens internal review into how bureau handled Michael Flynn case."

WOW? And how is he going to investigate himself? And how could anyone trust it?
FBI Director Wray opens internal review into how bureau handled Michael Flynn case https://t.co/AeE0yL46W6 #FBICorruption #Clapper #Brennan #NSA #spying
Widespread illegal monitoring by #Obama admin

-- Sidney Powell 🇺🇸⭐⭐⭐ (@SidneyPowell1) May 22, 2020

Last week, this reporter published the growing divide between Congressional Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee and Wray. The lawmakers have accused Wray of failing to respond to numerous requests to speak with FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka, who along with former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, conducted the now infamous White House interview with Flynn on Jan. 24, 2017.

Further, the lawmakers have also requested to speak with the FBI's former head of the Counterintelligence Division , Bill Priestap, whose unsealed handwritten notes revealed the possible 'nefarious' motivations behind the FBI's investigation of Flynn.

"Michael Flynn was wronged by the FBI," said a senior Republican official last week, with direct knowledge of the Flynn investigation.

"Sadly Director Wray has shown little interest in getting to the bottom of what actually happened with the Flynn case. Wray's lackadaisical attitude is an embarrassment to the rank and file agents at the bureau, whose names have been dragged through the mud time and time again throughout the Russia-gate investigation. Wray needs to wake up and work with Congress. If he doesn't maybe it's time for him to go. "

Powell argued that Flynn had pleaded guilty because his former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, along with his prosecutors, threatened to target his son. Those prosecutors also coerced Flynn, whose finances were depleted by his previous defense team. Mueller's team got Flynn to plead guilty to lying to the FBI about a phone conversation he had with the former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period. However, the agents who interviewed him did not believe he was lying.

Currently the DOJ's request to dismiss the case is now pending before federal Judge Emmet Sullivan. Sullivan has failed to grant the DOJ's request to dismiss the case and because of that Powell has filed a writ of mandamus to the U.S. D.C. Court of Appeals seeking the immediate removal of Sullivan, or to dismiss the prosecution as requested by the DOJ.

[May 22, 2020] System Update with Glenn Greenwald - The Murderous History and Deceitful Function of the CIA

May 22, 2020 | www.youtube.com

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity The CIA’s Murderous Practices, Disinformation Campaigns, and Interference in

In the weeks before the 2016 presidential election, the most powerful former leaders of the Central Intelligence Agency did everything they could to elect Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump. President Obama’s former acting CIA chief Michael Morrell published a full-throated endorsement of Clinton in the New York Times and claimed “Putin ha[s] recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation,” while George W. Bush’s post-9/11 CIA and NSA Chief, Gen. Michael Hayden, writing in the Washington Post, refrained from endorsing Clinton outright but echoed Morrell by accusing Trump of being a “useful fool, some naif, manipulated by Moscow” and sounding “a little bit the conspiratorial Marxist.” Meanwhile, the intelligence community under James Clapper and John Brennan fed morsels to both the Obama DOJ and the US media to suggest a Trump/Russia conspiracy and fuel what became the Russiagate investigation.

In his extraordinary election-advocating Op-Ed, Gen. Hayden, Bush/Cheney’s CIA Chief, candidly explained the reasons for the CIA’s antipathy for Trump: namely, the GOP candidate’s stated opposition to allowing CIA regime change efforts in Syria to expand as well as his opposition to arming Ukrainians with lethal weapons to fight Russia (supposedly “pro-Putin” positions which, we are now all supposed to forget, Obama largely shared).

As has been true since President Harry Truman’s creation of the CIA after World War II, interfering in other countries and dictating or changing their governments — through campaigns of mass murder, military coups, arming guerrilla groups, the abolition of democracy, systemic disinformation, and the imposition of savage despots — is regarded as a divine right, inherent to American exceptionalism. Anyone who questions that or, worse, opposes it and seeks to impede it (as the CIA perceived Trump was) is of suspect loyalties at best.

The CIA’s antipathy toward Trump continued after his election victory. The agency became the primary vector for anonymous, illegal leaks designed to depict Trump as a Kremlin agent and/or blackmail victim. It worked to ensure the leak of the Steele dossier that clouded at least the first two years of Trump’s presidency. It drove the scam Russiagate conspiracy theories. And before Trump was even inaugurated, open warfare erupted between the president-elect and the agency to the point where Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explicitly warned Trump on the Rachel Maddow Show that he was risking full-on subversion of his presidency by the agency:

Democrats, early in Trump’s presidency, saw clearly that the CIA had become one of Trump’s most devoted enemies, and thus began viewing them as a valuable ally. Leading out-of-power Democratic foreign policy elites from the Obama administration and Clinton campaign joined forces not only with Bush/Cheney neocons but also former CIA officials to create new foreign policy advocacy groups designed to malign and undermine Trump and promote hawkish confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. Meanwhile, other ex-CIA and Homeland Security officials, such as John Brennan and James Clapper, became beloved liberal celebrities by being hired by MSNBC and CNN to deliver liberal-pleasing anti-Trump messaging that, on a virtually daily basis, masqueraded as news.

Fair Use Excerpt. Read the rest here.


Arthur Davis , 1 day ago

All covered extensively in Killing Hope , U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, by William Blum

Timothy Lee , 22 hours ago

Oliver Stone's "The Untold History of the US" opened up my eyes to how shameful our history really is. The American Empire is no better then Great Britain, the very power this country was supposed to rise above.

Mehdi Hosseini , 1 day ago

When a system is fully controlled by the big corporation/money every action and move must serve it's master. Some are directly related to their immediate interest and some to prevent any future challenge to it.

Dennis Miller , 1 day ago

let's not forget the Dulles Brothers (CIA & State)

Joe Filter , 1 day ago

Such sad facts. 'Killing Hope' really does describe it.

Cygnus X-321 , 1 day ago

"...At CBS, we had been contacted by the CIA, as a matter of fact, by the time I became the head of the news and public affairs division in 1954 shifts had been established ... I was told about them and asked if I'd carry on with them...." -- Sid Mickelson, CBS News President 1954-61, describing Operation Mockingbird

Jorge Eduardo da Silva Tavares , 1 day ago

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins, was a NYTimes best-seller about the methods CIA use to dominate countries in Latin America and in Asia. John Perkins never was interviewed by Us Media.

[May 22, 2020] Sorting fact from fiction on Obamagate, Flynn investigations by Glenn Greenwald

FBI was converted into free floating secret police free to investigate anybody.
Notable quotes:
"... Well, there is the infamous Strzok-Page SMS where Page states that the WH wants to know everything. This occurred MONTHS before January 4, 2017. ..."
"... Mike Flynn was eyeballs deep in conflicts of interest between his business and his national security role. ..."
"... part of the call was to ask Russia to veto a vote which should also be drilled into as they had not taken office yet and actively undermined a sitting government ..."
"... The FBI asked about the call because they wanted to leak it without revealing they had intercepted the communications of a incoming National Security Advisor. The call might have been perfectly normal and legal but given the Russia hysteria of the time it was perfectly usable as a smear. ..."
"... So they went in and ambushed Flynn without a lawyer to either get him on the record and leak it or better yet lie about it. Flynn didn't know how depraved the Obama administration had become and didn't imagine they had unmasked him and also couldn't believe they would dare entrap him like some criminal by asking him about a call they already had intercepted. That was his mistake. ..."
"... Obama is an armed terrorist at the behest of the CIA for a proxy war in Libya (North Africa) and Syria ..."
May 22, 2020 | www.youtube.com

ilmaestro305 Hoch , 5 hours ago

Beria is supposed to have said to Stalin, "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime."

JB6789 , 4 hours ago (edited)

03: 45 - Well, there is the infamous Strzok-Page SMS where Page states that the WH wants to know everything. This occurred MONTHS before January 4, 2017.

JB6789 , 4 hours ago

Glenn Greenwald is always delivering a well-thought and well-researched view on so many important issues in this world. I may not share the same view on every issue with GG, but I make a reasonable effort to find his insights at every opportunity. He is an absolute pleasure to listen to, because he speaks with such clarity of thought and is clearly an exceptional lawyer. It may well be too much to ask for...but journalism could use 100 more Glenn Greenwald's.

2020 FDR New Deal Solution , 4 hours ago

I can't express how much respect I have for Glenn. The Hill and Glenn are some of the only people left in media that I actually trust.

Jared Allen , 2 hours ago

Rising is really drinking the kool aid on this one. So many facts about this case are being cherry picked to find a conspiracy. Mike Flynn was eyeballs deep in conflicts of interest between his business and his national security role.

Let's also not forget, he was fired by Trump because he lied to Mike Pence, not because the deep state railroaded him in some way.

... ... ...

Richw , 4 hours ago

Completely agree that this was criminal and should be explored fully but be objective and I heard about the story that part of the call was to ask Russia to veto a vote which should also be drilled into as they had not taken office yet and actively undermined a sitting government

ToldYouSo , 1 hour ago

Come on how can you beat around the bush so much?

The FBI asked about the call because they wanted to leak it without revealing they had intercepted the communications of a incoming National Security Advisor. The call might have been perfectly normal and legal but given the Russia hysteria of the time it was perfectly usable as a smear.

So they went in and ambushed Flynn without a lawyer to either get him on the record and leak it or better yet lie about it. Flynn didn't know how depraved the Obama administration had become and didn't imagine they had unmasked him and also couldn't believe they would dare entrap him like some criminal by asking him about a call they already had intercepted. That was his mistake.

Rogue Judas , 4 hours ago

Obama is an armed terrorist at the behest of the CIA for a proxy war in Libya (North Africa) and Syria.

[May 22, 2020] Time to Break up the FBI by William S. Smith

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... One could write a long history of FBI abuses and failures, from Latin America to Martin Luther King to Japanese internment. But just consider a handful of their more recent cases. ..."
"... But it was 9/11 that really sealed the FBI's ignominious track record. The lavishly funded agency charged with preventing terrorism somehow missed the attacks, despite their awareness of numerous Saudi nationals taking flying lessons around the country. Immediately after 9/11, the nation was gripped by the anthrax scare, and once again the FBI's inability to solve the case caused them to try to railroad an innocent man, Stephen Hatfill . ..."
"... With 9/11, the FBI also began targeting troubled Americans by handing them bomb materials, arresting them, and then holding a press conference to tell the country that they had prevented a major terrorist attack -- a fake attack that they themselves had planned. ..."
"... 9/11 also opened the floodgates to domestic surveillance and all the FISA abuses that most recently led to the prosecution of Michael Flynn. I am no fan of Flynn and his hawkish anti-Islamic views, but the way he was framed and then prosecuted really does shock the conscience. ..."
"... For the FBI, merely catching bad guys is too mundane. As one can tell from the sanctimonious James Comey, the culture at the Bureau holds grander aspirations. Comey's book is titled A Higher Loyalty , as if the FBI reports only to the Almighty. ..."
"... While the nation's elite colleges and tech companies are crawling with Chinese spies who are literally stealing our best ideas, the chief of the FBI's Counterintelligence Section, Peter Strzok, spent his days trying to frame junior aides in the Trump campaign. ..."
"... Some conservatives have called for FBI Director Christopher Wray to be fired. This would accomplish nothing, as the problem is not one man but an entire culture. ..."
"... One of the most amusing yet disturbing tends of the Trump era has been the increasingly strong embrace of the "intelligence community" (how I hate that term) by left liberals. ..."
"... It's tempting to wonder how many of them have even heard of COINTELPRO, but I suspect that most of them would be just fine if the FBI intervened to disrupt and destabilize the Marxist left in the unlikely event that it seemed to be gaining a significant political foothold. Can't have any nasty class politics disrupting their bourgeois identitarian parlor game! ..."
"... J. Edgar Hoover wrecked a lot of the good the FBI could have been right from the beginning, there needs to be a major cultural change over there and they need to be put back on track so that they serve us instead of themselves. ..."
"... Making sure crooks like Hoover and showboats like Comey never get put in charge would be a good start. ..."
"... Remember in "Three Days of the Condor," when Robert Redford reacts scornfully to Cliff Robertson's use of the term "community"? ..."
"... Collaboratus: Basically, working together. BULL, the individual IC Agencies can't work together internally, much less across agency boundaries. ..."
"... Virtus: a specific virtue in Ancient Rome. It carried connotations of valor, manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth, perceived as masculine strengths. Again, BULL. The Feminazis and lgbtqxyz crowd have, pretty much snipped any balls and put them in a jar. Yes, gay pride is big in the IC. ..."
"... Fides: was the goddess of trust and bona fides in Roman paganism. She was one of the original virtues to be considered an actual religious divinity. Fides is everything that is required for "honour and credibility, from fidelity in marriage, to contractual arrangements, and the obligation soldiers owed to Rome". With respect to the IC, that last bears repeating" "Obligations Soldiers Owed To Rome." In the IC (Rome), Leadership and Management (LM) have no obligations to the 'soldiers'; so, of course, the soldiers respond in kind. ..."
"... Real underline issue is FBI has been politicized. Rather than be neutral and independent, top FBI leaders have aligned with politicians. While nominate FBI officials, presidents also select their own than someone is independent. ..."
"... Absolutely nothing new or rare was done to Flynn. The FBI used perfectly standard dirty tricks on him. ..."
"... It isn't just the FBI that uses dirty tactics. most police departments also use dirty tactics. ..."
"... As I see it the agency that needs to be broken up is the CIA. What they do is shameful and not American. They are and have always been heavily involved in other countries internal affairs. They are an evil organization. ..."
"... Absolutely phenomenal that an entire essay abusing the FBI could be written without once mentioning the man who actually made the Federal Bureau of Investigation into what it is (whatever that might be). But J Edgar Hoover is still sufficiently iconic a figure to many Conservatives that it would be counterproductive to assault him. Better someone like Comey. ..."
"... I did not know the FBI had the power to go back in time, otherwise how did they get Flynn to lie to VP Pence on Jan 14 when they didn't interview him until 1/24? Amazing how powerful they are! ..."
May 18, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Its constant abuses, of which Michael Flynn is only the latest, show what a failed Progressive Era institution it really is. Fittingly, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was founded by a grandnephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte, during the Progressive Era. Bonaparte was a Harvard-educated crusader. As the FBI's official history states, "Many progressives, including (Teddy) Roosevelt, believed that the federal government's guiding hand was necessary to foster justice in an industrial society."

Progressives viewed the Constitution as a malleable document, a take-it-or-leave-it kind of thing. The FBI inherited that mindset of civil liberties being optional. In their early years, with the passage of the Espionage and Sedition Acts during World War I, the FBI came into its own by launching a massive domestic surveillance campaign and prosecuting war dissenters. Thousands of Americans were arrested, prosecuted, and jailed simply for voicing opposition.

One could write a long history of FBI abuses and failures, from Latin America to Martin Luther King to Japanese internment. But just consider a handful of their more recent cases. The FBI needlessly killed women and children at Waco and Ruby Ridge. Anyone who has lived anywhere near Boston knows of the Bureau's staggering corruption during gangster Whitey Bulger's reign of terror. The abuses in Boston were so terrific that radio host Howie Carr declared that the FBI initials really stood for "Famous But Incompetent." And then there's Richard Jewell, the hero security guard who was almost railroaded by zealous FBI agents looking for a scalp after they failed to solve the Atlanta terrorist bombing.

But it was 9/11 that really sealed the FBI's ignominious track record. The lavishly funded agency charged with preventing terrorism somehow missed the attacks, despite their awareness of numerous Saudi nationals taking flying lessons around the country. Immediately after 9/11, the nation was gripped by the anthrax scare, and once again the FBI's inability to solve the case caused them to try to railroad an innocent man, Stephen Hatfill .

With 9/11, the FBI also began targeting troubled Americans by handing them bomb materials, arresting them, and then holding a press conference to tell the country that they had prevented a major terrorist attack -- a fake attack that they themselves had planned.

9/11 also opened the floodgates to domestic surveillance and all the FISA abuses that most recently led to the prosecution of Michael Flynn. I am no fan of Flynn and his hawkish anti-Islamic views, but the way he was framed and then prosecuted really does shock the conscience. After Jewell, Hatfill, Flynn, and so many others, it's time to ask whether the culture of the FBI has become similar to that of Stalin's secret police, i.e. "show me the man and I'll show you the crime."

I am no anti-law enforcement libertarian. In a previous career, I had the privilege to work with agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and they were some of the bravest people I have ever met. And while the DEA can be overly aggressive (just ask anyone who has been subjected to federal asset forfeiture), it is inconceivable that its agents would plot a coup d'état against the president of the United States. The DEA sees their job as catching drug criminals; they stay in their lane.

For the FBI, merely catching bad guys is too mundane. As one can tell from the sanctimonious James Comey, the culture at the Bureau holds grander aspirations. Comey's book is titled A Higher Loyalty , as if the FBI reports only to the Almighty.

They see themselves as progressive guardians of the American Way, intervening whenever and wherever they see democracy in danger. No healthy republic should have a national police force with this kind of culture. There are no doubt many brave and patriotic FBI agents, but there is also no doubt they have been very badly led.

This savior complex led them to aggressively pursue the Russiagate hoax. Their chasing of ghosts should make it clear that the FBI does not stay in their lane. While the nation's elite colleges and tech companies are crawling with Chinese spies who are literally stealing our best ideas, the chief of the FBI's Counterintelligence Section, Peter Strzok, spent his days trying to frame junior aides in the Trump campaign.

Some conservatives have called for FBI Director Christopher Wray to be fired. This would accomplish nothing, as the problem is not one man but an entire culture. One possible solution is to break up the FBI into four or five agencies, with one responsible for counterintelligence, one for counterterrorism, one for complex white-collar crime, one for cybercrimes, and so on. Smaller agencies with more distinctive missions would not see themselves as national saviors and could be held accountable for their effectiveness at very specific jobs. It would also allow federal agents to develop genuine expertise rather than, as the FBI regularly does, shifting agents constantly from terrorism cases to the war on drugs to cybercrime to whatever the political class's latest crime du jour might be.

Such a reform would not end every abuse of federal law enforcement, and all these agencies would need to be kept on a short leash for the sake of civil liberties. It would, however, diminish the ostentatious pretension of the current FBI that they are the existential guardians of the republic. In a republic, the people and their elected leaders are the protectors of their liberties. No one else.

William S. Smith is senior research fellow and managing director at the Center for the Study of Statesmanship at The Catholic University of America. His new book is Democracy and Imperialism: Irving Babbitt and Warlike Democracies (2019) .


Embarrassed 11 hours ago

One of the most amusing yet disturbing tends of the Trump era has been the increasingly strong embrace of the "intelligence community" (how I hate that term) by left liberals.

It's hard to believe it was only a decade ago when they were (correctly) deriding these exact same people for their manifold failures relating to the War on Terror, but then again left liberals at that time had not yet abandoned the pretense that they were something other than a PMC social club.

It's tempting to wonder how many of them have even heard of COINTELPRO, but I suspect that most of them would be just fine if the FBI intervened to disrupt and destabilize the Marxist left in the unlikely event that it seemed to be gaining a significant political foothold. Can't have any nasty class politics disrupting their bourgeois identitarian parlor game!

Megan S Embarrassed 6 hours ago
It's not the left liberals, it's the centrists and the neocons fleeing the Republican Party like rats. The left never liked the FBI, never trusted them, with good reason.

J. Edgar Hoover wrecked a lot of the good the FBI could have been right from the beginning, there needs to be a major cultural change over there and they need to be put back on track so that they serve us instead of themselves.

Making sure crooks like Hoover and showboats like Comey never get put in charge would be a good start.

FJR Atlanta Embarrassed 3 hours ago
Or put another way... One of the most amusing yet disturbing tends of the Trump era has been the increasingly strong disdain of the "intelligence community" (how I hate that term) by far right conservatives.

Let's just be honest with ourselves - we really don't want intelligence, or science, or oversight, unless it supports our team.

Gary Keith Chesterton Embarrassed 3 hours ago
Remember in "Three Days of the Condor," when Robert Redford reacts scornfully to Cliff Robertson's use of the term "community"?

Nowadays, it's actually an official or semi-official term. They even have their own logo, for crying out loud.

View Hide
TISO_AX2 Gary Keith Chesterton an hour ago
It represents just one more bureaucrat in the line to go and tell lies before congressional oversight committees. Thanks Bushies.
Linux Pauling Gary Keith Chesterton 29 minutes ago • edited
Some thoughts on the IC Motto:

1. Collaboratus: Basically, working together. BULL, the individual IC Agencies can't work together internally, much less across agency boundaries. This goes to guys like Mike Flynn (former director of DIA), his predecessors and successors, and their peers across the Intel(?) Community (that one kills me, too); the IC. Not to 'slight' anyone, but middle management is no better, and probably, worse; everyone has to protect their own 'little rice bowl' ya know.

2. Virtus: a specific virtue in Ancient Rome. It carried connotations of valor, manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth, perceived as masculine strengths. Again, BULL. The Feminazis and lgbtqxyz crowd have, pretty much snipped any balls and put them in a jar. Yes, gay pride is big in the IC.

3. Fides: was the goddess of trust and bona fides in Roman paganism. She was one of the original virtues to be considered an actual religious divinity. Fides is everything that is required for "honour and credibility, from fidelity in marriage, to contractual arrangements, and the obligation soldiers owed to Rome". With respect to the IC, that last bears repeating" "Obligations Soldiers Owed To Rome." In the IC (Rome), Leadership and Management (LM) have no obligations to the 'soldiers'; so, of course, the soldiers respond in kind.

The ICs are dog eat dog; LM are looking out for themselves...Period. Actually doing 'the job' is pretty far down the TODO List. The vast majority of people in the 'trenches' are just trying to get through the day; like LM, doing the 'right thing' is no longer the first thought.

To make matters worse (if possible), MANY of those people in the trenches have almost no clue WTF they are doing. This is because management involuntarily reassigns people (SURPRISE!) to jobs for which they were not hired, have no qualifications, and, often, no interest in becoming qualified. Of course, they hang on hoping that 'black swan' will land and make everything right again.

We've had two major incidents (at least), in the last 20 years (9/11 and the Kung Flu) that are specific failures of the IC (IMO). The IC failed (fails?) because Collaboratus, Virtus, and Fides are just some words on a plaque; not goals for which to strive; lip service is a poor substitute.

Yeah, these yahoos are overdue for a good house cleaning as well.

Gary Keith Chesterton Linux Pauling 5 minutes ago
I work in Defense; and the problems there are identical.
Dodo 10 hours ago
Real underline issue is FBI has been politicized. Rather than be neutral and independent, top FBI leaders have aligned with politicians. While nominate FBI officials, presidents also select their own than someone is independent.

In order their men can do their "works", they also increased their authorities. Supposedly, FBI directors, once confirmed, will not change with president. In reality, we saw presidents to replace old ones with their own.

It is not break up or whatever "reform". As long as presidents (regardless whom) can choose their own, how can you expect FBI does its jobs stated by laws?

Amicus Brevis 8 hours ago • edited
It is amazing how far people will let their political hatreds take them. The FBI is actually more important for the services it provides police forces around America than it is for solving federal crimes.

The FBI have been using dirty practices on people for decades. Literally hundreds of people who are not criminals have written about this - several of them are former agents who left in good standing.

They practice some of them right out in the open, like leaking information about arrests to the press so that the press get to film their arrests - sometimes timing arrests to hit local primetime new. It even has a name - the prime time perp walk. Whether these people are convicted or not, those images follow them for the rest of their lives. Or announcing that a person is "a person of interest" to force cooperation, because they know that people hear "suspect" when they hear such announcements. They will then offer to announce that the person is no longer a person of interest in exchange for cooperation. It didn't deserve to be disbanded them.

Absolutely nothing new or rare was done to Flynn. The FBI used perfectly standard dirty tricks on him. But since he was a minion of Donald Trump, the FBI should have known that he was untouchable. That is their real wrongdoing here. But they didn't realize it, so they should be disbanded. It is just like some progressives call for the disbandment of ICE because it arrests illegal aliens.

This ignoramus reminds me of others of his kind who call for the disbandbandment of the UN because they don't like the behavior of its General Council, its human rights or the peace keeping agencies, completely oblivious of the critical services the dozens of non-political UN agencies provide to all countries, especially to very small or under developed ones. They call for the destruction of WHO because it kowtows to China no matter that a number of countries in the world would have access to zero advanced health services without it, and others who are less dependent, but find its services critical in maintaining healthy populations. They find it politically objectionable so get rid of it! I really hate how progressives throw around the words "entitled" and "privilege", but some people do behave that way.

jack Amicus Brevis 5 hours ago
It isn't just the FBI that uses dirty tactics. most police departments also use dirty tactics.
IanDakar jack an hour ago
You can't go without the police though and a lot of what goes there can be reformed. Stop treating them like an movie version of the military. Teach them to calm a situation instead of shooting first, and realize you can treat them like an important part of society without making them above the law.
jack 5 hours ago
As I see it the agency that needs to be broken up is the CIA. What they do is shameful and not American. They are and have always been heavily involved in other countries internal affairs. They are an evil organization.
IanDakar jack an hour ago
We don't have to pick one program to drop.

Add homeland security to it as well.

I'm a " good government beats a small badly run one" and not a friend to libertarian ideals but there's a lot of government that can get the heave ho.

Wally 5 hours ago
If conservatives are coming around to the idea that police corruption is a real thing, that would be great. Somehow, I tend to doubt that it extends much beyond a way to protect white collar and political corruption. I hope this is a turning point. The investigations into Clinton emails didn't seem to warrant a mention here. Oh well.
IanDakar Wally an hour ago
That whole email situation was worthless. Not to say whether there was or was not an issue but the investigation was nothing worthwhile and only resulted in complicating an already messy election. Whether you believe there was a crime or not there there was nothing good handled by that investigation.

Personally I'm more content with the Mueller investigation. Not the way everyone panicked over it on both sides but what Mueller actually did himself: came in, researched the situation, found out that while a good few people acted messy Trump himself wasn't doing more than Twitter talk (yes it's technically "not enough evidence to prosecute", but that is how we phrase "not guilty" technically: you prove guilt not innocence), stated that Trump keeps messing himself up (aka "why did you ask your staff to claim one reason for a firing then tell a different story on national TV idiot")..

Then ran for the hills as everyone screamed "impeach/witchhunt".

Though don't get me wrong: I'm not going to get on the way of any attempt to dismantle the FBI or any of those other systems. It's something I really wish "small government" actually meant.

FND 3 hours ago
And lets not forget that Russia warned the FBI about the Tsarnaev brothers. The FBI did a perfunctory investigation and dismissed the threat. They probably thought they were a couple of poor Chechen boys persecuted by those evil Russians.
Brasidas 3 hours ago
And while the DEA can be overly aggressive... it is inconceivable that its agents would plot a coup d'état against the president of the United States.

And it still is.

David Naas an hour ago
Absolutely phenomenal that an entire essay abusing the FBI could be written without once mentioning the man who actually made the Federal Bureau of Investigation into what it is (whatever that might be). But J Edgar Hoover is still sufficiently iconic a figure to many Conservatives that it would be counterproductive to assault him. Better someone like Comey.

But, this is part of a pattern of Trump and his loyal followers (no Conservatives they) assault on the Institutions. The FBI is insufficiently tamed by Billy Barr, so it must go. (Part of the deep state swamp. /s).

Actually, there are very sound reasons for keeping the FBI, and even more for reforming it. But since it was engaged in checking out Trump's minion, Flynn, it is bad, very bad, incredibly bad, and must go. OTOH, if Comey had bent the knee to Trump, the FBI would be the most tremendous force for good the country has ever seen.

But this essay must be seen as part of the background of attempted legitimization for whatever Trump tweetstormed today. Perhaps the critics are right, and "conservatism is dead". If so, it would be the proper thing to give it a decent burial and go on.

Because there is nothing about Donald John Trump which is the least Conservative, and it is sickening to see people I once presumed to be "principled" line up at the altar of Trumpism. You know he will not be satisfied until the country is renamed The United States of Trump.

Now, all you Trumpublicans and Trumpservatives go downvote because I decline to abandon Conservatism for Trumpworship,

Jim Hohman 9 minutes ago
I did not know the FBI had the power to go back in time, otherwise how did they get Flynn to lie to VP Pence on Jan 14 when they didn't interview him until 1/24? Amazing how powerful they are!

[May 22, 2020] This doesn't look good for the Obama Alumni Association

May 22, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

UPDATE "The Railroading of Michael Flynn" [Eli Lake, Commentary ] ( Lake's bio ).

This, as did the Greenwald YouTube the other day, puts together a coherent Flynn narrative. Here is a snippet: "Compare Flynn's treatment to McCabe's. Flynn was humiliated and bankrupted for allegedly lying to Pence and FBI agents over a phone call that advanced U.S. interests.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department inspector general found in 2018 that McCabe "knowingly provided false information" in three separate interviews during an investigation into self-serving leaks published by the Wall Street Journal about an aborted investigation into the Clinton Foundation in 2016.

That report also found that McCabe admonished more junior FBI agents for the leaks that he himself had authorized. Today, McCabe is a contributor at CNN. His opinions are still taken seriously at places like the esteemed Lawfare website. He remains in the good graces of the Trump resistance." \

This doesn't look good for the Obama Alumni Association (which, horridly, is a real thing ).

[May 22, 2020] Flynn Targeted By Christopher Steele After FBI Offered To Pay Ex-Spook 'Significantly'

May 22, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

In the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, the FBI offered to pay former British spy Christopher Steele "significantly" for collecting intelligence on Michael Flynn, according to the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross.

The FBI's proposal - made during an October 3, 2016 meeting in an unidentified European city, and virtually ignored by the press - has taken on new significance in light of recent documents exposing how the Obama administration targeted Flynn before and after president Trump's upset victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The inspector general's report, released on Dec. 9, 2019, said that FBI agents offered to pay Steele "significantly" to collect intelligence from three separate "buckets" that the bureau was pursuing as part of Crossfire Hurricane , its counterintelligence probe of four Trump campaign associates.

One bucket was "Additional intelligence/reporting on specific, named individuals (such as [Carter Page] or [Flynn]) involved in facilitating the Trump campaign-Russian relationship," the IG report stated.

FBI agents also sought contact with "any individuals or sub sources" who Steele could provide to "serve as cooperating witnesses to assist in identifying persons involved in the Trump campaign-Russian relationship."

Steele at the time had provided the FBI with reports he compiled alleging that members of the Trump campaign had conspired with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election. - Daily Caller

Of note, Steele was promoting a discredited rumor that Flynn had an extramarital affair with Svetlana Lokhova, a Russian-British academic who studied at the University of Cambridge. This rumor was amplified by the Wall Street Journal and The Guardian in March, 2017.

According to the Inspector General's report, the FBI gave Steele a "general overview" of their Crossfire Hurricane probe - including their efforts to surveil Trump campaign aides George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, along with Paul Manafort and Flynn. In fact - some FBI agents questioned whether the lead agent told Steel too much about the operation , according to the IG report.

Via the Daily Caller

In recent weeks, the release of two documents raise questions about potential links between the FBI's request of Steele and the Lokhova rumor .

One of the documents is a transcript of longtime John McCain associate David Kramer's interview with the House Intelligence Committee. Kramer testified on Dec. 17, 2017, that Steele told him in December 2016 that he suspected that Flynn had an extramarital affair with a Russian woman .

"There was one thing he mentioned to me that is not included here, and that is he believed that Mr. Flynn had an extramarital affair with a Russian woman in the U.K .," Kramer told lawmakers.

Kramer said that Steele conveyed that Flynn's alleged mistress was a "Russian woman" who "may have been a dual citizen."

An FBI memo dated Jan. 4, 2017, contained another allegation regarding Flynn and a mysterious Russian woman.

The memo, which was provided to Flynn's lawyers on April 30, said that an FBI confidential human source (CHS) told the bureau that they were present at an event that Flynn attended while he was still working in the U.S. intelligence community . - Daily Caller

Lokhova and Flynn have denied the rumors - with Lokhova's husband telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that he picked his wife up after the Cambridge dinner where an FBI informant said they 'left together in a cab.'

Meanwhile, a DIA official who was at the Cambridge event with Flynn also told the WSJ in March 2017 that there was nothing inappropriate going on between Flynn and Lokhova.

Read the rest of the report here .

[May 21, 2020] How Can Susan Rice Know What Obama and Comey Said if She Was Not Present by Larry C Johnson

May 21, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Here is the bottomline in a nutshell--Susan Rice has been caught red handed trying to construct a lie about what Barack Obama knew and did not know with respect to General Michael Flynn. She claimed to be present when Barack Obama discussed the Michael Flynn intercept but, according to Sally Yates, who was interviewed by the FBI, only Yates, Jim Comey and Barack Obama were present. This new revelation--made possible by the declassification of the Susan Rice email written in the last moments of the Obama Administration--actually bolsters Michael Flynn's contention that he was the victim of a political hit job designed to take out Donald Trump.

[May 21, 2020] Trump Is Exposing The Deep State Like No One Since JFK, Former CIA Spook by Greg Hunter

May 21, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Via Greg Hunter's USAWatchdog.com ,

With every new revelation about what President Trump calls "Obamagate," you see the curtain being torn down and revealing the corrupt players who were running America and attacking our Republic.

Former CIA Officer and counter-terrorism expert Kevin Shipp, who wrote a book about the Deep State called "From the Company of Shadows," says any hint that POTUS is a tool of the Deep State is preposterous.

Shipp explains, "That is absolutely ridiculous..."

" Donald Trump has confronted the Shadow Government and Deep State more than any other president in history, and that includes JFK. JFK did, of course, confront the Deep State and we saw what happened there.

There has been no other president that has had the guts to expose the Shadow Government and Deep State like Donald Trump has. What has the Deep State done? They have gone after him with a vengeance. Why would the Deep State attack their own with attacks to try to destroy him and his family if he wasn't threatening to expose the Deep State? No, he's not a Deep State president. He's not perfect. We all know that. There are members of his cabinet that we are concerned about with connections to some of the central banks. We all know that, but Donald Trump is not Deep State. He is splitting the Deep State wide open.

Look what DNI Rick Grenell just presented to the President. He authorized for release of names of all the unmaskers. Trump is exposing the Deep State, and, personally, I am proud of him because I have been waiting for this for 20 years for a president to come out and expose these things ."

On the virus crisis, Shipp says it's turned into a political weapon for the Left. Shipp contends, "They (Democrats) want to delay any solution to the Coronavirus until the election so they can keep the economy ruined and point the finger at Donald Trump..."

" That's one of the things they want to do. They also want mail-in ballots because that is one of the easiest ways to engage in election fraud. There is a report that just came out that people are getting mail-in ballots that already have the Democrat party checked on the box when they open it up, and they are not Democrats.

You better believe they are going to try to engage in voter fraud using mail-in ballots. There is no doubt about it because they are going to lose badly, and they know it. So, they have to do that. You bet."

The Democrats in the House are going to try, once again, to impeach President Trump for Russian collision. Recently released documents show it was a proven total hoax that they made up, and, yet, the Dems are going to try this again before the 2020 election. What's going on? Shipp says,

" This is the last gasp of Democrat Congressional tyrants trying one last time to remove this elected President. It's laughable...

What this is, is desperation on the part of Pelosi and Schumer. This is desperation on their part knowing that the whole thing was disproven and shot down by the evidence. If Trump gets elected a second time, you will see investigations into Congress, Senate, Obamagate and China. These people are desperate to keep that stuff from coming out.

You think President Trump is exposing them now? You wait until he gets elected a second time. That's why they are so terrified, and they are trying everything they can to keep him from being elected."

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with CIA whistleblower Kevin Shipp.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/UjFew1RLzlc

To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here...

Kevin Shipp's website is called FortheLoveofFreedom.net ...

[May 21, 2020] Grenell declassifies Susan Rice email sent on Inauguration Day

Some people are really angry ;-)
May 21, 2020 | thehill.com

RdLake LilLiMargeret 1927 13 hours ago

Obama & his band of corrupt, lying, manipulating, seditious, malevolent, lawless criminals, who are still running loose, back in the WH ... Above the law_ Perkins Coie Law Firm, Fusion GPS (Glenn Simpson) Christopher Steele, Stefan Harper, Josef Mifsud, Alexander Downer, Alexandra Chalupa, Robert Mueller, Andrew Weismann, Andrew McCabe, James Baker, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce & Nellie Ohr, Joe Pientka, ... Obama, Biden, Crooked Hillary, Wingman Eric Holder, Tarmac Loretta Lynch, John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Sally Yates, section data-role="main" data-tracking-area="main"
Mabel Eagle V The Illegal Individ #1 4 hours ago
Obama was spying on Americans for 8 years while he was in office
dcard88 Guest a day ago
She warned the traitor in chief that Flynn was 'working with' our enemy
Mabel Guest a day ago • edited
It was all A LIE ( as in SLANDER) all made up by Obama...I hope Flynn sues that POS for everything his owns section data-role="main" data-tracking-area="main"
BuckeyeRLP netcoach a day ago
Attack the guy who asks the questions. I understand. It's hard to believe they were this dishonest to begin with. Covering it up after the fact with lame emails is so Nixonian. But then again, Rice has a history of lying about history. Remember the Sunday propaganda parade she ran regarding the Benghazi coverup. Squirrels do not give birth to eagles as they say. You are what your history says you are.
BuckeyeRLP dcard88 14 hours ago
You lying coward. They all spoke under oath at the Schiff clown show. So did Comey, Clapper and Brennan. They all said no collusion under oath . Flynn a decorated general was destroyed by career bureaucrats that only serve themselves. Obama encouraged it at the least. Directed it at its worst. Shameful. section data-role="main" data-tracking-area="main"
BuckeyeRLP netcoach a day ago
Yes you are sorry. Defending a coup by a bunch of unelected burecrats over politics. Get a better candidate and win an election. Maybe do a little party analysts on how you lost middle America that's what I am talking about. Partisan hacks like yourself are as introspective as a dung beatle. You do what you do in sh!t created by others and don't question why.

[May 20, 2020] Russiagate skunk Evelyn Farkas is emotionally exhausted by correct claims that she blatantly lied to Mika Brzezinski

Was it Crowdstrike that had shown her the forensics data? This McCarthyist dog just keeps lying and keeps digging. The Obama administration was as shameless as they were crooked.
"They all sound like kids that got caught raiding the cookie jar making up wild tales of innocence with cookie crumbs all over their faces."
Notable quotes:
"... Opening your eyes wider while speaking doesn't make you look more intense, credible, and believable... ..."
"... (((They))) are taught from birth to "lie to, cheat, rob, enslave, and kill, with impunity" all Americans they call "Goyim, a mindless herd of cattle, sub-human animals." ..."
"... Ah Evelyn, Evelyn! You're just an exposed resistance tool HRC campaign hack doubling downer unemployed TDS afflicted congress woman wannabe who has no shame no principals and no alibi. Lots of love and kisses to Bezos/WaPo for letting them share your pain with us. Here at the disinfo clearinghouse you couldn't get elected dog catcher. ..."
May 18, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

...Meanwhile, Poor Evelyn's campaign staff has become " emotionally exhausted " after her Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts have been "overwhelmed with a stream of vile, vulgar and sometimes violent messages" in response to the plethora of conservative outlets which have called her out for Russia malarkey.

There is evidence that Russian actors are contributing to these attacks. The same day that right-wing pundits began pumping accusations, newly created Russian Twitter accounts picked them up. Within a day, Russian " disinformation clearinghouses " posted versions of the story . Many of the Twitter accounts boosting attacks have posted in unison, a sign of inauthentic social media behavior.

We assume Zero Hedge is included in said ' disinformation clearinghouses ' Farkas fails to expound on.

She closes by defiantly claiming "I wasn't silenced in 2017, and I won't be silenced now."

No Evelyn, nobody is silencing you. You're being called out for your role in the perhaps the largest, most divisive hoax in US history - which was based on faulty intelligence that includes CrowdStrike admitting they had no proof of that Russia exfiltrated DNC emails, and Christopher Steele's absurd dossier based on his 'Russian sources.'


MrAToZ, 1 minute ago

What's with the bug eyes on these crooks?

Kurpak, 27 seconds ago

Opening your eyes wider while speaking doesn't make you look more intense, credible, and believable...

It makes you look ******* insane.

iAmerican10, 8 minutes ago (Edited)

(((They))) are taught from birth to "lie to, cheat, rob, enslave, and kill, with impunity" all Americans they call "Goyim, a mindless herd of cattle, sub-human animals."

... ... ...

otschelnik, 35 minutes ago

Ah Evelyn, Evelyn! You're just an exposed resistance tool HRC campaign hack doubling downer unemployed TDS afflicted congress woman wannabe who has no shame no principals and no alibi. Lots of love and kisses to Bezos/WaPo for letting them share your pain with us. Here at the disinfo clearinghouse you couldn't get elected dog catcher.

[May 20, 2020] The criminalization of foreign policy dissent by Branko Marceti

May 20, 2020 | jacobinmag.com

The crux of Russiagate is that it's a political scandal masquerading as a criminal one.

The interminable scandal has been back in the news this past week thanks to the Trump Department of Justice's decision to drop charges against Michael Flynn. Flynn was once briefly Trump's national security advisor before being fired and then charged with lying to the FBI over a phone conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition. Last Thursday , the House Intelligence Committee finally released fifty-seven transcripts of closed-door interviews it conducted with various key players in the saga over 2017 and 2018, covering Flynn's call with Kislyak and other matters.

Since the news dropped, every effort has been made to turn Flynn's absolution into the latest Trump outrage. Barack Obama himself weighed in, charging in a leaked phone call with supporters that "there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free," and that the "rule of law is at risk."

Four years into this chaotic and reactionary presidency, there are more than enough legitimate Trump scandals to go around. But as with many things Russiagate, both the Flynn case and the release of the transcripts reflect far more poorly on the Obama administration, American's hallowed national security institutions, and the anti-Trump "Resistance."

Understanding why requires going all the way back to 2016 and the beginnings of the Flynn case. Flynn was a former intelligence official pushed out of the Obama administration over, among other things, his management style . Years later, he became a characteristically weird Trump guy: a heterodox foreign policy thinker who combined occasional opposition to endless war with conspiratorial Islamophobia, and became nationally known for flirting with the "alt-right" and chanting "Lock her up!" at the 2016 RNC.

Flynn's loyalty to Trump was rewarded that year when he was announced as the president-elect's national security advisor. At the same time, Flynn had, like many in Trump's orbit, been investigated by the FBI over whether he was Kremlin agent, and only further raised hackles after it was leaked that he had spoken to Kislyak the same day that Obama ordered sanctions and expelled thirty-five Russian embassy officials as retaliation for Russia's interference in that year's election.

Flynn was, at first, pushed out by Trump when it turned out he had caused Vice President Mike Pence to unwittingly lie about the contact. He was then later charged by Robert Mueller and his team in the course of the "collusion" probe with lying to the FBI (not, as Obama claimed, perjury), which at the time was cause for much speculation : it was the umpteenth "beginning of the end" of Trump's presidency but ultimately produced no new revelations about a Trump-Russia conspiracy. Now, he's been allowed to skip a maximum of five years in jail and walk away "scot-free," as Obama put it.

But through it all and since, details have trickled out that have made the entire saga far less clear-cut than those most invested in the "collusion" narrative would have the public believe. For one, despite all the innuendo around Flynn's Russian contacts and his sitting next to Putin at a dinner, investigators found nothing unseemly when looking into Flynn and had all but closed their investigation into him when the news about the Kislyak call broke.

Secondly, the charge Flynn was ultimately slapped with, lying to the FBI, now looks more like a case of entrapment. Recently released notes written by Bill Priestep , former FBI counterintelligence director, prior to interviewing Flynn about the Kislyak call suggest the Bureau was looking at the option to "get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired." In the notes, Priestep wrote that "I believe we should rethink this," that simply showing Flynn evidence so he could admit wrongdoing wasn't "going easy on him" and was routine FBI practice, and that "if we're seen as playing games, WH [White House] will be furious," so they should "protect our institution by not playing games."

What's more, contemporaneous notes show that the investigators themselves weren't sure Flynn had intentionally lied to them, and that Comey himself had said so in a March 2017 briefing, before claiming he had never said anything of the sort after being fired by Trump.

There were further improprieties in the investigation. Flynn has claimed, with some evidence , that the FBI pressured him to sit down for the interview without a lawyer. Additionally, two years ago, Comey himself admitted that he had violated protocol by sending investigators to interview Flynn without going through the White House counsel, calling it "something I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized administration."

Things get worse when one goes through the Mueller team's interview notes for then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates and Mary McCord, another DoJ official and both Obama appointees. To the surprise of Yates -- who insisted the White House needed to be informed Flynn had misled them, given it put him in a potentially compromising position -- Comey repeatedly refused to notify the White House, and the FBI's reasons for not doing so "morphed" over the course of discussion. Yates and her team were then "flabbergasted," "dumbfounded," and "hit the roof" when they learned Comey had sent agents to interview Flynn without informing her, believing it should have been coordinated with the DoJ.

After this, Mueller's prosecutors coerced Flynn into pleading guilty by bankrupting him and threatening to go after his son , not unlike the treatment visited upon government whistleblowers under the Obama administration. Through it all, there was the fact that Flynn had never actually committed any underlying crime by talking to Kislyak -- not to mention the fact that Mueller himself debunked the entire Russiagate conspiracy theory -- making his false statements to the FBI technically criminal, but irrelevant.

The backdrop to all of this is the FBI's staggering misconduct in spying on the Trump campaign in 2016. As last year's report from the DoJ inspector general revealed , the Bureau repeatedly misrepresented or left out evidence, and even used outright false claims to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, a businessman and sometime-CIA asset with ties to Russia who advocated for business-minded co-operation between the two countries.

In light of all of this, Russiagate looks less like a righteous crusade for truth and justice and more like the typical shenanigans for which the FBI and US government have long been known: prosecutorial overreach, entrapment, and the criminalization of foreign policy dissent. Trump's grotesqueries have has made it impossible for many liberals to acknowledge this fact. But the fact that the FBI's misconduct was aimed at a right-wing government this time should be no reason for Democrats to dismiss the magnitude of the scandal.

In fact, the Intelligence Committee transcripts reveal the extent to which it was ideological opposition to, or simply political disagreement with, the incoming administration over foreign policy that drove suspicion of a Trump-Russia conspiracy.

"Maybe I'm Biased"

Despite the insistence of anti-Trump media, "collusion" was never crime. Even former Obama officials alarmed by Trump's apparent closeness to the Kremlin acknowledged as such behind closed doors.

"Collusion is a word that's been used out in the public to refer to this investigation," McCord told the intelligence committee. "It's, of course, not a crime itself."

But you didn't need the testimony of Democratic officials to know this. If "colluding" with a foreign power to win an election was a crime, then it was one both Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney were guilty of in 2016 and 2012, respectively.

To defeat Trump in 2016, the Democratic Party teamed up with the Ukrainian government, which viewed a Clinton presidency -- with its controversial preference for sending weapons to Ukraine to fight Russia -- as most favorable to its interests. Though widely reported at the time , Ukraine's 2016 election meddling was retrospectively transformed into a made-up conspiracy theory when it became inconvenient to the Russiagate narrative. Meanwhile, the open support for Romney from a sitting Israel prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, just eight years ago, though controversial at the time , has similarly disappeared down a memory hole. That's not even to get into George W. Bush's closeness to a Saudi official heavily complicit in the September 11 terrorist attacks.

When all was said and done, Trump's run-in with the Kremlin hasn't come close to the level of intimacy and co-ordination with a foreign government seen in any of these examples.

No, Trump and his team's real crime was that they crossed the Washington foreign policy consensus and violated government norms, all in the service of attempting to improve relations with the wrong foreign government -- in this case, one deemed an official adversary. See this exchange between Rep. Francis Rooney (R-FL) and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, one of the former spy chiefs who has repeatedly claimed Trump was in the Kremlin's thrall on cable news (emphasis mine):

ROONEY: I mean, I guess the point is on the question is, is at what time is collusion collusion, and at what time is it just people that may have an affiliation with the campaign meeting or talking with, whether it be the Russian ambassador on somebody that's of Russian origin, and when should that be taken as something that rises to the level of an Intelligence Community concern?

CLAPPER: That's a great question, and I asked -- I really can't answer it other than the sort of visceral reaction to why all these meetings with the Russians . They are what I consider are an existential threat to this country, a country that is not interested in furthering our interests, certainly on cooperating with us. Maybe I'm biased. You know, I'm a Cold War warrior and all that , but -- so that was of concern to me.

At another point, Clapper -- who had earlier said that election interference is "almost genetic with" Russians, and that the 2016 interference had "viscerally affected me like nothing I've even experienced since I got in the intel business in 1963" -- recalled briefing the president-elect about the Kremlin's interference:

I would say it was a professional exchange. He got off on wouldn't it be great if we could get along with the Russians? I said, yeah, sure, if we found some convergence of our interests. But I'm in the 'trust but verify' camp when it comes to Russia. I mean, maybe I've just been around too long.

Or as Clapper put it at another point: "I have a very jaundiced view of dealing with the Russians."

Such thinking pervaded the mindset of other Obama officials. See Obama speechwriter and foreign policy advisor Ben Rhodes' reaction to the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting (emphasis mine):

l was absolutely shocked. I can tell you I worked on a presidential campaign in 2007-2008. I was one of the principal foreign policy staffers on that campaign. I would have no reason to ever meet with any Russians . The notion of, you know, David Plouffe, David Axelrod, and Valerie Jarrett meeting with the Russian Government would have been literally unthinkable in the context of our campaign. And the leadership of a campaign's time is their most precious commodity, and the fact that they felt it a worthy investment of time to sit down with representatives of the Russian government was absolutely astonishing to me , and went far beyond, frankly, any degree of interaction that I would have even guessed at.

Of course, much of the outrage over the Trump Tower meeting arose from the fact that the Trump campaign was trying to get dirt on their opponent from a foreign government (the same thing, incidentally, the Democratic Party actually did in 2016 with the Ukrainian government ). But quite apart from that, Rhodes here is scandalized specifically by the idea the campaign would simply sit down with representatives of the Russian government.

As Rhodes would later admit, he and other Obama campaign officials did communicate with foreign governments during the 2008 campaign and the transition, only they happened to be "a very small number of friendly governments to the United States." Rhodes tacitly acknowledges there's nothing inherently wrong with a campaign meeting with or communicating with a foreign government -- the issue for him is which foreign government , a fundamentally political question.

Here's Yates responding to a question from Rep. Denny Heck (D-WA) about whether "incoming administrations or people on their behalf never have contact with representatives of foreign governments" (emphasis mine):

YATES: No. I don't think that that was anybody's sense there, that you would never have any contact. I think what – as they described it to me, what seemed different about this was that he was having conversations with the Russians attempting to influence their conduct now during this administration, and that that would be unusual and troubling.

HECK: And –

YATES: And it also -- given that it was the Russians, there's sort of an extra concern there as well.

Or here's Obama's outgoing national security advisor recalling her conversations during the transition period with Flynn, the man set to replace her:

We did talk about Russia as an adversary, as a threat to NATO. But, frankly, we spent a lot more time talking about China in part because General Flynn's focus was on China as our principal overarching adversary. He had many questions and concerns about China. And when I elicited -- sought to elicit his perspective on Russia, he downplayed his assessment of Russia as a threat to the United States. He called it overblown. He said they're a declining power, they're demographically challenged, they're not really much of a threat, and then reemphasized the importance of China.

Flynn's factual points about Russia, by the way, are all objectively true . But as Rice went on to say, she "had seen enough at that point and heard enough to be a little bit sensitive to the question of the nature of General Flynn's engagements with the Russians," and so she declined to brief Flynn on Russia policy in the fullest detail, figuring he would be fully briefed once he officially took office.

Like Rhodes, Rice conceded that "it was normal, customary to have contacts with the governments of friendly countries" during a transition, as Obama's did with the "British, French, Germans, NATO allies, Asian allies."

"It was not normal," she said, "to have contacts with adversarial governments during a transition."

Rather than breaching any kind of legal standard, the common complaint among these officials was that Trump and his team had violated the norm or precept of "one government at a time": that even though the Trump administration was coming in, Obama and his team were still in the driver's seat, and it was inappropriate to step on their toes. Flynn's decision to do the opposite may have been unwise -- but was it really an acceptable basis for everything that followed?

It's clear that the chaos, dysfunction, and sheer weirdness of Trump's campaign and budding presidency contributed to deepening suspicion of him and his team. But it's also clear that this suspicion was more than a little animated by what was essentially a political disagreement over whether Russia is a US adversary, and if it should be treated as such via official policy.

Such a question might sound absurd to some ears. But outside the Beltway there are vast swaths of the US political spectrum where such foreign policy positions are contested: on relations with Iran and China, for instance, or the efficacy of the "war on terror" -- issues on which opposing views have often been deemed dangerous, suspect, or even treasonous by one side or another.

Rice herself declared at the end of her testimony, as she complained about Trump's praise for WikiLeaks, that "the rest of us, everybody in this room, knew that WikiLeaks was our adversary." Yet in 2010, when the Obama administration was aggressively going after this "adversary," the public was evenly split on whether Wikileaks had "served" or "harmed" the "public interest" -- with 57 percent of young people holding the former view. Just because Rice and the rest of the national security state viewed the organization as an adversary doesn't make it an objective fact.

And let's not forget the ongoing, total silence over the US government's decades-long friendly relationship with "allies" like Saudi Arabia, whose government officials were involved not in releasing embarrassing information about American policymakers, but a terrorist attack that killed thousands.

"A Debating Weapon Against the Opposition"

Whatever one thinks of the wisdom of Trump's ultimately aborted attempt to re-forge a friendly relationship with Russia, it's a foreign policy decision that a duly elected government is entitled to make. It therefore lays squarely in the political realm, not the legal one -- though national security officials and Democrats have tried their best to make it fit in the latter.

This is perhaps best symbolized by Comey and Obama's apparent goal of prosecuting Flynn under the Logan Act, a probably unconstitutional 221-year-old law enacted by the same repressive Congress that brought you the Alien and Sedition Acts, and which has never been used to successfully prosecute an American. As liberal legal scholar Detlev F. Vagts put it in in 1966, throughout its history, the Logan Act has been used as "a debating weapon against the opposition and as a threat against those out of power," a charge that remains just as true today , as attested by its invocation during the Bush and Obama years.

That the administration ultimately resorted to this antiquated law, which prohibits citizens from "correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government" over disagreements with the US, is a sign of how desperate it was to charge Flynn with anything in its waning days. That Flynn was no ordinary citizen but an official for an elected administration-in-waiting whose direct remit was foreign policy makes the threat even more absurd.

Unfortunately, this isn't the end of it. As others have pointed out , long before the Mueller report made clear a Trump-Russia conspiracy didn't actually exist, a number of Obama officials testified to the closed-door committee that they saw no actual evidence for this -- only hints that made them suspicious.

Yet that didn't stop those involved from using their public platforms to fan the flames of conspiracy against the Trump administration. Maybe most outrageous was former DNI Clapper, who despite testifying he'd seen no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion has repeatedly gone on CNN and charged that Trump could be a Russian asset. (Amusingly, for all of Obama's complaints that Flynn was allowed to get away with "perjury," it's Clapper who actually committed that particular crime, lying to Congress about the scope of government surveillance, which Obama's DoJ refused to lift a finger about despite demands from members of Congress).

Also deserving of special mention is Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democrat who more than any other pushed the "collusion" storyline, riding it to prominence and political donations . Schiff, long a conduit for military contractors , who entered Congress by fundraising record amounts off the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal , has spent years alleging a grand conspiracy between Trump and the Kremlin despite being told under oath by Obama officials hostile to Trump that they had seen no evidence of such a thing. Unsurprisingly, Schiff, the intelligence committee's chairman, long resisted the release of the transcripts.

Russiagate is therefore looking more and more like a familiar story: one of national security officials, driven by an unflinching belief in the righteousness of their cause and a suspicion of any foreign policy vision outside the narrow and militarist Washington consensus, leading a crusade against those whose views they viewed ran contrary to their own. As always, they turned fundamentally political disagreements into an issue of national security, resulting in the FBI violating norms and laws of its own, while running roughshod over the rights of American citizens.

It is too bad that, because the misconduct this time targeted the justifiably loathed figure of Trump, many observers are incapable of seeing this. The FBI's misconduct in the Trump-Russia investigation was "troubling, no question," writes Vox . "But they may not be unique to the Russia investigation, but rather endemic to the agency itself."

This is not a defense; it's a description of the very problem.

Why Should the Liberal Left Care?

For many on the liberal left, the Flynn case and the entire Russiagate saga elicits anything ranging from disinterest to outright cheer-leading. After all, why should anyone opposed to Trump, a lifelong criminal and dangerous reactionary, be bothered that the might of the United States' vast security state was, for once, turned against him?

The answer is that, as with all anti-civil liberties measures , these tactics are first legitimated by being turned on groups and individuals that are wholly unsympathetic, so they can later be used against less objectionable targets. Justifying prosecutorial misconduct and state overreach in one case where an outgoing administration and its allies targeted their political opponents over matters of policy sets a dangerous precedent for future victims, including a potential left-wing or even liberal administration.

Imagine, for instance, if Trump (or any other Republican administration) had spent years alarmingly tamping up tensions with an officially designated foreign adversary -- Iran or China, for instance. Imagine one of those governments then leaked unflattering but true information about Republican corruption and malfeasance in order to help their Democratic opponents win, and Trump retaliated with sanctions and other measures.

Imagine, too, that Democrats had publicly pledged to restore friendly relations with these powers during the campaign, and, upon winning the election, an official in the soon-to-be Democratic administration privately urged them not to overreact to Trump's retaliatory actions. Imagine, then, that the Trump administration unlawfully spied on members of the Democratic campaign, attempted to railroad that official on flimsy grounds, all while his allies continued hobbling the succeeding administration by alleging an unproven foreign conspiracy -- all because they thought reorienting relations with countries viewed as dangerous enemies by the Right was something inherently suspect and criminal.

Just as Democrats were right to demand Robert Mueller be allowed to carry out his inquiry, Republicans are absolutely correct to want an investigation of these abuses, even if they're driven by partisan motives -- partisan concerns, after all, have always played some role in the accounting of malfeasance in Washington, from Iran-Contra to the 9/11 Commission. And it's perfectly possible to be outraged at this entire saga without supporting Trump or treating the GOP as principled defenders of civil liberties -- indeed, the party is right now pushing a radical expansion of government surveillance powers that should worry us all.

It is particularly symbolic that in the midst of this imbroglio, the FBI just accidentally revealed the name of another Saudi embassy official complicit in the September 11 attacks, whose identity was long kept hidden by the US government as a "state secret" whose revelation could cause "significant harm to the national security." Collusion, foreign adversary, national security: in Washington, it's all in the eye of the beholder.

[May 20, 2020] Susan Rice Was Directed By Obama White House To Draft Inauguration Day Email To Herself

May 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden Wed, 05/20/2020 - 18:05 A 2017 Inauguration Day email that former national security adviser Susan Rice sent to herself documenting a January 5 Oval Office meeting discussing the case against her successor Michael Flynn was done so at the direction of White House counsel , according to Fox News . The meeting documented in Rice's memo included Obama, former VP Joe Biden and former FBI Director James Comey, who - according to Rice, "does have some concerns that incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador Kislyak."

"Given the importance and sensitivity of the subject matter, and upon the advice of the White House Counsel's Office, Ambassador Rice created a permanent record of the discussion," Rice's attorney Kathryn Ruemmler wrote to senators in 2018. "Ambassador Rice memorialized the discussion on January 20, because that was the first opportunity she had to do so, given the particularly intense responsibilities of the National Security Advisor during the remaining days of the administration and transition."

Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell declassified the previously redacted section of Rice's email and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., made it public on Tuesday.

That section says Comey suggested to Obama that the National Security Council [NSC] might not want to pass "sensitive information related to Russia" to incoming national security adviser Flynn.

The email pointed to what were apparently widespread concerns about Flynn's Russia contacts. Multiple sources confirmed to Fox News that what initially put Flynn on the radar was the number of interactions he had with senior Russian government officials in 2016, as laid out in various intelligence reports viewed by Obama White House officials. - Fox News

Damage control?

For those who aren't buying the given explanation for the email, 'Sundance' of The Conservative Treehouse has an interesting theory that it was written to cover up the fact that Obama knew all about the Flynn investigation .

2) The position of President Obama and Susan Rice is that the White House was unaware of any FBI investigation of Flynn (or the Trump campaign); nor did they have any involvement in directing it to take place.

-- TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) May 20, 2020

4) When James Clapper walked directly into the White House with "intelligence cuts", from the FBI to share with President Obama, it's likely the legal team around Obama -specifically including Kathryn Reummler- went bananas.

-- TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) May 20, 2020

6) Worse... if anyone should later question FBI Director Comey about it, Comey would say (honestly) he knew Obama was briefed on it because he provided a paper trail.

WH counsel Ruemmler would have immediately identified the White House exposure.

-- TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) May 20, 2020

8) The problem at that point (post meeting) was the risk of it being Obama's word -vs- James Comey.

Comey had records, a paper trail, for his escape; the White House did not.

It's a he said/he said risk.

-- TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) May 20, 2020

Addendum: The framework and purpose of the Rice 'memo to file' was obvious in the 2018 Rice/Ruemmler response to the Senate. pic.twitter.com/2IQxIyFwuK

-- TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) May 20, 2020

page 2 pic.twitter.com/tJ5CyqGsPb

-- TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) May 20, 2020

[May 20, 2020] COMEY urged probe into Flynn by misrepresenting Russian contacts, declassified memo shows

Looks like Comey was willing and active member of the Obama-Brennan gang plotting color revolution against Trump
Notable quotes:
"... incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador Kislyak ..."
"... has no indication thus far that Flynn has passed classified information to Kislyak ..."
"... could be an issue ..."
"... The level of communication is unusual ..."
"... sensitive information related to Russia ..."
"... election interference. ..."
"... a briefing by [Intelligence Committee] leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election ..."
"... no derogatory information ..."
"... Russian collusion ..."
"... proceeding 'by the book' ..."
"... prosecute him or get him fired ..."
May 20, 2020 | www.rt.com
incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador Kislyak " in a meeting documented in the January 2017 memo by National Security Advisor Susan Rice, the unredacted first page of which was obtained by CBS on Tuesday.

The FBI director admits he " has no indication thus far that Flynn has passed classified information to Kislyak ," and no real basis for his insistence that the probe must go on.

DEVELOPING: Declassified Rice email documenting WH meeting 1/5/2017 obtained @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/uA9V9oo4n4

-- Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) May 19, 2020

The only thing backing his hunch that the meetings between the general and the Russian diplomat " could be an issue "?

" The level of communication is unusual ," Comey tells Obama, according to Rice, hinting that the National Security Council should " potentially " avoid passing " sensitive information related to Russia " to Flynn.

The FBI director did not elaborate on what is supposed to be " unusual " about an incoming foreign policy official speaking with a Russian counterpart, especially in the midst of what was then a rapidly-unraveling diplomatic relationship between the two countries with Obama expelling 35 Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions over alleged-but-never-substantiated " election interference. " Given the circumstances, an absence of communication might have been more unusual. But the timing is certainly auspicious.

Rice, Flynn's predecessor who authored the memo, relates that the January 5 meeting followed " a briefing by [Intelligence Committee] leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election ."

The previous day, the FBI field office assigned with investigating Flynn attempted to close the case against him, called CROSSFIRE RAZOR, after having found " no derogatory information " to justify continued inclusion in the overarching CROSSFIRE HURRICANE probe (the " Russian collusion " investigation). They were blocked from doing so by Agent Peter Strzok, who added that the orders to keep the investigation going came from the " 7th floor " - i.e. agency leadership. The Flynn investigation had been underway since August, beginning the day after Strzok discussed an 'insurance policy' that was supposed to keep then-candidate Donald Trump out of office with Comey's deputy, Andrew McCabe. While Comey describes his probe of Flynn as " proceeding 'by the book' " after Obama repeatedly stresses he wants only a " by the book " investigation - both parties presumably hoping to avoid exactly the sequence of revelatory events that are currently unfolding - recently-unsealed documents from the case against Flynn indicate the general was entrapped, with the FBI's goal being to " prosecute him or get him fired " with an ambush-style interview.

They got both their wishes - after agents tricked him into sitting for questioning without a lawyer present, Flynn was accused of lying about his contacts with Kislyak, fired from his post in the White House, and subsequently pled guilty to lying to a federal agent.

The Department of Justice has dropped its charges against Flynn, citing gross misconduct and abuse of power at the FBI, which it claims had no basis for launching its investigation. However, US District Judge Emmet Sullivan has attempted to block the dismissal, appointing a retired judge as independent prosecutor to both argue against the Justice Department's move and pursue perjury charges against Flynn - essentially charging him with lying about lying.

On Tuesday, Flynn's attorney filed a writ of mandamus with the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, urging them to force Sullivan to step aside and allow the dismissal of the charges.

[May 20, 2020] How Can Susan Rice Know What Obama and Comey Said if She Was Not Present by Larry C Johnson

Notable quotes:
"... I guess Obama didn't think he could rely on Sally Yates to lie on his behalf but knew he could count on "Old Faithful" Susan Rice to do the job. If the MSM were fair they'd be mocking (at the very least) her overuse of the figure of speech "by the book". I hope someone throws that book at her and the rest of the cabal. ..."
"... BTW, I seem to recall reading a long time ago that Rice made a mess wherever she served. I could be mistaken though. ..."
"... Well if we can't get a "perfumed prince" in the docket, this deplorable will settle for a "perfumed princess. ..."
May 20, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

...This is nothing more than a lame, stupid attempt on the part of Susan Rice to create some plausible deniability for Barack Obama. She placed herself in a meeting that, according to Sally Yates, was limited to Obama, Comey and Yates. Rice puts the blame on Comey for talking about the Russians. The Sally Yates account told to FBI under the penalty of lying to the FBI, was quite clear that Obama initiated the discussion of Russia, Flynn and the sanctions.

Someone is lying. Susan Rice is a demonstrated liar and was not under oath when she wrote up her fabricated version of the 5 January meeting. Sally Yates, however, would face legal peril if she lied to the FBI agents who interviewed her. I believer Sally Yates provided the truthful account of what actually happened after Barack Obama asked everyone but Yates and Comey to leave the room.

Deap, 20 May 2020 at 12:49 AM

Did Barry ever wing anything on his own without his sidekicks Rce or Jarrett immediately by his side, ready to run cover for him later when necessary?

Rice's presence was probably so ubiquitous, it was not worthy of mention in later present party recollections. I would assume Barry could not speak in public without a teleprompter and not speak in private without his "wingman".

Why do we assume Valerie Jarrett is still living in the same house as the former POTUS? So when the phone rings and someone wants to know something about what Barry did while he was in office, ValJar the NightStalker can be ready with the answer.

My guess is Rice was attached at the hip whenever there was a chance Barry would open his mouth. Make the failure to mention Rice more an oversight rather than something ominous.

More troubling was Yates getting cut off by Lindsey Graham every time she tried to explain that Flynn had not been "unmasked" during her Senate testimony, per the video clip. What that just dismissive on Graham's part or inadvertent. Wild speculation, had McCain "leaked" the Flynn phone call to Wapo?

akaPatience , 20 May 2020 at 03:19 AM

I guess Obama didn't think he could rely on Sally Yates to lie on his behalf but knew he could count on "Old Faithful" Susan Rice to do the job. If the MSM were fair they'd be mocking (at the very least) her overuse of the figure of speech "by the book". I hope someone throws that book at her and the rest of the cabal.

BTW, I seem to recall reading a long time ago that Rice made a mess wherever she served. I could be mistaken though.

Has anyone else noticed that James Comey's been very quiet lately?

Morongobill , 20 May 2020 at 09:39 AM
Well if we can't get a "perfumed prince" in the docket, this deplorable will settle for a "perfumed princess. "

[May 20, 2020] This Was Some Shady Stuff Treasury Department Spied On Flynn, Manafort And Trump Family

Notable quotes:
"... The US Treasury Department was regularly spying on Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn , Paul Manafort Jr., senior staffers on the 2016 Trump campaign, members of the Trump family, and congressional lawmakers , according to The Tennessee Star 's Neil W. McCabe. ..."
"... The scheme allowed the perpetrators to circumvent classified avenues to surveil Americans. Once enough information had been gathered against a target, they would use a different type of search. ..."
"... In March 2017, the whistleblower filed a complaint with Acting Treasury Inspector General Richard K. Delmar, who never followed up on the matter despite acknowledging receipt of the complaint. Prior to that, she filed an August 2016 notification which was rejected as it didn't meet the requirements of a formal complaint. ..."
"... This surveillance program was run out of Treasury's Office of Intelligence Analysis , which was then under the leadership of S. Leslie Ireland ..."
"... The whistleblower said Treasury should never have been part of the unmasking of Flynn, because its surveillance operation was off-the-books. That is to say, the Justice Department never gave the required approval to the Treasury program, and so there were no guidelines, approvals nor reports that would be associated with a DOJ-sanctioned domestic surveillance operation. - The Tennessee Star ..."
May 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

The US Treasury Department was regularly spying on Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn , Paul Manafort Jr., senior staffers on the 2016 Trump campaign, members of the Trump family, and congressional lawmakers , according to The Tennessee Star 's Neil W. McCabe.

"I started seeing things that were not correct, so I did my own little investigation, because I wanted to make sure what I was seeing was correct," a former senior Treasury Department official and veteran of the intelligence community told McCabe. "You never want to draw attention to something if there is not anything there," she added.

The whistleblower said she only saw metadata, that is names and dates when the general's financial records were accessed. "I never saw what they saw."

By March 2016, the whistleblower said she and a colleague, who was detailed to Treasury from the intelligence community, became convinced that the surveillance of Flynn was not tied to legitimate criminal or national security concerns, but was straight-up political surveillance among other illegal activity occurring at Treasury.

"When I showed it to her, what she said, 'Oh, sh%t!' and I knew right then and there that I was right – this was some shady stuff," the whistleblower said.

"It wasn't just him," the whistleblower said. "They were targeting other U.S. citizens, as well." - The Tennessee Star

"Another thing they would do is take targeted names from a certain database – I cannot name, but you can guess – and they were going over to an unclassified database and they were running those names in the unclassified database," she added.

The scheme allowed the perpetrators to circumvent classified avenues to surveil Americans. Once enough information had been gathered against a target, they would use a different type of search.

In March 2017, the whistleblower filed a complaint with Acting Treasury Inspector General Richard K. Delmar, who never followed up on the matter despite acknowledging receipt of the complaint. Prior to that, she filed an August 2016 notification which was rejected as it didn't meet the requirements of a formal complaint.

In May 2017, she filed another complaint with the Office of Special Counsel.

This surveillance program was run out of Treasury's Office of Intelligence Analysis , which was then under the leadership of S. Leslie Ireland . Ireland came to OIA in 2010 after a long tenure at the Central Intelligence Agency and a one-year stint as Obama's daily in-person intelligence briefer .

The whistleblower said Treasury should never have been part of the unmasking of Flynn, because its surveillance operation was off-the-books. That is to say, the Justice Department never gave the required approval to the Treasury program, and so there were no guidelines, approvals nor reports that would be associated with a DOJ-sanctioned domestic surveillance operation. - The Tennessee Star

"Accessing this information without approved and signed attorney general guidelines would violate U.S. persons constitutional rights and civil liberties," said the whistleblower, adding "IC agencies have to adhere to Executive Order 12333, or as it is known in the community: E.O. 12-Triple-Three. Just because OIA does not have signed guidelines does not give them the power or right to operate as they want, if you want information on a U.S. person then work with the FBI on a Title III, if it is a U.S. person involved with a foreign entity then follow the correct process for a FISA, but without signed AG guidelines you cannot even get started ."

[May 19, 2020] The leak of the Kislyak call to the press was designed to sabotage Flynn and the Trump administration

From comments to the podcast: "Attempting to damage and/or remove a sitting US President with a political and legal hoax, from within, is a seditious attack against the United States of America."
May 19, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Podcast Right Now Episode 2, The Russiagate Hoax, with Svetlana Lokhova and Chuck Ross The American Conservative

Starting at minute 20 interview of Svetlana and Chuck makes the point that leak of the call to the press was to sabotage Flynn and the Trump administration. The PTB knew very early on that Flynn was not a Russian asset.

[May 18, 2020] About Evelyn Farkas political activity

May 18, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Dr Anon 36 minutes ago

Another woman who should be at home taking care of her husband, home and children.

mtumba, 29 minutes ago

What the **** do you have against husbands and children?

rockstone, 44 minutes ago

She closes by defiantly claiming "I wasn't silenced in 2017, and I won't be silenced now."

By all means Evelyn, keep talking. Especially after your lawyers tell you to shut up.

[May 18, 2020] Turley: The 'Unmasking' Of Joe Biden

Notable quotes:
"... The contradictions revealed in recent disclosures, including the list of officials seeking to "unmask" the identity of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, are shocking. There seems a virtual news blackout on these disclosures, including the fact that both former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden followed the investigation. Indeed, Biden's name is on the unmasking list. ..."
"... The declassification of material from the Michael Flynn case has exposed more chilling details of an effort by prosecutors to come up with a crime to use against the former national security adviser. ..."
"... That included the testimony of Evelyn Farkas, a former White House adviser who was widely quoted by the media with her public plea for Congress to gather all of the evidence that she learned of as part of the Obama administration. ..."
"... That story would have been encompassing if it was learned that there was no direct evidence to justify the investigation and that the underlying allegation of Russian collusion was ultimately found to lack a credible basis. ..."
"... But the motives of Obama administration officials are apparently not to be questioned. Indeed, back when candidate Donald Trump said the Obama administration placed his campaign officials under surveillance, the media universally mocked him. That statement was later proven to be true. The Obama administration used the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to conduct surveillance of Trump campaign officials. ..."
"... While unmasking is more routinely requested by intelligence officials, with a reported 10,000 such requests by the National Security Agency last year alone, it is presumably less common for figures like Biden or White House chief of staff Denis McDonough ..."
"... The media portrayed both Obama and Biden as uninvolved. But now we know they both actively followed the investigation. ..."
May 18, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

The contradictions revealed in recent disclosures, including the list of officials seeking to "unmask" the identity of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, are shocking. There seems a virtual news blackout on these disclosures, including the fact that both former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden followed the investigation. Indeed, Biden's name is on the unmasking list.

The declassification of material from the Michael Flynn case has exposed more chilling details of an effort by prosecutors to come up with a crime to use against the former national security adviser. This week, however, a letter revealed another unsettling detail. Among over three dozen Obama administration officials seeking to "unmask" Flynn in the investigation was former Vice President Joe Biden . This revelation came less than a day after Biden denied any involvement in the investigation of Flynn. It also follows a disclosure that President Obama was aware of that investigation.

For three years, many in the media have expressed horror at the notion of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia to influence the 2016 election. We know there was never credible evidence of such collusion. In recently released transcripts, a long list of Obama administration officials admitted they never saw any evidence of such Russian collusion. That included the testimony of Evelyn Farkas, a former White House adviser who was widely quoted by the media with her public plea for Congress to gather all of the evidence that she learned of as part of the Obama administration.

The media covered her concern that this evidence would be lost "if they found out how we knew what we knew" about Trump campaign officials "dealing with Russians." Yet in her classified testimony under oath, she said she did not know anything. Farkas is now running for Congress in New York and highlighting her role in raising "alarm" over collusion. As much of the media blindly pushed this story, a worrying story unfolded over the use of federal power to investigate political opponents.

There is very little question that the response by the media to such a story would have been overwhelming if George Bush and his administration had targeted the Obama campaign figures with secret surveillance .

That story would have been encompassing if it was learned that there was no direct evidence to justify the investigation and that the underlying allegation of Russian collusion was ultimately found to lack a credible basis.

But the motives of Obama administration officials are apparently not to be questioned. Indeed, back when candidate Donald Trump said the Obama administration placed his campaign officials under surveillance, the media universally mocked him. That statement was later proven to be true. The Obama administration used the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to conduct surveillance of Trump campaign officials.

Yet none of this matters as the media remains fully invested in the original false allegations of collusion. If Obama administration officials were to be questioned now, the coverage and judgment of the media may be placed into question, as even this latest disclosure from the investigation of the unmasking request of Biden will not alter the media narrative.

Unmasking occurs when an official asks an intelligence agency to remove anonymous designations hiding the identity of an individual. This masking is a very important protection of the privacy of American citizens who are caught up in national security surveillance. The importance of this privacy protection is being dismissed by media figures, like Andrea Mitchell, who declared the Biden story to be nothing more than gaslighting.

While unmasking is more routinely requested by intelligence officials, with a reported 10,000 such requests by the National Security Agency last year alone, it is presumably less common for figures like Biden or White House chief of staff Denis McDonough. Seeking unmasking information that was likely to reveal the name of a political opponent and possibly damage the Trump administration raises a concern. More importantly, it adds a detail of the scope of interest and involvement in an investigation that targeted Flynn without any compelling evidence of a crime or collusion.

The media portrayed both Obama and Biden as uninvolved. But now we know they both actively followed the investigation.

[May 18, 2020] Farkas is definitely one of the fraudulent supporters of the Obama Russiagate witch hunt, but generally he is clueless pawn in a big and dirty gate played by Obama-Brennan tandem

May 18, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Atlantic Council senior fellow, Congressional candidate, and Russia conspiracy theorist Evelyn Farkas is desperately trying to salvage her reputation after recently released transcripts from her closed-door 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee revealed she totally lied on national TV .

In March of 2017, Farkas confidently told MSNBC 's Mika Brzezinski: " The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff dealing with Russians , that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would not longer have access to that intelligence ."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/dCMF94FX530?start=25

Except, during testimony to the House, Farkas admitted she lied . When pressed by former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) on why she said 'we' - referring to the US government, Farkas said she "didn't know anything."

In short, she was either illegally discussing US intelligence matters with her "former colleagues," or she made the whole thing up.

Now, Farkas is in damage control mode - writing in the Washington Post that her testimony demonstrated "that I had not leaked intelligence and that my early intuition about Trump-Kremlin cooperation was valid.' She also claims that her comments to MSNBC were based on "media reports and statements by Obama administration officials and the intelligence community," which had "began unearthing connections between Trump's campaign and Russia."

Farkas is now blaming a 'disconcerting nexus between Russia and the reactionary right,' for making her look bad (apparently Trey Gowdy is part of the "reactionary right" for asking her who she meant by "we").

Attacks against me came first on Twitter and other social media platforms, from far-right sources. Forensics data I was shown suggested at least one entity had Russian ties . The attacks increased in quantity and ferocity until Fox News and Trump-allied Republicans -- higher-profile, and more mainstream, sources -- also criticized me .

...

Trump surrogates, including former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski , Donald Trump Jr. and Fox News hosts such as Tucker Carlson have essentially accused me of treason for being one of the "fraudulent originators" of the "Russia hoax." -Evelyn Farkas

She then parrots the Democratic talking point that the attacks she's received are part of Trump's larger "Obamagate" allegations - " a narrative that distracts attention from his administration's disastrous pandemic response and attempts to defect blame for Russian interference onto the Obama administration" (Obama told Putin to ' cut it out ' after all).

Meanwhile, Poor Evelyn's campaign staff has become " emotionally exhausted " after her Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts have been "overwhelmed with a stream of vile, vulgar and sometimes violent messages" in response to the plethora of conservative outlets which have called her out for Russia malarkey.

There is evidence that Russian actors are contributing to these attacks. The same day that right-wing pundits began pumping accusations, newly created Russian Twitter accounts picked them up. Within a day, Russian " disinformation clearinghouses " posted versions of the story . Many of the Twitter accounts boosting attacks have posted in unison, a sign of inauthentic social media behavior.

We assume Zero Hedge is included in said ' disinformation clearinghouses ' Farkas fails to expound on.

She closes by defiantly claiming "I wasn't silenced in 2017, and I won't be silenced now."

No Evelyn, nobody is silencing you. You're being called out for your role in the perhaps the largest, most divisive hoax in US history - which was based on faulty intelligence that includes crowdstrike admitting they had no proof of that Russia exfiltrated DNC emails, and Christopher Steele's absurd dossier based on his 'Russian sources.'


MrBoompi, 18 minutes ago

Lying is a common occurrence on MSNBC. Farkas was just showing her party she is qualified for a more senior position.

chubbar, 23 minutes ago

My opinion, based on zero facts, is that the lie she told was to Gowdy. She had to say she lied about having intelligence data or she'd be looking at a felony along with whomever she was talking to in the US gov't. You just know these cocksuckers in the resistance don't give a **** about laws or fairness, it's all about getting Trump. So they set up an informal network to get classified intelligence from the Obama holdovers out into the wild where these assholes could use it against Trump and the gov't operations. Treason. She needs to be executed for her efforts!

LetThemEatRand, 59 minutes ago

This whole thing reminds me of a fan watching their team play a championship game. If the ref makes a bad call and their team wins, they don't care. And if the ref makes a good call and their team loses, they blame the ref. No one cares about the truth or the facts. That in a nutshell is politics in the US. If you believe that anyone will "switch sides" or admit the ref made a bad call or a good call, you're smoking the funny stuff.

mtumba, 50 minutes ago

It's a natural response to a corrupt system.

When the system is wholly corrupt so that truth doesn't matter, what else is there to care about other than your side winning?

It's a travesty.

[May 18, 2020] Ep. 1251 Obama Did It - The Dan Bongino Show

Looks like Obama order surveillance on Flynn to Comey. Obama essentially fabricated the evident to start the color revolution against Trump
May 18, 2020 | www.youtube.com

John Haggart , 2 days ago

And that's why Obama could not help himself from calling that reporter.

John Sharp , 1 day ago

Pull Obama out of his mansion in cuffs. Stealing Americans votes is a death sentence.

Robert Beekman , 2 days ago

This is why they want to keep his case going, it keeps Flynn quiet. Drag it out till after the election.

Linda Catz , 2 days ago

Dano: you're giving senile Mueller too much credit. It wasn't him, it was Weissman! And possibly Van Crack!

H , 2 days ago

Hussein isn't sweating. He believes he's untouchable. He's that arrogant. He was a Trojan horse and has done irrefutable damage to our Constitution and our country.

Genny Reid , 2 days ago

It makes Watergate look like a picnic in the park. The complicit msm continues to hide the truth.

Thomas Loyd , 2 days ago

I have to echo Greg Gutfeld's sentiments on Adam Schiff: When the HELL is someone going to hold him accountable for the Three-Year-Schiff-Show the United States has had to go through??!?!?

He needs to be charged AT LEAST with leaking classified damnit!

And then all the other legal lies he held firm to! My last intelligence nerve was pressed hard with that.....and yet, there he continues lying his ass off protected (for now) by Congress! Elections CANNOT come quick enough! Can't wait to vote this year!

[May 18, 2020] FBI under Comey as an uncontrolled political police operating without any oversight from Justice Department

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "Did [ FBI Director James B. Comey] seek permission from you to do the formal opening of the counterintelligence investigation?" Rep. Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat, asked the former attorney general. ..."
"... "No, and he ordinarily would not have had to do that," Ms. Lynch answered. "lt would not have come to the attorney general for that." ..."
"... Mr. Schiff, a fierce defender of the FBI in the Russia probe, seemed taken aback. "Even in the case where you're talking about a campaign for president?" he asked. ..."
"... "I can't recall if it was discussed or not," Ms. Lynch said. "I just don't have a recollection of that in the meetings that I had with him." ..."
"... "Yates was very frustrated in the call with Comey," said the FBI interview report, known as a 302. "She felt a decision to conduct an interview of Flynn should have been coordinated with [the Department of Justice ]." ..."
"... Ms. Yates told the FBI that the interview was "problematic" because the White House counsel should have been notified. ..."
"... During his book tour, Mr. Comey bragged that he sent the two agents without such notification by taking advantage of the White House's formative stage. He said he "wouldn't have gotten away with it" in a more seasoned White House. ..."
"... Other evidence of an FBI on autopilot: The Justice Department inspector general's report on how the bureau probed the Trump campaign revealed more than a dozen instances of FBI personnel submitting false information in wiretap applications and withholding exculpatory evidence. For example, agents evaded Justice Department scrutiny by not telling their warrant overseer that witnesses had cast doubt on the reliability of the Steele dossier. ..."
May 18, 2020 | www.washingtontimes.com

Newly released documents show FBI agents operated on autopilot in 2016 and 2017 while targeting President Trump and his campaign with little or no Justice Department guidance for such a momentous investigation.

Loretta E. Lynch, President Obama's attorney general, said she never knew the FBI was placing wiretaps on a Trump campaign volunteer or using the dossier claims of former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to put the entire Trump world under suspicion. Mr. Steele was handled by Fusion GPS and paid with funds from the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

"I don't have a recollection of briefings on Fusion GPS or Mr. Steele ," Ms. Lynch told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in October 2017. "I don't have any information on that, and I don't have a recollection being briefed on that."

Under pressure from acting Director of National Intelligence Richard A. Grenell, the committee last week released transcripts of her testimony and that of more than 50 other witnesses in 2017 and 2018, when Republicans controlled the Trump- Russia investigation.

Ms. Lynch also testified that she had no knowledge the FBI had taken the profound step of opening an investigation, led by agent Peter Strzok, into the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016.

"Did [ FBI Director James B. Comey] seek permission from you to do the formal opening of the counterintelligence investigation?" Rep. Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat, asked the former attorney general.

"No, and he ordinarily would not have had to do that," Ms. Lynch answered. "lt would not have come to the attorney general for that."

Mr. Schiff, a fierce defender of the FBI in the Russia probe, seemed taken aback. "Even in the case where you're talking about a campaign for president?" he asked.

"I can't recall if it was discussed or not," Ms. Lynch said. "I just don't have a recollection of that in the meetings that I had with him."

Attorney General William P. Barr has changed the rules. He announced that the attorney general now must approve any FBI decision to investigate a presidential campaign.

Ms. Lynch's testimony adds to the picture of an insular, and sometimes misbehaving, FBI as its agents searched for evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to interfere in the 2016 election to damage Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton .

In documents filed by the Justice Department last week, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates expressed dismay that Mr. Comey would dispatch two agents, including Mr. Strzok, on Jan. 24, 2017, to interview incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn at the White House.

Ms. Yates, interviewed by FBI agents assigned to the Robert Mueller special counsel probe, said Mr. Comey notified her only after the fact.

"Yates was very frustrated in the call with Comey," said the FBI interview report, known as a 302. "She felt a decision to conduct an interview of Flynn should have been coordinated with [the Department of Justice ]."

Ms. Yates told the FBI that the interview was "problematic" because the White House counsel should have been notified.

During his book tour, Mr. Comey bragged that he sent the two agents without such notification by taking advantage of the White House's formative stage. He said he "wouldn't have gotten away with it" in a more seasoned White House.

Mr. Barr filed court papers asking U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to dismiss the Flynn case and his guilty plea to lying to Mr. Strzok about phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Mr. Strzok and other FBI personnel planned the Flynn interview as a near ambush with a goal of prompting him to lie and getting fired, according to new court filings.

Other evidence of an FBI on autopilot: The Justice Department inspector general's report on how the bureau probed the Trump campaign revealed more than a dozen instances of FBI personnel submitting false information in wiretap applications and withholding exculpatory evidence. For example, agents evaded Justice Department scrutiny by not telling their warrant overseer that witnesses had cast doubt on the reliability of the Steele dossier.

The far-fetched dossier was the one essential piece of evidence required to obtain four surveillance warrants on campaign volunteer Carter Page, according to Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz. The Mueller and Horowitz reports have discredited the dossier's dozen conspiracy claims against the president and his allies.

A who's who of Trump- Russia

Mr. Schiff, now chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence , had held on to the declassified transcripts for more than a year. Under pressure from Republicans and Mr. Grenell, he released the 6,000 pages on the hectic day Mr. Barr moved to end the Flynn prosecution.

The closed-door testimony included witnesses such as Mr. Obama's national security adviser, a United Nations ambassador, the nation's top spy and the FBI deputy director. There were also Clinton campaign chieftains and lawyers.

The transcripts' most often-produced headline: Obama investigators never saw evidence of Trump conspiracy between the time the probe was opened until they left office in mid-January 2017.

"I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election," former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper told the committee .

Mr. Clapper is a paid CNN analyst who has implied repeatedly and without evidence that Mr. Trump is a Russian spy and a traitor. The Mueller report contained no evidence that Mr. Trump is a Russian agent or election conspirator.

Mr. Schiff told the country repeatedly that he had seen evidence of Trump collusion that went beyond circumstantial. Mr. Mueller did not.

Mr. Schiff was a big public supporter of Mr. Steele 's dossier, which relied on a Moscow main source and was fed by deliberate Kremlin disinformation against Mr. Trump, according to the Horowitz report.

Trump Tower

One of Mr. Schiff's pieces of evidence of a conspiracy "in plain sight" is the meeting Donald Trump Jr. took with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya on June 9, 2016.

The connections are complicated but, simply put, a Russian friend of the Trumps' said she might have dirt on Mrs. Clinton . At the time, Ms. Veselnitskaya was in New York representing a rich Russian accused by the Justice Department of money laundering. To investigate, she hired Fusion GPS -- the same firm that retained Mr. Steele to damage the Trump campaign.

The meeting was brief and seemed to be a ruse to enable Ms. Veselnitskaya to pitch an end to Obama-era economic sanctions that hurt her client. Attending were campaign adviser Paul Manafort, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Anatoli Samochornov. Mr. Samochornov is a dual citizen of Russia and the U.S. who serves as an interpreter to several clients, including Ms. Veselnitskaya and the State Department.

Mr. Samochornov was the Russian lawyer's interpreter that day. His recitation of events basically backs the versions given by the Trump associates, according to a transcript of his November 2017 committee testimony.

The meeting lasted about 20 minutes. Ms. Veselnitskaya briefly talked about possible illegal campaign contributions to Mrs. Clinton . Manafort, busy on his cellphone, remarked that the contributions would not be illegal. Mr. Kushner left after a few minutes.

Then, Rinat Akhmetshin, a lobbyist, made the case for ditching sanctions. He linked that to a move by Russian President Vladimir Putin to end a ban on Americans adopting Russian children.

Mr. Trump Jr. said that issue would be addressed if his father was elected. In the end, the Trump administration put more sanctions on Moscow's political and business operators.

"I've never heard anything about the elections being mentioned at that meeting at all or in any subsequent discussions with Ms. Veselnitskaya," Mr. Samochornov testified.

No mask

One of the first things Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican, did to earn the animus of Democrats and the liberal media was to visit the Trump White House to learn about "unmaskings" by Obama appointees.

The National Security Agency, by practice, obscures the names of any Americans caught up in the intercept of foreign communications. Flynn was unmasked in the top-secret transcript of his Kislyak call so officials reading it would know who was on the line.

In reading intelligence reports, if government officials want the identity of an "American person," they make a request to the intelligence community. The fear is that repeated requests could indicate political purposes.

That suspicion is how Samantha Power ended up at the House intelligence committee witness table. The former U.N. ambassador seemed to have broken records by requesting hundreds of unmaskings, though the transcript did not contain the identities of the people she exposed.

She explained to the committee why she needed to know.

"I am reading that intelligence with an eye to doing my job, right?" Ms. Power said. "Whatever my job is, whatever I am focused on on a given day, I'm taking in the intelligence to inform my judgment, to be able to advise the president on ISIL or on whatever, or to inform how I'm going to try to optimize my ability to advance U.S. interests in New York."

She continued: "I can't understand the intelligence . Can you go and ascertain who this is so I can figure out what it is I'm reading. You've made the judgement, intelligence professionals, that I need to read this piece of intelligence, I'm reading it, and it's just got this gap in it, and I didn't understand that. But I never discussed any name that I received when I did make a request and something came back or when it was annotated and came to me. I never discussed one of those names with any other individual."

Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican, listened and then mentioned other officeholders, such as the White House national security adviser and the secretary of state.

"There are lots of people who need to understand intelligence products, but the number of requests they made, ambassador, don't approach yours," Mr. Gowdy said.

Ms. Power implied that members of her staff were requesting American identities and invoking her name without her knowledge.

The dossier

By mid- to late 2017, the full story on the Democrats' dossier -- that it was riddled with false claims of criminality that served, as Mr. Barr said, to sabotage the Trump White House -- was not known.

Mr. Steele claimed that there was a far-reaching Trump- Russia conspiracy, that Mr. Trump was a Russian spy, that Mr. Trump financed Kremlin computer hacking, that his attorney went to Prague to pay hush money to Putin operatives, and that Manafort and Carter Page worked as a conspiracy team.

Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn R. Simpson, a Clinton operative, spread the inaccuracies all over Washington: to the FBI , the Justice Department , Congress and the news media.

None of it proved true.

But to Clinton loyalists in 2017, the dossier was golden.

"I was mostly focused in that meeting on, you know, the guy standing behind this material is Christopher Steele ," campaign foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan said about a Fusion meeting. "He is the one who's judging its credibility and veracity. You know him. What do you think, based on your conversations with him? That's what I was really there to try and figure out. And Glenn was incredibly positive about Steele and felt he was really on to something and also felt that there was more out there to go find."

Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias vouched for the dossier, and its information spread to reporters. He met briefly with Mr. Steele during the election campaign.

"I thought that the information that he or they wished to convey was accurate and important," Mr. Elias testified.

"So the information that Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele wished to portray to the media in the fall of 2016 at that time, you thought, was accurate and important?" he was asked.

"As I understand it," he replied.

Mr. Elias rejected allegations that the Clinton campaign conspired with Russia by having its operatives spread the Moscow-sourced dirt.

"I don't have enough knowledge about when you say that Russians were involved in the dossier," he said to a questioner. "I mean that genuinely. I'm not privy to what information you all have.

"It sounds like the suggestion is that Russia somehow gave information to the Clinton campaign vis-a-vis one person to one person, to another person, to another person, to me, to the campaign. That strikes me as fanciful and unlikely, but perhaps as I said, I don't have a security clearance. You all have facts and information that is not available to me. But I certainly never had any hint or whiff."

[May 17, 2020] Trump Unmasking of Flynn is greatest political scam in history of US

Trump say that Brennan was one of the architect. Obama knew everything and probably directed the color revolution against Trump
Notable quotes:
"... Self-described, "scandal-free" administration Obama is a lie nonetheless, Obama will eventually have to testify in front of Congress there is no hiding from it. ..."
May 17, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Bruce Wayne , 9 hours ago

General Flynn vs Strzok are great example of good vs bad cops.

Hope for the Best , 9 hours ago

Should they reopen all FBI cases for the past 4 years and see if anyone else was railroaded.

Him Bike , 7 hours ago

The day after the election Sen Elizabeth Warren said "Trump has no idea what we have in store for him."

foreveralive , 6 hours ago

None of this is a surprise at all. The real surprise is if they actually arrest these people and put them on trial for their crimes.

BlackSmith , 4 hours ago

"Obama's legacy out" A mic drop

Story Time , 8 hours ago

Self-described, "scandal-free" administration Obama is a lie nonetheless, Obama will eventually have to testify in front of Congress there is no hiding from it.

[May 17, 2020] General Flynn investigation 'has tarnished Obama's legacy' - YouTube

Highly recommended!
May 17, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Missie , 22 hours ago

President Trump battled China for 3 1/2 years while Democrats tried to take him down. Like POTUS said, they're human scum.

Gusli Kokle , 22 hours ago

Obama is self-tarnishing.

Shane Brbich , 22 hours ago div tabindex="0" role="article"

> He will go down as The most corrupt president in history! Spied on an opponents campaign Authorised the intelligence agencies to spy Leaker Collided with Russia

Memey Memes , 22 hours ago

Tarnished its more than that its total evil.

Cinda Jenkins , 22 hours ago

I didn't think he had a legacy. A pretty bad one to say the least.

toycollector10 , 22 hours ago

Sky News Australia. How do you keep getting away with all of the truth telling? Watching from N.Z. Keep up the good work.

Missie , 22 hours ago

Our Fakenews networks conspired with Obama, Obama's previous Cabinet, Hillary, the CIA, FBI, NSA, DNC, and Democrats in Congress. They were all in on it together. #Sedition #Treason

jamee boss , 21 hours ago

The New World Order virus needs to be investigate immediately. This is the biggest crimes in the world history

Epifanio Esmero , 22 hours ago

By framing an innocent man, they have only entrapped themselves!! Karma!!

Ken Mulrooney , 22 hours ago

You can't tarnish that idiots legacy He doesn't need any help

Mark Shaw , 19 hours ago

As an outsider looking in, I find it hard to believe that the American people, would allow politicians of any party to get away with this behavior.

הדבר אדני יהוה לישועה , 20 hours ago

Obama framed Trump as a Russian spy to deflect public focus from the crimes of his Administration

chris campbell , 22 hours ago

He was tarnished a lllooonnnngggg time ago!His legacy is one of corruption!

John Inton , 21 hours ago

ex-president Obummer biggest legacy to the democratic world is allowing China to claim all of the South China Sea by turning a blind eye whilst China was dredging the sea beds and creating artificial islands all over the South China sea!!

mG , 19 hours ago

A shame nothing will actually happen to that trash.

Green Onions , 22 hours ago

Every move he made tarnished his reputation. The only thing propping him up was the media.

Jann , 20 hours ago

I hope Barak Hussein Obama goes down for this.

NOISLAMONAZIS DOTCOM , 22 hours ago (edited)

What legacy? Obama was just another NWO puppet and so performed as a puppet should. MSM is owned by the same people that are Obama's boss.

SandhoeFlyer , 19 hours ago

Obama will go down in history as a lier, a fraud, dishonourable and a lousy President .

I P , 20 hours ago

Obama was an America hater from day one, and committed many treasons public and private. His "legacy" is and was a fabrication of the MSM, who tolerated no end of abuses, including Obama suing a number of journalists.

But let's just look at one item, underplayed by the MSM: Obama did everything he could to stop the 9/11 victims bill, including a presidential veto, which was then overridden by a gigantic (97-1) senate vote.

McCain and Graham continued to fight the LAW, undoubtedly with Obama help, using Arab funded lawyers to the tune of 1.2 million dollars per month.

[May 17, 2020] LET'S TALK ABOUT LEAKING Kayleigh McEnany TAKES ON REPORTER Over Flynn

Kayleigh McEnany is a really bright, sharp person
May 15, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Keith Green , 2 days ago

Kayleigh: I'm glad you asked that question. Reporter: Whoops. 🤣

Another Divorced Dad , 1 day ago

Oh, he didn't like hearing what his "job" is. She's right. Journalists used to do something called "investigative reporting." Now, it's all about that, "GOTCHA!" Pathetic. 🥱

Bern VENTER , 1 day ago

She is brilliant. Journalists look like idiots like they are.

[May 17, 2020] The Media and Pundits Are Lying--The Flynn Unmasking Was Uncommon and Unusual by Larry C Johnson

Notable quotes:
"... Could Samantha Powers husband, Bloomberg media and book writer Cass Sunstein, have been looking over Samantha's shoulder when she was unmasking hundreds of names critically necessary for her job as UN Ambassador, even though she does not remember requesting any of them? ..."
"... why would Obama proceed with the dramatic expulsions of all those Russian diplomats and properties (when we now all know that Russia didn't hack the DNC and exfiltrate any e-mails) in that particular point in time and just a few weeks before the inauguration? ..."
May 17, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

walrus, 17 May 2020 at 04:22 PM

Mr. Johnson, Thank you both for your lucid explanations of Russiagate and your tenacity. I pray that with your help, the forces of good will triumph.

A question, are the plotters trying to hold out till the elections? It would seem that if they succeeded in doing that they and Trump loses the election, then they will have gotten away with this crime and established the IC as the equivalent of the Praetorian Guard.

Deap, 17 May 2020 at 04:50 PM
I do not want you to spy on me, Mr Clapper.
I do not want what you did to Gen Flynn, done to me.
I do expect to be protected by the US Constitution.

(Signed) A private US Citizen.

Deap, 17 May 2020 at 05:07 PM
Could Samantha Powers husband, Bloomberg media and book writer Cass Sunstein, have been looking over Samantha's shoulder when she was unmasking hundreds of names critically necessary for her job as UN Ambassador, even though she does not remember requesting any of them?
Alan, 17 May 2020 at 07:12 PM
Dan Bongino claims he had an epiphany and solved the non-unmasking of Flynn during that crucial period. (Remember, he had Trump for an interview a few weeks ago, his connection to him and his people might have helped his powers of intuition a bit).

It is a scenario that explains a lot, like for example, why would Obama proceed with the dramatic expulsions of all those Russian diplomats and properties (when we now all know that Russia didn't hack the DNC and exfiltrate any e-mails) in that particular point in time and just a few weeks before the inauguration?

What does the committee think of his take (if you can ignore his theatrics)?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ9cqYSMWFs&feature=emb_logo

Jim, 17 May 2020 at 08:47 PM

+++++++++++++++++

Adding to the rot. . . .

The attempted prosecution of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn's business partners on alleged FARA crimes, in which prosecutors are still saying the general is a foreign agent. [Foreign Agents Registration Act, US law since 1938.] [Even though he is not a defendant in that case.]

His business partner was convicted by a jury, on this, last year.

Judge shortly thereafter said the court [that judge] failed to properly instruct the jury – as the DOJ did not have evidence anyone was under the control of a foreign government -- the key criteria.

The conviction was vacated by the judge; this criteria was not met, nor was evidence produced by DOJ to show this.

This judge [Anthony Trenga] also allowed the DOJ to: appeal ruling.

That is, Trenga's ruling that vacated the conviction.

That is, let DOJ try and get a new trial -- a do-over.

Which, the DOJ, now under AG Bill Barr is currently attempting to do.

In the appeal for a new trial, Flynn is not a defendant.

His former business partners are.

The DOJ, in a motion and memorandum to the federal appeals court, ---pleading for right for another trial --- in this motion, the DOJ also accused Flynn, in writing, of being an agent of Turkey -- all along – "from the beginning," the DOJ motion, from January 2020 states.

Below is from 1/24/2020 DOJ filing against Messrs. Rafiekian and Alptekin, [Flynn's then-business partners prior to 2017], docketed in federal court in January:

>>>>>[[The evidence discussed above equally shows concerted action between Rafiekian, Flynn, and Alptekin to act subject to Turkey's direction or control. . . . From the beginning, the co-conspirators agreed that. . . .]]<<<<<

[Note: Rafiekian, in 2006, was nominated by President Bush to Board of Directors of the 'Export–Import Bank of the United States'; this nomination was confirmed/approved by USA Senate. He served on the bank's board from 2006 to 2011.

see:

[ https://www.congress.gov/110/chrg/shrg50323/CHRG-110shrg50323.htm ]

Attorney representing defendants, their reply, opposing DOJ appeal request -- rejecting the January 2020 DOJ motion and claims about the men -- from April 2020, motion and memorandum includes this:

[[Although the government's appellate brief now alleges that Flynn was a Turkish agent "[f]rom the beginning" (Br. 2), it sang a different tune just a month before trial [last year], when it told the district court that Flynn was not part of any conspiracy. It was only after Flynn made it clear that he would not offer the testimony the government expected to hear that it reversed course, announced that its erstwhile star witness was really a co-conspirator all along. . . .]]

That is: "from the beginning," as the DOJ asserts in their January 2020 filing.

This case was dismissed last year because there was no evidence that any of them were under the control of a foreign government, i.e., "foreign agents" -- yet the DOJ persists.

Nor was Flynn ever charged with any FARA alleged crimes, not by Mueller, not by anyone.

Flynn's case, prosecuted by Mueller/SCO -- the DOJ recently moved to end it all – yet Judge Sullivan persists.

One case, presided by Judge Contreras, then Sullivan: should never have ever been prosecuted. We now know this for a fact. Flynn was framed by his own government.

In the other case, that Trenga dismissed: Flynn, who is not a defendant, is accused of being a foreign agent by the DOJ, in January 2020.

Of note: Sullivan, apparently believing that he is, threatened Flynn with 15 years in jail, during a hearing in Dec. 2018, when the judge removed all pretense of being impartial, with his rant about the general selling out his country, possible treason, blah blah blah. In other words, the ghost of the long dead, still-born Logan Act, apparently.

To what issue will this come?

HAMLET
My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.
Still am I call'd. Unhand me, gentlemen.
By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me!
I say, away! Go on; I'll follow thee.

[HAMLET begins following the ghost, exits]

HORATIO
He waxes desperate with imagination.

MARCELLUS
Let's follow; 'tis not fit thus to obey him.

HORATIO
Have after. To what issue will this come?

MARCELLUS
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

HORATIO
Heaven will direct it.

MARCELLUS
Nay, let's follow him.

Obama's recent signaling of Flynn as Mr. Perjury, followed up soon thereafter by Sullivan's latching onto that exact same theme is curious. I don't know if this is just one more curve ball in this, or a fast ball right down the middle.

Recall:
There is no public record of Obama, or then AG Lynch or then DAG Sally Yates doing anything to remove Comey as FBI director or discipline him when he announced there would be no prosecution of Clinton in 2016 – keeping in mind Comey's role was not prosecutor, [as the country's general attorney; rather, his role was as police chief of the nation].

McCabe leaking to Wall Street Journal, late October 2016, that there was a criminal investigation involving Clinton Foundation. There is no record Obama, Lynch, Yates, Comey did anything to remove McCabe from duty as the FBI deputy director, or discipline him.

There are numerous examples of this lack of action in 2016 right up until Jan. 20, 2017 when Trump was inaugurated.

This exact pattern includes, of course the Flynn/Kislyak issue.

What is factual at this point is: Washington Post had knowledge as early as [and perhaps sooner than] Jan. 5, 2017 of Flynn phone conversation with Russian ambassador to US, Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak, that occurred late December.

And, this stuff was actually published, in WAP, on Jan. 12, 2017.

Obama left office noontime Jan. 20, 2017.

Among other things, might a purpose of the Flynn persecution also involve, rather, just be another curve ball -- to keep eyes away from the failure by Obama team to prosecute this criminal leak and outing of Flynn? I don't know.

I also don't know why Trump stated the following on Dec. 2, 2017, [the day after Flynn plead:

[[I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!]]

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/937007006526959618?lang=en

On May 13, 2020 Trump stated:
[[And when I see what is happening to him, it's disgraceful. And it was all a ruse. And, by the way, the FBI said he didn't lie. The FBI said he did not lie. So with all the stuff I'm hearing about lying, the FBI said he didn't lie. But the sleazebag said, "Well, we don't care what he -- what they say. We're saying he lied." Okay? But the FBI, you remember, when they left, they said, "He didn't lie." What they've done to that man and that family is a disgrace. But I just tell you that because I just left General Milley, and he said, "A great man and a great soldier." Isn't that a shame.]]

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-meeting-governor-polis-colorado-governor-burgum-north-dakota/

-30-

[May 17, 2020] Crisis of Character A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate

May 17, 2020 | www.amazon.com

>


Brian K. Miller , Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2016

The people who need to read this book won't even open the cover

Even as I sit down to type these words I know I am wasting my time. The people who need to read this book will not read it, and even if they did, they would refuse to believe it. They are so blinded by their sycophantic adoration of Secretary Clinton that they cannot accept as real any fact which serves to contradict their assumption of her divinity. I do not understand this depth of willful ignorance. All my life I have been a truth seeker and a fact checker. I know exactly how screwed up my own internal landscape is, and I even know how it got that way. Therefore, when I form an opinion on the real world I force myself to go and seek alternatives, to verify every fact, and to always seek the greater context those facts live within. Context is everything.

"Crisis of Character" by Gary J. Byrne is an exceptional book. It is one man's version of reality and it never pretends to be anything else. The constant search of the writer is in his seeking to define the moral context of everything he experiences. He does not expect perfection. He does expect accountability.

The "Introduction" opens with some background describing how and why he decided to write this book. In the first chapter he immediately jumps to a telling event that happened on a typical day of his tenure as a Secret Service Uniformed Division (SSUD) officer trusted with the last line of defense of the First Family and the White House itself. The chapter goes deeper into his background, chronicling how his father's influence and his childhood travels formed his internalized value system. There are multiple anecdotes from his time as an enlisted member of the Air Force Security Police (AFSP). These stories are both personally revealing and very solid examples of the many diverse situations the AFSP finds itself in. This is a real-life account of one man's service as an elite member of an elite fighting group.

Chapter 3 begins the main portion of the book. This is the story of his career with the SSUD which opens with his powerful memories of beginning his career protecting President G. H. W. Bush and the Bush family during the tenure of our 41st President. Life under the Clintons begins in Chapter 5 and carries on for about the next third of the book. One of the most interesting aspects of this story for me was how hard he worked to protect both the reputation of the Clintons and the security of the White House. As the story unfolds it becomes clear that during this period of time his attitude was much different than it is now. Events surrounding Monica Lewinsky, the ill-fated relief mission to Somalia, and the dramatic shift in priorities between the Bush administration and the Clinton administration challenged his assumptions about American life, American politics, and the values he learned from his father. It was only after he grew trapped between his own internalized moral code, the requirements of his job, and the complete lack of a moral code displayed by the Clintons that he finally sought to be transferred out of the White House. A good man driven to despair by the morally bankrupt couple chosen to lead the free world.

Chapter 14 begins his retelling of the fallout from the Ken Starr investigation into the activities of Bill and Hillary Clinton. This portion of the book struggles very hard to come to grips with how the Clintons managed to manipulate the media, the legal system, their inner cadre of loyalists, and the American people, into believing they were something other than criminals who failed in their responsibility to live up to the expectations of the American people. There is a great deal of information here about how the Clintons managed time and time again to avoid the consequences of their own corrupt and perverse behaviors. I found this portion of his story both genuinely heartbreaking and deeply infuriating. For the past three years my faith in our political process has been fighting to stay alive. Sadly, Gary Byrne's retelling of the Clinton impeachment proceedings has destroyed any small spark of faith I had remaining in our system. Clearly we have become a failed state. All that is left is for the right crisis to push us into a brutal, bloody, implosive collapse.

Chapter 16 begins the next phase in his life. Now he is working as an instructor, teaching advanced tactical training to federal agents from multiple law enforcement agencies as well as state and county agencies who contract with James J. Rowley Training Center (JJRTC). There are a couple of small anecdotes about his life as both an instructor and an in-rotation SSUD officer who still must from time to time serve protection details. Then 9/11 happens and his world turns upside down once again. As the SSUD is reorganized from top to bottom and political will surpasses policing as their core structure, he moves into the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) hoping that here he will have the tools and opportunities to genuinely help people and make a real difference in the world. Unfortunately, just before he makes the jump, the FAMS also falls victim to post 9/11 reorganization and even here, politics surpasses mission as the core foundation for policy creation and implementation. Nonetheless, the greater salary and the occasional victory are enough to keep him going until he retires.

The book closes with one last dire warning about the consequences of putting the Clintons back into the White House. His firsthand experience with the Clintons multiple and massive failures both within federal administrations and under Hillary Clinton's service as Senator and Secretary of State have given Gary J. Byrne a unique and deeply moving perspective on how political power functions in the United States of America. Honestly, there is a great deal to be learned by reading, "Crisis of Character". There are lessons here that are relevant to Hillary Clinton's unsuitability for the role of President, and there are lessons here for each of us individually in understanding the consequences that result from making decisions based on pure emotion, on poor comprehension of the situation we find ourselves in, and on trusting others to do our thinking for us.

A powerful book that needs to be read by everyone who supports Hillary Clinton, but won't be, because none of them want to see beyond the false front she has convinced them is real. It's not just that Hillary Clinton is a con artist and a criminal. The greater context of this book is the horrifying results that occur when we ourselves refuse to face the real world consequences of our own ignorance.

Texas Sweetheart , Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2016
She really is a nasty person

Great book. She really is a nasty person. They are both severely lacking in the morals, ethics, character and truth departments. Always interesting to get the perspective of a secret service agent. The Clintons were lucky to be surrounded by dedicated agents willing to give up their lives, despite the way they were treated and what they were subjected to covering up. Gary Byrne earned every penny this book brings him. Shame on the Clintons. They are a disgrace.

K. Olgren , Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2016
you'll be disappointed, but if you are open to read a ...

While it is true that the book covers his whole life, and the Clintons were just a small part of it, I found the entire book riveting. I couldn't put it down and read it in a matter of days. I also disagree with the reviewers who said there was nothing new in it. I never would have imagined Hillary Clinton was as hateful as she was, and the things people on her detail had to do to deal with her temper -- I felt sorry for them, and knowing that they are still following her and always will, I will always feel sorry for the people working beneath her.

This book is a worthwhile read. If you want a Clinton scoop from cover to cover, you'll be disappointed, but if you are open to read a man's fascinating life-story, you will enjoy it. I agree with another reviewer who said the low ratings were people who want to vote for Clinton. Honestly, I don't think either candidate we have to choose from has the right temperament for the Presidency, but we got stuck with the choice that we got.

In terms of the book itself, it was well done, a riveting page-turner throughout his entire life story. It is worth what it cost to read it.

[May 17, 2020] Apparently, the FBI, and not the CIA, are the real government.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... According to these transcripts of congressional testimony by some of the participants, the FBI decided all by itself after Comey was fired to consider acting against Trump by pursuing him for suspicion of conspiracy with Russia to give the Russians the president of the US that they supposedly wanted. ..."
"... Following these seditious and IMO illegal discussions the FBI and Sessions/Rosenstein's Justice Department sought FISA Court warrants for surveillance against associates of Trump and members of his campaign for president. ..."
"... IMO this collection of actions when added to whatever Clapper, Brennan and "the lads" of the Deep State were doing with the British intelligence services amount to an attempted "soft coup" against the constitution and from the continued stonewalling of the FBI and DoJ the coup is ongoing ..."
Jan 15, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Just to review the situation:

  1. The president of the US was made head of the Executive Branch (EC) of the federal government by Article 2 of the present constitution of the US. He is also Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the federal government. As head of the EC, he is head of all the parts of the government excepting the Congress and the Federal courts which are co-equal branches of the federal government. The Department of Justice is just another Executive Branch Department subordinate in all things to the president. The FBI is a federal police force and counter-intelligence agency subordinate to the Department of Justice and DNI and therefore to the president in all things. The FBI actually IMO has no legal right whatever to investigate the president. He is the constitutionally elected commander of the FBI. Does one investigate one's commander? No. The procedures for legally and constitutionally removing a president from office for malfeasance are clear. He must be impeached by the House of Representatives for "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" and then tried by the US Senate on the charges. Conviction results in removal from office.
  2. According to these transcripts of congressional testimony by some of the participants, the FBI decided all by itself after Comey was fired to consider acting against Trump by pursuing him for suspicion of conspiracy with Russia to give the Russians the president of the US that they supposedly wanted. Part of the discussions among senior FBI people had to do with whether or not the president had the legal authority to remove from office an FBI Director. Say what? Where have these dummies been all their careers? Do they not teach anything about this at the FBI Academy? The US Army lectures its officers at every level of schooling on the subject of the constitutional and legal basis and limits of their authority.
  3. Following these seditious and IMO illegal discussions the FBI and Sessions/Rosenstein's Justice Department sought FISA Court warrants for surveillance against associates of Trump and members of his campaign for president. Their application for warrants were largely based on unsubstantiated "opposition research" funded by the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign. The judge who approved the warrants was not informed of the nature of the evidence. These warrants provided an authority for surveillance of the Trump campaign.
  4. IMO this collection of actions when added to whatever Clapper, Brennan and "the lads" of the Deep State were doing with the British intelligence services amount to an attempted "soft coup" against the constitution and from the continued stonewalling of the FBI and DoJ the coup is ongoing. pl

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/14/politics/trump-fbi-debate-investigation/index.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Clause_4:_Receiving_foreign_representatives

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation#Organization

[May 16, 2020] Obamagate Is Not A Conspiracy Theory Zero Hedge

Notable quotes:
"... It is not conspiracy-mongering to note that the investigation into Trump was predicated on an opposition-research document filled with fabulism and, most likely, Russian disinformation. We know the DOJ withheld contradictory evidence when it began spying on those in Trump's orbit. We have proof that many of the relevant FISA-warrant applications -- almost every one of them, actually -- were based on "fabricated" evidence or riddled with errors. We know that members of the Obama administration, who had no genuine role in counterintelligence operations, repeatedly unmasked Trump's allies. And we now know that, despite a dearth of evidence, the FBI railroaded Michael Flynn into a guilty plea so it could keep the investigation going. ..."
"... By 2016, the Obama administration's intelligence community had normalized domestic spying. Obama's director of national intelligence, James Clapper, famously lied about snooping on American citizens to Congress. His CIA director, John Brennan, oversaw an agency that felt comfortable spying on the Senate , with at least five of his underlings breaking into congressional computer files. His attorney general, Eric Holder, invoked the Espionage Act to spy on a Fox News journalist , shopping his case to three judges until he found one who let him name the reporter as a co-conspirator. The Obama administration also spied on Associated Press reporters , which the news organization called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion." And though it's been long forgotten, Obama officials were caught monitoring the conversations of members of Congress who opposed the Iran nuclear deal. ..."
"... In her very last hour in office, national-security adviser Susan Rice wrote a self-preserving email to herself , noting that she'd attended a meeting with the president, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, FBI director James Comey, and Vice President Joe Biden in which Obama stressed that everything in the investigation should proceed "by the book." ..."
"... Biden is the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee, he's running as the heir to Obama's legacy, and he was at that meeting with Rice. He had denied even knowing anything about the FBI investigation into Flynn before being forced to correct himself after ABC's George Stephanopoulos pointed out that he was mentioned in Rice's email. It's completely legitimate to wonder what he knew about the investigation. ..."
"... s the FBI agents involved in the case noted, they wanted to have an " insurance policy " if the unthinkable happened. ..."
"... In 2016, the unthinkable did happen, and we're still dealing with the fallout four years later. We don't know where this scandal will end up, but one doesn't have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder. ..."
May 16, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by David Harsanyi via The National Review,

Those sharing #Obamagate hashtags on Twitter would do best to avoid the hysterics we saw from Russian-collusion believers, but they have no reason to ignore the mounting evidence that suggests the Obama administration engaged in serious corruption.

Democrats and their allies, who like to pretend that President Obama's only scandalous act was wearing a tan suit, are going spend the next few months gaslighting the public by focusing on the most feverish accusations against Obama. But the fact is that we already have more compelling evidence that the Obama administration engaged in misconduct than we ever did for opening the Russian-collusion investigation.

It is not conspiracy-mongering to note that the investigation into Trump was predicated on an opposition-research document filled with fabulism and, most likely, Russian disinformation. We know the DOJ withheld contradictory evidence when it began spying on those in Trump's orbit. We have proof that many of the relevant FISA-warrant applications -- almost every one of them, actually -- were based on "fabricated" evidence or riddled with errors. We know that members of the Obama administration, who had no genuine role in counterintelligence operations, repeatedly unmasked Trump's allies. And we now know that, despite a dearth of evidence, the FBI railroaded Michael Flynn into a guilty plea so it could keep the investigation going.

What's more, the larger context only makes all of these facts more damning . By 2016, the Obama administration's intelligence community had normalized domestic spying. Obama's director of national intelligence, James Clapper, famously lied about snooping on American citizens to Congress. His CIA director, John Brennan, oversaw an agency that felt comfortable spying on the Senate , with at least five of his underlings breaking into congressional computer files. His attorney general, Eric Holder, invoked the Espionage Act to spy on a Fox News journalist , shopping his case to three judges until he found one who let him name the reporter as a co-conspirator. The Obama administration also spied on Associated Press reporters , which the news organization called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion." And though it's been long forgotten, Obama officials were caught monitoring the conversations of members of Congress who opposed the Iran nuclear deal.

What makes anyone believe these people wouldn't create a pretext to spy on the opposition party?

If anyone does, they shouldn't, because on top of everything else, we know that Barack Obama was keenly interested in the Russian-collusion investigation's progress.

In her very last hour in office, national-security adviser Susan Rice wrote a self-preserving email to herself , noting that she'd attended a meeting with the president, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, FBI director James Comey, and Vice President Joe Biden in which Obama stressed that everything in the investigation should proceed "by the book."

Did high-ranking Obama-administration officials not always conduct such investigations "by the book"? It is curious that they would need to be specifically instructed to do so. It is also curious that the outgoing national-security adviser, 15 minutes after Trump had been sworn in as president, would need to mention this meeting.

None of this means that Obama committed some specific crime; he almost assuredly did not. In a healthy media environment, though, the mounting evidence of wrongdoing would spark an outpouring of journalistic curiosity.

"But," you might ask, "why does it matter, anymore?"

Well, for one thing, many of the same characters central to all this apparent malfeasance now want to retake power in Washington . Biden is the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee, he's running as the heir to Obama's legacy, and he was at that meeting with Rice. He had denied even knowing anything about the FBI investigation into Flynn before being forced to correct himself after ABC's George Stephanopoulos pointed out that he was mentioned in Rice's email. It's completely legitimate to wonder what he knew about the investigation.

Skeptics like to point out that the Obama administration had no motive to engage in abuse, because Democrats were sure they were going to win. Richard Nixon won 49 states in 1972. His cronies had no need to break into the DNC's offices and touch off Watergate. But as the FBI agents involved in the case noted, they wanted to have an " insurance policy " if the unthinkable happened.

In 2016, the unthinkable did happen, and we're still dealing with the fallout four years later. We don't know where this scandal will end up, but one doesn't have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder.

[May 16, 2020] Tucker Adam Schiff should resign

Highly recommended!
This act of sedition goes as high as (or as low as) Obama himself.
Notable quotes:
"... He should do more than resign. He should be prosecuted for his role in an attempted coup. Schiff for prisoner 2020. ..."
"... There's no willpower in the house to take action against him. ..."
May 16, 2020 | www.youtube.com

warchant59 , 1 week ago

He should do more than resign. He should be prosecuted for his role in an attempted coup. Schiff for prisoner 2020.

Shannon Moore , 2 days ago

Schiff probably practice his lies in his mirror every morning so he can convince himself of Russian interference. Biggest liar in America Adam Schifty schiff. Needs to be arrested immediately for treason and lying under oath. But as usual nothing will happen. These people are above the law. And are untouchable. Its enough to frustrate the hell out of normal sain Americans. 4 more years of Donald Trump

D LE , 3 days ago

Every person that went on television and knowingly lied should be tried for treason , sedition and attempted over throw of Trumps presidency.

TheFoolinthe rainn , 3 days ago

Folks need to take a much closer look at your own state legislature, district attorney, prosecutors, public defenders, social workers... especially your own town councils and school boards. They're stealing your lives and children at the Grassroots local level.

Norita Sanders , 5 days ago

Bill and Hillary Clinton sold the U.S. out years ago with the North American free trade agreement. And obama finished us off during g his last term.

CAPT. RICK ALLEN , 2 days ago

They should throw Schiff in jail and then give everything he owns to his victims who lost everything.

Joe Merkel , 1 day ago

Schiff absolutely SHOULD resign but he won't. Not only will he not but he'll cheat and win re-election along with his mom, Nancy Pelosi.

Tim Coleman , 3 days ago

Adam Schiff is not resigning. He's doubling down yet again! If you "want" him to resign, you need to understand he's staying in office until voted out. There's no willpower in the house to take action against him.

[May 16, 2020] According to the Conservative TreeHouse link, sounds like Barry was in a snit because the Russians did not "over-react" the way Barry planned, so Trump's day one job would not be putting out fires with the Russians that Barry had just started.

May 16, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Deap , 15 May 2020 at 11:54 PM

Did Barry want to drop a load of doo doo on Trump at the 11th hour, when he kicked out the Russians and dropped the sanctions on them for their "proven election interference"?

That was my immediate feeling at the time - kind of a wag the dog in reverse - go ahead Trump, get out of this one. Bye. I'm outta here. You take the Russian phone calls now.

According to the Conservative TreeHouse link, sounds like Barry was in a snit because the Russians did not "over-react" the way Barry planned, so Trump's day one job would not be putting out fires with the Russians that Barry had just started.

Barry was sorely perplexed. Jst why weren't the Russians doing what he had planned for them to do - dump doo doo on the incoming President. Why weren't they sabre rattling and putting incoming President Trump in his very first international incident, as Barry had intended.

Nope, the Russians went all chill instead. Who cared what a lame duck POTUS does anyway. Then Putin, invited all the Moscow foreign embassy kids over for a holiday party. No bombs, no threats, not even any pouts. What was up with that? Good will and good cheer towards all men, regardless of outgoing Boy President's little sand box snit.

What could have gone wrong, the Russians are supposed to be mad and escalating Barry's "decisive" actions. Let's go snooping. And there begins one more chapter in Obamagate - Waaaaaa, the Russians didn't do what I wanted them to do. I wanted them to rub schmutz in Trump's face on Day One. Instead they offered us cookies and holiday crackers.

And in the process Team Obama left a nefarious paper trail. Thank you Susan - aka Lady McBeth- Rice - your CYA memo for this final Obama Russian caper simply did not pass the smell test. Barry was beaked the Russians did not start WWIII.

[May 15, 2020] The Complete Collusion Against Trump Timeline

Highly recommended!
May 15, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

The Complete "Collusion Against Trump" Timeline by Tyler Durden Fri, 05/15/2020 - 22:50 Via SharylAttkisson.com,

It's easy to find timelines that detail Trump-Russia collusion developments. Here are links to two of them I recommend:

On the other side, evidence has emerged that makes it clear there were organized efforts to collude against candidate Donald Trump - and then President Trump. For example:

  • Anti-Russian Ukrainians allegedly helped coordinate and execute a campaign against Trump in partnership with the Democratic National Committee and news reporters.
  • A Yemen-born ex-British spy reportedly delivered political opposition research against Trump to reporters, Sen. John McCain, and the FBI; the latter of which used the material--in part--to obtain wiretaps against one or more Trump-related associates.
  • There were orchestrated leaks of anti-Trump information and allegations to the press, including by ex-FBI Director James Comey.
  • The U.S. intel community allegedly engaged in questionable surveillance practices and politially-motivated "unmaskings" of U.S. citizens, including Trump officials.
  • Alleged conflicts of interests have surfaced regarding FBI officials who cleared Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information and who investigated Trump's alleged Russia ties.

But it's not so easy to find a timeline pertinent to the investigations into these events.

Related: Obama Era Surveillance Timeline

Here's a work in progress...

(Please note that nobody cited has been charged with wrongdoing or crimes, unless the charge is specifically referenced. Temporal relationships are not necessarily evidence of a correlation.)

"Collusion against Trump" Timeline 2011

U.S. intel community vastly expands its surveillance authority, giving itself permission to spy on Americans who do nothing more than "mention a foreign target in a single, discrete communication." Intel officials also begin storing and entering into a searchable database sensitive intelligence on U.S. citizens whose communications are accidentally or "incidentally" captured during surveillance of foreign targets. Prior to this point, such intelligence was supposed to be destroyed to protect the constitutional privacy rights the U.S. citizens. However, it's required that names U.S. citizens be hidden or "masked" --even inside U.S. intel agencies --to prevent abuse.

Click here to read "Timeline of alleged sabotage of Trump in 2016 by Democrats and Ukraine."

2012

July 1, 2012: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton improperly uses unsecured, personal email domain to email President Obama from Russia.

2013

June 2013: FBI interviews U.S. businessman Carter Page, who's lived and worked in Russia, regarding his ongoing contacts with Russians. Page reportedly tells FBI agents their time would be better spent investigating Boston Marathon bombing (which the FBI's Andrew McCabe helped lead). Page later claims his remark prompts FBI retaliatory campaign against him. The FBI, under McCabe, will later wiretap Page after Page becomes a Donald Trump campaign adviser.

FBI secretly records suspected Russian industrial spy Evgeny Buryakov . It's later reported that Page helped FBI build the case.

Sept. 4, 2013: James Comey becomes FBI Director, succeeding Robert Mueller.

2014

Russia invades Ukraine. Ukraine steps up hiring of U.S. lobbyists to make its case against Russia and obtain U.S. aid. Russia also continues its practice of using U.S. lobbyists.

Ukraine forms National Anti-Corruption Bureau as a condition to receive U.S. aid. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau later signs evidence-sharing agreement with FBI related to Trump-Russia probe.

Ukrainian-American Alexandra Chalupa, a paid consultant for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), begins researching lobbyist Paul Manafort's Russia ties.

FBI investigates, and then wiretaps, Paul Manafort for allegedly not properly disclosing Russia-related work. FBI fails to make a case, according to CNN, and discontinues wiretap.

August 2014: State Dept. turns over 15,000 pages of documents to Congressional Benghazi committee, revealing former secretary of state Hillary Clinton used private server for government email. Her mishandling of classified info on this private system becomes subject of FBI probe.

2015

FBI opens investigation into Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, including for donations from a Chinese businessman and Clinton Foundation donor.

FBI official Andrew McCabe meets with Gov. McAuliffe, a close Clinton ally. Afterwards, "McAuliffe-aligned political groups donated about $700,000 to Mr. McCabe's wife for her campaign to become a Democrat state Senator in Virginia." The fact of the McAuliffe-related donations to wife of FBI's McCabe, while FBI was investigating McAuliffe and Clinton later becomes the subject of conflict of interest inquiry by Inspector General.

Feb. 9, 2015: U.S. Senate forms Ukrainian caucus to further Ukrainian interests. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is a member.

March 4, 2015: New York Times breaks news about Clinton's improper handling of classified email as secretary of state.

In internal emails , Clinton campaign chairman (and former Obama adviser) John Podesta suggests Obama withhold Clinton's emails from Congressional Benghazi committee under executive privilege.

March 2015: Attorney General Loretta Lynch privately directs FBI Director James Comey to call FBI Clinton probe a "matter" rather than an "investigation." Comey follows the instruction, though he later testifies that it made him "queasy."

March 7, 2015: President Obama says he first learned of Clinton's improper email practices "through news reports." Clinton campaign staffers privately contradict that claim emailing: "it looks like [President Obama] just said he found out [Hillary Clinton] was using her personal email when he saw it on the news." Clinton aide Cheryl Mills responds, "We need to clean this up, [President Obama] has emails from" Clinton's personal account.

May 19, 2015: Justice Dept. Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Peter Kadzik emails Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta from a private Gmail account to give him a "heads ups" involving Congressional questions about Clinton email.

Summer 2015: Democratic National Committee computers are hacked.

Sept. 2015: Glenn Simpson, co-founder of political opposition research firm Fusion GPS, is hired by conservative website Washington Free Beacon to compile negative research on presidential candidate Donald Trump and other Republicans.

Oct. 2015: President Obama uses a "confidentiality tradition" to keep his Benghazi emails with Hillary Clinton secret.

Oct. 12, 2015: FBI Director Comey replaces head of FBI Counterintelligence Division at New York Field Office with Louis Bladel.

Oct. 22, 2015: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) publicly states that Clinton is "not under criminal investigation."

Clinton testifies to House Benghazi committee.

Oct. 23, 2015: Clinton campaign chair John Podesta meets for dinner with small group of friends including a top Justice Dept. official Peter Kadzik.

Late 2015: Democratic operative Chalupa expands her political opposition research about Paul Manafort to include Trump's ties to Russia. She "occasionally shares her findings with officials from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign."

Dec. 4, 2015: Donald Trump is beating his nearest Republican presidential competitor by 20 points in latest CNN poll .

Dec. 9, 2015: FBI Director Comey replaces head of FBI Counterintelligence Division at Washington Field Office with Charles Kable.

Dec. 23, 2015: FBI Director Comey names Bill Priestap as assistant director of Counterintelligence Division.

2016

Obama officials vastly expand their searches through NSA database for Americans and the content of their communications. In 2013, there were 9,600 searches involving 195 Americans. But in 2016, there are 30,355 searches of 5,288 Americans.

Justice Dept. associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr meets with Fusion GPS' Christopher Steele, the Yemen-born ex-British spy leading anti-Trump political opposition research project.

January 2016: Democratic operative Ukrainian-American Chalupa tells a senior Democratic National Committee official that she feels there's a Russia connection with Trump.

Jan. 29, 2016: FBI Director Comey promotes Andrew McCabe to FBI Deputy Director.

McCabe takes lead on Clinton probe even though his wife received nearly $700,000 in campaign donations through Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe, who's also under FBI investigation.

March 2016: Clinton campaign chair John Podesta's email gets hacked.

FBI interviews Carter Page again.

Carter Page is named as one of the Trump campaign's foreign policy advisers.

March 2, 2016: FBI Director Comey replaces head of Intelligence Division of Washington Field Office with Gerald Roberts, Jr.

March 11, 2016: Russian Evgeny Buryakovwhich pleads guilty to spying in FBI case that Carter Page reportedly assisted with.

March 25, 2016: Ukrainian-American operative for Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chalupa meets with top Ukrainian officials at Ukrainian Embassy in Washington D.C. to "expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia," according to Politico. Chalupa previously worked for the Clinton administration.

Ukrainian embassy proceeds to work "directly with reporters researching Trump, Manafort and Russia to point them in the right directions," according to an embassy official (though other officials later deny engaging in election-related activities.)

March 29, 2016: Trump campaign hires Paul Manafort as manager of July Republican convention.

March 30, 2016: Ukrainian-American Democratic operative Alexandra Chalupa briefs Democratic National Committee (DNC) staff on Russia ties to Paul Manafort and Trump.

With "DNC's encouragement," Chalupa asks Ukrainian embassy to arrange meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to discuss Manafort's lobbying for Ukraine's former president Viktor Yanukovych. The embassy declines to arrange meeting but becomes "helpful" in trading info and leads.

Ukrainian embassy officials and Democratic operative Chalupa "coordinat[e] an investigation with the Hillary team" into Paul Manafort, according to a source in Politico. This effort reportedly includes working with U.S. media.

April 2016: There's a second breach of Democratic National Committee computers.

Washington Free Beacon breaks off deal with Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS for political opposition research against Trump.

Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee lawyer Mark Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, hire Fusion GPS for anti-Trump political research project.

Ukrainian member of parliament Olga Bielkova reportedly seeks meetings with five dozen members of U.S. Congress and reporters including former New York Times reporter Judy Miller, David Sanger of New York Times, David Ignatius of Washington Post, and Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt.

April 5, 2016: Convicted spy Buryakov is turned over to Russia.

Week of April 6, 2016: Ukrainian-American Democratic operative Chalupa and office of Rep. Mary Kaptur (D-Ohio), co-chair of Congressional Ukrainian Caucus, discuss possible congressional investigation or hearing on Paul Manafort-Russia "by September."

Chalupa begins working with investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, according to her later account.

April 10, 2016: In national TV interview, President Obama states that Clinton did not intend to harm national security when she mishandled classified emails. FBI Director James Comey later concludes that Clinton should not face charges because she did not intend to harm national security.

Around this time, the FBI begins drafting Comey's remarks closing Clinton email investigation, though Clinton had not yet been interviewed.

April 12, 2016:" Ukrainian parliament member Olga Bielkova and a colleague meet" with Sen. John McCain associate David Kramer with the McCain Institute. Bielkova also meets with Liz Zentos of Obama's National Security Council, and State Department official Michael Kimmage.

April 26, 2016: Investigative reporter Michael Isikoff publishes story on Yahoo News about Paul Manafort's business dealings with a Russian oligarch.

April 27, 2016 : The BBC publishes an article titled, "Why Russians Love Donald Trump."

April 28, 2016: Ukrainian-American Democratic operative Chalupa is invited to discuss her research about Paul Manafort with 68 investigative journalists from Ukraine at Library of Congress for Open World Leadership Center, a U.S. congressional agency. Chalupa invites investigative reporter Michael Isikoff to "connect(s) him to the Ukrainians."

After the event, reporter Isikoff accompanies Chalupa to Ukrainian embassy reception.

May 3, 2016: Ukrainian-American Democratic operative Chalupa emails Democratic National Committee (DNC) that she'll share sensitive info about Paul Manafort "offline" including "a big Trump component that will hit in next few weeks."

May 4, 2016: Trump locks up Republican nomination.

May 19, 2016: Paul Manafort is named Trump campaign chair.

May 23, 2016: FBI probe into Virginia governor and Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe becomes public. (McAuliffe is ultimately not charged with a crime.)

Justice Department Inspector General confirms it's looking into FBI's Andrew McCabe for alleged conflicts of interest in handling of Clinton and Gov. McAuliffe probes in light of McAuliffe directing campaign donations to McCabe's wife.

FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, who are reportedly having an illicit affair, text each other that Trump's ascension in the campaign will bring "pressure to finish" Clinton probe.

Nellie Ohr, wife of Justice Dept. associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr and former CIA worker, goes on the payroll of Fusion GPS and assists with anti-Trump political opposition research. Her husband, Bruce, reportedly fails to disclose her specific employer and work in his Justice Dept. conflict of interest disclosures.

Nellie Ohr applies for a ham radio license.

June 2016: Fusion GPS' Glenn Simpson " hires Yemen-born ex-British spy Christopher Steele for anti-Trump political opposition research project."Steele uses info from Russian sources "close to Putin" to compile unverified "dossier" later provided to reporters and FBI, which the FBI uses to obtain secret wiretap.

The Guardian and Heat Street report that the FBI applied for a FISA warrant in June 2016 to "monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials" but that the "initial request was denied."

June 7, 2016: Hillary Clinton locks up the Democrat nomination.

June 9, 2016: Meeting in Trump Tower includes Donald Trump Jr., Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner with Russian lawyer who said he has political opposition research on Clinton. (No research was ultimately provided.) According to CNN , the FBI has not yet restarted a wiretap against Manafort but will soon do so.

June 10, 2016: Democratic National Committee (DNC) tells employees that its computer system has been hacked. DNC blames Russia but refuses to let FBI examine its systems.

June 15, 2016: "Guccifer 2.0" publishes first hacked document from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.

June 17, 2016: Washington Post publishes front page story linking Trump to Russia: "Inside Trump's Financial Ties to Russia and His Unusual Flattery of Vladimir Putin."

June 20, 2016: Christopher Steele proposes taking some of Fusion GPS' research about Trump to FBI.

June 22, 2016: WikiLeaks begins publishing embarrassing, hacked emails from Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.

June 27, 2016: Attorney General Loretta Lynch meets privately with former President Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac in Phoenix, Arizona.

Late June 2016: DCLeaks website begins publishing Democratic National Committee emails.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine signs evidence-sharing agreement with FBI and will later publicly release a "ledger" implicating Paul Manafort in allegedly improper payments.

June 30, 2016: FBI circulates internal draft of public remarks for FBI Director Comey to announce closing of Clinton investigation. It refers to Mrs. Clinton's "extensive" use of her personal email, including "from the territory of sophisticated adversaries," and a July 1, 2012 email to President Obama from Russia. The draft concludes it's possible that hostile actors gained access to Clinton's email account.

Comey's remarks are revised to replace reference to "the President" with the phrase: "another senior government official." (That reference, too, is removed from the final draft.)

Attorney General Lynch tells FBI she plans to publicly announce that she'll accept whatever recommendation FBI Director Comey makes regarding charges against Clinton.

July 2016: Ukraine minister of internal affairs Arsen Avakov attacks Trump and Trump campaign adviser Paul Manafort on Twitter and Facebook, calling Trump "an even bigger danger to the US than terrorism."

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk writes on Facebook that Trump has "challenged the very values of the free world."

Carter Page travels to Russia to give a university commencement address. (Fusion GPS political opposition research would later quote Russian sources as saying Page met with Russian officials, which Page denies under oath and is not proven.)

One-time CIA operative Stefan Halper reportedly begins meetings with Trump advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, secretly gathering information for the FBI. These contacts begin "prior to the date FBI Director Comey later claimed the Russian investigation began."

July 1, 2016: Under fire for meeting with former President Clinton amid the probe into his wife, Attorney General Lynch publicly states she'll " accept whatever FBI Director Comey recommends" without interfering.

FBI official Lisa Page texts her boyfriend, FBI official Peter Strzok, sarcastically commenting that Lynch's proclamation is "a real profile in courage, since she knows no charges will be brought."

Ex-British spy Christopher Steele writes Justice Department official Bruce Ohr that he wants to discuss "our favourite business tycoon!" (apparently referencing Trump.)

July 2, 2016: FBI official Peter Strzok and other agents interview Clinton. They don't record the interview. Two potential subjects of the investigation, Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, are allowed to attend as Clinton's lawyers.

July 5, 2016: FBI Director Comey recommends no charges against Clinton, though he concludes she's been extremely careless in mishandling of classified information. Comey claims he hasn't coordinated or reviewed his statement in any way with Attorney General Lynch's Justice Department or other government branches. "They do not know what I am about to say," says Comey.

Fusion GPS' Steele, an ex-British spy, approaches FBI at an office in Rome with allegations against Trump, according to Congressional investigators. Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr schedules a Skype conference call with Steele.

Days after closing Clinton case, FBI official Peter Strzok signs document opening FBI probe into Trump-Russia collusion.

July 10, 2016: Democratic National Committee (DNC) aide Seth Rich, reportedly a Bernie Sanders supporter, is shot twice in the back and killed. Police suspect a bungled robbery attempt, though nothing was apparently stolen. Conspiracy theorists speculate that Rich "not the Russians" had stolen DNC emails after he learned the DNC was unfairly favoring Clinton. The murder remains unsolved.

July 2016: Trump adviser Carter Page makes a business trip to Russia.

FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) rejects FBI request to wiretap Page.

Obama national security adviser Susan Rice begins to show increased interest in National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence material including "unmasked Americans" identities, according to news reports referring to White House logs.

July 18-21, 2016: Republican National Convention

Late July 2016 : FBI agent Peter Strzok opens counterintelligence investigation based on Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos.

Democratic operative and Ukrainian-American Chalupa leaves the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to work full-time on her research into Manafort, Trump and Russia; and provides off-the-record guidance to "a lot of journalists."

July 22, 2016: WikiLeaks begins publishing hacked Democratic National Committee emails. WikiLeaks' Julian Assange denies the email source is Russian.

July 25-28, 2016 : Democratic National Convention

July 30, 2016 : Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr meets with ex-British spy Christopher Steele at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Ohr brings his wife, Nellie, who -- like Steele -- works at Fusion GPS on the Trump-Russia oppo research project. Ohr calls FBI Deputy Director McCabe.

July 31, 2016 : FBI's Peter Strzok formally begins counterintelligence investigation regarding Russia and Trump. It's dubbed "Crossfire Hurricane."

Aug. 3, 2016: Ohr reportedly meets with McCabe and FBI lawyer Lisa Page to discuss Russia-Trump collusion allegations relayed by ex-British spy Steele. Ohr will later testify to Congress that he considered Steele's information uncorroborated hearsay and that he told FBI agents Steele appeared motivated by a "desperate" desire to keep Trump from becoming president.

Aug. 4, 2016: Ukrainian ambassador to U.S. writes op-ed against Trump.

Aug. 8, 2016: FBI attorney Lisa Page texts her lover, FBI's head of Counterespionage Peter Strzok,"[Trump is] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!" Strzok replies,"No. No he won't. We'll stop it."

Aug. 14, 2016: New York Times breaks story about cash payments made a decade ago to Paul Manafort by pro-Russia interests in Ukraine. The ledger was released and publicized by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.

Aug. 15, 2016: CNN reports the FBI is conducting an inquiry into Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort's payments from pro-Russia interests in Ukraine in 2007 and 2009.

After a meeting discussing the election in FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's office, FBI's Counterespionage Chief Peter Strzok texts FBI attorney Lisa Page referring to the possibility of Trump getting elected. "We can't take that risk," he writes. And they speak of needing an "insurance policy."

Aug. 19, 2016: Paul Manafort resigns as Trump campaign chairman.

Ukrainian parliament member Sergii Leshchenko holds news conference to draw attention to Paul Manafort and Trump's "pro-Russia" ties.

Aug. 22, 2016 : Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr meets with Fusion GPS' Glenn Simpson who identifies several "possible intermediaries" between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Late August 2016:

Reportedly working for the FBI, one-time CIA operative Professor Halper meets with Trump campaign co-chair Sam Clovis offering his services as a foreign-policy adviser, according to The Washington Post. Halper would later offer to hire Carter Page.

Approx. Aug. 2016: FBI initiates a new wiretap against ex-Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, according to CNN, which extends at least through early 2017.

Sept. 2016: Fusion GPS's Steele becomes FBI source and uses associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr as point of contact. Steele tells Ohr that he's "desperate that Donald Trump not get elected."

President Obama warns Russia not to interfere in the U.S. election

Sept. 2, 2016: FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text that "[President Obama] wants to know everything we're doing."

Sept. 13, 2016 : The nonprofit First Draft, funded by Google, whose parent company is run by major Hillary Clinton supporter and donor Eric Schmidt, announces initiative to tackle "fake news." It appears to be the first use of the phrase in its modern context.

Sept. 15, 2016: Clinton computer manager Paul Combetta appears before House Oversight Committee but refuses to answer questions, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights.

Sept. 19, 2016: At UN General Assembly meeting, Ukrainian President Poroshenko meets with Hillary Clinton.

Mid-to-late Sept. 2016: Fusion GPS's Christopher Steele's FBI contact tells him the agency wants to see his opposition research "right away" and offers to pay him $50,000, according to the New York Times, for solid corroboration of his salacious, unverified claims. Steele flies to Rome , Italy to meet with FBI and provide a "full briefing."

Sept. 22, 2016: Clinton computer aide Brian Pagliano is held in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoena.

Sept. 23, 2016: It's revealed that Justice Department has granted five Clinton officials immunity from prosecution: former chief of staff Cheryl Mills, State Department staffers John Bentel and Heather Samuelson, and Clinton computer workers Paul Combetta and Brian Pagliano.

Yahoo News publishes report by Michael Isikoff about Carter Page's July 2016 trip to Moscow. (The article is apparently based on leaked info from Fusion GPS Steele anti-Trump "dossier" political opposition research.)

Sept. 25, 2016 : Trump associate Carter Page writes letter to FBI Comey objecting to the so-called "witch hunt" involving him.

Sept. 26, 2016 : Obama administration asks secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) court to allow National Counter Terrorism Center to access sensitive, "unmasked" intel on Americans acquired by FBI and NSA. (The Court later approves the request.)

FBI head of counterespionage Peter Strzok emails his mistress FBI attorney Lisa Page that Carter Page's letter (dated the day before) "...provides us a pretext to interview."

Sept. 27, 2016: Justice Department Assistant Attorney General of National Security Division John Carlin announces he's stepping down. He was former chief of staff and senior counsel to former FBI director Robert Mueller.

End of Sept. 2016: Fusion GPS' Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele meet with reporters, including New York Times, Washington Post, Yahoo News, the New Yorker and CNN or ABC. One meeting is at office of Democratic National Committee general counsel.

Early October 2016: Fusion GPS' Christopher Steele, the Yemen-born author of anti-Trump "dossier," meets in New York with David Corn, Washington-bureau chief of Mother Jones.

According to The Guardian, the FBI submits a more narrowly focused FISA wiretap request to replace one turned down in June to monitor four Trump associates.

Oct. 3, 2016: FBI seizes computers belonging to Anthony Weiner, who is accused of sexually texting an underage girl. Weiner is married to top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin. FBI learns there are Clinton emails on Weiner's laptop but waits several weeks before notifying Congress and reopening investigation.

Oct. 4, 2016: FBI Director Comey replaces head of Counterintelligence Division, New York Field Office with Charles McGonigal.

Oct. 7, 2016: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Department of Homeland Security issue statement saying Russian government is responsible for hacking Democrat emails to disrupt 2016 election.

Oct. 13, 2016: President Obama gives a speech in support of the crackdown on "fake news" by stating that somebody needs to step in and "curate" information in the "wild, wild West media environment."

Oct. 14, 2016: FBI head of counterespionage Peter Strzok emails his mistress FBI attorney Lisa Page discussing talking points to convince FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to persuade a high-ranking Dept. of Justice official to sign a warrant to wiretap Trump associate Carter Page. The email subject line is "Crossfire FISA." "Crossfire Hurricane" was one of the code names for four separate investigations the FBI conducted related to Russia matters in the 2016 election.

"At a minimum, that keeps the hurry the F up pressure on him," Strzok emailed Lisa Page less than four weeks before Election Day.

Mid-Oct. 2016: Fusion GPS' Steele again briefs reporters about Trump political opposition research. The reporters are from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Yahoo News.

Oct. 16, 2016: Mary McCord is named Assistant Attorney General for Justice Department National Security Division.

Oct. 18, 2016: President Obama advises Trump to "stop whining" after Trump tweeted the election could be rigged. "There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even you could even rig America's elections," said Obama. He also calls Trump's "flattery" of Russian president Putin "unprecedented."

In FBI emails, head of counterespionage Peter Strzok and his mistress FBI lawyer Lisa Page discuss rushing approval for a FISA warrant for a Russia-related investigation code-named "Dragon."

Oct. 19, 2016: Ex-British spy Christopher Steele writes his last memo for anti-Trump "dossier" political opposition research provided to FBI. The FBI reportedly authorizes payment to Steele. Fusion GPS has reportedly paid him $160,000.

Approx. Oct. 21, 2016: For the second time in several months, Justice Department and FBI apply to wiretap former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates sign the application. This time, the request is approved based on new FBI "evidence" including parts of Fusion GPS' "Steele dossier" and Michael Isikoff Yahoo article. The FBI doesn't tell the court that Trump's political opponent, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, funded the "evidence."

Oct. 24, 2016: Benjamin Wittes, confidant of FBI Director James Comey and editor-in-chief of the blog Lawfare, writes of the need for an "insurance policy" in case Trump wins. It's the same phrase FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok had used when discussing the possibility of a Trump win.

Obama intel officials orally inform Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of an earlier Inspector General review uncovering their "significant noncompliance" in following proper "702" procedures safeguarding the National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence database with sensitive info on US citizens.

Late Oct. 2016: Fusion GPS' Steele again briefs reporter from Mother Jones by Skype about Trump political opposition research.

Oct. 26, 2016: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court holds hearing with Obama intel officials over their "702" surveillance violations. The judge criticizes NSA for "institutional lack of candor" and states "this is a very serious Fourth Amendment issue."

Oct. 28, 2016: FBI Director Comey notifies Congress that he's reopening Clinton probe due to Clinton emails found on Anthony Wiener laptop several weeks earlier.

Oct. 30, 2016: Mother Jones writer David Corn is first to report on the anti-Trump "dossier," quoting unidentified former spy, presumed to be Christopher Steele. FBI general counsel James Baker had reportedly been in touch with Corn but Corn later denies Baker was the leaker.

FBI terminates its relationship with Steele because Steele had leaked his FBI involvement in Mother Jones article.

Steele reportedly maintains backchannel contact with Justice Dept. through Deputy Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr.

Oct. 31, 2016: New York Times reports FBI is investigating Trump and found no illicit connections to Russia.

Nov. 1, 2016: FBI concludes ex-British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled anti-Trump "dossier" using Russian sources, leaked to press and is not suitable for use as a confidential source. However, Steele continues to "help," according to Jan. 31, 2017 texts to Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr.

Nov. 3, 2016: FBI Attorney Lisa Page texts FBI's Peter Strzok about her concerns that Clinton might lose and Trump would become president: "The [New York Times] probability numbers are dropping every day. I'm scared for our organization."

Nov. 6, 2016: FBI Director Comey tells Congress that Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner computer do not change earlier conclusion: she should not be charged.

Nov. 8, 2016: Trump is elected president.

Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice's interest in NSA materials accelerates, according to later news reports.

Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr meets with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson shortly after election.

The FBI interviews Ohr about his ongoing contacts with Fusion GPS.

Nov. 9, 2016: An unnamed FBI attorney (later quoted in Dept. of Justice Inspector General probe) texts another FBI employee, "I'm just devastated...I just can't imagine the systematic disassembly of the progress we made over the last 8 years. ACA is gone. Who knows if the rhetoric about deporting people, walls, and crap is true. I honestly feel like there is going to be a lot more gun issues, too, the crazies won finally. This is the tea party on steroids. And the GOP is going to be lost, they have to deal with an incumbent in 4 years. We have to fight this again. Also Pence is stupid....Plus, my god damned name is all over the legal documents investigating [Trump's] staff."

Nov. 10, 2016 : Emails imply top FBI officials, including Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe and Bill Priestap engaged in a new mission to "scrub" or research lists of associates of President-elect Trump, looking for potential "derogatory" information.

President Obama meets with President-elect Trump in the White House and reportedly advises Trump not to hire Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

Nov. 2016: National Security Agency Mike Rogers meets with president-elect Trump and is criticized for "not telling the Obama administration."

Nov. 17, 2016: Trump moves his Friday presidential team meetings out of Trump Tower.

Nov. 18, 2016: Trump names Flynn his national security adviser. Over the next few weeks, Flynn communicates with numerous international leaders.

Nov. 18-20, 2016: Sen. John McCain and his longtime adviser, David Kramer--an ex-U.S. State Dept. official--attend a security conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia where former UK ambassador to Russia Sir Andrew Wood tells them about the Fusion GPS anti-Trump dossier. (Kramer is affiliated with the anti-Russia "Ukraine Today" media organization). They discuss confirming the info has reached top levels of FBI for action.

Nov. 21, 2016 : Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr, works for Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, meets with FBI officials including Peter Strzok, Strzok's girlfriend--FBI attorney Lisa Page, and another agent. Ohr's notes indicate the FBI "may go back to [ex-British spy] Chris Steele" of Fusion GPS just 20 days after dismissing him.

Nov. 28, 2016: Sen. McCain associate David Kramer flies to London to meet Christopher Steele for a briefing on the anti-Trump research. Afterward, Fusion GPS' Glenn Simpson gives Sen. McCain a copy of the "dossier." Steele also passes anti-Trump info to top UK government official in charge of national security. Sen. McCain soon arranges a meeting with FBI Director Comey.

Late Nov. 2016: Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr officially tells FBI about his contacts with Fusion GPS' Christopher Steele and about Ohr's wife's contract work for Fusion GPS.

Nov. 30, 2016 : UN Ambassador Samantha Power makes request to unmask the name of Trump National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was "incidentally" captured by intel surveillance.

Dec. 2016: Text messages between FBI officials Strzok and Page are later said to be "lost" due to a technical glitch beginning at this point.

Dec. 2, 2016: UN Ambassador Samantha Power and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper request to unmask the name of Trump National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was "incidentally" captured by intel surveillance.

Dec. 6, 2016: Two more Obama administration officials request to unmask the name of Flynn.

Dec. 7, 2016 : Power makes another Flynn unmasking request.

Dec. 8 or 9, 2016: Sen. John McCain meets with FBI Director Comey at FBI headquarters and hands over Fusion GPS anti-Trump research, elevating the FBI's investigation into the matter. The FBI compiles a classified two-page summary and attaches it to intel briefing note on Russian cyber-interference in election for President Obama .

Hillary Clinton makes a public appearance denouncing "fake news."

Hillary Clinton and Democratic operative David Brock of Media Matters announces he's leaving board of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), one of his many propaganda and liberal advocacy groups, to focus on "fake news" effort.

Brock later claims credit, privately to donors, for convincing Facebook to crack down on conservative fake news.

Dec. 14, 2017 : There are 10 more requests to unmask Flynn's name in intelligence, including two by Power, CIA Director Brennan, and six officials from the Treasury Dept.

Dec. 15, 2016: Obama intel officials "incidentally" spy on Trump officials meeting with the United Arab Emirates crown prince in Trump Tower. This is taken to mean the government was wiretapping the prince and "happened to capture" Trump officials communicating with him at Trump Tower. Identities of Americans accidentally captured in such surveillance are strictly protected or "masked" inside intel agencies for constitutional privacy reasons.

Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice secretly "unmasks" names of the Trump officials, officially revealing their identities. They reportedly include: Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

Director of National Intelligence Clapper expands rules to allow the National Security Agency (NSA) to widely disseminate classified surveillance material within the government. The same day, 17 Obama officials request the unmasking of Lt. Gen. Flynn in intelligence.

Dec. 16, 2016 : Five more Obama officials request unmasking of intelligence materials regarding Lt. Gen. Flynn.

Dec. 23, 2016 : Power request another Flynn unmasking.

Dec. 28, 2016 :

Lt. Gen. Flynn speaks with Russia ambassador.

Clapper and the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey request Flynn unmasking.

Dec. 29, 2016: President Obama imposes sanctions against Russia for its alleged election interference.

President-elect Trump national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn speaks with Russian Ambassador to U.S. Sergey Kislyak. The calls are wiretapped by U.S. intelligence and later leaked to the press.

State Department releases 2,800 work-related emails from Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, found by FBI on laptop computer of Abedin's husband, former Rep. Anthony Weiner.

2017

Jan. 2017: According to CNN: a wiretap reportedly continues against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, including times he speaks to Trump, meaning U.S. intel officials could have "accidentally" captured Trump's communications.

Justice Dept. Inspector General confirms it's investigating several aspects of FBI and Justice Department actions during Clinton probe.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testifies to Congress that Russia interfered in U.S. elections by spreading fake news on social media.

Justice Dept. official Peter Kadzik, who "tipped off" Hillary Clinton campaign regarding Congressional questions about Clinton's email, leaves government work for private practice.

The FBI interviews a main source of Christopher Steele's "dossier" and learns the information was merely bar room gossip and rumor never meant to be taken as fact or submitted to the FBI and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Carter Page. (The FBI does not notify the court and applies for, and receives, another wiretap against Page).

Early Jan. 2017: FBI renews wiretap against Carter Page. FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates again sign the application.

Jan. 3, 2017: Obama Attorney General Lynch signs rules Director of National Intelligence Clapper expanded Dec. 15 allowing the National Security Agency (NSA) to widely disseminate surveillance within the government.

Jan. 5, 2017: Intelligence Community leadership including FBI Director Comey, Yates, CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, provides classified briefing to President Obama, Vice President Biden and National Security Adviser Susan Rice on alleged Russia hacking during 2016 campaign, according to notes later written by national security adviser Susan Rice.

After briefing, according notes made later by Rice, President Obama convenes Oval Office meeting with her, FBI Director Comey, Vice President Biden and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. The "Steele dossier" is reportedly discussed. Also reportedly discussed: Trump National Security Adviser Flynn's talks with Russia's ambassador.

Jan. 6, 2017: FBI Director Comey and other Intel leaders meet with President-Elect Trump and his national security team at Trump Tower in New York to brief them on alleged Russian efforts to interfere in the election.

Later, Obama national security adviser Susan Rice would write herself an email stating that President Obama suggested they hold back on providing Trump officials with certain info for national security reasons.

After Trump team briefing, FBI Director Comey meets alone with Trump to "brief him" on Fusion GPS Steele allegations "to alert the incoming President to the existence of this material," even though it was salacious and unverified. Comey later says Director of National Intelligence Clapper asked him (Comey) to do the briefing personally.

Jan. 7, 2017 : Clapper and two other Obama administration officials request Flynn unmasking.

Jan. 10, 2017: The 35-page Fusion GPS anti-Trump "dossier" is leaked to the media and published. It reveals that sources of the unverified info are Russians close to President Putin.

Email written by FBI head of counterespionage Peter Strzok indicates the FBI has been given the anti-Trump "dossier" by at least 3 different anti-Trump sources.

A CIA official makes a Flynn unmasking request.

Jan. 11, 2017 : Power makes another Flynn unmasking request.

Jan. 12, 2017: Obama administration finalizes new rules allowing NSA to spread "certain intel to" other U.S. intel agencies without normal privacy protections.

Justice Dept. inspector general announces review of alleged misconduct by FBI Director Comey and other matters related to FBI's Clinton probe as well as FBI leaks.

Vice President Joe Biden and the Treasury Secretary request the unmasking of Flynn in intelligence communications.

Someone leaks to to David Ignatius of the Washington Post that Trump National Security Adviser Flynn had called Russia's ambassador. "What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the US sanctions?" asked Ignatius in the article.

Jan. 13, 2017: Senate Intelligence Committee opens investigation into Russia and U.S. political campaign officials.

Jan. 15, 2017: After leaks about Flynn's call with Russia's ambassador, Vice President-elect Mike Pence tells the press that Flynn did not discuss U.S. sanctions on the call.

Jan. 20, 2017: Trump becomes president.

Fifteen minutes after Trump becomes president, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice emails memo to herself purporting to summarize the Jan. 5 Oval Office meeting with President Obama and other top officials. She states that Obama instructed the group to investigate "by the book" and asked them to be mindful whether there were certain things that "could not be fully shared with the incoming administration."

Jan. 22, 2017: Intel info leaks to Wall Street Journal which reports "US counterintelligence agents have investigated communications" between Trump aide Gen. Michael Flynn and Russia ambassador to the U.S. Kislyak to determine if any laws were violated.

Jan. 23, 2017: Leak to Washington Post falsely claims Trump National Security Adviser Flynn is not the subject of an investigation.

Jan. 24, 2017: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates sends two FBI agents, including Peter Strzok, to the White House to question Gen. Flynn. FBI Director Comey later takes credit for "sending a couple of guys" to interview Flynn, circumventing normal processes.

Notes kept hidden until May 2020 show FBI officials discussing whether the goal of the meeting with Flynn was to "get him to lie" so that he would be fired or prosecuted.

Jan. 26, 2017: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and a high-ranking colleague go to White House to tell counsel Don McGahn that Flynn had lied to Pence about the content of his talks with Russian ambassador and "the underlying conduct that Gen. Flynn had engaged in was problematic in and of itself."

Jan. 27, 2017: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates again visits the White House.

Jan. 31, 2017: President Trump fires Acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she refuses to enforce his temporary travel ban on Muslims coming into U.S. from certain countries.

Ex-British spy Christopher Steele texts Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr who worked for Yates: "B, doubtless a sad and crazy day for you re- SY."

Dana Boente becomes Acting Attorney General. (It's later revealed that Boente signed at least one wiretap application against former Trump adviser Carter Page.)

Feb. 2, 2017: It's reported that five men employed by House of Representatives Democrats, including leader Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida), are under criminal investigation for allegedly "accessing House IT systems without lawmakers' knowledge." Suspects include three Awan brothers "who managed office information technology for members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other lawmakers."

Feb. 3, 2017: A Russian tech mogul named in the Steele "dossier" files defamation lawsuits against BuzzFeed in the U.S. and Christopher Steele in the U.K. over the dossier's claims he interfered in U.S. elections.

Feb. 8, 2017: Jeff Sessions becomes Attorney General and Dana Boente moves to Deputy Attorney General.

Feb. 9, 2017: News of FBI wiretaps capturing Trump national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn speaking with Russia's ambassador is leaked to the press. New York Times and Washington Post report Flynn discussed U.S. sanctions, despite his earlier denials. The Post also reports the FBI "found nothing illicit" in the talks. The Post headline in an article by Greg Miller, Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima reads, "National Security Adviser Flynn Discussed Sanctions with Russian Ambassador, Despite Denials, Officials Say."

Feb. 13, 2017 : Washington Post reports Justice Dept. has opened a "Logan Act" violation investigation against Trump national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

Feb. 14, 2017: New York Times reports that FBI had told Obama officials there was no "quid pro quo" (promise of a deal in exchange for some action) discussed between Gen. Flynn and Russian ambassador Kislyak.

Gen. Flynn resigns, allegedly acknowledging he misled vice president Mike Pence about the content of his discussions with Russia.

Comey says that, in a meeting, Trump states, "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go." Comey says he replies "he is a good guy." Trump later takes issue with Comey's characterization of the meeting.

Feb. 15, 2017 : NPR reports on "official transcripts of Flynn's calls" (saying they show no wrongdoing but that doesn't rule out illegal activity).

Feb. 17, 2017: Washington Post reports that "Flynn told FBI he did not discuss sanctions" with Russia ambassador and that "Lying to the FBI is a felony offense."

Feb. 24, 2017 : FBI interviews Flynn, according to later testimony from Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.

March 1, 2017: Washington Post reports Attorney General Jeff Sessions has met with Russian ambassador twice in the recent past (as did many Democrat and Republican officials). His critics say that contradicts his earlier testimony to Congress. The article by Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller raises the idea of a special counsel to investigate.

March 2017: FBI Director James Comey gives private briefings to members of Congress and reportedly says he does not believe Gen. Flynn lied to FBI.

House Intelligence Committee requests list of unmasking requests Obama officials made. The intel agencies do not provide the information, prompting a June 1 subpoena.

March 2, 2017: Attorney General Jeff Sessions recuses himself from Russia-linked investigations.

Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, becomes Acting Attorney General for Russia Probe. It's later revealed that Rosenstein singed at least one wiretap application against former Trump adviser Carter Page.

March 4, 2017: President Trump tweets: "Is it legal for a sitting President to be 'wire tapping' a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!" and "How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"

March 10, 2017: Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat, steps forward to support Trump's wiretapping claim, revealing that the Obama administration intel officials recorded his own communications with a Libyan official in Spring 2011.

March 14, 2017 : FBI Attorney Lisa Page texts FBI official Peter Strzok: "Finally two pages away from finishing [All the President's Men]. Did you know the president resigns in the end?!" Strzok replies, "What?!?! God, that we should be so lucky. [smiley face emoji]"

March 20, 2017 : FBI Director Comey tells House Intelligence Committee he has "no information that supports" the President's tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration. "We have looked carefully inside the FBI," Comey says. "(T)he answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components."

FBI Director Comey tells Congress there is "salacious and unverified" material in the Fusion GPS dossier used by FBI, in part, to obtain Carter Page wiretap. (Under FBI "Woods Procedures," only facts carefully verified by the FBI are allowed to be presented to court to obtain wiretaps.)

March 22, 2017: Chairman of House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) publicly announces he's seen evidence of Trump associates being "incidentally" surveilled by Obama intel officials; and their names being "unmasked" and illegally leaked. Nunes briefs President Trump and holds a news conference. He's criticized for doing so. An ethics investigation is opened into his actions but later clears him of wrongdoing.

In an interview on PBS, former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice responds to Nunes allegations by stating: "I know nothing about this, I really don't know to what Chairman Nunes was referring." (She later acknowledges unmasking names of Trump associates.)

March 2017: Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) writes Justice Dept. accusing Fusion GPS of acting as an agent for Russia "without properly registering" due to its pro-Russia effort to kill a law allowing sanctions against foreign human rights violators. Fusion GPS denies the allegations.

March 24, 2017: Fusion GPS declines to answer Sen. Grassley's questions or document requests.

March 27, 2017: Former Deputy Asst. Secretary of Defense Evelyn Farkas admits she encouraged Obama and Congressional officials to "get as much information as they can" about Russia and Trump officials before inauguration. "That's why you have the leaking," she told MSNBC.

Early April, 2017: A third FBI wiretap on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page is approved. Again, FBI Director James Comey, and acting attorney general Dana Boente sign the application. Trump officials including Mike Pompeo at the CIA are now leading the intel agencies during the wiretap.

April 3, 2017: Multiple news reports state that Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice had requested and reviewed "unmasked" intelligence on Trump associates whose information was "incidentally" collected by intel agencies.

April 4, 2017: Obama former National Security Adviser Rice admits, in an interview, that she asked to reveal names of U.S. citizens previously masked in intel reports. She says her motivations were not political. When asked if she leaked names, Rice states, "I leaked nothing to nobody."

April 6, 2017: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes recuses himself from Russia part of his committee's investigation.

April 11, 2017: FBI Director Comey appoints Stephen Laycock as special agent in charge of Counterintelligence Division for Washington Field Office.

Washington Post reports FBI secretly obtained wiretap against Trump campaign associate Carter Page last summer. (Later, it's revealed the summer wiretap had been turned down, but a subsequent application was approved in October.)

April 20, 2017: Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord resigns as acting head of Justice Dept. National Security Division. She'd led probes of Russia interference in election and Trump-Russia ties.

April 28, 2017: Dana Boente is appointed acting assistant attorney general for national security division to replace Mary McCord. (Boente has signed one of the questioned wiretap applications for Carter Page.)

National Security Agency (NSA) submits remedies for its egregious surveillance violations (revealed last October) to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court promising to "no longer collect certain internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target." The NSA also begins deleting collected data on U.S. citizens it had been storing.

May 3, 2017: FBI Director Comey testifies he's "mildly nauseous" at the idea he might have affected election with the 11th hour Clinton email notifications to Congress.

Comey also testifies he's "never" been an anonymous news source on "matters relating to" investigating the Trump campaign.

Obama's former national security adviser Susan Rice declines Republican Congressional request to testify at a hearing about unmaskings and surveillance.

May 8, 2017: Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testify to Congress. They admit having reviewed "classified documents in which Mr. Trump, his associates or members of Congress had been unmasked," and possibly discussing it with others under the Obama administration.

May 9, 2017: President Trump fires FBI Director James Comey. Andrew McCabe becomes acting FBI Director.

May 12, 2017: Benjamin Wittes, confidant of ex-FBI Director James Comey and editor in chief of Lawfare, contacts New York Times reporter Mike Schmidt to leak conversations he'd had with Comey as FBI Director that are critical of President Trump.

May 16, 2017: New York Times publishes leaked account of FBI memoranda recorded by former FBI Director James Comey. Comey later acknowledges engineering the leak of the FBI material through his friend, Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman, to spur appointment of special counsel to investigate President Trump.

Trump reportedly interviews , but passes over, former FBI Director Robert Mueller for position of FBI Director.

May 17, 2017: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoints Robert Mueller as Special Counsel, Russia-Trump probe. Mueller and former FBI Director Comey are friends and worked closely together in previous Justice Dept. and FBI positions.

The gap of missing text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page ends. The couple is soon assigned to the Mueller team investigating Trump.

May 19, 2017: Anthony Wiener, former Congressman and husband of Hillary Clinton confidant Huma Abedin, turns himself in to FBI in case of underage sexting ; his third major kerfuffle over sexting in six years.

May 22, 2017 : FBI Counterespionage Chief Peter Strzok texts FBI Attorney Lisa Page about whether Strzok should join Special Counsel Mueller's investigation of Trump-Russia collusion. Strzok spoke of "unfinished business" that he "unleashed" with the Clinton classified email probe and stated: "Now I need to fix it and finish it." He also referred to the Special Counsel probe, which hadn't yet begun in earnest, as an "investigation leading to impeachment." But he also stated he had a "gut sense and concern there's no big there there."

June 1, 2017: House Intelligence Committee issues 7 subpoenas, including for information related to unmaskings requested by ex-Obama officials national security adviser Susan Rice, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power.

June 8, 2017: Former FBI Director James Comey admits having engineered leak of his own memo to New York Times to spur appointment of a special counsel to investigate President Trump.

June 20, 2017: Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe names Philip Celestini as Special Agent in Charge of the Intelligence Division, Washington Field Office.

Late June, 2017: FBI renews wiretap against Carter Page for the fourth and final time that we know of. It lasts through late Sept. 2017. (Page is never ultimately charged with a crime.) FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein sign the renewal application.

Late July, 2017: FBI reportedly searches Paul Manafort's Alexandria, Virginia home.

Summer 2017: FBI lawyer Lisa Page is reassigned from Mueller investigation. Her boyfriend, FBI official Peter Strzok is removed from Mueller investigation after the Inspector General discovers compromising texts between Strzok and Page. Congress is not notified of the developments.

Aug. 2, 2017: Christopher Wray is named FBI Director.

August 2017: Ex-FBI Director Comey signs a book deal for a reported $2 million.

Sept. 13, 2017: Under questioning from Congress, Obama's former National Security Adviser Susan Rice reportedly admits having requested to see the protected identities of Trump transition officials "incidentally" captured by government surveillance.

Approx. Oct. 10, 2017: Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos pleads guilty to lying to FBI about his unsuccessful efforts during the campaign to facilitate meetings between Trump officials and Russian officials.

Oct. 17, 2017: Obama's former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power reportedly tells Congressional investigators that many of the hundreds of "unmasking" requests in her name during the election year were not made by her.

Oct. 24, 2017: Congressional Republicans announce new investigations into a 2010 acquisition that gave Russia control of 20% of U.S. uranium supply while Clinton was secretary of state; and FBI decision not to charge Clinton in classified info probe.

Oct. 30, 2017: Special Counsel Mueller charges ex-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and business associate Rick Gates with tax and money laundering crimes related to their foreign work. The charges do not appear related to Trump.

Nov. 2, 2017: Carter Page testifies to House Intelligence committee under oath without an attorney and asks to have the testimony published. He denies ever meeting the Russian official that Fusion GPS claimed he'd met with in July 2016.

Nov. 5, 2017: Special Counsel Robert Mueller files charges against ex-Trump national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn for allegedly lying to FBI official Peter Strzok about contacts with Russian ambassador during presidential transition.

Dec. 1, 2017: Former national security adviser Gen. Flynn pleads guilty of lying to the FBI. Prosecutors recommend no prison time (but later reverse their recommendation).

James Rybicki steps down as chief of staff to FBI Director.

Dec. 6, 2017: Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr is reportedly stripped of one of his positions at Justice Dept. amid controversy over his and his wife's role in anti-Trump political opposition research.

Dec. 7, 2017: FBI Director Wray incorrectly testifies that there have been no "702" surveillance abuses by the government.

Dec. 19, 2017: FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe repeatedly testifies that the wiretap against Trump campaign official Carter Page would not have been approved without the Fusion GPS info. FBI general counsel James Baker, who is himself subject of an Inspector General probe over his alleged leaks to the press, attends as McCabe's attorney. McCabe acknowledges that if Baker had met with Mother Jones reporter David Corn, it would have been inappropriate.

FBI general counsel James Baker is reassigned amid investigation into his alleged anti-Trump related contacts with media.

2018

Jan. 4, 2018: Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) refer criminal charges against Christopher Steele to the FBI for investigation. There's an apparent conflict of interest with the FBI being asked to investigate Steele since the FBI has used Steele's controversial political opposition research to obtain wiretaps.

Jan. 8, 2018: Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr loses his second title at the agency.

Jan. 10, 2018: Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen files defamation suits against Fusion GPS and BuzzFeed News for publishing the "Steele dossier," which he says falsely claimed he met Russian government officials in Prague, Czech Republic, in August of 2016.

Jan. 11, 2018: House of Representatives approves government's controversial "702" wireless surveillance authority. The Senate follows suit.

Jan. 19, 2018: Justice Dept. produces to Congress some text messages between FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok but states that FBI lost texts between December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017 due to a technical glitch.

President Trump signs six-year extension of "702" wireless surveillance authority.

Jan. 23, 2018: Former FBI Director Comey friend who leaked on behalf of Comey to New York Times to spur appointment of special counsel is now Comey's attorney.

Jan. 25, 2018: Justice Dept. Inspector General notifies Congress it has recovered missing text messages between FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.

Jan. 27, 2018: Edward O'Callaghan is named Acting Assistant Attorney General, National Security Division.

Jan. 29, 2018: Andrew McCabe steps down as Deputy FBI Director ahead of his March retirement.

Jan. 30, 2018: News reports allege that Justice Department Inspector General is looking into why FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe appeared to wait three weeks before acting on new Clinton emails found right before the election.

Feb. 2, 2018: House Intelligence Committee (Nunes) Republican memo is released. It summarizes classified documents revealing for the first time that Fusion GPS political opposition research was used, in part, to justify Carter Page wiretap; along with Michael Isikoff Yahoo News article based on the same opposition research.

Memo also states that Fusion GPS set up back channel to FBI through Nellie Ohr, who conducted opposition research on Trump and passed it to her husband, associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr.

Feb. 7, 2018: Justice Department official David Laufman, who helped oversee the Clinton and Russia probes, steps down as chief of National Security Division's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.

Feb. 9, 2018: Former FBI Director Comey assistant Josh Campbell leaves FBI for job at CNN.

Justice Department Associate Attorney General, Office of Legal Policy, Rachel Brand, resigns.

Feb. 16, 2018: Special counsel Mueller obtains guilty plea from a Dutch attorney for lying to federal investigators about the last time he spoke to Rick Gates regarding a 2012 project related to Ukraine. The plea does not appear to relate to 2016 campaign or Trump. The Dutch attorney is married to the daughter of a Russian oligarch who's suing Buzzfeed and Christopher Steele for alleged defamation in the "dossier."

Feb. 22, 2018: Former State Dept. official and Sen. John McCain associate David Kramer invokes his Fifth Amendment right not to testify before House Intelligence Committee. Kramer reportedly picked up the anti-Trump political opposition research in London and delivered it to Sen. McCain who delivered it to the FBI.

Special counsel Mueller files new charges against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and former campaign aide Rick Gates, accusing them of additional tax and bank fraud crimes. The allegations appear to be unrelated to Trump.

Fri. Feb. 23, 2018: Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates, pleads guilty to conspiracy and lying to investigators (though he issues a statement saying he's innocent of the indictment charges). The allegations and plea have no apparent link to Trump-Russia campaign collusion.

Sat. Feb. 24, 2018: Democrats on House Intel Committee release their rebuttal memo to the Republican version that summarized alleged FBI misconduct re: using the GPS Fusion opposition research to get wiretap against Carter Page.

March 12, 2018 : House Intelligence Committee closes Russia-Trump investigation with no evidence of collusion.

Fri. March 16, 2018 : Attorney General Jeff Sessions fires Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, based on recommendation from FBI ethics investigators.

Thurs. March 22, 2018 : President Trump announces plans to replace National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster with former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton.

House Judiciary Committee issues subpoenas to Department of Justice after Department failed to produce documents.

May 4, 2018 : Amid allegations that he was responsible for improper leaks, FBI attorney James Baker resigns and joins the Brookings Institution, writing for the anti-Trump blog "Lawfare" that first discussed the need for an "insurance policy" in case Trump got elected.

2019

March 2019 : Special Counsel Robert Mueller signs off on his final report stating that there was no collusion or coordination between Trump -- or any American -- and Russia. He leaves as an open question the issue of whether Trump took any actions that could be considered obstruction. No new charges are recommended or filed with the issuance of the report.

June 2019 : Former Trump National Security Adviser Flynn fire his defense attorneys and hires Sidney Powell.

Oct. 25, 2019 : Flynn files a motion to dismiss the case against him due to prosecutorial misconduct. Among other claims, Flynn says prosecutors failed to turn over exculpatory material tending to show his innocence. Prosecutors claim they were not required to turn over the information.

Dec. 19, 2019 : An investigation by Inspector General Michael Horowitz finds egregious abuses by FBI and Justice Department officials in obtaining wiretaps of former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page. The report also says an FBI attorney doctored a document, providing false information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to get the wiretaps.

2020

Jan. 7, 2020 : Prosecutors reverse their earlier recommendation for no prison time, and ask for up to six months in prison for Flynn.

Jan. 16, 2020 : Flynn files a motion to withdraw his guilty plea.

Jan. 23, 2020 : The Dept. of Justice finds that two of its wiretaps against former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page were improperly obtained and are therefore invalid.

Feb. 10, 2020: The Dept. of Justice asks a judge to sentence Trump associate Roger Stone to 7 to 9 years in prison for lying about his communications with WikiLeaks.

Feb. 11, 2020 : The Dept. of Justice reduces its recommendation for prison time for Stone after President Trump and others criticized the initial representation as excessive. Stone receives three years and four months in prison.

Feb. 20, 2020: President Trump appoints Richard Grenell as acting Director of National Intelligence. Grenell begins facilitating the release of long withheld documents regarding FBI actions against Trump campaign associates.

March 31, 2020 : A Justice Dept. Inspector General's analysis of more than two dozen wiretap applications from eight FBI field offices over two months finds "we do not have confidence" that the bureau followed standards to ensure the accuracy of the wiretap requests.

April 3, 2020 : Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court asks FBI to review whether it wiretaps are valid in light of information about problems and abuses.

April 29, 2020 : Newly-released documents show FBI officials, prior to their original interview with Flynn, discussing whether the goal was to try to get him to lie to get him fired or so that he could be prosecuted.

May 7, 2020 : The Department of Justice announces a decision to drop the case against Flynn.

* * *

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[May 15, 2020] No Proof That Russia Hacked DNC - Democrats Hid Sworn CrowdStrike Testimony For Over 2 Years

May 15, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

No Proof That Russia Hacked DNC - Democrats Hid Sworn CrowdStrike Testimony For Over 2 Years by Tyler Durden Fri, 05/15/2020 - 14:10 Authored by Aaron Maté via RealClearInvestigations.com,

CrowdStrike, the private cyber-security firm that first accused Russia of hacking Democratic Party emails and served as a critical source for U.S. intelligence officials in the years-long Trump-Russia probe, acknowledged to Congress more than two years ago that it had no concrete evidence that Russian hackers stole emails from the Democratic National Committee's server.

Crowdstrike President Shawn Henry: "We just don't have the evidence..."

CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry's admission under oath, in a recently declassified December 2017 interview before the House Intelligence Committee, raises new questions about whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller, intelligence officials and Democrats misled the public. The allegation that Russia stole Democratic Party emails from Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and others and then passed them to WikiLeaks helped trigger the FBI's probe into now debunked claims of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to steal the 2016 election. The CrowdStrike admissions were released just two months after the Justice Department retreated from its its other central claim that Russia meddled in the 2016 election when it dropped charges against Russian troll farms it said had been trying to get Trump elected.

Henry personally led the remediation and forensics analysis of the DNC server after being warned of a breach in late April 2016; his work was paid for by the DNC, which refused to turn over its server to the FBI. Asked for the date when alleged Russian hackers stole data from the DNC server, Henry testified that CrowdStrike did not in fact know if such a theft occurred at all: "We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated [moved electronically] from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated," Henry said.

Henry reiterated his claim on multiple occasions:

  • "There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually left."
  • "There's not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There's circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated."
  • " There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the network... We didn't have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data left based on the circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made."
  • "Sir, I was just trying to be factually accurate, that we didn't see the data leave, but we believe it left, based on what we saw."
  • Asked directly if he could "unequivocally say" whether "it was or was not exfiltrated out of DNC," Henry told the committee: "I can't say based on that."

Rep. Adam Schiff: Democrat held up interview transcripts, but finally relented after acting intel director Richard Grenell suggested he would release them himself. (Senate Television via AP)

In a later exchange with Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, Henry offered an explanation of how Russian agents could have obtained the emails without any digital trace of them leaving the server. The CrowdStrike president speculated that Russian agents might have taken "screenshots" in real time. "[If] somebody was monitoring an email server, they could read all the email," Henry said. "And there might not be evidence of it being exfiltrated, but they would have knowledge of what was in the email. There would be ways to copy it. You could take screenshots."

Henry's 2017 testimony that there was no "concrete evidence" that the emails were stolen electronically suggests that Mueller was at best misleading in his 2019 final report, in which he stated that Russian intelligence "appears to have compressed and exfiltrated over 70 gigabytes of data from the file server."

It is unlikely that Mueller had another source to make his more confident claim about Russian hacking.

The stolen emails, which were published by Wikileaks – whose founder, Julian Assange has long denied they came from Russia – were embarrassing to the party because, among other things, they showed the DNC had favored Clinton during her 2016 primary battles against Sen. Bernie Sanders for the presidential nomination. The DNC eventually issued an apology to Sanders and his supporters "for the inexcusable remarks made over email." The DNC hack was separate from the FBI's investigation of Clinton's use of a private server while serving as President Obama's Secretary of State.

The disclosure that CrowdStrike found no evidence that alleged Russian hackers exfiltrated any data from the DNC server raises a critical question: On what basis, then, did it accuse them of stealing the emails? Further, on what basis did Obama administration officials make far more forceful claims about Russian hacking?

Michael Sussmann: This lawyer at Perkins Coie hired CrowdStrike to investigate the DNC breach. He was also involved with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele in producing the discredited Steele dossier.

The January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which formally accused Russia of a sweeping influence campaign involving the theft of Democratic emails, claimed the Russian intelligence service GRU "exfiltrated large volumes of data from the DNC." A July 2018 indictment claimed that GRU officers "stole thousands of emails from the work accounts of DNC employees."

According to everyone concerned, the cyber-firm played a critical role in the FBI's investigation of the DNC data theft. Henry told the panel that CrowdStrike "shared intelligence with the FBI" on a regular basis, making "contact with them over a hundred times in the course of many months." In congressional testimony that same year, former FBI Director James Comey acknowledged that the FBI "never got direct access to the machines themselves," and instead relied on CrowdStrike, which "shared with us their forensics from their review of the system." According to Comey, the FBI would have preferred direct access to the server, and made "multiple requests at different levels," to obtain it. But after being rebuffed, "ultimately it was agreed to [CrowdStrike] would share with us what they saw."

Henry's testimony seems at variance with Comey's suggestion of complete information sharing. He told Congress that CrowdStrike provided "a couple of actual digital images" of DNC hard drives, out of a total number of "in excess of 10, I think." In other cases, Henry said, CrowdStrike provided its own assessment of them. The firm, he said, provided "the results of our analysis based on what our technology went out and collected." This disclosure follows revelations from the case of Trump operative Roger Stone that CrowdStrike provided three reports to the FBI in redacted and draft form. According to federal prosecutors, the government never obtained CrowdStrike's unredacted reports.

CrowdStrike's newy disclosed admissions raise new questions about whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller (above), intelligence officials and Democrats misled the public.

There are no indications that the Mueller team accessed any additional information beyond what CrowdStrike provided. According to the Mueller report, "the FBI later received images of DNC servers and copies of relevant traffic logs." But if the FBI obtained only "copies" of data traffic – and not any new evidence -- those copies would have shown the same absence of "concrete evidence" that Henry admitted to.

Adding to the tenuous evidence is CrowdStrike's own lack of certainty that the hackers it identified inside the DNC server were indeed Russian government actors. Henry's explanation for his firm's attribution of the DNC hack to Russia is replete with inferences and assumptions that lead to "beliefs," not unequivocal conclusions. "There are other nation-states that collect this type of intelligence for sure," Henry said, "but what we would call the tactics and techniques were consistent with what we'd seen associated with the Russian state." In its investigation, Henry said, CrowdStrike "saw activity that we believed was consistent with activity we'd seen previously and had associated with the Russian Government. We said that we had a high degree of confidence it was the Russian Government."

But CrowdStrike was forced to retract a similar accusation months after it accused Russia in December 2016 of hacking the Ukrainian military, with the same software that the firm had claimed to identify inside the DNC server.

The firm's work with the DNC and FBI is also colored by partisan affiliations. Before joining CrowdStrike, Henry served as executive assistant director at the FBI under Mueller. Co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the pro-NATO think tank that has consistently promoted an aggressive policy toward Russia. And the newly released testimony confirms that CrowdStrike was hired to investigate the DNC breach by Michael Sussmann of Perkins Coie – the same Democratic-tied law firm that hired Fusion GPS to produce the discredited Steele dossier, which was also treated as central evidence in the investigation. Sussmann played a critical role in generating the Trump-Russia collusion allegation. Ex-British spy and dossier compiler Christopher Steele has testified in British court that Sussmann shared with him the now-debunked Alfa Bank server theory, alleging a clandestine communication channel between the bank and the Trump Organization.

Henry's recently released testimony does not mean that Russia did not hack the DNC. What it does make clear is that Obama administration officials, the DNC and others have misled the public by presenting as fact information that they knew was uncertain. The fact that the Democratic Party employed the two private firms that generated the core allegations at the heart of Russiagate -- Russian email hacking and Trump-Russia collusion – suggests that the federal investigation was compromised from the start.

The 2017 Henry transcript was one of dozens just released after a lengthy dispute. In September 2018, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee unanimously voted to release witness interview transcripts and sent them to the U.S. intelligence community for declassification review. In March 2019, months after Democrats won House control, Rep. Adam Schiff ordered the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to withhold the transcripts from White House lawyers seeking to review them for executive privilege. Schiff also refused to release vetted transcripts, but finally relented after acting ODNI Director Richard Grenell suggested this month that he would release them himself.

Several transcripts, including the interviews of former CIA Director John Brennan and Comey, remain unreleased. And in light of the newly disclosed Crowdstrike testimony, another secret document from the House proceedings takes on urgency for public viewing. According to Henry, Crowdstrike also provided the House Intelligence Committee with a copy of its report on the DNC email theft.

[May 15, 2020] Camera Feed Cuts Out After CNN Asks James Clapper About Leaking Classified Information Zero Hedge

May 15, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden Fri, 05/15/2020 - 11:54 The camera feed to former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper suddenly cut out while CNN 's John Berman was pressing him to answer questions about leaks of classified information to the media, one day after a declassified memo revealed a list of Obama administration officials who made 'unmasking' requests regarding President Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Included in the list are Clapper, former Vice President Joe Biden, President Obama's Chief of Staff, and former CIA Director John Brennan. Notably, the requests began before Flynn's call with former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak - the classified details of which were leaked to the Washington Post in early 2017 as noted by the Washington Examiner .

"Asking for names, nothing wrong with that, unmasking in of itself, nothing wrong with that," Berman said to Clapper. "Leaking classified information, and by definition, these phone calls were classified, that's a problem, correct?"

Clapper, a CNN security analyst, responded "absolutely," before the image froze and his screen went dark.

Watch: Clapper just conceded on CNN that "No, I did not" find evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. Then, after being asked about leaking to the press, his video connection went dead... pic.twitter.com/Ab13DVFVQa

-- TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) May 14, 2020

Once his feed was restored, Clapper insisted that he wasn't the leaker.

"David Ignatius put out this famous column on Jan. 12 where he mentioned the phone call between Michael Flynn -- the Dec. 29 phone call. Did you leak that information?" Berman asked. "I did not," responded Clapper."

Once Clapper was back, he was asked whether he leaked the Flynn call to David Ignatius. He says: "No, I did not." pic.twitter.com/mAww8wsp9U

-- TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) May 14, 2020

Clapper insisted during Thursday's interview that unmasking a US citizen is a "routine thing" when "you have a valid foreign intelligence target engaging with a U.S. person."

That said, he c ouldn't remember what prompted the request "that was made on my behalf for unmasking" regarding Flynn, but that the "general concern" was over his engagement with Russians during the Trump team's transition to the White House. Of course, as even Slate wrote back in 2017, "Meetings between the president-elect's team and foreign officials are Normal," but that "Negotiations that undermine a sitting president's foreign policy are not unprecedented, but remain highly controversial and Not Normal.'

John Durham, the U.S. attorney picked by Attorney General William Barr to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia inquiry, is scrutinizing the Flynn unmaskings and subsequent leaks as part of his inquiry.

The Connecticut federal prosecutor is reportedly looking into a Jan. 12, 2017, article in the Washington Post by Ignatius, which said Flynn "cultivates close Russian contacts" and cited a "senior U.S. government official" who revealed Flynn had talked to former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak on Dec. 29, 2016, which was the same day former President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian officials . It is likely that this revelation, and subsequent leaks about the alleged contents of Flynn's discussions with Kislyak, were based on classified information. - Washington Examiner

And now, after destroying Flynn's life in a perjury trap, the Obama all-stars are scrambling.

[May 14, 2020] Tucker on Obamagate

May 14, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Patient Observer May 11, 2020 at 8:50 am

Don't fuck with the Tuck:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/fHh19Baj_pM?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

The guy is on fire. Per Carlson, Obama orchestrated the Russian collusion propaganda. I suspect that the lovely Ms. Hilary was a conspirator as well.

Carlson has the number 1 television news show with 4.56 million viewers on average.

https://www.nytimes.com/svc/oembed/html/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2020%2F04%2F28%2Fbusiness%2Fmedia%2Fvirus-tucker-carlson-sean-hannity-fox-ratings.html

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Mark Chapman May 11, 2020 at 9:54 am
Absolutely remarkable; in fact, 'stunning', as he uses it, is not too much of a stretch. The 'liberal elites' just go right on lying even though the sworn testimony of FBI interviewers is available for anyone to read, as well as the chilling manipulations of Strozk and Page, both of whom should be in prison and perhaps will be. And that fucker Schiff should swing. I can't believe the transformation of Carlson from Bush shill to the reincarnation of Edward R. Murrow. He makes this case so compellingly that nobody could watch that clip and not believe that Flynn was railroaded from the outset. And what were they allegedly going to jail Flynn's son for? Does anyone know? Were they just going to make something up? That is terrifying, and almost argues for the disbanding of the FBI, although it demonstrably still contains honest agents – as Carlson asks rhetorically, how many times have they done this already, and gotten away with it?

It's hard to imagine anyone would vote Democrat now.

Like Like

Cortes May 11, 2020 at 10:10 am
The son was being lined up for prosecution for alleged FARA violations regarding work on Turkey, I think. The son was working with the General.

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Mark Chapman May 11, 2020 at 11:45 am
Couldn't have been too much of a crime, if they offered to let him go in exchange for Flynn pleading guilty to lying. Actually, you'd kind of think their business was prosecuting crimes whoever committed them, and that offering to excuse a crime in exchange for a guilty plea is .kind of a crime.

Man, they have to clean house at the FBI. And there probably are several other organizations that need it, too. Not the political culling based on ideology that was a feature of the Bush White House, but the crowd that's in now just cannot be allowed to get off with nothing.

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uncle tungsten May 12, 2020 at 2:55 am
Greetings Mark and all, I am a new arrival as Jen suggested the company is fine here for barflies to ponder the world. Can I surmise that if Flynn and son were the FBI targets for nefarious business dealings then surely Biden and son fall in to that same category. After all Biden and son filched millions after arranging a USA loan of $1Billion to Ukraine and then did it again after the IMF loaned a few million more. Carpetbagging and its modern day practice is a crime in the USA last I looked.

If that conspicuous bias isn't enough cause to dismember the FBI then consider the Uranium One deal that Hillary Clinton and family set up or perhaps the Debbie Wasserman Shultz fostering the Awan family spy and blackmail ring.

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Mark Chapman May 12, 2020 at 9:37 am
Good day, Uncle, and welcome! For some reason I can't fathom, the Democrats seem to own or control all the 'respectable' media in the USA. FOX News is an exception, and has been a mouthpiece for the Republicans since its inception. But the Democrats control the New York Times and the Washington Post, which together represent the bulk of American public feeling to foreigners, and probably to the domestic audience as well. They are extremely active on conflicts between the two parties, ensuring the Democratic perspective gets put forward in calm, reasonable why-wouldn't-a-sensible-person-think-this-way manner. At the same time they cast horrific aspersions at the Republicans. Not that either are much good; but the news coverage is very one-sided – the position of the Democrats on the sexual-assault furor over the Kavanaugh appointment compared with their wait-and-see attitude to very similar accusations against Biden is a classic example.

Like Like

rkka May 13, 2020 at 9:33 am
Mark,

I don't think its the Democrats that control the NYT &WP, so much as plutocrats. They're also the ones who fund both the Democrats & the Republicans. The only significant difference between the parties is largely in the arena of the social "culture war" issues. But on the issues plutocrats care about, like economic policy & foreign policy, the differences are shades of grey, rather than actual distinctions.

Just remember the coverage of both papers in the run up to George W Shrub's catastrophic Iraq war. They're stenographers, not journalists.

Like Like

Mark Chapman May 13, 2020 at 11:12 am
That may well be true, but the NYT and WP historically champion the Democrats, endorse the Democratic candidate for president, and pander to Democratic issues and projects. The Wall Street Journal is the traditional Republican print outlet, and there might be others but I don't know them. CNN is overwhelmingly and weepily Democratic in its content – Wolf Blitzer's eyes nearly roll back in his head with ecstasy whenever he mentions Saint Hillary – while FOX News is Repubican to the bone and openly contemptuous of liberals. It could certainly be, on reflection probably is, that the same cabal of corporatists control them all, and a fine joke they must think it. And I certainly and emphatically agree there is almost no difference between the parties in execution of external policy.

[May 14, 2020] Dirty Dozen: The 12 revelations that sunk Mueller's case against Flynn

Notable quotes:
"... Ideally, they should each be prosecuted with an attempt to discern their connections to the political establishment, and specifically to the Clintons. What does that woman have to do to get jailed – blow somebody away on the 6 o'clock news? ..."
May 14, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

et Al May 11, 2020 at 8:22 am

JusttheNews.com: Dirty Dozen: The 12 revelations that sunk Mueller's case against Flynn
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/dirty-dozen-12-revelations-sunk-muellers-case-against

After a prescient 2017 tip from inside the FBI, a slow drip of revelations exposed the deep problems with the Flynn prosecution.
####

All at the link.

I should add that the author, seasoned investigative reporter John Soloman, wrote much of this over at TheHill.com and was targeted for review over his clearly labelled 'opinion' pieces reporting on the Bidens in the Ukraine. The Hill's conclusion is piss weak and accuses him of what just about every other journalist in the US does and reads in particular of holding him up to a much higher standard than others. As you will see from his twatter bio, he's worked for AP, Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Hill. Some things you are just not supposed to investigate, let alone report.

https://thehill.com/author/john-solomon

https://thehill.com/homenews/news/483600-the-hills-review-of-john-solomons-columns-on-ukraine

Mark Chapman May 11, 2020 at 9:37 am
At an absolute minimum, the FBI officials involved – except those who did their jobs properly and stated their judgments at the outset that there was no evidence Flynn was not telling the truth, or believed he was – should be fired and their pensions, if applicable, rescinded.

Ideally, they should each be prosecuted with an attempt to discern their connections to the political establishment, and specifically to the Clintons. What does that woman have to do to get jailed – blow somebody away on the 6 o'clock news?

[May 14, 2020] NYT defends Obama cabal efforts to entrap Flynn

May 14, 2020 | www.nytimes.com

Ex-F.B.I. Official Is Said to Undercut Justice Dept. Effort to Drop Flynn Case

Prosecutors questioned a former F.B.I. official whose notes were used to buttress their motion to dismiss the charge against the president's first national security adviser.

Bill Priestap, a former top F.B.I. official, played a central role in the agency's 2016 investigation into Russia's efforts to interfere in the presidential election. Credit... Alex Wong/Getty Images
Adam Goldman Katie Benner

By Adam Goldman and Katie Benner

    Published May 13, 2020 Updated May 14, 2020, 7:48 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON -- A key former F.B.I. official cast doubt on the Justice Department's case for dropping a criminal charge against President Trump's former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn during an interview with investigators last week, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Department officials reviewing the Flynn case interviewed Bill Priestap, the former head of F.B.I. counterintelligence, two days before making their extraordinary request to drop the case to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. They did not tell Judge Sullivan about Mr. Priestap's interview. A Justice Department official said that they were in the process of writing up a report on the interview and that it would soon be filed with the court.

The department's motion referred to notes that Mr. Priestap wrote around the bureau's 2017 questioning of Mr. Flynn, who later pleaded guilty to lying to investigators during that interview. His lawyers said Mr. Priestap's notes -- recently uncovered during a review of the case -- suggested that the F.B.I. was trying to entrap Mr. Flynn, and Attorney General William P. Barr said investigators were trying to "lay a perjury trap."

That interpretation was wrong, Mr. Priestap told the prosecutors reviewing the case. He said that F.B.I. officials were trying to do the right thing in questioning Mr. Flynn and that he knew of no effort to set him up. Media reports about his notes misconstrued them, he said, according to the people familiar with the investigation.

The department's decision to exclude mention of Mr. Priestap's interview in the motion could trouble Judge Sullivan, who signaled late on Tuesday that he was skeptical of the department's arguments.

Mr. Priestap and the Justice Department declined to comment. Mr. Priestap told investigators that he did not remember the circumstances surrounding the notes that he took, and that he was giving them his interpretation of the notes as he read them now, according to a person familiar with his interview.

Listen to 'The Daily': The Saga of Michael Flynn The U.S. dropped its criminal case against President Trump's first national security adviser. It was the latest reversal in a case full of them.

Former prosecutors and defense lawyers called the department's position hypocritical and troubling.

"If it is accurate that the F.B.I. official provided context around those notes, which is materially different from what they suggest, this could be a game changer in terms of how the court views the motivations behind the request to dismiss the case," said Edward Y. Kim, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan.

The department's decision to drop the Flynn case was a stunning reversal, widely regarded as part of an effort by Mr. Barr to undermine the Russia investigation . The prosecutor who led the case, Brandon L. Van Grack, withdrew from it, and only the interim U.S. attorney in Washington, Timothy Shea, a longtime adviser to Mr. Barr, signed the motion.

Both Mr. Van Grack and Jocelyn Ballantine, another prosecutor on the case, were upset with Mr. Barr's decision to drop the charge and his overall handling of the Flynn review, according to people familiar with their thinking.

Mr. Barr, who has long said that he had misgivings about the decision to prosecute Mr. Flynn, asked the top federal prosecutor in St. Louis, Jeff Jensen, earlier this year to scrub the case for any mistakes or improprieties.

Mr. Priestap's notes were among the documents that Mr. Jensen found. The prosecutors already on the case, Mr. Jensen's team and the F.B.I. disagreed about whether they were exculpatory and should be given to Mr. Flynn's lawyer, Sidney Powell. Mr. Jensen prevailed and gave them to Ms. Powell, who declared that they would exonerate her client, people familiar with the events said.

Mr. Priestap played a central role in the F.B.I. investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election and was involved in high-level discussions about whether to question Mr. Flynn, whose phone calls to the Russian ambassador at the time, Sergey I. Kislyak, had aroused investigators' suspicions.

Mr. Jensen and Ms. Ballantine, herself a veteran prosecutor, interviewed Mr. Priestap along with another prosecutor, Sayler Fleming, and an F.B.I. agent from St. Louis who was there to memorialize the encounter.

Justice Department investigators spoke with Mr. Priestap while they were embroiled in a debate that began last month about whether to drop the Flynn case.

Mr. Jensen and officials in Mr. Shea's office pushed to give Mr. Flynn's lawyers copies of the notes and other documents they had recently found. Mr. Van Grack and Dana Boente, the F.B.I. general counsel, argued against disclosing them.

Eventually the F.B.I. agreed to release the documents because they contained no classified or sensitive material, even though they believed they were not required to share them with the defense, according to an email from lawyers in Mr. Boente's office on April 23.

By the beginning of May, Mr. Jensen recommended to Mr. Barr that the charge be dropped, and the team began to draft the motion to dismiss it.

Mr. Van Grack and Ms. Ballantine, the prosecutors on the case, acknowledged the facts but vociferously disagreed with Mr. Jensen's legal argument that Mr. Flynn's lies were immaterial to the larger investigation into Russian election interference, according to department lawyers familiar with their conversations.

As the lawyers digested the interview with Mr. Priestap, some prosecutors expressed concern that they were moving too fast. But other officials pointed out that in less than a week the department was due to respond to Mr. Flynn's motion to dismiss the case, and argued against proceeding in that matter if they were about to drop the entire case.

Mr. Jensen agreed, as did Mr. Barr, and they filed their request. Even though they knew it was coming, some prosecutors on the case expressed shock, associates said.

Mr. Flynn's case grew out of phone calls he made to Mr. Kislyak in the final days of 2016, asking that Moscow refrain from retaliating after the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia as punishment for interfering in the election. The conversations were captured on routine wiretaps of Mr. Kislyak and prompted concern among the F.B.I. agents investigating Mr. Flynn once they learned of them.

Then the incoming vice president, Mike Pence, publicly denied that Mr. Flynn had asked Russia to hold off on sanctions. Agents began to suspect that Mr. Flynn was lying to other Trump officials about the phone calls and were concerned that he was a blackmail risk because Russia knew the truth of the calls.

Mr. Priestap's notes, taken hours before agents questioned Mr. Flynn on Jan. 24, 2017, showed that F.B.I. officials were debating how to proceed and trying to determine the objective of questioning Mr. Flynn.

Mr. Priestap wrote: "What's our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?" Mr. Priestap also mentioned the risks of an interview, adding, "Protect our institution by not playing games" and "If we're seen playing games, WH will be furious."

Those notes reflected Mr. Priestap's own thoughts before meeting with F.B.I. leadership to discuss how to question Mr. Flynn, the people said. A footnote in Mr. Shea's motion included a reference to Mr. Priestap's ruminations. The motion described them as "talking points."

The notes also showed that the F.B.I. softened its interview strategy with Mr. Flynn. Officials decided that agents would be allowed to read back portions of the highly classified phone call transcripts to refresh Mr. Flynn's memory. F.B.I. investigators felt at the time it was important to figure out whether Mr. Flynn would tell the truth in an interview.

Though Mr. Flynn was told ahead of time about the interview, the F.B.I. director at the time, James B. Comey, unilaterally decided to go forward with it, angering Justice Department officials who said the bureau should have coordinated closely with them and notified the White House Counsel's Office.

Two agents went to the White House to question Mr. Flynn. He lied repeatedly, and prosecutors have said that agents gave him "multiple opportunities to correct his false statements by revisiting key questions."

Mr. Flynn later agreed to plead guilty, entering a plea twice before he later reversed himself, hiring new lawyers and asking Judge Sullivan to allow him to withdraw it.

After the notes and other documents were made public, Ms. Powell seized on them to declare that they cast doubt on the F.B.I.'s decision to question Mr. Flynn and to charge him with lying. She accused the bureau of framing her client.

Mr. Shea also argued that the F.B.I. had no legitimate reason to interview Mr. Flynn. He said that the bureau's counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn had essentially ended and agents had insufficient reason to keep it open and were trying to entrap him.

The interview with Mr. Flynn "seems to have been undertaken only to elicit those very false statements and thereby criminalize Mr. Flynn," Mr. Shea wrote.

Mr. Barr has called Mr. Flynn's conversations with Mr. Kislyak " laudable " and said that his lies were immaterial to the Russia investigation, rejecting the view of the prosecutors who had said that Mr. Flynn hurt the inquiry by misleading the F.B.I. agents. Judge Sullivan has also said the lies were material.

[May 14, 2020] Sullivan Flies Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

Notable quotes:
"... he recognizes he is sitting on a volcano, partly of his own making because of decisions he made; and those of Judge Rudy Contreras, the man who was on the bench when Flynn plead to the false charges, circa Dec. 1, 2017. ..."
"... Neither Contreras, nor Flynn's Covington lawyers, prior this plea, demanded the DOJ produce original FBI 302s -- of the Jan. 24, 2017 FBI interview of Flynn -- to show the concrete substance, that is, actual evidence, that would purportedly show the general lied. ..."
"... The DOJ never produced this. Ever. Sullivan, he never asked nor demanded nor got to read those original 302s either, even though he has been sitting on this case since Dec. 7, 2017. ..."
"... The only rational reason, I think, Sullivan said he needs "help" -- before consummating the DOJ's request to end this matter – is simple. Sullivan knows he is sitting on a volcano, and he can't take the heat. ..."
"... Thus, he might be creating conditions for a last hurrah of nonsense from the enemies of justice who are the enemies of Flynn, who want to file amica with the court. Put another way, the judge is inviting the very circus he claim to want to avoid, in his Minute Order. ..."
May 14, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Jim , 13 May 2020 at 04:51 PM

Federal Judge Emmett Sullivan needs "help." His words, not mine. Although amica, or amicus briefs can be routine in civil cases, in a criminal case, it is a prosecutor's duty to decide things as basic as whether to prosecute a case. But in the Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn matter, Sullivan says he now needs outside help.

The need, the judge says, came following the DOJ decision to end prosecution of the general, having determined there was no crime; the heretofore prosecution of him was a phantom of the opera.

Sullivan now wants an encore. What might that be? Pirates of Penzance? Sullivan Flies Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

In a recent order the judge said he will invite outside parties -- outside of the DOJ -- to provide this judge "unique information or perspective that can help the court." The absurdity of Sullivan notwithstanding, it could be: he recognizes he is sitting on a volcano, partly of his own making because of decisions he made; and those of Judge Rudy Contreras, the man who was on the bench when Flynn plead to the false charges, circa Dec. 1, 2017.

Neither Contreras, nor Flynn's Covington lawyers, prior this plea, demanded the DOJ produce original FBI 302s -- of the Jan. 24, 2017 FBI interview of Flynn -- to show the concrete substance, that is, actual evidence, that would purportedly show the general lied.

The DOJ never produced this. Ever. Sullivan, he never asked nor demanded nor got to read those original 302s either, even though he has been sitting on this case since Dec. 7, 2017.

After a year of sitting on the case, Flynn said he was ready to be sentenced: the prosecutors had said they were fine with no jail time for him.

During this Dec. 18, 2018 hearing, Sullivan Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. [If you have not, read transcript of this hearing, it's at least a half-hour read.] Sullivan told Flynn he could face 15 years in jail, implied he committed treason, was a traitor to his country, blah blah blah.

The prosecutor at the time, Brandon Van Grack, told the Pirate of Penzance that more assistance of Flynn was needed for the bogus Mueller investigation. Sullivan [Gilbert was not in the courtroom] then allowed Flynn's sentencing hearing to be continued, so long as Mueller submitted monthly progress reports to ascertain the general was cooperating with the special counsel office's "investigation" of nonexistent "crimes" against who knows what at that point. To recap: Sullivan threatened Flynn with 15 years in prison; Flynn withdrew his willingness to be sentenced at that time; Van Grack out of nowhere said the general needed to cooperate some more with Mueller.

Had Sullivan not gone rouge at this hearing; had he demanded and gotten the original 302s, I would give more credence to what I'll say next.

The only rational reason, I think, Sullivan said he needs "help" -- before consummating the DOJ's request to end this matter – is simple. Sullivan knows he is sitting on a volcano, and he can't take the heat.

Thus, he might be creating conditions for a last hurrah of nonsense from the enemies of justice who are the enemies of Flynn, who want to file amica with the court. Put another way, the judge is inviting the very circus he claim to want to avoid, in his Minute Order.

Reason I'm not necessarily opposed to this circus is practical: more sunshine can be brought to this prosecution, this malicious and political perecution of Flynn – sunshine, via the DOJ release document after document that just piles onto the record DOJ/FBI/CIA lawlessness that was directed against and targeted Flynn. And perhaps other delicious nuggets, too.

When the smoke clears, the fat lady finally sings, Sullivan can say or claim he did everything to give everyone their say, blah blah blah, and hope like hell everyone forgets this Pirate's dereliction of duty, as a judge with a lifetime appointment.

Perhaps, should this show go on, we might discover why Contreras mysteriously recused himself right after the Flynn pleas.

Perhaps we will read all of the Covington law firm Eric Holder and Michael Chertoff emails, and what they were saying about Flynn, the good, the bad, the ugly.

And, since Barry decided to directly and publicly insert himself in this fiasco last week, with his remark about Flynn and "perjury," who knows what other documents will be filed on the docket. [Obama's pre meditated use of "perjury" when he knows it was not about that, indicates just how sinister his public involvement now is.]

I would like to see all of Sullivan's communications, work related and private, involving the Flynn case.

Please file all of them on the docket, Judge Sullivan, un-redacted, you who opened this can of worms. [So we can see if you, by your own "standards" might be a "security threat" or "sold out your country," etc.]

Sullivan didn't start this fire; he did pour gasoline on it.

". . . .Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. . . ."[Epistle to the Galatians]

-30-

ambrit , 13 May 2020 at 11:50 PM
Sir;
What was Flynn's attitude towards the "Holy Land" at that time? Was he a threat to the Judea and Samaria clique?
I can't help but compare the treatment of Flynn to the treatment of Petraeus.
turcopolier , 14 May 2020 at 08:43 AM
ambrit

He was opposed to a lot of our commitments in the ME.

Deap , 13 May 2020 at 10:01 PM
There is one hidden benefit leaving Flynn still "twisting slowly, slowly in the wind" for making a "false statement during a federal investigation".

His treatment at the hands of his own government will certainly resonate with those we now find on the unmasking list. They will soon be visited by federal investigators who will be asking them a lot of questions - no lying guys and gals. Look what could happen to you too.

akaPatience , 13 May 2020 at 05:53 PM
I could use an explanation of the IMPLICATIONS of this revelation. Is it possible there's nothing nefarious about someone who, for example, received a copy of Obama's daily briefing in which Flynn may have been alluded to and therefore that person requested unmasking for a fuller understanding of the matter? It's been reported that Obama exponentially expanded the numbers of people who were privy to his daily briefing.

Does the fact that the FBI was undertaking a counterintelligence investigation of Gen. Flynn at the time, wrong/unethical as that may have been, give cover?

Is there any legal jeopardy facing those whose names are on the list? If so, what?

turcopolier , 13 May 2020 at 06:24 PM
aka Patience

Whoever leaked the unmasked identity is liable for a felony charge carrying a ten year prison term

[May 14, 2020] No More Mr.Nice Guy - Trump Urges Senate To Call Obama To Testify

May 14, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

After the unmasking of the unmaskers (including Biden), ObamaGate is growing...

And President Trump clearly won't let it go (and why should he after three years of utter bullshit)...

If I were a Senator or Congressman, the first person I would call to testify about the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by FAR, is former President Obama. He knew EVERYTHING. Do it @LindseyGrahamSC , just do it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more talk!

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2020

We won't be holding our collective breaths however, but it would be deliciously ironic if the president who claimed "no scandals" during his presidency, was brought down after leaving office by the biggest scandal in US history.

[May 14, 2020] 'I Didn't Know Anything': Former Obama Official Criticized After Classified Testimony Contradicts Her Public Statements by Jonathan Turley

Notable quotes:
"... One of the most embarrassing is the testimony of Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama Administration official who was widely quoted in her plea to Congress to gather the evidence that she knew was found in by the Obama Administration. In her testimony under oath Farkas repeatedly stated that she knew of no such evidence of collusion. ..."
"... Farkas, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, was widely quoted when she said on MSNBC in 2017 that she feared that evidence she knew about would be destroyed by the Trump Administration. She stated: ..."
"... ...was urging my former colleagues, and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill Get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration, because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior people that left. So it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy . . . the Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about their, the staff, the Trump staff's dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. So I became very worried, because not enough was coming out into the open, and I knew that there was more. ..."
"... 'You also didn't know whether or not anybody in the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, did you?' Gowdy later asked, getting to the point. ..."
"... "I didn't," Farkas responded. ..."
May 11, 2020 | ronpaulinstitute.org

The long-delayed release of testimony from the House Intelligence Committee has proved embarrassing for a variety of former Obama officials who have been extensively quoted on the allegedly strong evidence of collusion by the Trump campaign and the Russians. Figures like James Clapper, who is a CNN expert, long indicated hat the evidence from the Obama Administration was strong and alarming. However, in testimony, Clapper denied seeing any such evidence .

One of the most embarrassing is the testimony of Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama Administration official who was widely quoted in her plea to Congress to gather the evidence that she knew was found in by the Obama Administration. In her testimony under oath Farkas repeatedly stated that she knew of no such evidence of collusion.

Farkas, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, was widely quoted when she said on MSNBC in 2017 that she feared that evidence she knew about would be destroyed by the Trump Administration. She stated:

...was urging my former colleagues, and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill Get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration, because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior people that left. So it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy . . . the Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about their, the staff, the Trump staff's dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. So I became very worried, because not enough was coming out into the open, and I knew that there was more.
MSNBC never seriously questioned the statements despite the fact that Farkas left the Obama Administration in 2015 before any such investigation could have occurred. As we have seen before, the factual and legal basis for such statements are largely immaterial in the age of echo journalism. The statement fit the narrative even if it lacked any plausible basis.

Not surprisingly, the House Intelligence Committee was eager to have Farkas share all that she stated she "knew about ["the Trump folks"], their staff, the Trump's staff's dealing with Russian" and wanted to get "into the open." After all, she told MSNBC that "I knew that there was more."

She was finally put under oath in the closed classified sessions and there was nothing but classified crickets. Farkas was repeatedly asked to share that information that electrified the MSNBC hosts and audience. She repeatedly denied any such knowledge, telling then Rep. Trey Gowdy (R, S.C.), "I didn't know anything."

Gowdy noted that Farkas left the Obama administration in 2015 and asked "Then how did you know?" She repeated again "I didn't know anything."

Gowdy then asked "Well, then why would you say, we knew?"

He also asked:

'You also didn't know whether or not anybody in the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, did you?' Gowdy later asked, getting to the point.
"I didn't," Farkas responded.

MSNBC has said nothing about its prior headline story being untrue. Indeed, the media has barely acknowledged that the new documents reinforce that there was never any evidence of collusion and ultimately the allegations were rejected by the Special Counsel, Congress, and inspectors general.

For her part, Farkas has moved on. She is running for Congress . She is still citing her role in raising "the alarm" about Russian collusion:

'fter I left the Obama administration, I campaigned to help elect Secretary Clinton as our next President. When Russians interfered in that election, I was among the first to sound the alarm and urge Congress to take action. And I haven't let up since then.
She was indeed one of the first but it proved to be a false alarm based on nonexistent knowledge. Does that matter anymore?

Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org .


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[May 13, 2020] The NSA list of people asking that a name be unmasked which turned out to be Michael Flynn

May 13, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

By Robert Willmann

Released today is a list from the National Security Agency of officials who asked -- between 8 November 2016 and 31 January 2017 -- that a name be unmasked in intercepted communications, and the name turned out to be Gen. Michael Flynn--

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelflynn_nsa_unmasking_requests.pdf

Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the Director of the NSA, included the list with a short memo to Richard Grenell, the Acting Director of National Intelligence, who declassified the list and then routed it today to U.S. Senators Charles Grassley and Ron Johnson.

I think the senators should have asked for a wider time frame.

[May 13, 2020] All the Adam Schiff Transcripts - WSJ

May 13, 2020 | www.wsj.com

Americans expect that politicians will lie, but sometimes the examples are so brazen that they deserve special notice. Newly released Congressional testimony shows that Adam Schiff spread falsehoods shamelessly about Russia and Donald Trump for three years even as his own committee gathered contrary evidence.

[May 13, 2020] From RussiaGate To ObamaGate The End Of Boomerville by Tom Luongo

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... it's clear that Obama was always the vector through which the entire investigation into Donald Trump pointed. He's the only one with the power to have marshaled the forces arrayed against Trump for the past four years. ..."
"... What's clear now is the President Obama's administration was regularly engaged in illegally using NSA database access to spy on Americans and political opponents . This operation pre-dates Trump by a few years ..."
"... On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the database after he learned FISA-702 "about"(17) and "to/from"(16) search queries were being done without authorization ..."
"... And that's when everything changed. Because at that point, having lost access Obama's spy team needed another way into the NSA database. Enter Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele and the ridiculous dossier used to issue FISA warrants on Carter Page and all the rest of it. ..."
"... Obama is guilty of the highest crimes a President can be guilty of, utilizing Federal law enforcement and intelligence services to spy on a political opponent during an election. This is after eight years of ruinous wars, coups both successful and not, drone-striking U.S. citizens and generally carrying on like the vandal he is. ..."
"... Obama's people have been covering for him for nearly four years now. They have been exposed as bald-faced liars by the transcripts of their impeachment testimonies to Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee. ..."
"... Now that the heat is rising and the apparatus they used to control turns its attention to what they did, enough of them will roll over and give Attorney General William Barr what he wants. ..."
"... And here we are coming into the home stretch and the bitter end is staring these people in the face. They've lost all credibility, corrupted whole swaths of the Federal government beyond recognition and activated every resource they have in the media and the chattering classes to make manifest a bald-faced lie. And it didn't work. Now the desperation sets in. The exoneration of Gen. Michael Flynn, the release of the transcripts and conflicting stories told by John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey and the rest all point to something beyond sinister. ..."
"... You can smell the fear now. From Bill Kristol to John Brennan they can see the end of their project, whether it was for a New American Neocon Century or just the cynical push for a transnational oligarchy based around the European Union, their Utopian dreams have run into the immovable object of a people refusing to believe their lies anymore. ..."
May 13, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, 'n Guns blog,

From the beginning of the story RussiaGate was always about Barack Obama . I didn't always see it that way, certainly. My seething hatred for all things Hillary Clinton is a powerful blind spot I admit to freely.

But, it's clear that Obama was always the vector through which the entire investigation into Donald Trump pointed. He's the only one with the power to have marshaled the forces arrayed against Trump for the past four years.

We've known this for a couple of years now but there were a seemingly endless series of distractions put in place to obfuscate the truth...

Donald Trump was not a Russian agent.

What's clear now is the President Obama's administration was regularly engaged in illegally using NSA database access to spy on Americans and political opponents . This operation pre-dates Trump by a few years.

It was de rigeur by the time the election cycle ramped up in 2016. The timing of events is during that time period paints a very damning picture. This article from Zerohedge by way of Conservative Treehouse lays out the timing, the activities and the shifts in the narrative that implicate Obama beyond any doubt.

On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the database after he learned FISA-702 "about"(17) and "to/from"(16) search queries were being done without authorization. Thus begins the first discovery of a much bigger background story.

And that's when everything changed. Because at that point, having lost access Obama's spy team needed another way into the NSA database. Enter Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele and the ridiculous dossier used to issue FISA warrants on Carter Page and all the rest of it.

The details are all there for anyone with eyes willing to see, the question is whether anyone deep in the throes of Trump Derangement Syndrome will take their eyes off the shadow play in front of them long enough to look.

I'm not holding my breath.

Obama is guilty of the highest crimes a President can be guilty of, utilizing Federal law enforcement and intelligence services to spy on a political opponent during an election. This is after eight years of ruinous wars, coups both successful and not, drone-striking U.S. citizens and generally carrying on like the vandal he is.

OBAMAGATE! pic.twitter.com/pFbb6hgDhF

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2020

... ... ...

These people obviously missed the key point about Goebbels' Big Lie theory of propaganda. For it to work there has to be a nugget of truth to wrap the lie in before you can repeat it endlessly to make it real. And that's why RussiaGate is dead. Long live ObamaGate.

Obama's people have been covering for him for nearly four years now. They have been exposed as bald-faced liars by the transcripts of their impeachment testimonies to Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee.

None of them were willing to testify under oath, and be guilty of perjury, to the effect that Trump was colluding with the Russians. But, they'd say it on TV, Twitter and anywhere else they could to attack Trump with patent nonsense.

Now that the heat is rising and the apparatus they used to control turns its attention to what they did, enough of them will roll over and give Attorney General William Barr what he wants. Some of them will fall on their sword for Obama.

But I don't think Trump will be satisfied with that. He has to know that Obama is the key to truly draining the Swamp if that is, in fact, his goal. Because if he doesn't attack Obama now, Obama will be formidable in October. Both men are fighting for their lives at this point.

Trump was supposed to roll over and play nice. But Pat Buchanan rightly had him pegged at the beginning of this back in January of 2017, saying that Trump wasn't like Nixon, he wouldn't walk away to protect the office of the Presidency. He would fight to the bitter end because that's who he is.

And here we are coming into the home stretch and the bitter end is staring these people in the face. They've lost all credibility, corrupted whole swaths of the Federal government beyond recognition and activated every resource they have in the media and the chattering classes to make manifest a bald-faced lie. And it didn't work. Now the desperation sets in. The exoneration of Gen. Michael Flynn, the release of the transcripts and conflicting stories told by John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey and the rest all point to something beyond sinister.

You can smell the fear now. From Bill Kristol to John Brennan they can see the end of their project, whether it was for a New American Neocon Century or just the cynical push for a transnational oligarchy based around the European Union, their Utopian dreams have run into the immovable object of a people refusing to believe their lies anymore.

... ... ...

* * *

Join My Patreon if you no longer want to live in Boomerville. Install the Brave Browser if you want to help others escape it.

[May 13, 2020] Biden Spokesman Insults Journolist Who Revealed Biden Role in Unmasking Flynn

May 13, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

The day just keeps getting better and better. The left is now moving the goalposts, parroting the new talking point that: 'sure, Biden unmasked Flynn - but that just goes to show how concerned everyone was about him.'

Biden spokesman Andrew Bates, meanwhile, took to Twitter to insult journalist Catherine Herridge as a "partisan, rightwing hack who is a regular conduit for conservative media manipulation..." for revealing Biden's involvement in unmasking Flynn. He then deleted the tweet and issued a statement accusing President Trump of "dishonest media manipulation to distract from his response to the worst public health crisis in 100 years," adding that the documents "simply indicate the breadth and depth of concern across the American government -- including among career officials -- over intelligence reports of Michael Flynn's attempts to undermine ongoing American national security policy through discussions with Russian officials or other foreign representatives."

. @JoeBiden camp responds to "unmasking" list: "These documents simply indicate the breadth and depth of concern across the American govt...over intelligence reports of Michael Flynn's attempts to undermine ongoing American national security policy" via @AndrewBatesNC pic.twitter.com/bNl9Fp5JH1

-- Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) May 13, 2020

Somehow their response failed to include why Biden tried to lie on Tuesday about knowledge of the Flynn investigation. * * *

Update (1635ET): It did not take long for the liberalati to try and distract from what just dropped and to turn their cognitive dissonance up to '11'. None other than Ben Rhodes quickly ranted:

"The unconfirmed, acting DNI using his position to criminalize routine intelligence work to help re-elect the president and obscure Russian intervention in our democracy would normally be the scandal here..."

To which The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel rebuked rather eloquently...

"This is the best they've got--to complain about transparency. "

But perhaps most notable is the fact the unmasking involved here occurred BEFORE the Kislyak call that was supposedly triggered the move against Flynn et al.

Another riddle we are sure Messrs. Biden et al. will quickly mumble-splain.

* * *

A list of Obama administration officials who participated in the 'unmasking' of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has been released by Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley. The names include former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former Vice President Joe Biden .

SCOOP @CBSNews obtains @RichardGrenell notification to congress declassified "unmasking list" Flynn between late 2016 and January 2017 - Read 3 pages provided by NSA here pic.twitter.com/NozVpQlRn2

-- Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) May 13, 2020

#FLYNN unmasking docs include these key details "Each individual was an authorized recipient of the original report and the unmasking was approved through NSA's standard process..While the principals are identified below, we cannot confirm they saw the unmasked information." pic.twitter.com/vz9W3uHPSz

-- Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) May 13, 2020

The revelation comes after Biden was caught trying to lie about his knowledge of the Flynn investigation during a Tuesday morning interview - changing course after host George Stephanopoulos pointed out his documented attendance at a January 5 Oval Office meeting in which key members of the Obama administration discussed the ongoing investigation into Flynn's intercepted contacts with the Russian ambassador.

Notably, Obama asked Comey to conceal the FBI's investigation from the incoming administration.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/oIaqV0CtOBY

Declassified documents reveal V.P. Biden ordered the unmasking of General Flynn's private conversation.
Anyone think that Biden might have abused his power to go after a political opponent...

-- Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) May 13, 2020

The Senate must immediately hold hearings on this! Clapper, Comey, Brennan and even Biden owe it to the American people. They should testify under oath. What did the former president know?

-- Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) May 13, 2020

As we have previously noted, "unmasking" is a term used when the identity of a U.S. citizen or lawful resident is revealed in classified intelligence reports. Normally, when government officials receive intelligence reports, the names of American citizens are redacted to protect their privacy. But officials can request that names, listed as "U.S. Person 1," for example, be unmasked internally in order to give context about the potential value of the intelligence. Unmasking is justified for national security reasons but is governed by strict rules across the U.S. intelligence apparatus that make it illegal to pursue for political reasons or to leak classified information generated by the process .

Last week, Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell visited the Justice Department with the list of unmaskers, which the DOJ effectively said was up to him to release, according to a Fox News report.

After Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice was outed as the ringleader of an unmasking campaign, the Wall Street Journal reported that she wasn't the only administration official to participate in Flynn's unmasking .

The new disclosure comes after the FBI was revealed to have attempted to ensnare Flynn in a perjury trap , despite the agency's own DC field office suggesting that the case be closed.

Wooooo.... Biden's in trouble.

-- Jenna Jameson (@jennajameson) May 13, 2020

[May 13, 2020] President Obama should have kept his mouth shut

Especially in view of his role in Russiagate...
May 13, 2020 | news.yahoo.com

Related: What is 'Obamagate' and why is Trump so worked up about it?

Last week, remarks by Obama were leaked to Yahoo News that were highly critical about Trump and his administration, seeming to break a convention in US politics that former occupants of the White House rarely criticize their successors.

Speaking to alumni of his administration, Obama said he was worried about the "rule of law", in light of the justice department's decision to drop its case against the former national security adviser Michael Flynn. That's the issue at the heart of Trump's attempts to gin up an "Obamagate" scandal, which on Tuesday morning he again claimed "makes Watergate look small time!"

Obama also said the response to the coronavirus pandemic had been "an absolute chaotic disaster".

McConnell was speaking to Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump in an online fundraiser on Monday night.

Asked about Obama "slamming" the administration for its response to the coronavirus outbreak, he said: "I think President Obama should have kept his mouth shut.

"You know, we know he doesn't like much this administration is doing. That's understandable. But I think it's a little bit classless frankly to critique an administration that comes after you."

He added: "You had your shot. You were there for eight years. I think the tradition that the Bushes set up of not critiquing the president who comes after you is a good tradition."

There is a tradition of former presidents not commenting on or attacking their successors in the Oval Office, but Trump is not part of the informal club which currently includes Obama, George W Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and he has regularly attacked those who went before him.

Plus, Obama's views of Trump are pretty well known, if usually by indirect routes and leaks to the press. For example, in a Hulu documentary about Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign against Trump, the Virginia senator Tim Kaine is seen to say the then president thinks Trump is a fascist.

In the remarks leaked to Yahoo News, Obama said he would be hitting the campaign trail for Joe Biden this fall to help him try to unseat Trump and make him a one-term president. Biden leads Trump in key swing states and national polling and McConnell is also presiding over a Senate majority that now looks increasingly at risk as Republican popularity dips.

[May 13, 2020] John Brennan Concealed 'High-Quality' Intelligence That Russia Wanted Hillary Clinton To Win Report

Notable quotes:
"... House Intelligence Committee staff told me that after an exhaustive investigation reviewing intelligence and interviewing intelligence officers, they found that Brennan suppressed high-quality intelligence suggesting that Putin actually wanted the more predictable and malleable Clinton to win the 2016 election . ..."
"... Instead, the Brennan team included low-quality intelligence that failed to meet intelligence community standards to support the political claim that Russian officials wanted Trump to win, House Intelligence Committee staff revealed. They said that CIA analysts also objected to including that flawed, substandard information in the assessment. ..."
"... Fox 's Henry said that he has obtained independent confirmation of the pro-Clinton Russia claim made by Fleitz . ..."
"... Brennan's concealment of this key information was yet another link in the chain of the Obama administration's plot to smear Donald Trump as a Russian asset - a hoax supported by the Clinton-funded Steele dossier, which the FBI knew was Russian disinformation (or, more likely, Steele's Russophobic fantasies) before they used it as a predicate to spy on Trump aide Carter Page during the 2016 election. ..."
May 13, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Former CIA director John Brennan suppressed intelligence which indicated that Russia wanted Hillary Clinton to win because "she was a known quantity," vs. the unpredictable Donald Trump, according to Fox News ' Ed Henry.

During a Tuesday night discussion with Tucker Carlson, Henry said that Brennan "also had intel saying, actually, Russia wanted Hillary Clinton to win because she was a known quantity, she had been secretary of state, and Vladimir Putin's team thought she was more malleable, while candidate Donald Trump was unpredictable."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/xWSWdS8rILs

Perhaps Russian President Vladimir Putin has fond memories of the time Bill Clinton hung out at his 'private homestead' during the same trip where he collected a $500,000 payday for a speech at a Moscow bank, right before the Uranium One deal was approved.

And as Breitbart 's Joel Pollak notes, Henry's claim backs up a similar allegation by former National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz , who said on April 22:

House Intelligence Committee staff told me that after an exhaustive investigation reviewing intelligence and interviewing intelligence officers, they found that Brennan suppressed high-quality intelligence suggesting that Putin actually wanted the more predictable and malleable Clinton to win the 2016 election .

Instead, the Brennan team included low-quality intelligence that failed to meet intelligence community standards to support the political claim that Russian officials wanted Trump to win, House Intelligence Committee staff revealed. They said that CIA analysts also objected to including that flawed, substandard information in the assessment.

Fox 's Henry said that he has obtained independent confirmation of the pro-Clinton Russia claim made by Fleitz .

Brennan's concealment of this key information was yet another link in the chain of the Obama administration's plot to smear Donald Trump as a Russian asset - a hoax supported by the Clinton-funded Steele dossier, which the FBI knew was Russian disinformation (or, more likely, Steele's Russophobic fantasies) before they used it as a predicate to spy on Trump aide Carter Page during the 2016 election.

And now, Brennan is a contributor on MSNBC. How fitting.

[May 12, 2020] OBAMAGATE! Trump Tweets Tucker Carlson's Crushing Breakdown Why The Former President Should Be Panicking

May 12, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Why is former President Obama calling forth all his defensive resources now? Why did former national security advisor Susan Rice write her CYA letter? Why have republicans in congress not been willing to investigate the true origins of political surveillance? What is the reason for so much anger, desperation and opposition from a variety of interests?

In a single word in a single tweet tonight, President Trump explained it perfectly - with help from Fox News' Tucker Carlson's detailed breakdown" "OBAMAGATE!" ...

OBAMAGATE! pic.twitter.com/pFbb6hgDhF

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2020

As around 2:15 in the clip above, Carlson explains that then president of the United States Barack Obama turned to the head of the FBI - the most powerful law enforcement official in America, and said "Continue to secretly investigate my chief political rival so I can act against him."

Comey's response? "Yes, sir."

Having watched that clip in detail, here is 'sundance' from TheConservativeTreehouse.com laying out the details surrounding political surveillance in the era of President Obama...

With the release of recent transcripts and the declassification of material from within the IG report, the Carter Page FISA and Flynn documents showing FBI activity, there is a common misconception about why the intelligence apparatus began investigating the Trump campaign in the first place. Why was Donald Trump considered a threat?

In this outline we hope to provide some fully cited deep source material that will explain the origin; and specifically why those inside the Intelligence Community began targeting Trump and using Confidential Human Sources against campaign officials.

During the time-frame of December 2015 through April 2016 the NSA database was being exploited by contractors within the intelligence community doing unauthorized searches.

On March 9, 2016, oversight personnel doing a review of FBI system access were alerted to thousands of unauthorized search queries of specific U.S. persons within the NSA database.

NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was made aware.

Subsequently NSA Director Rogers initiated a full compliance review of the system to identify who was doing the searches; & what searches were being conducted.

On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the database after he learned FISA-702 "about"(17) and "to/from"(16) search queries were being done without authorization. Thus begins the first discovery of a much bigger background story.

When you compile the timeline with the people involved; and the specific wording of the resulting review, which was then delivered to the FISA court; and overlay the activity that was taking place in the GOP primary; what we discover is a process where the metadata collected by the NSA was being searched for political opposition research and surveillance.

Additionally, tens-of-thousands of searches were identified by the FISA court as likely extending much further than the compliance review period: " while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of the non compliant queries since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 period coincided with an unusually high error rate" .

In short, during the Obama administration the NSA database was continually used to conduct surveillance. This is the critical point that leads to understanding the origin of "Spygate", as it unfolded in the Spring and Summer of 2016.

It was the discovery of the database exploitation and the removal of access as a surveillance tool that created their initial problem. Here's how we can tell .

Initially in December 2015 there were 17 GOP candidates and all needed to be researched.

However, when Donald Trump won New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina the field was significantly whittled. Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich and Carson remained.

On Super Tuesday, March 2, 2016 , Donald Trump won seven states (VT, AR, VA, GA, AL, TN, MA) it was then clear that Trump was the GOP frontrunner with momentum to become the presumptive nominee. On March 5th , Trump won Kentucky and Louisiana; and on March 8th Trump won Michigan, Mississippi and Hawaii.

The next day, March 9th , NSA security alerts warned internal oversight personnel that something sketchy was going on.

This timing is not coincidental. As FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer later wrote in her report, " many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges ." Put another way: attributes belonging to a specific individual(s) were being targeted and queried, unlawfully. Given what was later discovered, it seems obvious the primary search target, over multiple date ranges , was Donald Trump.

There were tens-of-thousands of unauthorized search queries; and as Judge Collyer stated in her report, there is no reason to believe the 85% non compliant rate was any different from the abuse of the NSA database going back to 2012.

As you will see below the NSA database was how political surveillance was being conducted during Obama's second term in office. However, when the system was flagged, and when NSA Director Mike Rogers shut down "contractor" access to the system, the system users needed to develop another way to get access.

Mike Rogers shuts down access on April 18, 2016. On April 19, 2016, Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson's wife, Mary Jacoby visits the White House. Immediately thereafter, the DNC and Clinton campaign contract Fusion GPS who then hire Christopher Steele.

Knowing it was federal "contractors", outside government with access to the system, doing the unauthorized searches, the question becomes: who were the contractors?

The possibilities are quite vast. Essentially anyone the FBI or intelligence apparatus was using could have participated. Crowdstrike was a known FBI contractor ; they were also contracted by the DNC . Shawn Henry was the former head of the FBI office in DC and is now the head of Crowdstrike; a rather dubious contractor for the government and a politically connected data security and forensic company. James Comey's special friend Daniel Richman was an unpaid FBI "special employee" with security access to the database. Nellie Ohr began working for Fusion-GPS on the Trump project in November 2015 and she was a CIA contractor ; and it's entirely likely Glenn Simpson or people within his Fusion-GPS network were also contractors for the intelligence community.

Remember the Sharyl Attkisson computer intrusions? It's all part of this same network; Attkisson even names Shawn Henry as a defendant in her ongoing lawsuit.

All of the aforementioned names, and so many more, held a political agenda in 2016.

It seems likely if the NSA flags were never triggered then the contracted system users would have continued exploiting the NSA database for political opposition research; which would then be funneled to the Clinton team. However, once the unauthorized flags were triggered, the system users (including those inside the official intelligence apparatus) needed to find another back-door to continue Again, the timing becomes transparent.

Immediately after NSA flags were raised March 9th; the same intelligence agencies began using confidential human sources (CHS's) to run into the Trump campaign. By activating intelligence assets like Joseph Mifsud and Stefan Halper the IC (CIA, FBI) and system users had now created an authorized way to continue the same political surveillance operations.

When Donald Trump hired Paul Manafort on March 28, 2016 , it was a perfect scenario for those doing the surveillance. Manafort was a known entity to the FBI and was previously under investigation. Paul Manafort's entry into the Trump orbit was perfect for Glenn Simpson to sell his prior research on Manafort as a Trump-Russia collusion script two weeks later.

The shift from "unauthorized exploitation of the NSA database" to legally authorized exploitation of the NSA database was now in place. This was how they continued the political surveillance. This is the confluence of events that originated "spygate", or what officially blossomed into the FBI investigation known as "Crossfire Hurricane" on July 31.

If the NSA flags were never raised; and if Director Rogers had never initiated the compliance audit; and if the political contractors were never blocked from access to the database; they would never have needed to create a legal back-door, a justification to retain the surveillance. The political operatives/contractors would have just continued the targeted metadata exploitation.

Once they created the surveillance door, Fusion-GPS was then needed to get the FBI known commodity of Chris Steele activated as a pipeline. Into that pipeline all system users pushed opposition research. However, one mistake from the NSA database extraction during an "about" query shows up as a New Yorker named Michael Cohen in Prague.

That misinterpreted data from a FISA-702 "about query" is then piped to Steele and turns up inside the dossier; it was the wrong Michael Cohen. It wasn't Trump's lawyer, it was an art dealer from New York City with the same name; the same "identifier".

A DEEP DIVE – How Did It Work?

Start by reviewing the established record from the 99-page FISC opinion rendered by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer on April 26, 2017. Review the details within the FISC opinion.

I would strongly urge everyone to read the FISC report (full pdf below) because Judge Collyer outlines how the DOJ, which includes the FBI, had an "institutional lack of candor" in responses to the FISA court. In essence, the Obama administration was continually lying to the FISA court about their activity, and the rate of fourth amendment violations for illegal searches and seizures of U.S. persons' private information for multiple years.

Unfortunately, due to intelligence terminology Judge Collyer's brief and ruling is not an easy read for anyone unfamiliar with the FISA processes. That complexity also helps the media avoid discussing it; and as a result most Americans have no idea the scale and scope of the Obama-era surveillance issues. So we'll try to break down the language.

Top Secret FISA Court Order... by The Conservative Treehouse on Scribd

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/349542716/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-72P5FzpI44KMOuOPZrt1

For the sake of brevity and common understanding CTH will highlight the most pertinent segments showing just how systemic and troublesome the unlawful electronic surveillance was.

Early in 2016 NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was alerted of a significant uptick in FISA-702(17) "About" queries using the FBI/NSA database that holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication.

The NSA compliance officer alerted Admiral Mike Rogers who then initiated a full compliance audit on/around March 9th, 2016 , for the period of November 1st, 2015, through May 1st, 2016.

While the audit was ongoing, due to the severity of the results that were identified, Admiral Mike Rogers stopped anyone from using the 702(17) "about query" option, and went to the extraordinary step of blocking all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016 (keep these dates in mind).

Here are some significant segments:

The key takeaway from these first paragraphs is how the search query results were exported from the NSA database to users who were not authorized to see the material. The FBI contractors were conducting searches and then removing, or 'exporting', the results. Later on, the FBI said all of the exported material was deleted.

Searching the highly classified NSA database is essentially a function of filling out search boxes to identify the user-initiated search parameter and get a return on the search result.

♦ FISA-702(16) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person ("702"); and the "16" is a check box to initiate a search based on " To and From ". Example, if you put in a date and a phone number and check "16" as the search parameter the user will get the returns on everything "To and From" that identified phone number for the specific date. Calls, texts, contacts etc. Including results for the inbound and outbound contacts.

♦ FISA-702(17) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (702); and the "17" is a check box to initiate a search based on everything " About " the search qualifier. Example, if you put a date and a phone number and check "17" as the search parameter the user will get the returns of everything about that phone. Calls, texts, contacts, geolocation (or gps results), account information, user, service provider etc. As a result, 702(17) can actually be used to locate where the phone (and user) was located on a specific date or sequentially over a specific period of time which is simply a matter of changing the date parameters.

And that's just from a phone number.

Search an ip address "about" and read all data into that server; put in an email address and gain everything about that account. Or use the electronic address of a GPS enabled vehicle (about) and you can withdraw more electronic data and monitor in real time. Search a credit card number and get everything about the account including what was purchased, where, when, etc. Search a bank account number, get everything about transactions and electronic records etc. Just about anything and everything can be electronically searched; everything has an electronic 'identifier' .

The search parameter is only limited by the originating field filled out. Names, places, numbers, addresses, etc. By using the "About" parameter there may be thousands or millions of returns. Imagine if you put "@realdonaldtrump" into the search parameter? You could extract all following accounts who interacted on Twitter, or Facebook etc. You are only limited by your imagination and the scale of the electronic connectivity.

As you can see below, on March 9th, 2016, internal auditors noted the FBI was sharing "raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information".

In plain English the raw search returns were being shared with unknown entities without any attempt to "minimize" or redact the results. The person(s) attached to the results were named and obvious. There was no effort to hide their identity or protect their 4th amendment rights of privacy; and database access was from the FBI network:

But what's the scale here? This is where the story really lies.

Read this next excerpt carefully.

The operators were searching "U.S Persons". The review of November 1, 2015, to May 1, 2016, showed "eighty-five percent of those queries" were unlawful or "non compliant".

85% !! "representing [redacted number]".

We can tell from the space of the redaction the number of searches were between 10,000 and 99,999 [six digits]. If we take the middle number of 50,000 – a non compliant rate of 85 percent means 42,500 unlawful searches out of 50,000.

The [six digit] amount (more than 10,000, less than 99,999), and 85% error rate, was captured in a six month period, November 2015 to April 2016.

Also notice this very important quote: " many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges ." This tells us the system users were searching the same phone number, email address, electronic identifier, repeatedly over different dates.

Specific person(s) were being tracked/monitored .

Additionally, notice the last quote: " while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of" these non lawful searches "since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 coincided with an unusually high error rate" .

That means the 85% unlawful FISA-702(16)(17) database abuse has likely been happening since 2012 .

2012 is an important date in this database abuse because a network of specific interests is assembled that also shows up in 2016/2017:

  • Who was 2012 FBI Director? Robert Mueller, who was selected by the FBI group to become special prosecutor in 2017.
  • Who was Mueller' chief-of-staff? Aaron Zebley, who became one of the lead lawyers on the Mueller special counsel.
  • Who was 2012 CIA Director? John Brennan (remember the ouster of Gen Petraeus)
  • Who was ODNI? James Clapper.
  • Remember, the NSA is inside the Pentagon (Defense Dept) command structure. Who was Defense Secretary? Ash Carter

Who wanted NSA Director Mike Rogers fired in 2016? Brennan, Clapper and Carter.

And finally, who wrote and signed-off-on the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment and then lied about the use of the Steele Dossier? The same John Brennan, and James Clapper along with James Comey.

Tens of thousands of searches over four years (since 2012), and 85% of them are illegal. The results were extracted for? . (I believe this is all political opposition use; and I'll explain why momentarily.)

OK, that's the stunning scale; but who was involved?

Private contractors with access to " raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to FBI's requests ":

And as noted, the contractor access was finally halted on April 18th, 2016.

[Coincidentally (or likely not), the wife of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson, Mary Jacoby, goes to the White House the very next day on April 19th, 2016.]

None of this is conspiracy theory.

All of this is laid out inside this 99-page opinion from FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer who also noted that none of this FISA abuse was accidental in a footnote on page 87 : " deliberate decisionmaking ":

This specific footnote, if declassified, could be a key. Note the phrase: "( [redacted] access to FBI systems was the subject of an interagency memorandum of understanding entered into [redacted])" , this sentence has the potential to expose an internal decision; withheld from congress and the FISA court by the Obama administration; that outlines a process for access and distribution of surveillance data.

Note: " no notice of this practice was given to the FISC until 2016 ", that is important.

Summary:

The FISA court identified and quantified tens-of-thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI database using the FISA-702(16)(17) system. The database was repeatedly used by persons with contractor access who unlawfully searched and extracted the raw results without redacting the information and shared it with an unknown number of entities.

The outlined process certainly points toward a political spying and surveillance operation; and we are not the only one to think that's what this system is being used for.

Back in 2017 when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was working to reauthorize the FISA legislation, Nunes wrote a letter to ODNI Dan Coats about this specific issue:

SIDEBAR :

To solve the issue, well, actually attempt to ensure it never happened again, NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers eventually took away the "About" query option permanently in 2017. NSA Director Rogers said the abuse was so inherent there was no way to stop it except to remove the process completely. [ SEE HERE ] Additionally, the NSA database operates as a function of the Pentagon, so the Trump administration went one step further. On his last day as NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers -together with ODNI Dan Coats- put U.S. cyber-command, the database steward, fully into the U.S. military as a full combatant command. [ SEE HERE ] Unfortunately it didn't work as shown by the 2018 FISC opinion rendered by FISC Judge James Boasberg [ SEE HERE ]

There is little doubt the FISA-702(16)(17) database system was used by Obama-era officials, from 2012 through April 2016, as a way to spy on their political opposition.

Quite simply there is no other intellectually honest explanation for the scale and volume of database abuse that was taking place; and keep in mind these searches were all ruled to be unlawful. Searches for repeated persons over a period time that were not authorized.

When we reconcile what was taking place and who was involved, then the actions of the exact same principle participants take on a jaw-dropping amount of clarity.

All of the action taken by CIA Director Brennan, FBI Director Comey, ODNI Clapper and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter make sense. Including their effort to get NSA Director Mike Rogers fired .

Everything after March 9th, 2016, had a dual purpose: (1) done to cover up the weaponization of the FISA database. [ Explained Here ] Spygate, Russia-Gate, the Steele Dossier, and even the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (drawn from the dossier and signed by the above) were needed to create a cover-story and protect themselves from discovery of this four year weaponization, political surveillance and unlawful spying. Even the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel makes sense; he was FBI Director when this began. And (2) they needed to keep the surveillance going.

The beginning decision to use FISA(702) as a domestic surveillance and political spy mechanism appears to have started in/around 2012. Perhaps sometime shortly before the 2012 presidential election and before John Brennan left the White House and moved to CIA. However, there was an earlier version of data assembly that preceded this effort.

Political spying 1.0 was actually the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term " Secret Research Project " originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:

The IRS sent the FBI "21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation." The transaction occurred in October 2010 ( link )

Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there's a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012 .

The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal. Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.

Lesson Learned – It would appear the Obama administration learned a lesson from attempting to gather a large opposition research database operation inside a functioning organization large enough to have some good people that might blow the whistle.

The timeline reflects a few months after realizing the "Secret Research Project" was now worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database. If our hunch is correct, that is what will be visible in footnote #69:

How this all comes together in 2019/2020

Fusion GPS was not hired in April 2016 just to research Donald Trump. As shown in the evidence provided by the FISC, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The Obama administration already knew everything about the Trump campaign, and were monitoring everything by exploiting the FISA database.

However, after the NSA alerts in/around March 9th, 2016, and particularly after the April 18th shutdown of contractor access, the Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to create a legal albeit ex post facto justification for the pre-existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion GPS gave them that justification in the Steele Dossier.

That's why the FBI small group, which later transitioned into the Mueller team, were so strongly committed to and defending the formation of the Steele Dossier and its dubious content.

The Steele Dossier, an outcome of the Fusion contract, contains three insurance policy purposes: (1) the cover-story and justification for the pre-existing surveillance operation (protect Obama); and (2) facilitate the FBI counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign (assist Clinton); and (3) continue the operation with a special counsel (protect both).

An insurance policy would be needed. The Steele Dossier becomes the investigative virus the FBI wanted inside the system. To get the virus into official status, they used the FISA application as the delivery method and injected it into Carter Page. The FBI already knew Carter Page; essentially Carter Page was irrelevant, what they needed was the FISA warrant and the Dossier in the system { Go Deep }.

The Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to give them a plausible justification for already existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion-GPS gave them that justification and evidence for a FISA warrant with the Steele Dossier.

Ultimately that's why the Steele Dossier was so important; without it, the FBI would not have a tool that Mueller needed to continue the investigation of President Trump. In essence by renewing the FISA application, despite them knowing the underlying dossier was junk, the FBI was keeping the surveillance gateway open for Team Mueller to exploit later on.

Additionally, without the Steele Dossier the DOJ and FBI are naked with their FISA-702 abuse as outlined by John Ratcliffe.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/wWsvZuiPyTI

Thankfully we know U.S. Attorney John Durham has talked to NSA Director Mike Rogers. In this video Rogers explains how he was notified of what was happening and what he did after the notification.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/CIJGH9RS2Fc

* * *

After tonight's tweets from President Trump, we should expect a full-court press from 'the resistance' to distract from the cracks appearing in the former President's halo of invincibility...

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[May 12, 2020] Flashback Obama Ordered Comey To Conceal FBI Activities Right Before Trump Took Office

May 12, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Flashback: Obama Ordered Comey To Conceal FBI Activities Right Before Trump Took Office by Tyler Durden Mon, 05/11/2020 - 14:05 With weeks to go before Donald Trump's inauguration, former President Obama and VP Joe Biden were briefed by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on matters related to the Russia investigation.

The January 5, 2017 meeting - also attended by former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, has taken on a new significance in light of revelations of blatant misconduct by the FBI - and the fact that the agency decided not to brief then-candidate Trump that a "friendly foreign government" (Australia) advised them that Russia had offered a member of his campaign 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton.

The rumored 'dirt' was in fact told to Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos by Joseph Mifsud - a shadowy Maltese professor and self-described member of the Clinton Foundation. Papadopoulos then told Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who told Aussie intelligence, which tipped off the FBI, which then launched Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Papadopoulos was then surveiled by FBI spy Stefan Halper and his honeypot 'assistant' who went by the name "Azra Turk" - while in 2017, Papadopoulos claims a spy handed him $10,000 in what he says goes "all the way back to the DOJ, under the previous FBI under Comey, and even the Mueller team."

Meanwhile, the Trump DOJ decided last week to drop the case against former Director of National Security, Mike Flynn, after it was revealed that the FBI was trying to ensnare him in a 'perjury trap,' and that Flynn was coerced into pleading guilty to lying about his very legal communications with the Russian Ambassador.

And let's not forget that the FBI used the discredited Steele Dossier to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page - and all of his contacts . Not only did the agency lie to the FISA court to obtain the warrant, the DOJ knew the outlandish claims of Trump-Russia ties in the Steele Dossier - funded by the Clinton Campaign - had no basis in reality.

And so, it's worth going back in time and reviewing that January 5, 2017 meeting which was oddly documented by Susan Rice in an email to herself on January 20, 2017 - inauguration day, which purports to summarize that meeting.

Rice later wrote an email to herself on January 20, 2017 -- Trump's inauguration day and her last day in the White House -- purporting to summarize that meeting. "On January 5, following a briefing by IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election," Rice wrote, "President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. Vice President Biden and I were also present."

According to Rice, "President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities 'by the book.'" But then she added a significant caveat to that "commitment": "From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia . "

The next portion of the email is classified, but Rice then noted that " the President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team . Comey said he would."

At the time Obama suggested to Yates and Comey -- who were to keep their posts under the Trump administration -- that the hold-overs consider withholding information from the incoming administration, Obama knew that President Trump had named Flynn to serve as national security advisor. Obama also knew there was an ongoing FBI investigation into Flynn premised on Flynn being a Russian agent. - The Federalist

And so, instead of briefing Trump on the Flynn investigation, Comey "privately briefed Trump on the most salacious and absurd 'pee tape' allegation in the Christopher Steele dossier."

The fact that Comey did so leaked to the press, which used the briefing itself as justification to report on, and publish the dossier .

What Comey didn't brief Trump on was the FBI's bullshit case against Michael Flynn - accusing the incoming national security adviser of being a potential Russian agent. And according to The Federalist , " Even after Obama had left office and Comey had a new commander-in-chief to report to, Comey continued to follow Obama's prompt by withholding intel from Trump. "

The Federalist also raises questions about former DNI James Clapper - specifically, whether Clapper lied to Congress in July of 2017 when he said he never briefed Obama on the substance of phone calls between Flynn and the Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

According to the report, accounts from Comey and McCabe directly contradict Clapper's claim.

" Did you ever brief President Obama on the phone call, the Flynn-Kislyak phone calls? " asked Rep. Francis Rooney (R0FL) during Congressional testimony, to which Clapper replied: " No. "

Except, Comey told Congress that Clapper directly briefed Obama ahead of the January 5 meeting.

"[A]ll the Intelligence Community was trying to figure out, so what is going on here?" Comey testified. "And so we were all tasked to find out, do you have anything [redacted] that might reflect on this. That turned up these calls [between Flynn and Kislyak] at the end of December, beginning of January," Comey testified. "And then I briefed it to the Director of National Intelligence, and Director Clapper asked me for copies [redacted], which I shared with him ... In the first week of January, he briefed the President and the Vice President and then President Obama's senior team about what we found and what we had seen to help them understand why the Russians were reacting the way they did. "

And now to see if anything comes of the ongoing Durham investigation, or if Attorney General Bill Barr will simply tie a bow on the matter and call it a day.

[May 11, 2020] Lee Zeldin Adam Schiff 'should resign today' for role in Russia investigation by Dominick Mastrangelo

Highly recommended!
Looks like Obama was the head of this gaslighing operation, not Schiff...
May 11, 2020 | www.washingtonexaminer.com
R ep. Lee Zeldin demanded that Rep. Adam Schiff be stripped of his post as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and resign because of his role in the Russia investigation.

"Adam Schiff should not be the chair of the House Intelligence Committee. His gavel should be removed. He should be censured. He should resign," Zeldin said Monday on Fox News. "There's a lot that should happen, but Nancy Pelosi isn't going to punish Adam Schiff. In fact, that's the reason why he has the gavel in the first place."

Republicans have been critical of Schiff in recent weeks after reports suggested that Schiff was trying to block the release of some of the transcripts of the investigation's 53 witness interviews.

Some of the transcripts were eventually released and undercut claims used by Democrats to push for impeachment.

"He's the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, which became the House Impeachment Committee because of the way he writes these fairy-tale parodies," Zeldin said.

The Republican from New York suggested that Schiff and Democrats who impeached Trump and tried to remove him from office were aided by friends in the media.

"It's actually one that the Democrats reward. It's one that the media rewards," Zeldin said. "So, I'm not going to expect any repercussions even though he should resign today."

https://embed.air.tv/v1/iframe/oJNk_yRyQ5G9DqCdGyOLTQ?organization=MoTlAWfQQXyEPg6AYxEZSw

[May 11, 2020] McCarthy: It would be 'profoundly crazy if Obama wasn't in on Flynn case'

Highly recommended!
Obama knew details of wiretapped Flynn phone calls, surprising top DOJ official in meeting with Biden, declassified docs show
And persecution of Flynn might be continuation of Obama action to destroy him after he criticized Obama foreign policy.
May 11, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Travis Moorman , 3 hours ago

It would be even more scary if Obama wasn't in on it.

LostInPA , 3 hours ago

Yates is up to her eyeballs in this coup attempt. She's trying to CYA like Rice. They going to jail.

[May 11, 2020] Grenell Takes Action To 'Unmask' Obama Officials Involved In Flynn Unmasking Scandal

Notable quotes:
"... Grenell reportedly visited the Justice Department last week to request the list of individuals, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity. ..."
"... Will Grenell unmask the unmaskers? ..."
May 11, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Richard Grenell, President Trump's acting Director of National Intelligence who successfully pressured Adam Schiff (D-CA) into releasing bombshell transcripts from the Russia investigation, is now after former officials from the Obama administration involved in the so-called "unmasking" of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn during his conversations with the former Russian ambassador following the 2016 election, according to ABC News .

"Unmasking" is a term used when the identity of a U.S. citizen or lawful resident is revealed in classified intelligence reports. Normally, when government officials receive intelligence reports, the names of American citizens are redacted to protect their privacy. But officials can request that names, listed as "U.S. Person 1," for example, be unmasked internally in order to give context about the potential value of the intelligence. Unmasking is justified for national security reasons but is governed by strict rules across the U.S. intelligence apparatus that make it illegal to pursue for political reasons or to leak classified information generated by the process .

And much like Obama's IRS targeting scandal, US government capabilities were exploited to accomplish political objectives .

Grenell reportedly visited the Justice Department last week to request the list of individuals, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

His visit indicates his focus on an issue previously highlighted in 2017 by skeptics of the investigation into the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia, specifically allegations that former officials improperly unveiled Flynn's identity from intercepts of his call with former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Grenell's visit came the same week that Attorney General William Barr moved to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn following his guilty plea for lying to the FBI about his conversations with Kislyak. - ABC News

After Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice was outed as the ringleader of an unmasking campaign, the Wall Street Journal reported that she wasn't the only administration official to participate in Flynn's unmasking .

The news comes after the DOJ dropped all charges against Flynn, after several unsealed documents revealed that the FBI was more interested in ensnaring him in a perjury trap - after the agency's own DC field office advised that they were barking up the wrong tree . Under pressure due to legal bills and an FBI threat to pursue his son, Flynn caved and pleaded guilty to lying about his communications with the Russian ambassador.

" They did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at that stage , based on a perfectly legitimate and appropriate call he made as a member of the transition," Barr told CBS last week.

In 2017, then-House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) accused the Obama administration of unmasking Trump transition officials - while two national security officials at the White House provided Nunes with supporting evidence.

Will Grenell unmask the unmaskers?

@GenFlynn was wrongly targeted.
• The Steele Dossier was made-up.
• The Russia-collusion narrative was a farce.

Obama's White House and Justice Department led the way on these lies. Time for Susan Rice, James Clapper, and Loretta Lynch to answer for what transpired.

-- Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) May 11, 2020

[May 11, 2020] Twin Pillars of Russiagate Crumble by Ray McGovern

Highly recommended!
So the RussiaGate was giant gaslighting of the US electorate by Clinton gang and intelligence agencies rogues.
Notable quotes:
"... For two and a half years the House Intelligence Committee knew CrowdStrike didn't have the goods on Russia. Now the public knows too. ..."
"... House Intelligence Committee documents released Thursday reveal that the committee was told two and half years ago that the FBI had no concrete evidence that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers to filch the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks ..."
"... Henry testifies that "it appears it [the theft of DNC emails] was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually left." ..."
"... This, in VIPS view, suggests that someone with access to DNC computers "set up" selected emails for transfer to an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example. The Internet is not needed for such a transfer. Use of the Internet would have been detected, enabling Henry to pinpoint any "exfiltration" over that network. ..."
"... Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director and a VIPs member, filed a sworn affidavit in the Roger Stone case. Binney said: "WikiLeaks did not receive stolen data from the Russian government. Intrinsic metadata in the publicly available files on WikiLeaks demonstrates that the files acquired by WikiLeaks were delivered in a medium such as a thumb drive." ..."
"... Both pillars of Russiagate–collusion and a Russian hack–have now fairly crumbled. ..."
"... Thursday's disclosure of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee shows Chairman Adam Schiff lied not only about Trump-Putin "collusion," [which the Mueller report failed to prove and whose allegations were based on DNC and Clinton-financed opposition research] but also about the even more basic issue of "Russian hacking" of the DNC. [See: "The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate."] ..."
"... Fortunately, the cameras were still on when I approached Schiff during the Q&A: "You have every confidence but no evidence, is that right?" I asked him. His answer was a harbinger of things to come. This video clip may be worth the four minutes needed to watch it. ..."
"... Schiff and his partners in crime will be in for much tougher treatment if Trump allows Attorney General Barr and US Attorney John Durham to bring their investigation into the origins of Russia-gate to a timely conclusion. Barr's dismissal on Thursday of charges against Flynn, after released FBI documents revealed that a perjury trap was set for him to keep Russiagate going, may be a sign of things to come. ..."
May 11, 2020 | original.antiwar.com

For two and a half years the House Intelligence Committee knew CrowdStrike didn't have the goods on Russia. Now the public knows too.

House Intelligence Committee documents released Thursday reveal that the committee was told two and half years ago that the FBI had no concrete evidence that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers to filch the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks in July 2016.

The until-now-buried, closed-door testimony came on Dec. 5, 2017 from Shawn Henry, a protégé of former FBI Director Robert Mueller (from 2001 to 2012), for whom Henry served as head of the Bureau's cyber crime investigations unit.

Henry retired in 2012 and took a senior position at CrowdStrike, the cyber security firm hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign to investigate the cyber intrusions that occurred before the 2016 presidential election.

The following excerpts from Henry's testimony speak for themselves. The dialogue is not a paragon of clarity; but if read carefully, even cyber neophytes can understand:

Ranking Member Mr. [Adam] Schiff: Do you know the date on which the Russians exfiltrated the data from the DNC? when would that have been?

Mr. Henry: Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC, we have indicators that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have no indicators that it was exfiltrated (sic). There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case, it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually left.

Mr. [Chris] Stewart of Utah: Okay. What about the emails that everyone is so, you know, knowledgeable of? Were there also indicators that they were prepared but not evidence that they actually were exfiltrated?

Mr. Henry: There's not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There's circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated.

Mr. Stewart: But you have a much lower degree of confidence that this data actually left than you do, for example, that the Russians were the ones who breached the security?

Mr. Henry: There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the network.

Mr. Stewart: And circumstantial is less sure than the other evidence you've indicated.

Mr. Henry: "We didn't have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data left based on the circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made.

In answer to a follow-up query on this line of questioning, Henry delivered this classic: "Sir, I was just trying to be factually accurate, that we didn't see the data leave, but we believe it left, based on what we saw."

Inadvertently highlighting the tenuous underpinning for CrowdStrike's "belief" that Russia hacked the DNC emails, Henry added: "There are other nation-states that collect this type of intelligence for sure, but the – what we would call the tactics and techniques were consistent with what we'd seen associated with the Russian state."

Interesting admission in Crowdstrike CEO Shaun Henry's testimony. Henry is asked when "the Russians" exfiltrated the data from DNC.

Henry: "We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated." ?? pic.twitter.com/TyePqd6b5P

-- Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) May 8, 2020

Not Transparent

Try as one may, some of the testimony remains opaque. Part of the problem is ambiguity in the word "exfiltration."

The word can denote (1) transferring data from a computer via the Internet (hacking) or (2) copying data physically to an external storage device with intent to leak it.

As the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has been reporting for more than three years, metadata and other hard forensic evidence indicate that the DNC emails were not hacked – by Russia or anyone else.

Rather, they were copied onto an external storage device (probably a thumb drive) by someone with access to DNC computers. Besides, any hack over the Internet would almost certainly have been discovered by the dragnet coverage of the National Security Agency and its cooperating foreign intelligence services.

Henry testifies that "it appears it [the theft of DNC emails] was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually left."

This, in VIPS view, suggests that someone with access to DNC computers "set up" selected emails for transfer to an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example. The Internet is not needed for such a transfer. Use of the Internet would have been detected, enabling Henry to pinpoint any "exfiltration" over that network.

Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director and a VIPs member, filed a sworn affidavit in the Roger Stone case. Binney said: "WikiLeaks did not receive stolen data from the Russian government. Intrinsic metadata in the publicly available files on WikiLeaks demonstrates that the files acquired by WikiLeaks were delivered in a medium such as a thumb drive."

The So-Called Intelligence Community Assessment

There is not much good to be said about the embarrassingly evidence-impoverished Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of Jan. 6, 2017 accusing Russia of hacking the DNC.

But the ICA did include two passages that are highly relevant and demonstrably true:

(1) In introductory remarks on "cyber incident attribution", the authors of the ICA made a highly germane point: "The nature of cyberspace makes attribution of cyber operations difficult but not impossible. Every kind of cyber operation – malicious or not – leaves a trail."

(2) "When analysts use words such as 'we assess' or 'we judge,' [these] are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong." [And one might add that they commonly ARE wrong when analysts succumb to political pressure, as was the case with the ICA.]

The intelligence-friendly corporate media, nonetheless, immediately awarded the status of Holy Writ to the misnomered "Intelligence Community Assessment" (it was a rump effort prepared by "handpicked analysts" from only CIA, FBI, and NSA), and chose to overlook the banal, full-disclosure-type caveats embedded in the assessment itself.

Then National Intelligence Director James Clapper and the directors of the CIA, FBI, and NSA briefed President Obama on the ICA on Jan. 5, 2017, the day before they gave it personally to President-elect Donald Trump.

On Jan. 18, 2017, at his final press conference, Obama saw fit to use lawyerly language on the key issue of how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks , in an apparent effort to cover his own derriere.

Obama: "The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked."

So we ended up with "inconclusive conclusions" on that admittedly crucial point. What Obama was saying is that U.S. intelligence did not know -- or professed not to know -- exactly how the alleged Russian transfer to WikiLeaks was supposedly made, whether through a third party, or cutout, and he muddied the waters by first saying it was a hack, and then a leak.

From the very outset, in the absence of any hard evidence, from NSA or from its foreign partners, of an Internet hack of the DNC emails, the claim that "the Russians gave the DNC emails to WikiLeaks " rested on thin gruel.

In November 2018 at a public forum, I asked Clapper to explain why President Obama still had serious doubts in late Jan. 2017, less than two weeks after Clapper and the other intelligence chiefs had thoroughly briefed the outgoing president about their "high-confidence" findings.

Clapper replied : "I cannot explain what he [Obama] said or why. But I can tell you we're, we're pretty sure we know, or knew at the time, how WikiLeaks got those emails." Pretty sure?

Preferring CrowdStrike; 'Splaining to Congress

CrowdStrike already had a tarnished reputation for credibility when the DNC and Clinton campaign chose it to do work the FBI should have been doing to investigate how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks . It had asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine's struggle with separatists supported by Russia. A Voice of America report explained why CrowdStrike was forced to retract that claim.

Why did FBI Director James Comey not simply insist on access to the DNC computers? Surely he could have gotten the appropriate authorization. In early January 2017, reacting to media reports that the FBI never asked for access, Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee there were "multiple requests at different levels" for access to the DNC servers.

"Ultimately what was agreed to is the private company would share with us what they saw," he said. Comey described CrowdStrike as a "highly respected" cybersecurity company.

Asked by committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) whether direct access to the servers and devices would have helped the FBI in their investigation, Comey said it would have. "Our forensics folks would always prefer to get access to the original device or server that's involved, so it's the best evidence," he said.

Five months later, after Comey had been fired, Burr gave him a Mulligan in the form of a few kid-gloves, clearly well-rehearsed, questions:

BURR: And the FBI, in this case, unlike other cases that you might investigate – did you ever have access to the actual hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?

COMEY: In the case of the DNC, we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. But we didn't get direct access.

BURR: But no content?

COMEY: Correct.

BURR: Isn't content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?

COMEY: It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks – the people who were my folks at the time is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016.

In June last year it was revealed that CrowdStrike never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, according to the Justice Department.

By any normal standard, former FBI Director Comey would now be in serious legal trouble, as should Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, et al. Additional evidence of FBI misconduct under Comey seems to surface every week – whether the abuses of FISA, misconduct in the case against Gen. Michael Flynn, or misleading everyone about Russian hacking of the DNC. If I were attorney general, I would declare Comey a flight risk and take his passport. And I would do the same with Clapper and Brennan.

Schiff: Every Confidence, But No Evidence

Both pillars of Russiagate–collusion and a Russian hack–have now fairly crumbled.

Thursday's disclosure of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee shows Chairman Adam Schiff lied not only about Trump-Putin "collusion," [which the Mueller report failed to prove and whose allegations were based on DNC and Clinton-financed opposition research] but also about the even more basic issue of "Russian hacking" of the DNC. [See: "The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate."]

Five days after Trump took office, I had an opportunity to confront Schiff personally about evidence that Russia "hacked" the DNC emails. He had repeatedly given that canard the patina of flat fact during an address at the old Hillary Clinton/John Podesta "think tank," The Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Fortunately, the cameras were still on when I approached Schiff during the Q&A: "You have every confidence but no evidence, is that right?" I asked him. His answer was a harbinger of things to come. This video clip may be worth the four minutes needed to watch it.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/SdOy-l13FEg

Schiff and his partners in crime will be in for much tougher treatment if Trump allows Attorney General Barr and US Attorney John Durham to bring their investigation into the origins of Russia-gate to a timely conclusion. Barr's dismissal on Thursday of charges against Flynn, after released FBI documents revealed that a perjury trap was set for him to keep Russiagate going, may be a sign of things to come.

Given the timid way Trump has typically bowed to intelligence and law enforcement officials, including those who supposedly report to him, however, one might rather expect that, after a lot of bluster, he will let the too-big-to-imprison ones off the hook. The issues are now drawn; the evidence is copious; will the Deep State, nevertheless, be able to prevail this time?

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This originally appeared at Consortium News .

[May 11, 2020] Obama Participated In Plot To Frame Flynn Sidney Powell

May 11, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

"These agents specifically schemed and planned with each other how to not tip him off, that he was even the person being investigated," Powell told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures," adding "So they kept him relaxed and unguarded deliberately as part of their effort to set him up and frame him."

According to recently released testimony, President Obama revealed during an Oval Office meeting weeks before the interview that he knew about Flynn's phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak , apparently surprising then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates .

After the meeting, Obama asked Yates and then-FBI Director James Comey to "stay behind." Obama "specified that he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information." - Fox News

Despite the FBI's Washington DC field office recommending closing the case against Flynn - finding "no derogatory information" against him - fired agent Peter Strzok pushed to continue investigating, while former FBI Director James Comey admitted in December 2019 that he "sent" Strzok and agent Joe Pientka to interview Flynn without notifying the White House first .

... ... ...

After Strzok and Pientka interviewed Flynn, handwritten notes unsealed last month reveal that at least one agent thought the goal was to entrap Flynn .

"What is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?" reads one note.

... ... ...

"The whole thing was orchestrated and set up within the FBI, [former Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper, [Former CIA Director John] Brennan, and in the Oval Office meeting that day with President Obama," said Powell. When asked if she thinks Flynn was the victim of a plot that extended to Obama, she said "Absolutely."

[May 11, 2020] Anti-Russian hysteria as the key feature of American neofascism. In a way RussiaGate is a neofascist putsch

May 11, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

FDR warned his son before his death of his understanding of the British takeover of American foreign policy, but still could not reverse this agenda. His son recounted his father's ominous insight:

"You know, any number of times the men in the State Department have tried to conceal messages to me, delay them, hold them up somehow, just because some of those career diplomats over there aren't in accord with what they know I think. They should be working for Winston. As a matter of fact, a lot of the time, they are [working for Churchill]. Stop to think of 'em: any number of 'em are convinced that the way for America to conduct its foreign policy is to find out what the British are doing and then copy that!" I was told six years ago, to clean out that State Department. It's like the British Foreign Office ."

Before being fired from Truman's cabinet for his advocacy of US-Russia friendship during the Cold War, Wallace stated:

"American fascism" which has come to be known in recent years as the Deep State. "Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about this conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain races, creeds and classes."

In his 1946 Soviet Asia Mission , Wallace said " Before the blood of our boys is scarcely dry on the field of battle, these enemies of peace try to lay the foundation for World War III. These people must not succeed in their foul enterprise. We must offset their poison by following the policies of Roosevelt in cultivating the friendship of Russia in peace as well as in war."

[May 11, 2020] We Could All Be General Michael Flynn Tomorrow by Scott Ritter

Notable quotes:
"... "[Plea bargaining] is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal justice system." ..."
"... Federal prosecutors are equipped with a considerable range of legal weapons that can be used to compel confessions and discourage a jury trial, including charge-stacking (charging multiple criminal counts derived from a single act), mandatory-minimum sentences which eliminate discretion on the part of a sentencing judge, pretrial confinement, inordinately high bail, threats against friends and family, and the reality that any sentence handed down after trial will be substantially greater than one that could be reached via a plea bargain. ..."
"... The upside of such a process is a streamlined criminal justice system which places a premium on convictions and incarceration without the cost of a trial. The downside, however, is an unacceptably high rate of false confessions obtained by the plea deal process -- the National Registry of Exonerations estimates that as many as 20 percent of all plea deal-related confessions are false . ..."
"... The Obama national security team abused its power by unmasking Flynn's identity, then leaked Flynn's identity to the press, using this press reporting to justify the continuance of a baseless counterintelligence investigation in order to set a perjury trap intended to place Flynn in legal jeopardy. This is not how American justice is supposed to be dispensed, and the fact that Flynn had to undergo this ordeal should send a shiver down every American's spine, because if left unchecked, there but for the grace of God go us all. ..."
May 11, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com
The Department of Justice's case against retired Army Lieutenant General and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn has exposed an ugly reality involving the abuse of power at the highest levels of the Executive Office all the way down the justice system this country ostensibly holds so dear.

Plea bargains are an unfortunate reality of an American system of justice which finds merit in coercing people to admit guilt for crimes they didn't commit in order to avoid the expense of a trial and to prevent friends and family from potential legal liability. If the purpose behind such procedural abuse of power is to fight actual crime, the American people have grown accustomed to turning a blind eye. But if the purpose is to exact political revenge on someone who has incurred the disfavor of those in power, then the plea bargain system is a direct assault on the Constitution that should insult every American, regardless where they stand on the respective merits of the case. General Flynn's case falls firmly in the latter category.

Mike Flynn isn't everyone's cup of tea. The controversial intelligence officer is perhaps best known for his short 24-day tenure as President Trump's National Security Advisor, relieved of his duties for allegedly lying about a conversation he had with then-Russian Ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak. The FBI claimed Flynn had lied about this conversation to its agents during a January 24, 2017 interview , a charge Flynn subsequently pled guilty to .

But in a surprising turn of events, the Department of Justice has dropped its case against Flynn on the eve of his being sentenced in a Federal Court. In their dismissal of the case, the Justice department concluded that the FBI's interview with Flynn was "conducted without any legitimate investigative basis" and that the questioning was "untethered to, and unjustified by, the F.B.I.'s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn."

Flynn's many critics have cried foul, claiming the dismissal is nothing short of a perversion of justice carried out at the behest of President Trump by an overly partisan Attorney General, William Barr. Flynn's supporters have praised this outcome as a clear case of exoneration in the face of corrupt FBI agents who abused the extraordinary powers they wield to engage in Constitutionally impermissible conduct designed to frame the former General.

In 2018, the Department of Justice initiated approximately 80,000 federal prosecutions . Two percent of these cases went to trial, with an 83 percent conviction rate. Of the remaining 98 percent of the cases, some 90 percent ended with the defendant pleading guilty; the remaining 8 percent were dismissed. The plea process is so prevalent and pervasive in the U.S. Court system that in the Supreme Court's 2012 decision in Missouri v. Frye , Justice Steven Kennedy, writing for the majority, quoted a prominent law review article which concluded that "[Plea bargaining] is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal justice system."

Federal prosecutors are equipped with a considerable range of legal weapons that can be used to compel confessions and discourage a jury trial, including charge-stacking (charging multiple criminal counts derived from a single act), mandatory-minimum sentences which eliminate discretion on the part of a sentencing judge, pretrial confinement, inordinately high bail, threats against friends and family, and the reality that any sentence handed down after trial will be substantially greater than one that could be reached via a plea bargain.

The upside of such a process is a streamlined criminal justice system which places a premium on convictions and incarceration without the cost of a trial. The downside, however, is an unacceptably high rate of false confessions obtained by the plea deal process -- the National Registry of Exonerations estimates that as many as 20 percent of all plea deal-related confessions are false .

The reason for such a high rate of occurrence rests in the coercive reality attached to the tools used by the prosecutor to leverage a plea in the first place. For someone who is guilty of a crime, a plea deal that reduces a potential 20-year sentence to five is very attractive. For an innocent person, however, the prospect of not being able to afford competent legal representation (an all-too reality, especially in one is subjected to pre-trial confinement and as such unable to earn a living), combined with potential threats made to prosecute family and friends, make pleading guilty to a crime not committed a viable option.

The plea bargain process also facilitates prosecutorial misconduct. By pleading guilty, a defendant cedes control of the processes of justice to the prosecution; issues related to discovery -- the requirement on the part of the prosecution to turn over all evidence relating to the charged conduct, even if exculpatory in nature -- are often brushed aside, since guilt is admitted and no challenge to the charges will be mounted. Prosecutors more often than not bully their way into a coerced plea agreement, even when they know that their case would not withstand scrutiny, because simple statistics have proven that more often than not they can get away with it.

♦♦♦

The prosecution of General Flynn is a text-book example of clear prosecutorial abuse designed to obtain a guilty plea. The FBI initiated a counterintelligence-scope investigation against General Flynn not because he was accused of committing a crime, but rather because he had incurred the wrath of the Obama administration.

When the FBI opened its Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened on July 31, 2016, its scope was limited to allegations that a Trump campaign advisor, George Papadopoulos, was in contact with persons working on behalf of the Russian government who were involved in the alleged theft of documents from the Democratic National Committee server. Flynn had no connection whatsoever to this issue. However, the FBI used the Crossfire Hurricane investigation as cover to open a separate investigation , known as Crossfire Razor, against Flynn based upon contacts he had with Russia Today, a state-sponsored media outlet.

William Barr has since determined that Crossfire Razor was not a bona fide counterintelligence investigation in so far as it lacked proper predication and Flynn's Russian connections were not materially relevant.

In January 2017 the FBI was preparing to shut down Crossfire Razor when FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok argued that it remain open so that he could conduct an interview with Flynn about his telephone call with Ambassador Kislyak in December 2016. This is where the Flynn case loses touch with its foundation of legality. The Flynn-Kislyak phone call was monitored by the U.S. intelligence community. Normally the identity of any U.S. citizen so monitored is "masked," or hidden, from any consumer of the intelligence. On certain occasions, select senior officials may request that an identity be "unmasked" to allow for a greater understanding of the context of the conversation. Flynn's identity was "unmasked" using this procedure, most likely on the orders of then-FBI Director James Comey. According to Comey , he then briefed Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who in turn briefed President Obama.

There was bad blood between Flynn, Clapper and Obama. On November 10, 2016, when Obama met with President-elect Trump in the White House, he warned Trump not to hire Flynn as his National Security Advisor, ostensibly because of his behavior while serving as the Director of DIA; Trump ignored this advice, naming Flynn as the incoming NSA on November 18. Clapper was the man who fired Flynn at the DIA in 2014.

On January 12, David Ignatius published an article in The Washington Post which detailed Flynn's December conversation with Kislyak; Sydney Powell, Flynn's laywer, has filed documents with the Federal Court asserting that Ignatius had received this highly classified information in violation of the law, and furthermore that is was Clapper who cleared Ignatius to "take the kill shot on Flynn" by publishing the details of the Flynn-Kislyak conversation.

If the potential for collusion between the FBI Director (Comey), the Director of National Intelligence (Clapper) and the President of the United States (Obama) to undermine Flynn wasn't disturbing enough, the fact that Ignatius' article enabled the FBI to conduct an interview on January 24 with Flynn that has been described by William Barr as "a perjury trap" should seal the deal.

Flynn was subsequently fired as the NSA, charged with lying to the FBI, bankrupted in the process of trying to defend himself, and threatened with the prosecution of his son if he opted to take the matter to trial. Like many before him, Flynn pled guilty to a crime he never should have been charged with in the first place. Only the diligence of Flynn's current legal team in forcing disclosure of exculpatory information, combined with William Barr's efforts to expose wrongdoing by the FBI and the Intelligence Community in investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, made the dismissal of Flynn's case possible.

It doesn't matter where one stands on the issue of Mike Flynn, the man. I for one am personally disturbed by his overly partisan approach toward national security, and the liberty he takes with facts when making an argument. I don't believe he was the right person to serve as Trump's National Security Advisor. Apparently neither did President Obama and his national security team. But we don't have a vote in this matter; the National Security Advisor is President Trump's responsibility to select. Elections have consequences.

The Obama national security team abused its power by unmasking Flynn's identity, then leaked Flynn's identity to the press, using this press reporting to justify the continuance of a baseless counterintelligence investigation in order to set a perjury trap intended to place Flynn in legal jeopardy. This is not how American justice is supposed to be dispensed, and the fact that Flynn had to undergo this ordeal should send a shiver down every American's spine, because if left unchecked, there but for the grace of God go us all.

Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of several books, including his forthcoming, Scorpion King: America's Embrace of Nuclear Weapons From FDR to Trump (2020).

[May 10, 2020] What did Obama know, and when did he know it

FBI under Obama acted as Gestapo -- the political police. Obama looks now especially bad and probably should be prosecuted for the attempt to stage coup d'état against legitimately elected president. His CIA connections need to investigated and prosecuted too, and first of all Brennan.
Notable quotes:
"... Yates, who was briefly the acting attorney general during the early days of the Trump administration before getting fired, also laid out how in the ensuing days, Comey kept the FBI's actions cloaked in secrecy and repeatedly rebuffed her suggestions that the incoming Trump team be made aware of the Flynn recordings. ..."
"... "One thing people will see when they look at the documents is how Director Comey purposely went around the Justice Department and ignored Deputy Attorney General Yate s," Attorney General William Barr said during a Thursday interview with CBS News. "Deputy Attorney General Yates, I've disagreed with her about a couple of things, but, you know, here she upheld the fine tradition of the Department of Justice. She said that the new administration has to be treated just like the Obama administration, and they should go and tell the White House about their findings And, you know, Director Comey ran around that." ..."
"... Obama asked Yates and Comey to stay behind when the meeting concluded. ..."
"... Obama "started by saying that he had 'learned of the information about Flynn' and his conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak," Yates said, according to the notes. "Obama specified he did not want any additional information on the matter but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently." washington examiner ..."
"... Obama did not want any additional information on the matter? Careful CYA. From the account of this meeting it is clear that Obama and Biden knew that Comey was intent on pursuing Flynn. If that is so, then subsequent events indicate that Obama did not act to stop Comey, and since Comey was hiding his effort against Flynn from main Justice, it must be that someone on high was encouraging him. Now, who would that be? pl ..."
"... All this was known in DC for the past few years. Everyone on the HSPCI knew what the closed door testimony was. Clapper was categorical that there was "no empirical evidence of collusion". The Crowdstrike CEO was categorical that he had no definitive evidence that the Russians exfiltrated data from the DNC servers. Yet Schiff, Clapper, Brennan and all the media hacks were on TV every night screaming Russia! Russia! and Collusion! Collusion! ..."
"... I'm revealing my age by using this expression from the Watergate era, but "what did Obama, Biden and Comey know, and when did they know it?" ..."
"... So Obama used Yates to go after Flynn. They have really worked a number on Flynn to discredit him, and it almost worked. Now it would appear their scheme is starting to unravel a bit. ..."
"... Is Obama being thrown under the bus here? Are Comey and Yates (or others) trying to cover their asses now that Flynn is free? Did Trump and his allies always know this and waited for the right moment to reveal it for better effect? The game is at hand. ..."
"... Brennan was encouraging Comey. I just learned something recently. Brennan spent time in Indonesia around the same time that Obama's mother lived there. It has been reported that Obama and Brennan had a fairly close relationship. I wonder how long they have known each other. ..."
"... I did see a clip of Matt Gaetz calling out Ryan and Trey Gowdy from preventing them from issuing subpoenas. Why do you think the Republican leadership in the House and Senate did not want to investigate? ..."
May 09, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

" Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told special counsel Robert Mueller's team that she first learned the FBI possessed and was investigating recordings of Flynn's late 2016 conversations with a Russian envoy following a Jan. 5, 2017, national security meeting at the White House. It wasn't Comey who told her, but former President Barack Obama.

Yates, who was briefly the acting attorney general during the early days of the Trump administration before getting fired, also laid out how in the ensuing days, Comey kept the FBI's actions cloaked in secrecy and repeatedly rebuffed her suggestions that the incoming Trump team be made aware of the Flynn recordings.

These revelations appear in declassified FBI interview notes of the Mueller team's conversation with Yates in August 2017, highlighted by the Justice Department on Thursday as U.S. Attorney for D.C. Timothy Shea moved to drop its criminal charges against Flynn.

"One thing people will see when they look at the documents is how Director Comey purposely went around the Justice Department and ignored Deputy Attorney General Yate s," Attorney General William Barr said during a Thursday interview with CBS News. "Deputy Attorney General Yates, I've disagreed with her about a couple of things, but, you know, here she upheld the fine tradition of the Department of Justice. She said that the new administration has to be treated just like the Obama administration, and they should go and tell the White House about their findings And, you know, Director Comey ran around that."

Yates told Mueller's team she first learned of the Flynn recordings following a White House meeting about the Intelligence Community Assessment attended by Yates, Comey, Vice President Joe Biden , then-CIA Director John Brennan, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, then-national security adviser Susan Rice, and others. Obama asked Yates and Comey to stay behind when the meeting concluded.

Obama "started by saying that he had 'learned of the information about Flynn' and his conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak," Yates said, according to the notes. "Obama specified he did not want any additional information on the matter but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently." washington examiner

-------------

Obama did not want any additional information on the matter? Careful CYA. From the account of this meeting it is clear that Obama and Biden knew that Comey was intent on pursuing Flynn. If that is so, then subsequent events indicate that Obama did not act to stop Comey, and since Comey was hiding his effort against Flynn from main Justice, it must be that someone on high was encouraging him. Now, who would that be? pl

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/sally-yates-learned-of-flynn-targeting-from-obama-as-comey-kept-her-in-the-dark-declassified-documents-show


Jack , 09 May 2020 at 12:40 PM

Sir

All this was known in DC for the past few years. Everyone on the HSPCI knew what the closed door testimony was. Clapper was categorical that there was "no empirical evidence of collusion". The Crowdstrike CEO was categorical that he had no definitive evidence that the Russians exfiltrated data from the DNC servers. Yet Schiff, Clapper, Brennan and all the media hacks were on TV every night screaming Russia! Russia! and Collusion! Collusion!

Devin Nunes was spot on and correct that there was an attempted coup. All the media and even many Republicans called him a conspiracy theorist.

SST maintaining its glorious tradition was spot on in its analysis with the limited data available that there was a coup and the traitors were not those in the Trump campaign but the leadership in law enforcement and intelligence. A big shoutout to you, Larry and David Habakkuk.

Trump himself was like deer caught in the headlights. Furiously tweeting but not doing much of anything else while his own nominees at the DOJ and FBI were plotting and acting to destroy his presidency. Devin Nunes imploring him to declassify and expose all the evidence from the FISA applications, the 302s, the internal communications among the plotters including the prolific FBI lovers. He still hasn't.

What happens next? Will the whole coup be exposed in its entirety? Will anyone be held to account?

If Trump doesn't care enough even when his ass was being fried to disclose all the evidence with the stroke of his pen and if all he cares is to tweet "witch-hunt" and "Drain the Swamp", how realistic is it that any of the coup plotters will be tried for treason?

Deap , 09 May 2020 at 01:01 PM
Barry was doing his usual thing, the signature move of his entire political career: .... voting "present". His CYA equivalent of no comment.

Plausible deniability was a high art form for Barry. Where was Barry Soetoro between 16:00 and 22:00 on Sept 11, 2012? We still do not know.

Jim Henely , 09 May 2020 at 01:07 PM
I'm revealing my age by using this expression from the Watergate era, but "what did Obama, Biden and Comey know, and when did they know it?"
RussianBot , 09 May 2020 at 01:40 PM
So Obama used Yates to go after Flynn. They have really worked a number on Flynn to discredit him, and it almost worked. Now it would appear their scheme is starting to unravel a bit.

Is Obama being thrown under the bus here? Are Comey and Yates (or others) trying to cover their asses now that Flynn is free? Did Trump and his allies always know this and waited for the right moment to reveal it for better effect? The game is at hand.

Yahoo released a leaked call today of Obama criticizing Trump's response over coronavirus. Here's the big headline Yahoo is running:

Exclusive: Obama says in private call that 'rule of law is at risk' in Michael Flynn case

https://news.yahoo.com/obama-irule-of-law-michael-flynn-case-014121045.html

The Flynn case was invoked by Obama as a principal reason that his former administration officials needed to make sure former Vice President Joe Biden wins the November election against President Trump. "So I am hoping that all of you feel the same sense of urgency that I do," he said. "Whenever I campaign, I've always said, 'Ah, this is the most important election.' Especially obviously when I was on the ballot, that always feels like it's the most important election. This one -- I'm not on the ballot -- but I am pretty darn invested. We got to make this happen."
Obama misstated the charge to which Flynn had previously pleaded guilty. He was charged with false statements to the FBI, not perjury.

Misstated seems like a stretch. The call sounds scripted and I suspect the leak was deliberate.

Keith Harbaugh , 09 May 2020 at 02:12 PM
Sundance covered in great detail the context in which that 2017-01-05 meeting occurred:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/01/why-was-flynn-targeted-a-timeline-review-of-the-three-phases/

A YouTube video of Barry's cry of dismay (and fear) over the dismissal of charges against Flynn is here:
https://youtu.be/tbQ8P3GhD-c

EmJay72159508 , 09 May 2020 at 04:50 PM
Brennan was encouraging Comey. I just learned something recently. Brennan spent time in Indonesia around the same time that Obama's mother lived there. It has been reported that Obama and Brennan had a fairly close relationship. I wonder how long they have known each other.
JMH , 09 May 2020 at 04:58 PM
Keith Harbaugh,

O'Biden's Dad just wheeled around the corner in a wood paneled station wagon and dressed down the neighborhood kids who took O'Biden's ball. A humiliating experience for O'Biden who sits in the passenger seat as a mere spectator.

Keith Harbaugh , 09 May 2020 at 07:35 PM
Sundance just posted an astoundingly detailed account of
how illegal surveillance was conducted by unauthorized FBI-contractors
while the GOP was sorting out the candidates for its 2016 presidential nomination:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/09/why-is-obama-panicking-now-the-importance-of-understanding-political-surveillance-in-the-era-of-president-obama/

The open question is: Just who were those contractors?
Surely that is known to some, and is significant to current politically-charged inquiries.
Just why that information has not become public is a good question.
Can anyone provide a reliable source for that information?

Jack , 09 May 2020 at 09:30 PM
It is unsurprising @realDonaldTrump enjoys wallowing in his fetid self-indulgence, but I find it surreal that so many other government officials encourage his ignorance, incompetence, & destructive behavior.

BTW, history will be written by the righteous, not by his lickspittle.

https://twitter.com/johnbrennan/status/1259191320515616770?s=21

Is Brennan always like this? His tweets seem unhinged.

Fred , 09 May 2020 at 09:55 PM
"Deputy Attorney General Yates"

She served as Acting AG, accepting the post when Trump was inaugurated. What did she tell him about his whole affair? Was the opposition to the EO 13769 just an excuse to have herself fired so she would not have to either perjure herself or reveal the truth to Trump?

Jack,
"All this was known in DC for the past few years."

You left out that Paul Ryan was Speaker of the House because the Republicans were in the majority then and the HPSCI under his term as speaker did not subpoena a very large group of people, didn't ask relevant questions, didn't release information to the public and thus ensuring the left took over the House after the 2016 elections.

JerseyJeffersonian , 09 May 2020 at 10:33 PM
I, too, coincidentally just concluded a close reading of the Conservative Tree House post that Mr. Harbaugh just recommended. It is, indeed, well worth such a close reading. There have been various puzzling things along the way these last few years for which this post provides explanations. Of particular utility, is its inclusion of a timeline of the arc of the episodes of illegal government surveillance that began (?) with the IRS spying of 2012, and how - and why - it evolved from that episode into the massive abuses of the FISA process of which we are becoming increasingly aware as revelations are forthcoming.

CTH's work is superb, but I do want to say that I am also supremely grateful for all of the good work and analysis from Larry Johnson, and other contributors, as well as for the trenchant comments of Col. Lang. Multivalent sources of information, analysis, and comment provide one with the parallax requisite to understanding this web of perfidy. My gratitude also is owing to all of you Members of the Committee of Correspondence, each of whom brings personal observations and insights to bear, always much to my benefit.

Jack , 10 May 2020 at 03:51 AM
Fred,

I did see a clip of Matt Gaetz calling out Ryan and Trey Gowdy from preventing them from issuing subpoenas. Why do you think the Republican leadership in the House and Senate did not want to investigate?

Jim , 10 May 2020 at 05:42 AM
["One thing people will see when they look at the documents is how Director Comey purposely went around the Justice Department and ignored Deputy Attorney General Yates," Attorney General William Barr said during a Thursday interview with CBS News. "Deputy Attorney General Yates, I've disagreed with her about a couple of things, but, you know, here she upheld the fine tradition of the Department of Justice. She said that the new administration has to be treated just like the Obama administration, and they should go and tell the White House about their findings And, you know, Director Comey ran around that."]

++++++++++++

This is fascinating because: this, what Barr is discussing, on national TV, . . . this particular dimension, this Yates/Comey playing hide the bacon has nothing at all to do with actual Brady material in the Lt. Gen. Flynn case.

Barr is referring to the Special Counsel Mueller Office's interview with Yates on Aug. 15, 2017, entered into the system three weeks later. Her interview occurred more than two months prior to Flynn's coerced guilty plea.

This SCO document was released to the court May 7 as exhibit 4 attached to the DOJ motion to end the prosecution of Flynn. It was produced in line with request by defense for Brady material.

What Barr forgets to say is: This SCO interview of Yates shows that Comey and Yates talked on the phone -- prior to -- the notorious Jan. 24, 2017 FBI interview of Flynn.

"Comey . . . informed her that two agents were on their way to interview Flynn at the White House," the SCO said, according to the new court filing.

Yates took no action, -- she did nothing to order Comey to abort this soon-to-happen FBI interview of Flynn, this SCO interview of her shows.

She was Comey's boss, the Acting Attorney General, at the time.

It shows that she was upset precisely because she wanted the FBI to coordinate with the DOJ -- on getting Flynn screwed -- even suggesting, she told the SCO, that consideration that Flynn be recorded, instead of memorialized using standard 302 form – in-writing-only.

Yates wanted Flynn fired, she told the SCO.

Yates apparently was unable on her own to figure out, as the AG, the FBI and DOJ -- none of them had any predicate, no "materiality," nothing "tethered" to any crime, as there was no crime. And if she did not know these basic facts, had no awareness of them, then: why was she the AG in the first place?

And what did Yates glean, right after this Jan. 24 interview of Flynn?

"Yates received a brief readout of the interview the night it happened, and a longer readout the following day," which begs the question of why the original 302 of this was never produced by the DOJ, to the defense; and also, why Covington law firm never asked to see this before allowing Flynn to make his plea.

"Yates did not speak to the interviewing agents herself, but understood from others that their assessment was that Flynn showed no 'tells' of lying," the SCO report says.

Based on her personal preference, rather than DOJ norms, she went to the White House, and her expectation was they would fire Flynn. I fail to see how this nonsense by Yates seem to escape Barr's notice. Or, is something else also going on?

She personally went to the White House, and her smear campaign against Flynn began, went on and on and on, even after she was fired after being Acting AG for just ten days.

In her brief stint as Acting AG: Yates refused to tell the White House Counsel if Flynn was being investigated, when the WHC asked her, directly, about this, according to what she told the SCO. Can't blame this fact on the unctuous Comey.

She did tell the SCO that she wanted the WHC to know Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI – and that she had concerns about Flynn, and she said those concerns related to the Logan Act. Yates told SCO her concerns were because of the Logan Act, and that she expressed this to the White House.

The Washington Examiner reporting that "It wasn't Comey who told her, but former President Barack Obama" -- about the Flynn-Kislyak phone call --- this is interesting, very interesting, if true, assuming Yates was telling the SCO the truth. This is what she claims in her August 2017 interview with SCO.

But this bit of information is hardly Brady material [how is whether Obama or Comey told her materially germane to the Flynn case, viz. Brady material?].

The question the SCO should have been concerned about is: who actually leaked the transcript of the Flynn-Kislyak telephone call to the media?

Is this a serious crime? Or is this OK?

We still do not know this answer, and AG Barr has not told us. Nor has his boss, Trump.

It is interesting that Barr chose to highlight that Comey went around Yates' back in Comey ordering FBI to interview Flynn, but not that Yates knew of the Flynn interview before it went down, and sat on her arse about it.

In fairness to Comey, they were, as the FB of Investigations, conducting the investigation, which is their job, however rogue this FBI's I actually was, targeting Flynn.

The Flynn-Kislyak telephone call, occurring late December of 2016, was reported by the Washington Post on Jan. 12, 2017, eight days before Trump was sworn in.

And who leaked this, has anyone been prosecuted, will anyone be?

Obama still president, Loretta Lynch still AG, Yates still Deputy AG, Comey FBI director, McCabe Deputy FBI director, etc.

Starting Jan. 20 and for ten days, Yates was the AG. She appeared bent on destroying Flynn, and did nothing that I know of to prosecute who leaked the Flynn-Kislyak telephone call to WAPO. Did someone on high perhaps ask her not to?

Nor was Comey and McCabe investigating this as best I can tell. Yet this was an actual, clear cut crime we all saw, plain as day. Or maybe this is OK? Was someone on high asking them not to?

I watched Barr say, during his interview with CBS news, [following the May 7 release of documents to the court]: "One thing people will see when they look at the documents is how Director Comey purposely went around the Justice Department and ignored Deputy Attorney General Yates," Barr told Catherine Herridge.

And my first thought was: why is Barr doing an apparent CYA for Yates?

What office might she want to be running for in the future; is she a cooperating witness in the wider Durham probe, why is Yates being portrayed as someone other than what she was: A leader in the effort to destroy Michael Flynn.

She was the AG, and she failed to hold Comey accountable at the time; this is a fact, apparently, that reflects poorly on her.

She told the White House -- as best she could -- that Flynn was a piece of dung, and told the SCO, in their interview of her, that she expected the White House to fire Flynn. This reflects poorly on her.

And threatened Logan Act prosecution of Flynn to the White house. This reflects poorly on her.

She smeared Flynn in a CNN interview on May 16, the day before Mueller was appointed. This reflects poorly on her.

Well, who leaked the Flynn-Kislyak telephone call, and did Yates act on that?

Folks that "should have known better" -- far and wide, smeared Flynn, justified the lawlessness against him; one of many examples, titled: "Leaking Flynn's name to the press was illegal, but utterly justified" published by TheHill.com.

https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/319955-yes-leaking-flynns-name-to-press-was-illegal-but

She wasn't the only one, but Yates was smack dab in the middle of enabling and perpetuating a long-running smear campaign against Flynn, to destroy him by any means necessary. This reflects poorly on her.

Why is Barr carrying water for her.

As for Obama, he did nothing to stop Comey in 2016 when Comey announced he was exonerating Clinton. Nor did AG Lynch, even though that is not the function of the FBI -- an act of insubordination, by the way, for which Rosenstein officially fired him in May 2017, which set, somehow, in motion the Mueller SC appointment by Rosenstein.

If Comey is such a rogue, and Barr is now claiming Yates tried to do the right thing, in spite of Comey, then why didn't Yates fire Comey Jan. 24 right on the spot? And end the fiasco right then and there?

In her May 16, 2017 CNN interview she only has kind words to say about him.

AS for who on high was encouraging Comey's extra legal free-lancing in the Clinton and Flynn matters is a pertinent question.

Who were the enablers, in other words?

Barr appears to imply Comey did it all on his own, which is not entirely accurate. Perhaps this also implies that Durham will prosecute Comey? I don't know if anyone will be prosecuted at all. Time will tell.

It is clear Comey's enablers would, by rank, have been, viz. the Clinton matter: Obama and Lynch.

In the Flynn matter: Trump and Yates.

Simple logic dictates that: if Main Justice was "not in the loop" then, for Clinton matter, this means Obama was enabling Comey to exonerate her; and also dictate that, for Flynn, that Trump was the one "on high" enabling Comey.

If there are others on high, they were not in the chain of command as I understand the current US Government structure.
-30-

Fred , 10 May 2020 at 09:19 AM
Jack,

"Never Trump".

Jim,

You seem to think Trump was informed of all the relevant information about the FBI's conduct during his first ten days in office. Because Barr, being appointed AG two years after these events, has yet to indict anyone in the case, Trump was actually enabling Yates in destroying Flynn? Neither appear to be logical conclusions to me.

Bobo , 10 May 2020 at 09:50 AM
So on a December 29, 2016 The Obama administration placed sanctions on Russia that evolved to Flynn, at the instruction of the incoming Trump administration, contacting the Russian ambassador requesting that they not retaliate or heighten the situation.

On January 5th Ms. Yates learned from Obama of the Flynn intervention.

Rather than contact Trump directly Obama went along with the Comey Logan Act thoughts.

The decision to enact sanctions obviously involved State, CIA, DNI and FBI but why not Justice or did it. But why was the incoming Trump administration not consulted.

There was only one Machiavellian thinker in that group and it wasn't the idiot who got his panties all twisted up.

[May 10, 2020] A Cabal Of Liars - Sara Carter Demands Top Obama Officials Need To Be Held Accountable by Sara Carter

May 10, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Via SaraACarter.com,

"This is a cabal of liars of the Obama administration senior officials," said Sara Carter, a Fox News contributor and host of "The Sara Carter Show" on Fox News's show "The Ingraham Angle" on Friday.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/video-embed.html?video_id=6155418151001&loc=zerohedge.com&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fcabal-liars-sara-carter-demands-top-obama-officials-need-be-held-accountable&_xcf=

Watch the latest video at <a href="https://www.foxnews.com">foxnews.com</a>

"And you have to ask yourself one question. They all stuck with the same exact propaganda, the same exact his information, that the Trump administration, that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia, even though they had no evidence whatsoever, and they manufactured that evidence against the president."

"And this is why all of them need to be investigated " explained Carter.

" What they did here is not only in effect of our national security, they basically told a lie across the globe and divided our nation for more than three years, and eventually someone is going to pay the price for this. And I think this is exactly why John Durham and Attorney General William Barr are conducting this investigation so thoroughly, because what they did was a crime against the American people.

"Why is it that Obama asks Comey and Yates, how should we treat Michael Flynn? Why does he ask that question to them in a private meeting in the Oval Office?" asked Raymond Arroyo, who hosted "The Ingraham Angle' on Friday.

"I think that is pretty evident, because he along with Michael Flynn had a very divisive relationship," responded Carter.

" When Michael Flynn challenged him on the narrative that he was spreading that Al Qaeda was on the run and that ISIS was just this jayvee team, Michael Flynn was not going to accept that. He also was not going to accept the fact that there were serious problems within the intelligence community, and he challenged President Obama on that. I think in the beginning it was a good relationship. I remember that, they had a good relationship, and then it broke apart."

"A lot of people don't remember, was that meeting that President Trump, very first meeting he had with President Obama at the White House," continued Sara Carter.

"When President Obama put a seed in President Trump's head, saying, I only have one person I want to warn you about, and that is Mike Flynn. And the reason they wanted Mike Flynn out was because he was the only one in the administration that really understood the intelligence community, and he was going to catch all of them and what they were doing , which was what they were trying to do was break the administration apart and remove President Trump."

[May 10, 2020] Did the FBI target Michael Flynn to protect Obama's policies, not national security by Kevin R. Brock

Highly recommended!
This was a coup d'état and it has little to do with the protection of Oabama policies, but a lot with protection of Clinton clan to which Obama belongs.
FBI investigators were corrupt and acted as a political police
Notable quotes:
"... Heavily redacted FBI documents that have been released indicate Flynn was one of several Trump campaign members who merited their own subfile investigation under the larger, now infamous " Crossfire Hurricane " debacle. Flynn even got his own cool codename -- "Crossfire Razor." (No, the FBI isn't usually that absurd. But absurdity colored that entire period of time.) ..."
"... FBI documents show that a Foreign Agent Registration Act ( FARA ) case was opened against Flynn. The stated reasons, in rank order, for initiating the investigation were that he was a member of the Trump campaign; he had "ties" to various Russian state-affiliated entities; he traveled to Russia; and he had a high-level top-secret clearance -- for which, by the way, he was polygraphed regularly to determine if he was a spy. ..."
"... None of the listed reasons is unusual activity for the kind of positions he held. Overall it is pretty thin justification for investigating an American citizen. Yet, most chillingly, the Crossfire Hurricane team stated it was investigating Flynn "specifically" because he was "an adviser to then Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump for foreign policy issues." ..."
"... Kevin R. Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, was an FBI special agent for 24 years and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He is a founder and principal of NewStreet Global Solutions , which consults with private companies and public safety agencies on strategic mission technologies. ..."
May 10, 2020 | thehill.com
investigation of Michael Flynn , the more it appears he was targeted precisely because, as the national security adviser to the incoming Trump administration, he signaled that the new administration might undo Obama administration policies -- which is kind of what the American people voted for in 2016.

Some will say that Gen. Flynn was investigated for legitimate criminal or national security reasons. Yet, the FBI's ultimate interview of Flynn addressed none of the grounds that the FBI used to open the original case against him. For those of us who have run FBI investigations, that is more than odd.

Heavily redacted FBI documents that have been released indicate Flynn was one of several Trump campaign members who merited their own subfile investigation under the larger, now infamous " Crossfire Hurricane " debacle. Flynn even got his own cool codename -- "Crossfire Razor." (No, the FBI isn't usually that absurd. But absurdity colored that entire period of time.)

For the record, Flynn clearly exercised poor judgment as a result of being interviewed by the FBI. The larger question is whether the team under then-Director James Comey had a legitimate basis to conduct the interview at all.

FBI documents show that a Foreign Agent Registration Act ( FARA ) case was opened against Flynn. The stated reasons, in rank order, for initiating the investigation were that he was a member of the Trump campaign; he had "ties" to various Russian state-affiliated entities; he traveled to Russia; and he had a high-level top-secret clearance -- for which, by the way, he was polygraphed regularly to determine if he was a spy.

None of the listed reasons is unusual activity for the kind of positions he held. Overall it is pretty thin justification for investigating an American citizen. Yet, most chillingly, the Crossfire Hurricane team stated it was investigating Flynn "specifically" because he was "an adviser to then Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump for foreign policy issues."

Let me be clear: That is not a legitimate justification to investigate an American citizen.

There is a theme that runs through the entire Crossfire Hurricane disaster, which has been publicly articulated by Comey and his deputy director, Andrew McCabe : They saw themselves as stalwarts in the breach defending America from a presidential candidate who they believed was an agent of Russia .

... ... ...

Kevin R. Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, was an FBI special agent for 24 years and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He is a founder and principal of NewStreet Global Solutions , which consults with private companies and public safety agencies on strategic mission technologies.

[May 10, 2020] Russiagate has been an obvious coup attempt from the beginning, and several attempts have followed...

The genius of Russiagate is that it managed to gaslight the whole nation
May 10, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
jinn , May 10 2020 15:20 utc | 5
Russiagate has been an obvious coup attempt from the beginning, and several attempts have followed...
__________________________________________________

That is not at all obvious.
Russiagate was obviously designed to look like a coup attempt, but you have to be extremely gullible to believe any of it is real.

The recent Flynn bruhaha is a perfect example of the phoniness surrounding Russiagate.

The FBI investigators that interviewed Flynn believed he had not been deceptive and any fool who was paying attention at the time believed he was not guilty because 2 weeks before that FBI interview the news media had reported that the phone call with Kislyak had been recorded by the FBI and that there was nothing improper or illegal that would motivate Flynn to lie about his talk with Kislyak. The story that Flynn lied to the FBI is unbelievable on its face.

Don't blame the FBI for creating this fake story. Trump is the one and only one that created the fake Flynn-lied-to-the-FBI story, Before Trump created the phony story that Flynn had lied to the FBI nobody else had at that time believed Flynn lied to the FBI.
But once Trump had created the phony story that Flynn lied to the FBI then all the gullible morons started to believe the phony story. And even Flynn himself goes along with Trump's phony story because he is a good soldier that follows command.

Trump says he fired Flynn for lying to the FBI

Before Comey's testimony to Congress that suggested that Trump was twisting Comey's arm to let Flynn go for lying to the FBI no one had ever said that Flynn lied to the FBI. That story was created by Trump and reported by Comey.
And then Mueller and Flynn and Comey all helped Trump foist that phony story that Flynn lied to the FBI onto the public.

The implication of Comey's testimony to Congress was that in order to get Flynn off a charge of Lying to the FBI Trump first tried to cajole Comey to go easy on Flynn and when that did not work Trump fired Comey.
The problem with that whole BS story is that the crux of it (that Flynn lied to the FBI) never happened. It was entirely invented by Trump to make it look like Trump was engaged in mortal combat with the deep state. But it was all staged and fake (i.e. Kayfabe)


jinn , May 10 2020 15:42 utc | 7

Russigate falls apart:

_______________________________________________
Well duh....

Russiagate was designed to fall apart.

It was obvious all along that all the stories that came out in the Mueller Report were badly written sit-com material - the script for a comic soap opera. And they were all scripted to fall apart when examined closely.

What I could never figure out was what this guy Mueller was going to say when he was dragged in front of Congress and required to answer tough questions about all the garbage he had produced. I thought for sure that for Mueller the jig would be up there was no way the farce would not be revealed for all to see.

And then it happened. Mueller testified and it turned out Mueller could not remember any of it.

Senator: Did you say XYZ?
Mueller: Is that in the report??
Senator: yes it is.
Mueller: Then it is true.

Making Mueller Senile and unable to remember anything was brilliant - pure genius. The rest of the Russiagate script was mediocre at best.

Jackrabbit , May 10 2020 17:01 utc | 16
bevin @ May 10 16:41

It was a transparently false narrative designed, by the most incompetent election campaign team in history ...

Occam's razor says Hillary threw the election. No seasoned politician would make the mistakes that she made - especially when they yearn to make history (as the first woman president) and the entire establishment (left and right) is counting on them to win.

Believing what is evidently incredible has long been a test of loyalty ...

And you prove your loyalty with the belief that Hillary lost because of an "incompetent election campaign".

!!

[May 10, 2020] Does Obama now feels his potential liability for staging coup d' tat and gaslighting the whole nation?

Highly recommended!
All-in-all Obama was a CIA sponsored fraud: In 2008 I posted at another blog this: "Obama is a fraud and my view does not hang on the controversial birther movement. " From whence he came? He made a speech at the Democratic National Convention; 3 years in the Senate, then runs to occupy the White House. The media puff pieces. "Hope and Change, Yes, We Can" Watch for the broken promises."
Notable quotes:
"... Now why is Obama against General Flynn? Hmmm. Good question. Did the FBI target Michael Flynn to protect Obama's policies, not national security? LINK ..."
"... Gen. Flynn: Obama Administration made a "wilful decision" to support Sunni extremists (a Jihadi proxy army) against Assad . This directly contradicts the phony narrative of Obama as peace-loving black man (as certified by his Nobel Prize!). ..."
"... In 2008 I posted at another blog this: "Obama is a fraud and my view does not hang on the controversial birther movement. " From whence he came? He made a speech at the Democratic National Convention; 3 years in the Senate, then runs to occupy the White House. The media puff pieces. "Hope and Change, Yes, We Can" Watch for the broken promises." ..."
May 10, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Prof K , May 10 2020 16:05 utc | 9

Posted by: Prof K | May 10 2020 16:05 utc | 9

Obama weighed in this week...on Flynn. Why?

What is he trying to preempt?

He only steps in at critical moments to stop something, as he did before SC to block Bernie.

Now this. How does it relate to Russiagate and his potential liability?


Likklemore , May 10 2020 17:08 utc | 18

@ ProfK 9

Whether or not General Flynn is loathed or liked, there is Supreme Court decisions setting precedence for dropping a case when found to be wrapped in prosecutorial misdeeds:

As for the first 'black' president out from the shadows;

Obama, the petit constitutional law scholar, signed the NDAA National Defence Authorization Act which allows imprisonment of Americans forever has no standing to claim the "rule of law is at risk" and he may want to call Eric Holder.

Certified Hypocrite.

Now why is Obama against General Flynn? Hmmm. Good question. Did the FBI target Michael Flynn to protect Obama's policies, not national security? LINK

Jackrabbit , May 10 2020 17:31 utc | 19
Likklemore @ May10 17:08
Did the FBI target Michael Flynn to protect Obama's policies, not national security?

Gen. Flynn: Obama Administration made a "wilful decision" to support Sunni extremists (a Jihadi proxy army) against Assad . This directly contradicts the phony narrative of Obama as peace-loving black man (as certified by his Nobel Prize!).

!!

Likklemore , May 10 2020 18:11 utc | 22
@ Jackrabbit 19

Thanks for that additional link. And that's why Obama could not standby with Flynn in the NSA role. Recall Hillary's on Trump- "if he is elected we'll hang" (paraphrased)

In 2008 I posted at another blog this: "Obama is a fraud and my view does not hang on the controversial birther movement. " From whence he came? He made a speech at the Democratic National Convention; 3 years in the Senate, then runs to occupy the White House. The media puff pieces. "Hope and Change, Yes, We Can" Watch for the broken promises."

Fast Forward to 2011 he signs NDAA. "How Obama disappointed the world." Der Spiegel had such an article 9 Aug.2011. But he was re-(S)-elected.

[May 10, 2020] Did Obama Defense Deputy Lie To Protect Her Fraudulent Russiagate Sources

May 10, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Did Obama Defense Deputy Lie To Protect Her Fraudulent Russiagate Sources?


xxx Barnacles, 1 minute ago

Justice for me, but not for thee. They prosecute Flynn, Manafort, Stone, Papadoupolis, and tried to prosecute Trump. Yet, none of the Deep State/demonrats get prosecuted. No Comey, Strzok, Page, McCabe, Clapper, or Brennan.

xxx booboo, 2 minutes ago

It would not be difficult to ascertain just the opposite, she spoke the truth in the MSNBC interview and she lied under oath in a congressional hearing. There are always paper trails and bread crumbs but they won't be followed because the Atlantic Council is the defacto State Department. Ciitizen Jury, Crime and Punishment teams would have to enforce the law of the land at this point.

xxx lwilland1012, 5 minutes ago (Edited)

Nobody is covering this bombshell that was dropped from the Grenell transcripts: "we had indication that the DNC was hacked."

"Indication? Direct evidence?"

"No direct evidence."

Matt Taibi of all people is covering this bombshell from Crowdstrike

No direct evidence means that Russia DID NOT interfere in the election.

xxx onwisconsinbadger, 11 minutes ago

Did Michael Flynn Lie To Protect His Russia Sources?

Flynn was in violation of both federal law and the US Constitution Emoluments Clause which forbids former military members from getting paid to lobby for a foreign government without written permission from congress or the Secretary of the Army which he never got. Flynn was lobbying for both Turkey and Russia without explicit permission to do so. Technically he could be brought back to active duty and tried in a Courts Martial for what he did or be charged in a federal court but that would be pointless with Trump as POTUS like so many other things with Trump it establishes a dangerous precedent for future incidents because they will argue a uneven application of law because Flynn wasn't prosecuted so why should they?

[Apr 02, 2020] There is ZERO DIFFERENCE between the ENTIRE Democratic party and RUNOS - because they are the same crooked, corrupt and terrible people. Same scam artists. Same criminals.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... And now you are hoping the Bushites team up with Democrats. Let me tell you something. THEY ALREADY ARE AND HAVE BEEN. Most of the Bush family and their admins voted for Clinton. ..."
"... One of my far left Bernie buddies said something interesting ..."
"... . "The Democrats have embraced hypocrisy. They hated Nixon and loved Obama. Both did the exact same thing. One got busted. Democrats hated the Bush family, but love the Clintons and the Democrat establishment. THEY ARE THE SAME DAMN PEOPLE. There are 3 groups of people in the US. Trump supporters, Bernie supporters and the domestic enemy establishment." ..."
Apr 02, 2020 | thehill.com

Gee Money 10 hours ago • edited

The Dems will give Rino lawmakers a choice in two weeks. Drop Donny or get on the unemployment line in November. I wonder what the GOP will decide.

Don Draighneaux Gee Money10 hours ago
I ain't giving them a choice, I'm giving them the boot

215 days until Correction Day

Je vois tout Gee Money10 hours ago
Investigate everyone of them for crimes against America and Americans.
Tyye Gee Money10 hours ago
They will take their "socialist" government welfare and still vote for Trump to own the libs...
Durwood McElroy Gee Money10 hours ago
You just Freudianly said something interesting. As a former Democrat, I am proud of NEVER have voted for anyone named "Bush". The entire family is as crooked as it gets. The entire anti-Trump, never Trumping RINOs are led by the Bushes and their crooked apologists, like Bill "I love me some Bush Oil Wars" Kristol.

How much did the Bush family throw at Jebby, in hopes he get the nomination in 2016? I think it was $150m in Iowa alone?

And now you are hoping the Bushites team up with Democrats. Let me tell you something. THEY ALREADY ARE AND HAVE BEEN. Most of the Bush family and their admins voted for Clinton.

There is ZERO DIFFERENCE between the ENTIRE Democratic party and RUNOS - because they are the same crooked, corrupt and terrible people. Same scam artists. Same criminals.

Thanks for pointing it out. One of my far left Bernie buddies said something interesting . "The Democrats have embraced hypocrisy. They hated Nixon and loved Obama. Both did the exact same thing. One got busted. Democrats hated the Bush family, but love the Clintons and the Democrat establishment. THEY ARE THE SAME DAMN PEOPLE. There are 3 groups of people in the US. Trump supporters, Bernie supporters and the domestic enemy establishment."

He is more correct than I am

[Mar 08, 2020] The art of betrail or ordinary voters: CIA democrats or how Dems establishment focused on cultivating ever greater ties with the military and intelligence services

This actually started with Clintons, who also can be viewed as CIA democrats. (especially Hillary)
In no way Sanders supporters will vote for Biden. They will stay home or vote for the third party candidate. This is kind of mini-civil war withing the Dem Party and while Clinton wing won, this is a Pyrrhic victory.
Notable quotes:
"... There are the CIA Democrats who were elected in the last mid-terms. There was the obscene, degrading veneration of first James Comey and then Robert Mueller. ..."
"... There is Adam Schiff and the endless Russiagate black hole of mental resources, money, time and political capital. ..."
"... What they all have in common is the Democrats pressuring Trump for being insufficiently imperialist and warmongering. ..."
Mar 07, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

tempestteacup , , March 7, 2020 at 8:38 am

This is what I was thinking. It was obvious from 2015 that one of Trump's most effective messages was his criticism of the Iraq War, of Nato, Syria and the endless occupation of Afghanistan. We can also set aside the fact that he has largely failed to do much of what he implied in his campaign. The point is that he campaigned to the left of the Democrats on these issues and did it knowingly -- and that this was a message that resonated with, as you say, voters connected in some way to the military.

Also significant in this context is that since his election, the mainstream Washington Dems have focused (besides their interminable obsession with 'civility') on cultivating ever greater ties with the military and intelligence services.

There are the CIA Democrats who were elected in the last mid-terms. There was the obscene, degrading veneration of first James Comey and then Robert Mueller.

There is Adam Schiff and the endless Russiagate black hole of mental resources, money, time and political capital.

What they all have in common is the Democrats pressuring Trump for being insufficiently imperialist and warmongering. In this context, too, it is significant that the Dem mandarins have chosen Joe Biden, probably the most right wing of all the remaining opponents facing off against Bernie -- definitely worse than Obama (remember that when he chose Biden as VP it was viewed rightly as throwing a bone to the Blue Dogs and other Dem reactionaries!) and almost certainly worse even than HRC herself.

But it doesn't have to be that way. As you suggest, an anti-war message can reach voters in special ways and unite, for example, groups that would otherwise view themselves as miles apart -- e.g. radicalised young people and rural working class families with military connections. That is exactly the type of solidarity we need. And therefore almost as exactly the sort of thing that Democrats minus Bernie will do all they can to prevent coming to pass!

tempestteacup , March 7, 2020 at 8:22 am

Yes, I didn’t mean to suggest that direct exposure to the often tragic consequences of serving the American Empire inevitably leads those affected to critical insights into how it operates or sustains itself – there is a difference between experience and insight, feeling and knowing. But I believe it does mean there is a very fertile ground for anti-war sentiments in precisely those groups most frequently dismissed by mainstream Democrats or the media as irredeemably…ahem…deplorable.

Not sure I agree that internationally minded socialism died in the trenches of WWI. It was quite literally murdered in that war’s aftermath through the brutal suppression of working class struggles like the Spartacist uprising and political assassinations of figures like Rosa Luxermburg and Karl Liebknecht. And it was ideologically murdered by the capital-assisted rise of fascism and national chauvinism at precisely the moment when global capitalism was entering a period of potentially terminal crisis. In that broad sweep of events I would go so far as to include the ascension to power of Stalin in the Soviet Union and his socialism-in-one-country, which effectively ended the internationalism unleashed by the 1917 Revolution.

After WWII, the capitalist West of course responded to these crises by ceding more ground to workers than they had ever done before. Socialised healthcare in Europe, the welfare state, access to education, state-led investment. They rightly feared the consequences of a resurgent international socialism and opted to head things off at the pass (I hate that cliche, to quote Hedley Lamarr!). But no less influential was the Stalinist Soviet Union’s cynical manipulation of liberation struggles and the various Communist Parties they funded across the West and Latin America. Their sabotage of the Spanish Republican struggle was here the template, as they evolved various “popular front” tactics to lead various working-class movements down strategically (for them) useful blind alleys.

In fact, the list of betrayals committed by the Soviet Union with regard to their international ‘comrades’ bears comparison with the Democratic Party’s own patented ability to bury social movements in the US – leading bravely and courageously…from behind.

As for Bernie/AOC, their plan to ‘deal with domestic problems first’ is exactly what I take issue with. In the first place, I see no evidence that the ruling class will allow even their modest policies to be enacted. This is not the Depression Era. Unions are weak, corrupt or worse. Political consciousness may be growing but remains relatively low compared to the 20th century. There is no broad mass movement beyond Washington DC which political leaders can use as leverage in the struggles that would inevitably need to be fought over policies like Medicare for All. Maybe they will emerge once the struggles gain momentum, but for now the disposition of social forces and political power is very different from the context in which the New Deal was (partially) executed or the Civil Rights Era in the 60s.

More importantly, though, and what I’ve been trying to get at is the idea that you can effectively decouple domestic from foreign issues is a mirage. Particularly in a period of unparalleled interconnection where global capital and finance have themselves eroded the integrity of nation states or their sovereignty. And besides that, Trump’s election has brought into the open the enormous political power that has been amassed by the military and intelligence services – and which will without doubt be brought to bear on any Bernie or AOC attempting to bring about domestic reforms opposed by the oligarchy.

I just don’t think it is possible to confront one set of issues without confronting the other – their interrelationship requires them to be faced at the same time. And that is of course before we talk about the moral imperative to do so.

One last thing – a lesson learned painfully from Labour under Corbyn. His constant capitulations over mainly foreign issues – Israel, Trident, the Skripal case, Syria, Julian Assange – didn’t free up space or energy to fight for domestic reform. It didn’t satisfy his opponents in the media or on the right wing of his own party. It signalled his weakness and encouraged them to press on with ever more insistent demands. And, crucially, it demotivated and demobilised the very popular support on which his insurgent movement relied. It disillusioned, confused and depressed the energies of those who had powered him to the leadership. And, finally, it exposed him as weak or vacillating to voters he needed to convince or galvanise.

Now Bernie is a much, much more skilled political operator than Jeremy Corbyn, but on the other hand the Democratic Party is far more corrupt and corporatist, far more detached from and unaccountable to its base of support. The Labour Party, at least, is a mass membership party with continued trade union links. The Dems are a mafia cartel/protection racket based around no more than perpetuating the privileges of those they call their own (elected officials, consultants, media cheerleaders etc). As I said in my first post, I acknowledge he is fighting a very particular fight for the nomination/presidency – and he is kept constantly busy fending off dishonest attacks from all sides – but if not him, then others, like AOC, need in my view to stop putting off confrontation over foreign issues for another day – the struggle needs to combine domestic and international otherwise it will end up sacrificing both.

Bazarov , March 7, 2020 at 1:46 pm

I don’t think Bernie is a much more skilled political operator than Jeremy Corbyn–I think he’s about as bad, so bad that he’s about to get defeated by a Joe Biden, a pudding brained old man with a terrible record.

But Bernie is going to do a great service (I hope) by losing and that’s to turn the nascent left away from electoralism and more toward the street, organizing the masses in the manner that the right wing has: by emphasizing propaganda to radicalize the normies (radio/podcasts/youtube), by siloing cadres into a parallel culture, and by growing tendencies toward revolutionary action by encouraging socialization with specific political content (in the right wing world these are gun/religious groups).

Out of these social formations, electoral success organically follows. The left ought to build the secular equivalent of evangelical churches (a Socialist Meeting Hall in every town!) and gun groups (left wing boy scouts and also…left wing gun groups?). Get the people out of their homes to meet one another in a specific political context. When someone identifies as “Socialist,” it should be a shorthand for a kind of “social” existence that is notably separate from the “normal” (as it is right now for the Right Wing–a strong reason, in my view, for the successful rightward political seduction of such a large portion of the masses, who ought to be easy pickings for the left).

Lambert Strether Post author , March 7, 2020 at 3:36 am

> The overextension of empire is always going to provide its weakest points.

Exhibit A at least in terms of visibility: The supply chain.

It would surely be possible to frame, and possibly even to conceptualize, the combination of gutting manufacturing in this country and moving it to China as a bad case of Imperial overstretch….

[Mar 07, 2020] Democrat Establishment deliberatly hands control over the nomination to the political establisment in states they will never win in the general elections

So sellout by Clinton of the Democratic Party to Wall Street proved to be durable and sustainable...
Bernie again behaves like a sheep dog with no intention to win... "Let's be friends" is not a viable strategy...
Notable quotes:
"... the same character traits that make him an honorable politician also make him fundamentally unsuited for the difficult task of waging a successful outsider campaign for the nomination of a major political party. ..."
"... Why hasn't Sara Nelson, head of the Flight Attendants' Union, endorsed Bernie? (Personally I have always thought she'd be a good VP.) ..."
"... Robinson is dreaming if he thinks Non-Profit Industrial Complex entities like EMILY's List and Planned Parenthood will lift a finger to help Sanders, or busines unionists like Randi Weingarten. To his credit, though, Ady Barkan switched immediately. External support, though is correct: IIRC, there are plenty of union locals to be had; the Culinary Workers should be only the first. ..."
"... "Corporate Lobbyists Control the Rules at the DNC" [ ReadSludge ]. "Among the 447 total voting DNC members, who make up the majority of 771 superdelegates, there are scores of corporate lobbyists and consultants -- including many of the 75 at-large DNC members, who were not individually elected . ..."
"... The 32-member DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee contains the following 20 individuals: a health insurance board member co-chair, three surrogates for presidential campaigns (two for Bloomberg, one for Biden), four current corporate lobbyists, two former corporate lobbyists, six corporate consultants, and four corporate lawyers." ..."
"... "Joe Biden is a friend of mine" is the 2020-updated version of "enough about the damn e-mails, already". No amount of ground-level organizing can make up for a candidate willing to publicly overlook what should be high-office-disqualifying fundamental character traits in his opponents out of "niceness". ..."
"... It's easy to do a post Super Tuesday defeat analysis of Sanders but remember, everything seems to work before SC where I think the Democrats fixed the election and the same holds for Super Tuesday. ..."
"... post-dial-up-modem ..."
Mar 07, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Sanders (D)(1): "Bernie Sanders needs to find the killer instinct" [Matthew Walther, The Week ]. I've heard Useful Idiots, Dead Pundits, and the inimitable Jimmy Dore all make the same point, but Walther's prose makes the point most forcefully (as prose often does). The situation:

There is no greater contrast imaginable than the one between the popular (and frequently exaggerated) image of so-called "Bernie bros" and the almost painfully conciliatory instincts of the man they support.

This was fully in evidence on Wednesday afternoon when Sanders responded to arguably the worst defeat of his political career by chatting with journalists about how " disgusted " he is at unspecified online comments directed at Elizabeth Warren and her supporters and what a " decent guy " Joe Biden is.

He did this despite the fact that Warren, with the connivance of debate moderators, recently called him a sexist in front of an audience of millions, effectively announcing that she had no interest in making even a tacit alliance with the only other progressive candidate in the race and, one imagines, despite thinking that the former vice president's record on virtually everything -- finance, health care, race relations, the environment, foreign policy -- should render him ineligible for office.

It should go without saying that offering these pleasantries will do Sanders few if any favors.

Lambert here: This is a Presidential primary, not the Senate floor. There is no comity. Walther then gives a list of possible scorched earth tactics to use against Biden; we could all make such a list. But then:

Sanders's benevolent disposition does him credit. But the same character traits that make him an honorable politician also make him fundamentally unsuited for the difficult task of waging a successful outsider campaign for the nomination of a major political party.

Corbyn had the same problem...

Sanders really must not let Biden and the Democrat Establishment off the hook. He seems to have poor judgment about his friends. Warren was no "friend." And neither is Joe Biden.

If Sanders wants friends, he can buy a dog .

He should forget those false friends, go into the next debate, and slice Joe Biden off at the knees. Trump would. And will, if Sander loses.

His canvassers and more importantly his millions of small donors deserve no less. The race and the debate is now between two people, and only one can emerge the winner. Sanders needs to decide if he wants to be that person, and then do what it takes . (If the outcome of the Sanders campaign is a left that is a permanently institutionalized force, distinct from liberal Democrats, I would regard that as a net positive. If that is Sanders' ultimate goal, then fine. He's not going to achieve that goal by being nice to Joe Biden. Quite the reverse.)

UPDATE Sanders (D)(2): "Time To Fight Harder Than We've Ever Fought Before" [Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs ].

"Biden now has some formidable advantages going forward: Democrats who no longer see him as a failed or risky bet will finally endorse and campaign for him. He will find it easier to raise money. He will have "momentum." Bloomberg's exit will bring him new voters.

Sanders may find upcoming states even harder to win than the Super Tuesday contests. But the one thing that would guarantee a Sanders loss is giving up and going home, which is exactly what Joe Biden hopes we will now do."

Here follows a laundry list of tactics. Then: "The real thing Bernie needs in order to win, though, is external support. Labor unions, activists, lawmakers, anyone with a public platform: We need to be pressuring them to endorse Bernie.

Why hasn't Sara Nelson, head of the Flight Attendants' Union, endorsed Bernie? (Personally I have always thought she'd be a good VP.)

Now that Elizabeth Warren is clearly not going to win, will organizations like the Working Families Party and EMILY's List and people like AFT president Randi Weingarten and Medicare For All advocate Ady Barkan switch and endorse Sanders?

Where is the Sierra Club, SEIU (Bernie, after all, was one of the first national figures to push Fight for $15), the UAW, Planned Parenthood? Many progressive organizations have been sitting out the race because Warren was in it."

Good ideas in general, but Robinson is dreaming if he thinks Non-Profit Industrial Complex entities like EMILY's List and Planned Parenthood will lift a finger to help Sanders, or busines unionists like Randi Weingarten. To his credit, though, Ady Barkan switched immediately. External support, though is correct: IIRC, there are plenty of union locals to be had; the Culinary Workers should be only the first.

Warren (D)(1): "Why Elizabeth Warren lost" [Ryan Cooper, The Week ]. "Starting in November, however, she started a long decline that continued through January, when she started losing primaries . So what happened in November?

It is hard to pin down exactly what is happening in such a chaotic race, but Warren's campaign certainly made a number of strategic errors. One important factor was surely that Warren started backing away from Medicare-for-all, selling instead a bizarre two-step plan.

The idea supposedly was to pass universal Medicare with two different bills, one in her first year as president and one in the third year. Given how difficult it is to pass anything through Congress, and that there could easily be fewer Democrats in 2023 than in 2021, it was a baffling decision. Worse, Warren then released a plan for financing Medicare-for-all that was simply terrible.

Rather than levying a new progressive tax, she would turn existing employer contributions to private health insurance plans into a tax on employers, which would gradually converge to an average for all businesses but the smallest. The clear objective here was to claim that she would pay for it without levying any new taxes on the middle or working classes. But because those employer payments are still part of labor compensation, it is ultimately workers who pay them -- making Warren's plan a horribly regressive head tax (that is, an equal dollar tax on almost all workers regardless of income).

All that infuriated the left, and struck directly at Warren's branding as the candidate of technical competence. It suggested her commitment to universal Medicare was not as strong as she claimed, and that she would push classic centrist-style Rube Goldberg policies rather than clean, fair ones. (Her child care plan, with its complicated means-testing system, had a similar defect).

Claiming her plan was the only one not to raise taxes on the middle class was simply dishonest. In sum, this was a classic failed straddle that alienated the left but gained no support among anti-universal health care voters. More speculatively, this kind of hesitation and backtracking may have turned off many voters." • On #MedicareForAll, called it here on "pay for" ; and here on "transition." Warren's plans should not have been well-received, and they were not. I'm only amazed that these really technical arguments penetrated the media (let along the voters).

Warren (D)(2): "Warren Urged by National Organization for Women Not to Endorse Sanders: He Has 'Done Next to Nothing for Women'" [ Newsweek ]. • Establishment really pulling out all the stops.

* * *

"Why Southern Democrats Saved Biden" [Mara Gay, New York Times ]. (Gay was the lone member of the Times Editorial Board to endorse Sanders .) "Through Southern eyes, this election is not about policy or personality. It's about something much darker. Not long ago, these Americans lived under violent, anti-democratic governments. Now, many there say they see in President Trump and his supporters the same hostility and zeal for authoritarianism that marked life under Jim Crow .

They were deeply skeptical that a democratic socialist like Mr. Sanders could unseat Mr. Trump. They liked Ms. Warren, but, burned by Hillary Clinton's loss, were worried that too many of their fellow Americans wouldn't vote for a woman."

Well worth a read. At the same time, it's not clear why the Democrat Establishment hands control over the nomination to the political establishment in states they will never win in the general; the "firewall" in 2016 didn't work out all that well, after all. As for Jim Crow, we might do well to remember that Obama destroyed a generation of Black wealth his miserably inadequate response to the foreclosure crisis, and his pathetic stimulus package kept Black unemployment high for years longer than it should have been. And sowed the dragon's teeth of authoritarian reaction as well.

"Corporate Lobbyists Control the Rules at the DNC" [ ReadSludge ]. "Among the 447 total voting DNC members, who make up the majority of 771 superdelegates, there are scores of corporate lobbyists and consultants -- including many of the 75 at-large DNC members, who were not individually elected .

The 32-member DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee contains the following 20 individuals: a health insurance board member co-chair, three surrogates for presidential campaigns (two for Bloomberg, one for Biden), four current corporate lobbyists, two former corporate lobbyists, six corporate consultants, and four corporate lawyers."


ewmayer , March 6, 2020 at 6:03 pm

"Joe Biden is a friend of mine" is the 2020-updated version of "enough about the damn e-mails, already". No amount of ground-level organizing can make up for a candidate willing to publicly overlook what should be high-office-disqualifying fundamental character traits in his opponents out of "niceness".

Lambert Strether Post author , March 7, 2020 at 1:57 am

> Bernie is thinking like an organizer

That's fine, but if his organization is then put at the disposal of Joe Biden, I don't see how the organization survives. (That's why the DNC cheating meme* is important; it provides the moral cover to get out of that loyalty oath (which the Sanders campaign certainly should have had its lawyers take a look at)).

NOTE * Iowa, Texas, and California have all had major voting screw-ups, all of which impacted Sanders voters disproportionately. The campaign should sue. They have the money.)

dcblogger , March 6, 2020 at 2:15 pm

I once met an union organizer and he said he could go back to any site he had worked and be on friendly terms with everyone. Bernie is thinking like an organizer. I think that making this about Social Security is his best bet. It demolishes Biden in a way that makes the election about the American people.

pretzelattack , March 6, 2020 at 2:25 pm

he needs to go after biden on the issues in a much more forceful manner than he typically does, with lots and lots of specifics. did i mention lots of specifics? and lots of pointed references to biden's past positions, and a focus on pinning him down on his position now. he needs to ask questions biden will not be prepared for with easy scripted responses.

JohnnyGL , March 6, 2020 at 2:59 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hcEljDeFEI

Well, he's baited Biden into a spat about SS for now, so that's a positive sign.

drumlin woodchuckles , March 6, 2020 at 7:10 pm

Perhaps if Sanders can keep successfully baiting Biden with hooks baited with Biden's own past statements over and over and over again, that Sanders can then go on to practice some very well disguised passive-aggressive pointing/not-pointing to Biden's mental condition by asking Biden at every opportunity: " don't you remember that, Joe? You remember saying that, don't you Joe? Don't you remember when you said that, Joe?"

Titus , March 6, 2020 at 3:31 pm

Except 70% of Women according to Stanford finding these kind of confrontations distressing to very distressing. Tricky. One changes emotions by using emotions so the trick here is "allowing" Biden to act deranged and expressing sorrow over it. For 70% of guys they won't get the emotional content, but will understand the logic of the questions and lack of answers. It can be done, Bill Clinton and Obama were very good at this. Look you want to be president you got to play the game at the highest level. Good practice for dealing with trump.

Oh , March 6, 2020 at 3:51 pm

Timing was right for both Obama and Clinton. After the GFC voters would have gone for any Democrat because Republicans were toxic. Similarly, it was fortuitous for Clinton because Perot was running and he quit the race a couple of months before the election.

Obama got loads and loads of money from Wall Street. Neither of these guys would stand a chance in an election year when the economy was doing well.

It's easy to do a post Super Tuesday defeat analysis of Sanders but remember, everything seems to work before SC where I think the Democrats fixed the election and the same holds for Super Tuesday.

I didn't see anyone pointing out that Bernie had to be confrontational when he seems to be winning.

Mo's Bike Shop , March 6, 2020 at 8:59 pm

Wait. How many days ago was the field of candidates wide open?

If Bernard does not roast Biden on Social Security I will be disappointed. If Smokin' Joe doesn't lash out with his typical aplomb, I'll be disappointed. I'm saving myself up for bigger disappointments.

I'll be happy with the Vermont interpretation of Huey Long. I'm glad that people are finally noticing we have one Socialist Senator.

Idea for an 'own the slur' bumper sticker: "I'm tickled pink by Bernie" -- Although I don't know how the post-dial-up-modem crowd might misinterpret that?

foghorn longhorn , March 6, 2020 at 2:56 pm

This is such bs.
Trump insulted the f*ck out of mccain, mittens, jeb, cruz, pelosi, schumer and the rest of the clown posse and what did they do?

Passed every gd thing he sent to them.

Are we gonna fight or dance, it's past time to get it on.

Zagonostra , March 6, 2020 at 6:01 pm

"I admittedly don't even know what to call Pelosi and Schumer at this point, besides a simple "past their sell date".

How about corrupt, immoral dishonest, greedy, sociopaths for starters (for more accurate adjectives I recommend viewing Jimmy Dore)

Glen , March 6, 2020 at 5:22 pm

Bernie cannot say it, but I can.

I support Bernie because Bernie supports the polices I think we need to save the country: M4A, GND,$15/hr min, free college, etc. To me, being an FDR Dem like Bernie is the moderate position, we've done it before, we know it works. Biden's support of neoliberal polices that have wrecked America is the extreme position.

But the DNC does not support FDR's Democracy. They have ended up to the right of Ronald Reagan. Pelosi could have pushed a M4A bill but did not. Pelosi could have pushed any number of polices to show how Trump is failing the working and middle class, but she did not.

So if Bernie is not picked for the general, I no longer have a reason to support the Dems, and will stay home. Actually, I will probably not stay home, I will work to get Dems out of office, and in general, work to burn the party to the ground. Why? Because it is in the way, and does not support the working class or the middle class.

The Dem party has to decide – do they really support the working and middle class or not. Because only Bernie supports those polices, and the rest of the Dems running for President do not.

[Mar 03, 2020] Whacking Rich is a reminder to Sanders what the party establishmen is capable of

Highly recommended!
Mar 03, 2020 | www.unz.com

An alternative view that has been circulating for several years suggests that it was not a hack at all, that it was a deliberate whistleblower-style leak of information carried out by an as yet unknown party, possibly Rich, that may have been provided to WikiLeaks for possible political reasons, i.e. to express disgust with the DNC manipulation of the nominating process to damage Bernie Sanders and favor Hillary Clinton.

There are, of course, still other equally non-mainstream explanations for how the bundle of information got from point A to point B, including that the intrusion into the DNC server was carried out by the CIA which then made it look like it had been the Russians as perpetrators. And then there is the hybrid point of view, which is essentially that the Russians or a surrogate did indeed intrude into the DNC computers but it was all part of normal intelligence agency probing and did not lead to anything. Meanwhile and independently, someone else who had access to the server was downloading the information, which in some fashion made its way from there to WikiLeaks.

Both the hack vs. leak viewpoints have marshaled considerable technical analysis in the media to bolster their arguments, but the analysis suffers from the decidedly strange fact that the FBI never even examined the DNC servers that may have been involved. The hack school of thought has stressed that Russia had both the ability and motive to interfere in the election by exposing the stolen material while the leakers have recently asserted that the sheer volume of material downloaded indicates that something like a higher speed thumb drive was used, meaning that it had to be done by someone with actual physical direct access to the DNC system. Someone like Seth Rich.

... ... ...

Given all of that back story, it would be odd to find Trump making an offer that focuses only on one issue and does not actually refute the broader claims of Russian interference, which are based on a number of pieces of admittedly often dubious evidence, not just the Clinton and Podesta emails.

Which brings the tale back to Seth Rich. If Rich was indeed responsible for the theft of the information and was possibly killed for his treachery, it most materially impacts on the Democratic Party as it reminds everyone of what the Clintons and their allies are capable of.

It will also serve as a warning of what might be coming at the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee in July as the party establishment uses fair means or foul to stop Bernie Sanders. How this will all play out is anyone's guess, but many of those who pause to observe the process will be thinking of Seth Rich.


plantman , says: Show Comment February 29, 2020 at 9:35 pm GMT

Excellent roundup.

I don't ascribe to the idea that the intel agencies kill American citizens without a great deal of thought, but in Rich's case, they probably felt like they had no choice. Think about it: The DNC had already rigged the primary against Bernie, the Podesta emails had already been sent to Wikileaks, and if Rich's cover was blown, then he would publicly identify himself as the culprit (which would undermine the Russiagate narrative) which would split the Democratic party in two leaving Hillary with no chance to win the election.

I can imagine Hillary and her intel connections looking for an alternative to whacking Rich but eventually realizing that there was no other way to deflect responsibility for the emails while paving the way for an election victory.

If Seth Rich went public, then Hillary would certainly lose.

I imagine this is what they were thinking when they decided there was really only one option.

james charles , says: Show Comment February 29, 2020 at 11:14 pm GMT
"I have watched incredulous as the CIA's blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton's corruption."
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence-conviction/

"The FBI Has Been Lying About Seth Rich"
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

niteranger , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 12:08 am GMT
@plantman It's more than Hillary losing. It would have been easy to connect the dots of the entire plot to get Trump. Furthermore, it would have linked Obama and his cohorts in ways that the country might have exploded. This was the beginning of a Coup De'tat that would have shown the American political process is a complete joke.

... ... ...

Carlton Meyer , says: Website Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 1:04 am GMT
To understand why the DNC mobsters and the Deep State hate him, watch this great 2016 interview where Assange calmly explains the massive corruption that patriotic FBI agents refer to as the "Clinton Crime Family." This gang is so powerful that it ordered federal agents to spy on the Trump political campaign, and indicted and imprisoned some participants in an attempt to pressure President Trump to step down. It seems Trump still fears this gang, otherwise he would order his attorney general to drop this bogus charge against Assange, then pardon him forever and invite him to speak at White House press conferences.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/_sbT3_9dJY4?feature=oembed

Ron Unz , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 3:18 am GMT
Well, here was my own take on the controversy a couple of years ago, and I really haven't seen anything to change my mind:

Well, DC is still a pretty dangerous city, but how many middle-class whites were randomly murdered there that year while innocently walking the streets? I wouldn't be surprised if Seth Rich was just about the only one.

Julian Assange has strongly implied that Seth Rich was the source of the DNC emails that cost Hillary Clinton the presidency. So if Seth Rich died in a totally random street killing not long afterward, isn't that just the most astonishing coincidence in all of American history?

Consider that the leaks effectively nullified the investment of the $2 billion or so that her donors had provided, and foreclosed the flood of good jobs and appointments to her camp-followers, not to mention the oceans of future graft. Seems to me that's a pretty good motive for murder.

Here's my own plausible speculation from a couple of months ago:

Incidentally, I'd guess that DC is a very easy place to arrange a killing, given that until the heavy gentrification of the last dozen years or so, it was one of America's street-murder capitals. It seems perfectly plausible that some junior DNC staffer was at dinner somewhere, endlessly cursing Seth Rich for having betrayed his party and endangered Hillary's election, when one of his friends said he knew somebody who'd be willing to "take care of the problem" for a thousand bucks

https://www.unz.com/announcement/new-software-releaseopen-thread/#comment-1959442

https://www.unz.com/isteve/was-seth-rich-murdered-by-the-russians-the-democratic-elite-or-the-democratic-base/#comment-2069185

Let's say a couple of hundred thousand middle-class whites lived in DC around then, and Seth Rich was about the only one that year who died in a random street-killing, occurring not long after the leak.

Wouldn't that seem like a pretty unlikely coincidence?

Mustapha Mond , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 3:45 am GMT
"If Rich was indeed responsible for the theft of the information and was possibly killed for his treachery ."

Heroism is the proper term for what Seth Rich did. He saw the real treachery, against Bernie Sanders and the democratic faithful who expect at least a modicum of integrity from their Party leaders (even if that expectation is utterly fanciful, wishful thinking), and he decided to act. He paid for it with his life. A young, noble life.

In every picture I've seen of him, he looks like a nice guy, a guy who cared. And now he's dead. And the assholes at the DNC simply gave him a small plaque over a bike rack, as I understand it.

Seth Rich: American Hero. A Truth-Teller who paid the ultimate price.

Great reporting, Phil. Another home run.

(And thanks to Ron for chiming in. Couldn't agree more. As a Truth-Teller extraordinaire, please watch your back, Bro. And Phil, too. You both know what these murderous scum are capable of.)

Biff , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 3:46 am GMT
When the FBI doesn't fully investigate a crime(DNC-emails/9-11/JFK-murder) the only conclusion is " coverup ".
John Chuckman , says: Website Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 7:31 am GMT
I suppose American security services could have been involved.

That would explain the poor police investigation and lack of information and questions answered.

But Hillary and her dirty associates were quite capable of hiring a hit.

That would also explain the lack of information, since DC, unlike any other city, is literally controlled by the Federal government.

This is a very vicious woman despite her clownishly made-up face.

Her words after Gaddafi's murder were chilling.

She is said to have been responsible too for pressuring for the final push to get Waco out of the headlines. 80 folks incinerated.

She also joked about Assange, "can't we just drone him or something?"

And there was the dirty business at Benghazi.

She is indeed a woman capable of anything. A contemporary Borgia.

Daniel Rich , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 9:33 am GMT
Because the {real} killers of JFK, MLK and RFK were never detained and jailed/hanged, why would one expect a lesser known, more ordinary individual's murder [Seth] to be solved?
hobo , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 10:27 am GMT
Seymour Hersh, in a taped phone conversation, claimed to have access to an FBI report on the murder. According to Hersh, the report indicated tha FBI Cyber Unit examined Rich's computer and found he had contacted Wikileaks with the intention of selling the emails.

Seymour Hersh discussing Wikileaks DNC leaks Seth Rich & FBI report ( 7 min)

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZJpQPGeUeQY?feature=oembed

Antiwar7 , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 10:33 am GMT
Another reason Assange may not want to reveal it, if Seth Rich was a source for Wikileaks, could be that Seth Rich didn't act alone, and revealing Seth's involvement would compromise the other(s).

Or it could simply be that Wikileaks has promised to never reveal a source, even after that source's death, as a promise to future potential sources, who may never want their identities revealed, to avoid the thought of embarrassment or repercussions to their associates or families.

Incidentally, they only started really going after Assange after the Vault 7 leaks of the CIA's active bag of software tricks. I think, for Assange's sake, they should instead have held on to that, and made it the payload of a dead man's switch.

Chet Roman , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 11:05 am GMT
I'm not sure how credible the source is but Ellen Ratner, the sister of Assange's former lawyer and a journalist, told Ed Butowsky that Assange told her that it was Seth Rich. She asked Butowsky to contact Rich's parents. She confirms the Assange meeting in an interview, link below. Butowsky does not seem to be a credible source but Ratner does. If it was Seth Rich then I have no doubt that his brother knows the details and the family does not want to lose another son.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/_YyuWpjTbg0?feature=oembed

The story has gone nowhere.

Chet Roman , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 11:42 am GMT
"According to Assange's lawyers, Rohrabacher offered a pardon from President Trump if Assange were to provide information that would attribute the theft or hack of the Democratic National Committee emails to someone other than the Russians."

Not to quibble on semantics but Rohrabacher met with Assange to ask if he would be willing to reveal the source of the emails then Rohrabacher would contact Trump and try to make deal for Assange's freedom. Rohrabacher clarified that he never talked to Trump or that he was authorized by Trump to make any offer.

The MSM has been using the "amnesty if you say it was not the Russians" narrative to hint at a coverup by Russian agent Trump. Normal for the biased MSM.

Giraldi's link "Assange did not take the offer" has nothing to do with Rohrabacher's contact. It's just a general piece on Assange acting as a journalist should act.

https://www.rohrabacher.com/news/my-meeting-with-julian-assange

Alfred , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 12:01 pm GMT
@plantman I can imagine Hillary and her intel connections looking for an alternative to whacking Rich

Have you never had to deal with a psychopath? That is not the way they reason.

She would have done it in the "national interest"

DaveE , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 2:21 pm GMT
I'm of the opinion Ron Unz seems to share, that Rich was not a particularly "big hitter" in the DNC hierarchy and that his murder was more likely the result of a very nasty inter-party squabble. I seem to recall a LOT of very nasty talk between the Jewish neocons in the Bush era and the decent, traditional "small-government" style Republicans who greatly resented the neocons' hijacking of the GOP for their demonic zionist agenda.

Common sense would suggest that the zionist types who have (obviously) hijacked the DNC are at least as nasty and ruthless as the neocons who destroyed any decency or fair-play within the GOP. It's not exactly hard to believe that these Murder, Inc. types (also lefties of their era) wouldn't hesitate to whack someone like Rich for merely uttering a criticism of Israel, for example.

Hell, Meyer Lansky ordered the hit-job on Bugsy Seigel for forgetting to bring bagels to a sit-down ! There was a great web-site by a mobster of that era, long since taken down, who described the story in detail. I forget the names .. but I'll see if I can't find a copy of some of the pieces posted at least a decade ago .

It's not exactly hard to imagine some very nasty words being exchanged between the Rahm Emmanuel types and decent Chicago citizens, for example, who genuinely cared for their city and weren't afraid of The Big Jew and his mobster cronies . to their detriment I'm sure.

We're talking about organized crime, here, folks. The zionists make the so-called (mostly fictitious) Sicilian Mafia look like newborn puppies. They wouldn't hesitate to whack a guy like Rich for taking their favorite space in the bicycle rack.

Rev. Spooner , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 3:27 pm GMT
@John Chuckman A long time ago I read in the London Guardian ( before it's reputation was in tatters) that the witch kept a list of all who pissed her off and updated it every night.
A quick search and here it is https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/14/hillary-clinton-hitlist-spreadsheet-grudge
Altai , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 3:33 pm GMT
My only trouble with the Seth Rich thing is, it seems a bit extreme, they seem quite callous in murdering foreigners but US citizens in the US who are their staffers? If they really were prepared to go out and kill in this way, they're be a lot more suspicious deaths.

What makes the case most compelling is the very quick investigation by police that looks like they were told by somebody concerned about how the whole thing looked to close up the case nice and quickly. That and the fact that he was shot in the back, which doesn't make sense for an attempted robbery turned murder.

However, it may also be that as in so many cities in the US, murder clearance rates for street shootings (Little forensic evidence, can only go by witness accounts or through poor alibis from usual suspects and their associates. In this case there is also no connection between Rich and any possible shooter with no witnesses.) are just so very low that DC police don't bother and Seth Rich's death just happened to be one such case that attracted some scrutiny.

But then maybe for the reasons above a place like DC is perfect to just murder somebody on the street and that's why they were so brazen about it.

Ron Unz , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 3:47 pm GMT
@Altai

Seth Rich's death just happened to be one such case that attracted some scrutiny.

Well, upthread someone posted a recording of a Seymour Hersh phone call that confirmed Seth Rich was the fellow who leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks, thereby possibly swinging the presidential election to Trump and overcoming $2 billion of Democratic campaign advertising.

Shortly afterwards, he probably became about the only middle-class white in DC who died in a "random street killing" that year. If you doubt this, see if you can find any other such cases that year.

I think it is *extraordinarily* unlikely that these two elements are unconnected and merely happened together by chance.

[Mar 03, 2020] Clinton past still hunts him

Mar 03, 2020 | www.unz.com

Central Intelligence Allies , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 3:01 am GMT

What the Clintons and their allies are capable of, indeed! Cord Meyer bragged of recruiting Bill. His wifey's CIA handlers I mean allies planted her on the House Judiciary Committee staff to conceal key authorities bearing on the Watergate investigation. They illicitly enriched her with a commodity trading wheeze as hilariously, blatantly improbable as the Zorro Trust's New Mexico lottery win (itself recently reburied with factoids as contemptuously half-assed as George Bush the CIA Janitor:)

https://www.thelostogle.com/2019/08/14/no-jeffrey-epstein-did-not-win-25-million-from-an-oklahoma-lottery-ticket-or-did-he/

CIA put Bill to work laundering drug money at Mena. Then the couple ran that unprecedented macro-scale covert ops slush fund the Clinton Foundation.

To install Hillary as presidential figurehead, DCI John Brennan initiated the Russia-hacking Big Lie with its chorus of elderly spooks in the Mockingbird media. Misjudging Hillary's profoundly repulsive personality, Brennan failed.

Now Hillary, ridden with Parkisons, is squawking and wobbling like Ahnold's faulty disguise in Total Recall, and CIA has given up on her. But they haven't given up on ruling your country. Lest we forget, the guy who's now buying the party and hiring its apparatchiks has got his own CIA medal in the vault: he set up the biggest domestic Chiến dịch Phụng Hoàng center in New York.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/717864/cia-nypd-ig.pdf

Nobody gets near the White House without doing lots of favors for CIA.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cia-then-and-now-old-wine-in-new-bottles/5666818

[Feb 27, 2020] Russiagate Investigation Now Endangers Obama by Eric Zuesse

Notable quotes:
"... The Russiagate investigation, which had formerly focused against the current US President, has reversed direction and now targets the prior President. ..."
"... In order to appreciate the seriousness of that misconduct and its implications, it is useful to understand certain procedural and substantive requirements that apply to the government's conduct of electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes. Title I of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA ), codified as amended at 50 USC. 1801-1813, governs such electronic surveillance. It requires the government to apply for and receive an order from the FISC approving a proposed electronic surveillance. When deciding whether to grant such an application, a FISC judge must determine among other things, whether it provides probable cause to believe that the proposed surveillance target is a "foreign power" or an agent a foreign power. ..."
"... The government has a heightened duty of candor to the FISC in ex parte proceedings, that is, ones in which the government does not face an adverse party, such as proceedings on electronic surveillance applications. The FISC expects the government to comply with its heightened duty of candor in ex parte proceedings at all times. Candor is fundamental to this Court's effective operation. ..."
"... On December 9, 2019, the government filed, with the FISC, public and classified versions of the OIG Report. It documents troubling instances in which FBI personnel provided information to NSD ..."
"... which was unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession. It also describes several instances in which FBI personnel withheld from NSD information in their possession which was detrimental to their case for believing that Mr. ..."
"... Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power. ..."
"... MACCALLUM: Were you surprised that he ..."
"... seemed to give himself such a distance from the entire operation? ..."
"... "JAMES COMEY: As the director sitting on top of an organization of 38,000 people you can't run an investigation that's seven layers below you. You have to leave it to the career professionals to do." ..."
"... MACCALLUM: Do you believe that? ..."
"... BARR: No, I think that the -- one of the problems with what happened was precisely that they pulled the investigation up to the executive floors, and it was run and bird dogged by a very small group of very high level officials. And the idea that this was seven layers below him is simply not true. ..."
"... Allegedly, George Papadopoulos said that "Halper insinuated to him that Russia was helping the Trump campaign" , and Papadopoulos was shocked at Halper's saying this. Probably because so much money at the Pentagon is untraceable, some of the crucial documentation on this investigation might never be found. For example, the Defense Department's Inspector General's 2 July 2019 report to the US Senate said "ONA personnel could not provide us any evidence that Professor Halper visited any of these locations, established an advisory group, or met with any of the specific people listed in the statement of work." ..."
"... very profitable business ..."
"... Schultz and other members of the DNC staff had exercised bias against Bernie Sanders and in favor of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic primaries -- which favoritism had been the reason why Obama had appointed Shultz to that post to begin with. She was just doing her job for the person who had chosen her to lead the DNC. Likewise for Comey. In other words: Comey was Obama's pick to protect Clinton, and to oppose Trump (who had attacked both Clinton and Obama). ..."
"... Nowadays, Obama is telling the Party's billionaires that Elizabeth Warren would be good for them , but not that Sanders would -- he never liked Sanders. ..."
"... and, so, Trump now will be gunning against Obama ..."
"... Whatever the outcome will be, it will be historic, and unprecedented. (If Sanders becomes the nominee, it will be even more so; and, if he then wins on November 3rd, it will be a second American Revolution; but, this time, a peaceful one -- if that's even possible, in today's hyper-partisan, deeply split, USA.) ..."
"... There is no way that the outcome from this will be status-quo. Either it will be greatly increased further schism in the United States, or it will be a fundamental political realignment, more comparable to 1860 than to anything since. ..."
"... Reform is no longer an available option, given America's realities. A far bigger leap than that will be required in order for this country to avoid falling into an utter abyss, which could be led by either Party, because both Parties have brought the nation to its present precipice, the dark and lightless chasm that it now faces, and which must now become leapt, in order to avoid a free-fall into oblivion. ..."
"... The problem in America isn't either Obama or Trump; it's neither merely the Democratic Party, nor merely the Republican Party; it is instead both; it is the Deep State . ..."
Dec 29, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org
Former US President Barack Obama is now in severe legal jeopardy, because the Russiagate investigation has turned 180 degrees; and he, instead of the current President, Donald Trump, is in its cross-hairs.

The biggest crime that a US President can commit is to try to defeat American democracy (the Constitutional functioning of the US Government) itself, either by working with foreign powers to take it over, or else by working internally within America to sabotage democracy for his or her own personal reasons. Either way, it's treason (crime that is intended to, and does, endanger the continued functioning of the Constitution itself*), and Mr. Obama is now being actively investigated, as possibly having done this.

The Russiagate investigation, which had formerly focused against the current US President, has reversed direction and now targets the prior President. Although he, of course, cannot be removed from office (since he is no longer in office), he is liable under criminal laws, the same as any other American would be, if he committed any crime while he was in office.

A December 17th order by the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court severely condemned the performance by the FBI under Obama, for having obtained, on 19 October 2016 (even prior to the US Presidential election), from that Court, under false pretenses, an authorization for the FBI to commence investigating Donald Trump's Presidential campaign, as being possibly in collusion with Russia's Government. The Court's ruling said:

In order to appreciate the seriousness of that misconduct and its implications, it is useful to understand certain procedural and substantive requirements that apply to the government's conduct of electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes. Title I of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA ), codified as amended at 50 USC. 1801-1813, governs such electronic surveillance. It requires the government to apply for and receive an order from the FISC approving a proposed electronic surveillance. When deciding whether to grant such an application, a FISC judge must determine among other things, whether it provides probable cause to believe that the proposed surveillance target is a "foreign power" or an agent a foreign power.

The government has a heightened duty of candor to the FISC in ex parte proceedings, that is, ones in which the government does not face an adverse party, such as proceedings on electronic surveillance applications. The FISC expects the government to comply with its heightened duty of candor in ex parte proceedings at all times. Candor is fundamental to this Court's effective operation.

On December 9, 2019, the government filed, with the FISC, public and classified versions of the OIG Report. It documents troubling instances in which FBI personnel provided information to NSD [National Security Division of the Department of Justice] which was unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession. It also describes several instances in which FBI personnel withheld from NSD information in their possession which was detrimental to their case for believing that Mr. [Carter] Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power.

On December 18th, Martha McCallum, of Fox News, interviewed US Attorney General Bill Barr , and asked him (at 7:00 in the video ) how high up in the FBI the blame for this (possible treason) goes:

MACCALLUM: Were you surprised that he [Obama's FBI Director James Comey] seemed to give himself such a distance from the entire operation?

"JAMES COMEY: As the director sitting on top of an organization of 38,000 people you can't run an investigation that's seven layers below you. You have to leave it to the career professionals to do."

MACCALLUM: Do you believe that?

BARR: No, I think that the -- one of the problems with what happened was precisely that they pulled the investigation up to the executive floors, and it was run and bird dogged by a very small group of very high level officials. And the idea that this was seven layers below him is simply not true.

The current (Trump) A.G. there called the former (Obama) FBI Director a liar on that.

If Comey gets heat for this possibly lie-based FBI investigation of the US Presidential nominee from the opposite Party of the sitting US President (Comey's own boss, Obama), then protecting himself could become Comey's top motivation; and, in that condition, protecting his former boss might become only a secondary concern for him.

Moreover, as was first publicly reported by Nick Falco in a tweet on 5 June 2018 (which tweet was removed by Twitter but fortunately not before someone had copied it to a web archive ), the FBI had been investigating the Trump campaign starting no later than 7 October 2015. An outside private contractor, Stefan Halper, was hired in Britain for this, perhaps in order to get around laws prohibiting the US Government from doing it. (This was 'foreign intelligence' work, after all. But was it really ? That's now being investigated.) The Office of Net Assessment (ONA) "through the Pentagon's Washington Headquarters Services, awarded him contracts from 2012 to 2016 to write four studies encompassing relations among the US, Russia, China and India" .

Though Halper actually did no such studies for the Pentagon, he instead functioned as a paid FBI informant (and it's not yet clear whether that money came from the Pentagon, which spends trillions of dollars that are off-the-books and untraceable ), and at some point Trump's campaign became a target of Halper's investigation. This investigation was nominally to examine "The Russia-China Relationship: The impact on US Security interests."

Allegedly, George Papadopoulos said that "Halper insinuated to him that Russia was helping the Trump campaign" , and Papadopoulos was shocked at Halper's saying this. Probably because so much money at the Pentagon is untraceable, some of the crucial documentation on this investigation might never be found. For example, the Defense Department's Inspector General's 2 July 2019 report to the US Senate said "ONA personnel could not provide us any evidence that Professor Halper visited any of these locations, established an advisory group, or met with any of the specific people listed in the statement of work."

It seems that the Pentagon-contracted work was a cover-story, like pizza parlors have been for some Mafia operations. But, anyway, this is how America's 'democracy' actually functions . And, of course, America's Deep State works not only through governmental agencies but also through underworld organizations . That's just reality, not at all speculative. It's been this way for decades, at least since the time of Truman's Presidency (as is documented at that link).

Furthermore, inasmuch as this operation certainly involved Obama's CIA Director John Brennan and others, and not only top officials at the FBI, there is no chance that Comey would have been the only high official who was involved in it. And if Comey was involved, then he would have been acting in his own interest, and not only in his boss's -- and here's why: Comey would be expected to have been highly motivated to oppose Mr. Trump, because Trump publicly questioned whether NATO (the main international selling-arm for America's 'defense'-contractors) should continue to exist, and also because Comey's entire career had been in the service of America's Military-Industrial Complex, which is the reason why Comey's main lifetime income has been the tens of millions of dollars he has received via the revolving door between his serving the federal Government and his serving firms such as Lockheed Martin . For these people, restoring, and intensifying, and keeping up, the Cold War , is a very profitable business . It's called by some "the Military-Industrial Complex," and by others "the Deep State," but by any name it is simply agents of the billionaires who own and control US-based international corporations, such as General Dynamics and Chevron. As a governmental official, making decisions that are in the long-term interests of those investors is the likeliest way to become wealthy.

Consequently, Comey would have been benefitting himself, and other high officials of the Obama Administration, by sabotaging Trump's campaign, and by weakening Trump's Presidency in the event that he would become elected. Plus, of course, Comey would have been benefitting Obama himself. Not only was Trump constantly condemning Obama, but Obama had appointed to lead the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 Presidential primaries, Debbie Wasserman Schultz , who as early as 20 February 2007 had endorsed Hillary Clinton for President in the Democratic Party primaries, so that Shultz was one of the earliest supporters of Clinton against even Obama himself. In other words, Obama had appointed Shultz in order to increase the odds that Clinton -- not Sanders -- would become the nominee in 2016 to continue on and protect his own Presidential legacy. Furthermore, on 28 July 2016, Schultz became forced to resign from her leadership of the DNC after WikiLeaks released emails indicating that Schultz and other members of the DNC staff had exercised bias against Bernie Sanders and in favor of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic primaries -- which favoritism had been the reason why Obama had appointed Shultz to that post to begin with. She was just doing her job for the person who had chosen her to lead the DNC. Likewise for Comey. In other words: Comey was Obama's pick to protect Clinton, and to oppose Trump (who had attacked both Clinton and Obama).

Nowadays, Obama is telling the Party's billionaires that Elizabeth Warren would be good for them , but not that Sanders would -- he never liked Sanders. He wants Warren to get the voters who otherwise would go for Sanders, and he wants the Party's billionaires to help her achieve this (be the Party's allegedly 'progressive' option), so that Sanders won't be able to become a ballot option in the general election to be held on 3 November 2020.

He is telling them whom not to help win the Party's nomination. In fact, on November 26th, Huffington Post headlined "Obama Said He Would Speak Up To Stop Bernie Sanders Nomination: Report" and indicated that though he won't actually say this in public (but only to the Party's billionaires), Obama is determined to do all he can to prevent Sanders from becoming the nominee. In 2016, his choice was Hillary Clinton; but, today, it's anyone other than Sanders; and, so, in a sense, it remains what it was four years ago -- anyone but Sanders.

Comey's virtually exclusive concern, at the present stage, would be to protect himself, so that he won't be imprisoned. This means that he might testify against Obama. At this stage, he's free of any personal obligation to Obama -- Comey is now on his own, up against Trump, who clearly is his enemy. Some type of back-room plea-bargain is therefore virtually inevitable -- and not only with Comey, but with other top Obama-appointees, ultimately. Obama is thus clearly in the cross-hairs, from now on. Congressional Democrats have opted to gun against Trump (by impeaching him); and, so, Trump now will be gunning against Obama -- and against the entire Democratic Party (unless Sanders becomes its nominee, in which case, Sanders will already have defeated that Democratic Party, and its adherents will then have to choose between him versus Trump; and, so, too, will independent voters).

But, regardless of what happens, Obama now is in the cross-hairs. That's not just political cross-hairs (such as an impeachment process); it is, above all, legal cross-hairs (an actual criminal investigation). Whereas Trump is up against a doomed effort by the Democratic Party to replace him by Vice President Mike Pence, Obama will be up against virtually inevitable criminal charges, by the incumbent Trump Administration. Obama played hardball against Trump, with "Russiagate," and then with "Ukrainegate"; Trump will now play hardball against Obama, with whatever his Administration and the Republican Party manage to muster against Obama; and the stakes this time will be considerably bigger than just whether to replace Trump by Pence.

Whatever the outcome will be, it will be historic, and unprecedented. (If Sanders becomes the nominee, it will be even more so; and, if he then wins on November 3rd, it will be a second American Revolution; but, this time, a peaceful one -- if that's even possible, in today's hyper-partisan, deeply split, USA.)

There is no way that the outcome from this will be status-quo. Either it will be greatly increased further schism in the United States, or it will be a fundamental political realignment, more comparable to 1860 than to anything since.

The US already has a higher percentage of its people in prison than does any other nation on this planet. Americans who choose a 'status-quo' option will produce less stability, more violence, not more stability and a more peaceful nation in a less war-ravaged world. The 2020 election-outcome for the United States will be a turning-point; there is no way that it will produce reform.

Americans who vote for reform will be only increasing the likelihood of hell-on-Earth. Reform is no longer an available option, given America's realities. A far bigger leap than that will be required in order for this country to avoid falling into an utter abyss, which could be led by either Party, because both Parties have brought the nation to its present precipice, the dark and lightless chasm that it now faces, and which must now become leapt, in order to avoid a free-fall into oblivion.

The problem in America isn't either Obama or Trump; it's neither merely the Democratic Party, nor merely the Republican Party; it is instead both; it is the Deep State .

That's the reality; and the process that got us here started on 26 July 1945 and secretly continued on the American side even after the Soviet Union ended and Russia promptly ended its side of the Cold War. The US regime's ceaseless thrust, since 26 July 1945, to rule the entire world, will climax either in a Third World War, or in a US revolution to overthrow and remove the Deep State and end its dictatorship-grip over America. Both Parties have been controlled by that Deep State , and the final stage or climax of this grip is now drawing near. America thus has been having a string of the worst Presidents -- and worst Congresses -- in US history. This is today's reality.

Unfortunately, a lot of American voters think that this extremely destabilizing reality, this longstanding trend toward war, is okay, and ought to be continued, not ended now and replaced by a new direction for this country -- the path toward world peace, which FDR had accurately envisioned but which was aborted on 26 July 1945. No matter how many Americans might vote for mere reform, they are wrong. Sometimes, only a minority are right. Being correct is not a majority or minority matter; it is a true or false matter. A misinformed public can willingly participate in its own -- or even the world's -- destruction. That could happen.

Democracy is a prerequisite to peace, but it can't exist if the public are being systematically misinformed. Lies and democracy don't mix together any more effectively than do oil and water.

[Jan 09, 2020] https://www.reddit.com/r/PedoGate/comments/elypk5/paul_krugman_has_been_downloading_child/

Jan 09, 2020 | www.reddit.com

5 comments 100% Upvoted Log in or sign up to leave a comment log in sign up Sort by View discussions in 6 other communities level 1


Tiny_Pay 2 points · 5 hours ago

What a weird tweet. level 1

IAmTeaBag4 2 points · 4 hours ago

Paul is probably just trying to get ahead of it. Possibly he was tipped off he was about to be busted? Just a thought. Nothing better than blaming Q in a leftist mind..

Edit: In the Alex Jones case they sent the child porn as an attachment to an email. This is straight up using his IP address. I'm no computer expert so I don't know if this can be done? Or how hard it would be to do. level 2

Tarlok888 1 point · 3 hours ago

If someone had a backdoor into his system, it's theoretically possible they could have done it by remote control. His description of it is completely ridiculous, though. Continue this thread level 1

nocoinerclub 1 point · 3 hours ago

even though prison limits Internet usage, the good news is he'll be allowed to use a FAX MACHINE!


(FYI- Krugman's two famous predictions are 1) bitcoin is not worth its $100 price and will soon go to $0.. and 2) the Internet will fail and be nothing more than a glorified fax machine)

[Dec 23, 2019] From "Spook Air" to the "Lolita Express" The Genesis and Evolution of the Jeffrey Epstein-Bill Clinton Relationship by Whitne

Notable quotes:
"... Far from being the work of a single political party, intelligence agency or country, the power structure revealed by the network connected to Epstein is nothing less than a criminal enterprise that is willing to use and abuse children in the pursuit of ever more power, wealth and control. ..."
"... According to one U.S. investigator with substantial knowledge of BCCI's activities, some BCCI officials have acknowledged that some of the females provided some members of the Al-Nahyan family [one of the ruling families in the UAE] were young girls who had not yet reached puberty, and in certain cases, were physically injured by the experience. The official said that former BCCI officials had told him that BCCI also provided males to homosexual VIPs." ..."
"... BCCI was largely brought into the United States business community through the efforts of Jackson Stephens and Bert Lance, former budget director for Jimmy Carter, who assisted with BCCI's acquisition of First American Bank. The law firm involved in this effort was Arkansas' Rose Law Firm and it involved several of the firm's lawyers, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Webster Hubbell and C.J. Giroir. Also involved in the effort was Clark Clifford, former Secretary of Defense under Lyndon B. Johnson, and Kamal Adham, former director general of Saudi intelligence. ..."
"... The late journalist Michael Ruppert asserted that this "bugged software" was none other than the Promis software, which both U.S. and Israeli intelligence had bugged in order to spy on intelligence and which had been marketed in part by Robert Maxwell, father of Jeffrey Epstein's madam, Ghislaine Maxwell. Ruppert cited Systematics as "a primary developer of Promis for financial intelligence use." Promis had originally been leased by Inslaw Inc., a small software company founded by Bill Hamilton, to the Department of Justice -- which later stole it from Inslaw, forcing it to declare bankruptcy. ..."
"... Systematics also had a subsidiary in Israel that, according to a former Israeli intelligence officer, was operated by contractors for the Mossad and sold software to banks and telecommunications companies. According to Richardson's letter, that Israeli subsidiary of Systematics also had a Massachusetts-based front company, which was partially owned by a former U.S. intelligence official. ..."
"... Two partners in the Rose Law Firm who would later serve in the Clinton administration, Vince Foster and Webster Hubbell, acquired significant financial interests in Systematics through ownership in Alltel, which purchased Systematics in the early 1990s. The Hamiltons also provide considerable evidence that Foster's distress prior to his death in 1993 appears to have been related to concerns about litigation involving Systematics and the on-going litigation over Promis' theft. ..."
"... Casolaro had been investigating an international crime syndicate he termed " the Octopus " at the time of his death in 1991. Casolaro believed that this "Octopus" involved powerful individuals in the private and public sectors as well as the criminal underworld and that they were collectively responsible for some of the biggest scandals of the 1980s, including Iran-Contra, BCCI and the theft of the Promis software. ..."
"... Two days after arriving in Martinsburg, Casolaro was found dead in his hotel room and his briefcase full of his research notes and evidence was missing. His death was ruled a suicide. ..."
"... Speculation only grew following the FBI investigation , given that the FBI lied to Congress, pressured its own agents not to question whether it was a suicide and lost 90 percent of its files related to Casolaro's death -- among other glaring inconsistencies. ..."
"... Ostrovsky, in his #1 New York Times bestseller " By Way of Deception ," notes that Khashoggi had been recruited by the Mossad years before and that his private jet had been fitted in Israel. In relation to Iran-Contra, Ostrovsky claims that it was a $5 million bridge loan that Khashoggi provided that helped to overcome the lack of trust between Israel and Iran during the initial arms deals in the early 1980s, and thus his participation was critical to the success of the scheme. ..."
"... One of Epstein's clients after leaving Bear Stearns, per Ward's sources, was the CIA/Mossad-linked Khashoggi at the very time that Khashoggi was involved in Iran-Contra, an operation involving both U.S. and Israeli intelligence. British journalist Nigel Rosser reported in January 2001 in the Evening Standard that Epstein had claimed that he was also working for the CIA during this same time period. ..."
"... Since Epstein's arrest, records of Rosser's article have been scrubbed from British newspaper archives, including the Evening Standard 's own. However, MintPress independently confirmed with Bob Fitrakis, whom Rosser had interviewed for the article in question, that the article did allege that Epstein used to claim he worked for the CIA. In addition, other reports from the time period cited excerpts of Rosser's article, including the reference to Epstein's past claims of involvement with the CIA. ..."
"... Though Epstein denied past connections to the CIA at the time Rosser's article was published, it is worth mentioning that Robert Maxwell -- father of Ghislaine Maxwell and long-time Mossad operative -- also vehemently denied his now well-documented links to Israeli intelligence until his death. Furthermore, as will be shown later in this article, Epstein and his only known billionaire "client," Leslie Wexner, would later forge a business relationship with the CIA front company Southern Air Transport and play a major role in the airline's relocation to Columbus, Ohio in the mid-1990s. During that period, two prominent Ohio officials believed that both Epstein and Wexner were working with the CIA, according to Ohio-based journalist Bob Fitrakis. ..."
"... Furthermore, there is the additional fact that BCCI trafficked underage girls for sex as a means of obtaining favors from and gaining leverage over powerful individuals, something in which Epstein would later become deeply involved. As was shown in Part II of this series, several individuals who were running either sexual blackmail operations involving minors or child trafficking operations were connected to CIA front companies like BCCI, other organizations connected to the Iran-Contra scandal, and several individuals close to the Reagan White House. ..."
"... The CIA director at the time, Bill Casey, was a close friend of Roy Cohn, who also ran the sexual blackmail operation involving underage boys out of Manhattan's Plaza Hotel, described in Part I of this series. According to Cohn's long-time secretary Christine Seymour, Casey was one of Cohn's most frequent callers. ..."
"... [T]he CIA may have used B.C.C.I. as more than an undercover banker: U.S. agents collaborated with the black network in several operations, according to a B.C.C.I. black-network "officer" who is now a secret U.S. government witness. Sources have told investigators that B.C.C.I. worked closely with Israel's spy agencies and other Western intelligence groups as well, especially in arms deals ." (emphasis added) ..."
"... Later iterations of that arms deal were allegedly brokered with the involvement of Prince Charles of the British royal family, and corruption investigations into Al Yamamah were later shut down by the efforts of Tony Blair as well as Prince Andrew. Leese is said to have spoken of Epstein's "genius" and lack of morals when he introduced him to Steve Hoffenberg of Tower Financial, and soon after that introduction Hoffenberg hired Epstein. ..."
"... Two years after BCCI's fraud-driven collapse, Tower Financial imploded in 1993 in what is still considered to be one of the largest Ponzi schemes in American history. Hoffenberg later asserted in court that Epstein had been intimately involved in Tower's shady financial practices and had called Epstein the "architect of the scam." However, by the time Tower Financial had collapsed, Epstein was no longer working for the company. Despite Hoffenberg's testimony and abundant evidence regarding Epstein's role in the scheme, Epstein's name was mysteriously dropped from the case. ..."
"... It is likely that Epstein's conspicuous cultivation and support of prominent scientists was in fact camouflage to help cover his real role as a covert operative specializing in blackmail. Comments by some scientists who attended his soirees indicate that Epstein was scientifically an ignoramus and was unserious in scientific discussions. ..."
"... The Mena story was an open secret in Arkansas. Paul Greenberg (who bestowed the monicker "Slick Willie" upon The Boy Wonder) wrote extensively upon this subject. There have been rumors–never confirmed– that Clinton may have been recruited by Spook Inc. as early as his undergrad days at G-Town (it's still not clear how Clinton, a relatively unknown American college graduate, could gain entry into the USSR in the summer of '69 for a "vacation" at a time when our relations with that country were as low as they ever were). ..."
"... What con man does not claim to be a secret agent? ..."
"... Epstein also claimed to be a blackmailer, He promoted himself as freelance secret agent, acting for governments or malefactors whichever paid most, when he was trying to get a journalist to write a book about him in the eighties. Last year Epstein told a NYT journalist that he had compromising material on top tech magnates (this was probably Elon Musk) ..."
"... There was another interview around the same time in which Epstein "rambled" about the big tech people he knew to business reporters at his mansion. Every reporter who was around him decided he was full of it. ..."
"... Going on like this, Epstein would have been disposed of by his own organisation .. if it actually existed. The Mafia kill people for far less ..."
"... Wexner was one of five key managers of organized crime cash flows in the United States. many members of the so-called Mega Group, which Wexner co-founded, had direct ties to the Lansky crime syndicate. Meyer Lansky was a pioneer of sexual blackmail operations and was deeply connected to both U.S. intelligence and Israel's Mossad. ..."
"... I don't buy a word of this. Too much emphasis on sex trafficking, the meaningless description underage and the so-called victims. For some reason everyone believed the story that Epstein was some kind of pervert. Only children trust the Government when it says sex crime, WMD, ISIS or UFO. ..."
Aug 23, 2019 | www.unz.com

Far from being the work of a single political party, intelligence agency or country, the power structure revealed by the network connected to Epstein is nothing less than a criminal enterprise that is willing to use and abuse children in the pursuit of ever more power, wealth and control.

On August 10th, and for several days after, speculation swirled after it was announced that Jeffrey Epstein had been found dead in his cell. His cause of death has officially been ruled suicide by hanging.

Epstein, the billionaire pedophile and sex trafficker with a myriad of connections to the rich and powerful in the United States and several other countries, had told those close to him that he had feared for his life prior to his sudden "suicide," the Washington Post reported, while his defense lawyers claimed that he had planned to cooperate with federal authorities.

Following the controversial conclusion by the New York Medical Examiner that Epstein's death was a suicide -- a conclusion contested by Epstein's attornies as well as by independent forensic pathologists, given the apparent evidence pointing towards strangulation -- corporate media coverage of the Epstein case has slowed to a trickle, save for sensationalist stories about his alleged co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and new salacious details of his past. Gone from corporate media are any hints of the larger scandal, revolving around the admission that Epstein had "belonged to intelligence."

In this four-part series, " The Jeffrey Epstein Scandal: Too Big to Fail ," MintPress has revealed that Epstein's activities -- a sexual blackmail operation involving minors and connected to intelligence agencies -- was one of many such operations that have taken place for decades, developing from the nexus forged between the CIA, organized crime and Israeli intelligence shortly after World War II.

As Part II of this series revealed, these sexual blackmail operations proliferated during the Iran-Contra affair, which involved this same dark alliance between U.S./Israeli intelligence and organized crime. Though this series has thus far largely focused on the ties of Republican officials to those operations and associated crimes, the final installment of this series will focus on Democratic politicians, namely the Clinton family, and their ties to this same network as well as Jeffrey Epstein.

The Clintons' own involvement in Iran-Contra revolved around the covert activities at Arkansas' Mena Airport, which involved the CIA front company Southern Air Transport and occurred while Clinton was governor. Just a few years into the Clinton presidential administration, Leslie Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein would play a major role in Southern Air Transport's relocation to Columbus, Ohio, leading to concerns among top Ohio officials that both men were not only working with the CIA, but that Wexner's company, The Limited, sought to use the CIA-linked airline for smuggling.

During that same period of time, Epstein had already forged close ties to important Clinton White House officials and prominent Clinton donors like Lynn Forester de Rothschild and made several personal visits to the official presidential residence.

Some of these ties appear related to Epstein's shady financial activities, particularly involving currency markets and offshore tax havens -- activities he began to perfect while working for prominent Iran-Contra figures in the early 1980s, several of whom were tied to the CIA-linked bank Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) and had known relationships with Israeli intelligence, namely the Mossad. The nature of Epstein's work for these individuals and other evidence strongly suggests that Epstein himself had a relationship with BCCI after leaving Bear Stearns and prior to the bank's collapse in 1991.

Of particular importance are Epstein's relationship to the Clinton Foundation and the alleged role of Epstein's Virgin Islands-based hedge fund and the Clinton Foundation in money laundering activity, a relationship still under investigation by MintPress .

It is this tale of intrigue that fully reveals the extent to which this decades-old alliance between organized crime, the CIA, and Israeli intelligence has corrupted and influenced politicians of both political parties, both through the use of sexual blackmail and through other means of coercion.

Far from being the work of a single intelligence agency or a single country, the power structure revealed by this network connected to Epstein is nothing less than a criminal enterprise that transcends nationality and is willing to use and abuse children in the pursuit of ever more power, wealth and control. Existing for decades and willing to use any means necessary to cover its tracks, this criminal racket has become so integrated into the levers of power, in the United States and well beyond, that it is truly too big to fail.

Iran Contra, Mena Airport and the Clintons

When one thinks back to the now-famous Iran-Contra scandal, names like Ronald Reagan, Oliver North and Barry Seal comes to mind, but former President Bill Clinton also played an outsized role in the scandal -- using his home state of Arkansas, where he was then serving as governor, as a sort of rallying point for the CIA's U.S.-side of the Central American operation.

In fact, during Clinton's reign as governor a small town called Mena, nestled in the Ozark Mountains west of Arkansas' capital Little Rock, would be propelled into the national spotlight as a hub for drug and arms smuggling and the training of CIA-backed far-right militias.

Under the close watch of the CIA, then led by William Casey, the Mena Intermountain Regional Airport was used to stockpile and deliver arms and ammunition to the Nicaraguan Contras. The arms were sometimes exchanged for cocaine from South American cartels, which would then be sent back to Mena and used to fund the covert CIA operation.

https://content.jwplatform.com/players/hreAXvJJ-YuKiCfZc.html

Though efforts have been made to dismiss Clinton's role in the scandal, his direct intervention in the Contras' attempts to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua suggests Clinton had some sort of personal stake in the efforts and was unlikely aloof to the major smuggling operation taking place in his state while he had been governor. In fact, while governor, Clinton split with many other state governments in sending a contingency of the Arkansas National Guard to Honduras to train the Nicaraguan Contras on how to overthrow their Sandinista government. Clinton would also discuss his first-hand knowledge of the operation with now-Trump administration Attorney General William Barr.

Much of this channeling of both weapons and drugs was carried out by notorious drug smuggler and alleged CIA/DEA operative Barry Seal. According to the book Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair:

A federal investigation aided by the Arkansas State Police established that Barry Seal, a drug dealer working for the Medellin cartel as well as with the C.I.A. and the D.E.A., had his planes retrofitted at Mena for drug drops, trained pilots there and laundered his profits partly through financial institutions in Arkansas. Seal, at this time was in close contact with [Oliver] North, who acknowledged the relationship in his memoir. These were the years in which North was constructing his covert supply lines for the contras."

Seal was known to use aircraft that belonged to the company Southern Air Transport and he also employed flight crews that worked for that same company. Southern Air Transport, formerly Air America, was once directly owned by the CIA and today is remembered for being a CIA front during Iran-Contra. Less known is the relationship between the CIA-linked airline and Leslie Wexner and his then-close associate Jeffrey Epstein, which will be discussed in detail later in this report.

Seal seemed to always operate with much less than six degrees of separation from Clinton while the latter served as governor. In his 1999 confessional expose, Cross-fire: Witness in the Clinton Investigation , former Arkansas policeman turned personal driver and security guard for Bill Clinton, L.D. Brown, recounts how Clinton encouraged him to seek out a post at the CIA. Clinton allegedly went so far as to edit the essay Brown wrote for this employment application. The essay topic was drug smuggling in Central America. Upon receiving his application, the CIA put Brown in touch with none other than Barry Seal. Seal would later be gunned down in 1986 while serving six-months probation for drug-smuggling charges.

Seal was not the only affiliate of Oliver North running a Contra-connected operation in Arkansas. Terry Reed, who had worked for North since 1983, claimed to have been put in touch with Seal by North and established a base just 10 miles north of Mena -- in Nella, Arkansas -- where "Nicaraguan Contras and other recruits from Latin American were trained in resupply missions, night landings, precision paradrops and similar maneuvers," according to Cockburn and St. Clair. Reed further asserted that drug money was being laundered through Arkansas financial institutions.

After Clinton's half-brother Roger was busted for cocaine smuggling (Clinton would later pardon him while president) the CIA sought to move Contra operations out of Arkansas, hoping to put a damper on the increasingly public and sloppy Arkansas-based operation. According to Terry Reed in his book Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA , co-written with John Cummings, a hushed meeting was held in a bunker at Camp Robinson in North Little Rock, Arkansas. During the meeting, William Barr, who represented himself as the emissary of then-CIA Director Bill Casey told Clinton:

The deal we made was to launder our money through your bond business but what we didn't plan on was you and your n****r here start taking yourselves seriously and purposely shrinking our laundry."

Barr chastised Clinton for his sloppy handling of the delicate operation and his half-brother's very public fall from grace. He would later tell Clinton, according to Reed ,

Bill, you are Mr. Casey's fair-haired boy You and your state have been our greatest asset. Mr. Casey wanted me to pass on to you that unless you fuck up and do something stupid, you're No. 1 on the short list for a shot at the job that you've always wanted. You and guys like you are the fathers of the new government. We are the new covenant."

Attempts to investigate Clinton's role in the Mena operations and more broadly in the Iran-Contra affair were allegedly axed by Clinton's own confidantes, who consistently denied he played a role in the scandal. According to the Wall Street Journal , former IRS investigator William Duncan teamed with Arkansas State Police Investigator Russell Welch in what became a decade-long battle to bring the matter to light. In fact, of the nine separate state and federal probes into the affair, all failed.

Duncan would later say of the investigations, "[They] were interfered with and covered up, and the justice system was subverted," and a 1992 memo from Duncan to high-ranking members of the attorney general's staff notes that Duncan was instructed "to remove all files concerning the Mena investigation from the attorney general's office." The attorney general, serving under George H. W. Bush, at that time was William Barr, who is currently attorney general under Trump.

The Bank of Crooks and Criminals International

Another Clinton connection to the CIA and the Iran-Contra affair runs through the family's connection to Arkansas financier Jackson Stephens and the CIA-linked Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), which critics nicknamed the "Bank of Crooks and Criminals International." Stephens was among the richest people in Arkansas and was also a major donor and backer of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton . He also played a key role in the rise of Walmart .

Jackson Stephens and other members of the Stephens family bankrolled Bill Clinton's rise to political prominence , contributing large sums of money to both Clinton's gubernatorial and his later presidential campaigns. In addition, Worthen Bank, which was majority-owned by Stephens, provided Clinton's first presidential campaign a $3.5 million line of credit. In addition, Stephens' many businesses were frequently represented by the Rose Law Firm, where Hillary Clinton was a partner.

A redacted FBI report from 1998 describes Stephens as having "lengthy and continuing ties to the Clinton administration and associates" and also discusses allegations that Stephens has been involved in the "illegal handling of campaign contributions to the Democratic National Party."

BCCI had originally been founded by a group of bankers from Pakistan, though Newsweek later reported that CIA officials appeared to have been involved in the bank's founding and that BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi had been encouraged by the CIA to found the bank after "the agency realized that an international bank could provide valuable cover for intelligence operations." CIA documents that later surfaced during congressional hearings on the bank's activities and related scandals stated that BCCI was directly involved in "money laundering, narco-financing, gunrunning and holding large sums of money for terrorist groups."

Evidence in the case against BCCI shows cocaine seized from a warehouse and suitcases full of cash to be laundered. Photo | FLMD District Court

Though BCCI was known for its CIA links, Catherine Austin Fitts -- former Assistant Secretary for Housing–Federal Housing Commissioner at HUD during the George H. W. Bush administration, and investment banker with the firms Hamilton Securities Group and Dillon, Read & Co. -- believes that those links went well beyond the CIA. Fitts -- who was placed on the board of the BCCI subsidiary First American Bank following BCCI's collapse -- told MintPress that, after reading through troves of documents regarding the bank's activities prior to its implosion, it was clear to her that there was "no way" its clandestine activities were carried on without the full knowledge of the Federal Reserve, specifically the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the White House.

BCCI also played a key role in the Iran-Contra affair and accounts of the bank were used to send payoffs to individuals linked to the scheme. Adnan Khashoggi, a key figure and intermediary in the scandal, used one BCCI account to move more than $20 million related to illegal arms sales and BCCI created fake documentation, including checks signed by Oliver North, allowing the sale to go forward. The bank later, when its activities subsequently came under congressional scrutiny, claimed it had no records of these transactions.

In addition, BCCI appears to have been involved in the sex trafficking of underage girls, including girls that had not yet reached puberty. According to the report entitled " The BCCI Affair ," by then-U.S. Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Hank Brown (R-CO), BCCI officials were alleged to have obtained leverage with powerful individuals, including prominent members of the ruling families of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), by providing them with young virgins.

The report (page 70) specifically states :

According to one U.S. investigator with substantial knowledge of BCCI's activities, some BCCI officials have acknowledged that some of the females provided some members of the Al-Nahyan family [one of the ruling families in the UAE] were young girls who had not yet reached puberty, and in certain cases, were physically injured by the experience. The official said that former BCCI officials had told him that BCCI also provided males to homosexual VIPs."

BCCI was largely brought into the United States business community through the efforts of Jackson Stephens and Bert Lance, former budget director for Jimmy Carter, who assisted with BCCI's acquisition of First American Bank. The law firm involved in this effort was Arkansas' Rose Law Firm and it involved several of the firm's lawyers, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Webster Hubbell and C.J. Giroir. Also involved in the effort was Clark Clifford, former Secretary of Defense under Lyndon B. Johnson, and Kamal Adham, former director general of Saudi intelligence.

One of the men added to the BCCI board after the acquisition of First American Bank was Robert Keith Gray, whom Newsweek described as often having "boasted of his close relationship with the CIA's William Casey; Gray used to say that before taking on a foreign client, he would clear it with Casey." As was discussed in Part II of this series, Gray was also an expert in homosexual blackmail operations for the CIA and was reported to have collaborated with Roy Cohn in those activities. Some of Gray's clients at the powerful PR firm he led, Hill & Knowlton, included BCCI clients and Mossad-linked individuals, such as Adnan Khashoggi and Marc Rich.

While the Rose Law Firm was assisting BCCI's entrance into the American financial system, it also represented the Stephens-owned financial services company, Stephens Inc., as well as the data-processing company Systematics Inc., which Stephens acquired in the late 1960s. According to James Norman in his book The Oil Card: Global Economic Warfare in the 21st Century , Systematics was "a primary vehicle or front company for the National Security Agency in the 1980s and early 1990s to market and implant bugged software in the world's major money-center banks and clearinghouses as part of the Reagan/Bush 'follow the money' effort to break the Soviets."

The late journalist Michael Ruppert asserted that this "bugged software" was none other than the Promis software, which both U.S. and Israeli intelligence had bugged in order to spy on intelligence and which had been marketed in part by Robert Maxwell, father of Jeffrey Epstein's madam, Ghislaine Maxwell. Ruppert cited Systematics as "a primary developer of Promis for financial intelligence use." Promis had originally been leased by Inslaw Inc., a small software company founded by Bill Hamilton, to the Department of Justice -- which later stole it from Inslaw, forcing it to declare bankruptcy.

According to a 1995 document sent on behalf of Inslaw's founders to then-independent Counsel Ken Starr that asked him to review Inslaw's case, Systematics had "covertly implanted [software] into the computers of its bank customers" that allowed "allied intelligence agencies surreptitiously to track and monitor the flow of money through the banking system" and had done so at "the behest of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and its partner in Israeli intelligence." Inslaw also stated that the software was used by these same intelligence agencies in the "laundering of money, especially drug profits."

Systematics also had a subsidiary in Israel that, according to a former Israeli intelligence officer, was operated by contractors for the Mossad and sold software to banks and telecommunications companies. According to Richardson's letter, that Israeli subsidiary of Systematics also had a Massachusetts-based front company, which was partially owned by a former U.S. intelligence official.

Two partners in the Rose Law Firm who would later serve in the Clinton administration, Vince Foster and Webster Hubbell, acquired significant financial interests in Systematics through ownership in Alltel, which purchased Systematics in the early 1990s. The Hamiltons also provide considerable evidence that Foster's distress prior to his death in 1993 appears to have been related to concerns about litigation involving Systematics and the on-going litigation over Promis' theft.

BCCI itself was known to employ the Promis software after its theft by the DOJ; and one of its subsidiaries, First American Bank, also " filtered PROMIS money " -- i.e., laundered the money generated from the sale of the stolen Promis software -- according to the late journalist Danny Casolaro.

Casolaro had been investigating an international crime syndicate he termed " the Octopus " at the time of his death in 1991. Casolaro believed that this "Octopus" involved powerful individuals in the private and public sectors as well as the criminal underworld and that they were collectively responsible for some of the biggest scandals of the 1980s, including Iran-Contra, BCCI and the theft of the Promis software.

Casolaro had told friends and family that he was close to concluding his investigation and several people close to him had seen documents involving money transfers involving BCCI and the World Bank to people involved in these scandals, such as Earl Brian and Adnan Khashoggi. Casolaro went to Martinsburg, Virginia to meet with some sources to get the final piece of the puzzle and "bring back the head of the Octopus." Two days after arriving in Martinsburg, Casolaro was found dead in his hotel room and his briefcase full of his research notes and evidence was missing. His death was ruled a suicide.

Crime scene photos show deep lacerations in Casolaro's arms

Many, including Casolaro's family, do not believe that Casolaro committed suicide. A week before his death, Casolaro told his brother he had been receiving death threats and the manner in which he died, deep slashes in his arms, was not consistent with Casolaro's well-known squeamishness around even minor amounts of blood. Speculation only grew following the FBI investigation , given that the FBI lied to Congress, pressured its own agents not to question whether it was a suicide and lost 90 percent of its files related to Casolaro's death -- among other glaring inconsistencies.

In a 1994 letter provided to MintPress by Inslaw Inc., Inslaw lawyer Charles Work told then-Assistant Attorney General John Dwyer that one of Inslaw's confidential sources in government had stated that Casolaro had been injected with a substance that deadened his nerves from the neck down, explaining the apparent lack of struggle and that the substance used had come from the U.S. Army inventory. The person who had arranged Casolaro's final meeting before his death was a U.S. military intelligence officer named Joseph Cuellar.

The same year that Casolaro died, there were several other suspicious deaths involving people directly connected to the Promis scandal or involved in Casolaro's investigation of "the Octopus" -- including Alan Standorf , one of Casolaro's sources; Robert Maxwell , father of Ghislaine Maxwell, Mossad operative, and salesman of the bugged Promis software; and John Tower -- the former Texas senator who assisted Maxwell in selling the bugged Promis software to the Los Alamos laboratories.

Jeffrey Epstein and "The Dirtiest Bank of All"

While the role Arkansas played in Iran-Contra is one aspect of the scandal that is often overlooked, so to is the key role played by Israeli intelligence-linked arms dealers and smugglers who would later be connected to powerful individuals in the Mega Group and Jeffrey Epstein, such as Marc Rich and Adnan Khashoggi.

One of the key players in the Iran-Contra affair was Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, uncle of the slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. One lesser known fact about Adnan Khashoggi is that, at the time of his Iran-Contra dealings, he was working for the Israeli Mossad, according to former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky.

Ostrovsky, in his #1 New York Times bestseller " By Way of Deception ," notes that Khashoggi had been recruited by the Mossad years before and that his private jet had been fitted in Israel. In relation to Iran-Contra, Ostrovsky claims that it was a $5 million bridge loan that Khashoggi provided that helped to overcome the lack of trust between Israel and Iran during the initial arms deals in the early 1980s, and thus his participation was critical to the success of the scheme.

According to journalist Vicky Ward , Adnan Khashoggi was a client of Jeffrey Epstein's in the early 1980s, not long after Epstein's departure from Bear Stearns in 1981. The reason Epstein left the bank remains murky. Though some former Bear Stearns employees claim he was fired, others -- including Epstein himself -- claimed that he resigned of his own volition.

Ward suggests that Epstein may have left the bank owing to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation into insider trading in a case that involved a tender offer placed by the Seagrams corporation for St. Joe Minerals Corp. Seagrams owner Edgar Bronfman, son of Meyer Lansky associate Samuel Bronfman and member of the Mega Group, had tipped off several investors and bankers of the coming tender offer. Epstein resigned from Bear Stearns the day after the SEC opened the case and later claimed he had left the company as a result of a relatively minor "Reg D" violation and rumors that he had an "illicit affair with a secretary."

Yet, as Ward noted :

The SEC never brought any charges against anyone at Bear Stearns for insider trading in St. Joe, but its questioning seems to indicate that it was skeptical of Epstein's answers. Some sources have wondered why, if he was such a big producer at Bear Stearns, he would have given it up over a mere $2,500 fine."

Regardless of the exact reason for Epstein's sudden departure, it was immediately after he left the bank that "the details [of Epstein's work history] recede into shadow. A few of the handful of current friends who have known him since the early 1980s recall that he used to tell them he was a "bounty hunter," recovering lost or stolen money for the government or for very rich people. He has a license to carry a firearm."

Writing in Salon , a former friend of Epstein's, Jesse Kornbluth, also stated that Epstein had claimed to be a "bounty hunter" for the rich and powerful:

When we met in 1986, Epstein's double identity intrigued me -- he said he didn't just manage money for clients with mega-fortunes, he was also a high-level bounty hunter . Sometimes, he told me, he worked for governments to recover money looted by African dictators. Other times those dictators hired him to help them hide their stolen money ." (emphasis added)

One of Epstein's clients after leaving Bear Stearns, per Ward's sources, was the CIA/Mossad-linked Khashoggi at the very time that Khashoggi was involved in Iran-Contra, an operation involving both U.S. and Israeli intelligence. British journalist Nigel Rosser reported in January 2001 in the Evening Standard that Epstein had claimed that he was also working for the CIA during this same time period.

Since Epstein's arrest, records of Rosser's article have been scrubbed from British newspaper archives, including the Evening Standard 's own. However, MintPress independently confirmed with Bob Fitrakis, whom Rosser had interviewed for the article in question, that the article did allege that Epstein used to claim he worked for the CIA. In addition, other reports from the time period cited excerpts of Rosser's article, including the reference to Epstein's past claims of involvement with the CIA.

Specifically, Rosser's article had included the following passage:

He [Epstein] has a license to carry a concealed weapon, once claimed to have worked for the CIA, although he now denies it – and owns properties all over America. Once he arrived at the London home of a British arms dealer bringing a gift – a New York police-issue pump-action riot gun. 'God knows how he got it into the country,' a friend said."

Though Epstein denied past connections to the CIA at the time Rosser's article was published, it is worth mentioning that Robert Maxwell -- father of Ghislaine Maxwell and long-time Mossad operative -- also vehemently denied his now well-documented links to Israeli intelligence until his death. Furthermore, as will be shown later in this article, Epstein and his only known billionaire "client," Leslie Wexner, would later forge a business relationship with the CIA front company Southern Air Transport and play a major role in the airline's relocation to Columbus, Ohio in the mid-1990s. During that period, two prominent Ohio officials believed that both Epstein and Wexner were working with the CIA, according to Ohio-based journalist Bob Fitrakis.

Past claims and evidence of Epstein's involvement with the CIA, coupled with his time as a "shadowy" financial fixer for double-asset Khashoggi, strongly suggest that, whatever Epstein was doing for Khashoggi during this time, it likely involved BCCI. According to " The BCCI Affair " report, Khashoggi "acted as the middleman for five Iranian arms deals for the United States, financing a number of them through BCCI" and "served as the 'banker' for arms shipments as the undercover scheme developed." The report continued:

Khashoggi and [another Iran-Contra arms dealer Manucher] Ghorbanifer performed a central role for the U.S. government in connection with the Iran-Contra affair in operations that involved the direct participation of CIA personnel [and both Khashoggi and Ghorbanifer] banked at BCCI's offices in Monte Carlo and, for both, BCCI's services were essential as a means of providing short-term credit for sales from the U.S. through Israel to Iran."

Saudi arms deale Adnan Khashoggi arrives at Manhatten Federal Court, New York, April 4, 1990. Photo | AP

This connection is even more likely given the fact that Bear Stearns -- Epstein's previous employer right up until he became a financial fixer for Khashoggi and other powerful people -- also worked directly with BCCI during this period. Indeed, Bear Stearns served as a broker to BCCI, a fact that remained hidden until a lengthy court battle in the U.K. concluded in 2011 and forced the government's "Sandstorm Report" about BCCI's activities to unredact the names of Bear Stearns and other institutions, individuals and countries that had done business with the CIA-linked bank.

Furthermore, there is the additional fact that BCCI trafficked underage girls for sex as a means of obtaining favors from and gaining leverage over powerful individuals, something in which Epstein would later become deeply involved. As was shown in Part II of this series, several individuals who were running either sexual blackmail operations involving minors or child trafficking operations were connected to CIA front companies like BCCI, other organizations connected to the Iran-Contra scandal, and several individuals close to the Reagan White House.

The CIA director at the time, Bill Casey, was a close friend of Roy Cohn, who also ran the sexual blackmail operation involving underage boys out of Manhattan's Plaza Hotel, described in Part I of this series. According to Cohn's long-time secretary Christine Seymour, Casey was one of Cohn's most frequent callers.

Another fact that further suggests that Epstein had connections to BCCI is that Epstein was known to have been close to other arms dealers of the period and BCCI was frequently used specifically for covert arms deals. After the bank's collapse in 1991, an article in Time magazine entitled "BCCI: The Dirtiest Bank of All" noted the following:

[T]he CIA may have used B.C.C.I. as more than an undercover banker: U.S. agents collaborated with the black network in several operations, according to a B.C.C.I. black-network "officer" who is now a secret U.S. government witness. Sources have told investigators that B.C.C.I. worked closely with Israel's spy agencies and other Western intelligence groups as well, especially in arms deals ." (emphasis added)

One of the arms dealers that Epstein apparently knew quite well was the British arms dealer Sir Douglas Leese. Leese was involved in brokering the first of a series of controversial British arms deals that involved Khashoggi , known as the Al Yamamah Deal and allegedly involving bribery of members of the Saudi royal family and top Saudi officials. In addition to Khashoggi, several of those officials and royal family members had deep ties to BCCI.

Later iterations of that arms deal were allegedly brokered with the involvement of Prince Charles of the British royal family, and corruption investigations into Al Yamamah were later shut down by the efforts of Tony Blair as well as Prince Andrew. Leese is said to have spoken of Epstein's "genius" and lack of morals when he introduced him to Steve Hoffenberg of Tower Financial, and soon after that introduction Hoffenberg hired Epstein.

Two years after BCCI's fraud-driven collapse, Tower Financial imploded in 1993 in what is still considered to be one of the largest Ponzi schemes in American history. Hoffenberg later asserted in court that Epstein had been intimately involved in Tower's shady financial practices and had called Epstein the "architect of the scam." However, by the time Tower Financial had collapsed, Epstein was no longer working for the company. Despite Hoffenberg's testimony and abundant evidence regarding Epstein's role in the scheme, Epstein's name was mysteriously dropped from the case.

Given that Epstein allegedly received his "sweetheart deal" in 2008 as a result of having "belonged to intelligence," Epstein's activities in the 1980s and early 1990s suggest that his ability to avoid charges in relation to the Tower Financial Ponzi scheme may have been for similar reasons.

Though Hoffenberg claims that he met Epstein through Leese, Epstein himself claimed that he had met the convicted fraudster through John Mitchell, former attorney general under Richard Nixon.

As was noted in Part II of this series, Mitchell was a "friend" of disgraced Washington lobbyist Craig Spence, according to Spence before his fall from grace. Spence, for much of the 1980s, ran a sexual blackmail operation in D.C. involving underage boys and had taken some of those "call boys" on midnight tours of the White House that he said had been arranged by then-National Security Adviser Donald Gregg. Spence, after his trafficking and exploitation of minors was exposed, died under mysterious circumstances. His death was quickly labeled a suicide, not unlike Jeffrey Epstein's.

With Epstein and Wexner's Help, "Spook Air" Finds a New Home

While the state of Arkansas became a hub for CIA activity during the Reagan years and the Iran-Contra scandal, another state appeared to take its place in the 1990s -- Ohio. Just as Arkansas oligarch Jackson Stephens helped attract the CIA to his home state during Iran-Contra, it was also an Ohio oligarch and his close associate that helped attract the CIA to the Buckeye State. Those men were Leslie Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein, respectively.

In Part III of this series, MintPress detailed Wexner's alleged ties to organized crime and his links to the still unsolved homicide of Columbus, Ohio lawyer Arthur Shapiro. Shapiro, who was representing Wexner's company "The Limited" at the time of his death, was set to testify before a grand jury about tax evasion and his involvement with "questionable tax shelters." Columbus police described the Shapiro murder as "a Mafia 'hit'" and a suppressed police report implicated Wexner and his business associates as being involved in or benefiting from Shapiro's death, and as having links to prominent New York-based crime syndicates.

However, Wexner and The Limited also appear to have had a relationship with the CIA. In 1995, Southern Air Transport (SAT) -- a well-known front company for the CIA -- relocated from Miami, Florida to Columbus, Ohio. First founded in the late 1940s, SAT from 1960 until 1973 was directly owned by the CIA, which sought to use the company as a cover for covert operations. After 1973, the company was placed in private hands, although all of its subsequent owners would have CIA ties, including James Bastian, a former lawyer for the CIA, who owned SAT at the time of its relocation to Ohio.

SAT was intimately involved in the Iran-Contra affair, having been used to funnel weapons and drugs to and from the Nicaraguan Contras under the guise of delivering "humanitarian aid," while also sending American weapons to Israel that were then sold to Iran in violation of the U.S. arms embargo. In 1986 alone, SAT transported from Texas to Israel 90 tons of TOW anti-tank missiles, which were then sold to Iran by Israel and Mossad-linked intermediaries like Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.

Even though the airline's CIA links were well known, Leslie Wexner's company, The Limited, sought to coax SAT to relocate its headquarters from Miami, Florida to Columbus, Ohio, a move that was realized in 1995. When Edmund James, president of James and Donohew Development Services, told the Columbus Dispatch in March 1995 that SAT was relocating to Columbus' Rickenbacker airfield, he stated that "Southern Air's new presence at Rickenbacker begins in April with two regularly scheduled 747 cargo flights a week from Hong Kong," citing SAT President William Langton. "By fall, that could increase to four a week. Negotiations are underway for flights out of Rickenbacker to the Far East Much of the Hong Kong-to-Rickenbacker cargo will be for The Limited," Wexner's clothing company. "This is a big story for central Ohio. It's huge, actually," James said at the time.

The day following the press conference, Brian Clancy, working as a cargo analyst with MergeGlobal Inc., told the Journal of Commerce that the reason for SAT's relocation to Ohio was largely the result of the lucrative Hong Kong-to-Columbus route that SAT would run for Wexner's company. Clancy specifically stated that the fact that "[The] Limited Inc., the nation's largest retailer, is based in Columbus undoubtedly contributed in large part to Southern Air's decision."

According to documents obtained by journalist Bob Fitrakis from the Rickenbacker Port Authority, Ohio's government also tried to sweeten the deal to bring SAT to Columbus in order to please powerful Ohio businessmen like Wexner. Orchestrated by Governor George Voinovich's then-Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud, the Rickenbacker Port Authority and the Ohio Department of Development created a package of several financial incentives, funded by Ohio taxpayers, to lure the airline to relocate to Ohio. The Journal of Commerce described the "generous package of incentives from the state of Ohio" as "including a 75 percent credit against its corporate tax liability for the next 10 years, a $5 million low-interest loan, and a $400,000 job-training grant."In 1996, then-SAT spokesman David Sweet had told Fitrakis that the CIA-linked airline had only moved to Columbus because "the deal [put together by the development department] was too good to turn down."

Though SAT had promised Ohio's government that it would create 300 jobs in three years, it quickly laid off numerous workers and failed to construct the maintenance facility it had promised, even though it had already accepted $3.5 million in taxpayer funds for that and other projects. As the company's financial problems mounted, Ohio's government declined to recoup the millions in dollars it loaned the company, even after it was alleged that $32 million in the bank account of Mary Bastian, the wife of SAT's owner and former CIA lawyer James Bastian, were actually company funds . On October 1, 1998, SAT filed for bankruptcy. It was the very same day that the CIA's Inspector General had published a comprehensive report on the airline's illicit involvement in drug trafficking.

Furthermore, Fitrakis noted that in addition to Wexner the other main figures who were key in securing SAT's relocation to Ohio were Alan D. Fiers Jr., a former chief of the CIA Central American Task Force, and retired Air Force Major General Richard Secord, head of air logistics for SAT's covert action in Laos between 1966 and 1968, while the company was still known as Air America. Secord was also the air logistics coordinator in the illegal Contra resupply network for Oliver North during Iran-Contra. Fiers was one of the key individuals involved in Iran-Contra who was later pardoned by George H.W. Bush with the assistance of then-Attorney General Bill Barr. Barr -- currently serving as attorney general in the Trump administration, and top of the chain of DOJ command in the investigation of Epstein's death in prison -- has refused to recuse himself from the investigation into Epstein's network and his recent death.

Despite the involvement of these CIA-linked men, as well as the organized crime-linked Leslie Wexner, the then-president of SAT told the Columbus Dispatch that the airline was "no longer connected to the CIA."

Notably, It was during this same time that Epstein exerted substantial control over Wexner's finances; and, according to Fitrakis and his extensive reporting on Wexner from this period, it was Epstein who orchestrated logistics for Wexner's business operations, including The Limited. As was revealed in the Arthur Shapiro murder file and in ties between SAT and The Limited, much of The Limited's logistics involved figures and companies connected to organized crime and U.S. intelligence. It is also important to note that SAT was well-known for being a CIA front company prior to the efforts of Wexner et al. to bring the airline to Columbus, and that, a few years prior, Epstein himself had previously worked for intelligence-linked figures also involved in Iran-Contra, such as Adnan Khashoggi.

In addition, during this time period, Epstein had already begun to live in the now infamous New York penthouse that had first been purchased by Wexner in 1989. Wexner had apparently installed CCTV and recording equipment in an odd bathroom in the home after his purchase, and never lived in the home, as was noted in Part III of this series.

In an exclusive interview, Bob Fitrakis told MintPress that Epstein and Wexner's involvement with SAT's relocation to Ohio had caused suspicion among some prominent state and local officials that the two were working with U.S. intelligence. Fitrakis specifically stated that then-Ohio Inspector General David Strutz and then-Sheriff of Franklin County Earl Smith had personally told him that they believed that both Epstein and Wexner had ties to the CIA. These claims further corroborate what was first reported by Nigel Rosser in the Evening Standard that Epstein had claimed to have worked for the CIA in the past.

Fitrakis also told MintPress that Strutz had referred to SAT's route between Hong Kong and Columbus on behalf of Wexner's company The Limited as "the Meyer Lansky run," as he believed that Wexner's association with SAT was related to his ties to elements of organized crime that were connected to the Lansky-created National Crime Syndicate. In addition, Catherine Austin Fitts -- the former investment banker and government official, who has extensively investigated the intersection of organized crime, black markets, Wall Street and the government in the U.S. economy -- was told by an ex-CIA employee that Wexner was one of five key managers of organized crime cash flows in the United States.

As this series has noted in previous reports, Meyer Lansky was a pioneer of sexual blackmail operations and was deeply connected to both U.S. intelligence and Israel's Mossad. Furthermore, many members of the so-called Mega Group, which Wexner co-founded, had direct ties to the Lansky crime syndicate.

Marc Rich's Pardon and Israel's "Leverage" over Clinton

Another shadowy figure with connections to the Mega Group, Mossad, U.S. intelligence and organized crime is the "fugitive financier" Marc Rich, whose pardon during the last days of the Clinton White House is both well-known and still mired in controversy years after the fact.

Marc Rich was a commodities trader and hedge fund manager best known for founding the commodity trading and mining giant Glencore and for doing business with numerous dictatorships, often in violation of sanctions. He worked particularly closely with Israel and, according to Haaretz :

In the years after the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the ensuing global Arab oil embargo, a period when nobody wanted to sell oil to Israel, for almost 20 years Rich was the main source of the country's oil and energy needs."

It was that trading on Israel's behalf that would ultimately lead to Rich being charged in 1983 for violating the U.S. oil embargo on Iran by selling Iranian oil to Israel. Rich was also charged with tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering and several other crimes.

Haaretz also noted that Rich's businesses were "a source of funding for secret financial arrangements" and that "his worldwide offices, according to several reliable sources, frequently served Mossad agents, with his consent." Rich had more direct ties to the Mossad as well. For instance, his foundation -- the Rich Foundation -- was run by the former Mossad agent Avner Azulay. Rich was also friendly with prominent Israel politicians, including former Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Ehud Barak, and was a frequent provider of "services" for Israeli intelligence, services he freely volunteered.

Marc Rich, right, is pictured with Israel's Shimon Peres in a photo from Mark Daneil Ammann's "The King of Oil."

According to Rich's biographer, Daniel Ammann, Rich also fed information to U.S. intelligence but declined to give specifics. "He did not want to tell with whom he cooperated within the U.S. authorities or which branch of the U.S. government he supplied with intelligence," Ammann said in an interview with the Daily Beast .

One clue as to the nature of Rich's relationship to U.S. intelligence is his apparent ties to BCCI. "The BCCI Affair" report mentions Rich as a person to investigate in relation to the bank and states :

BCCI lending to Rich in the 1980s amounted to tens of millions of dollars. Moreover, Rich's commodities firms were used by BCCI in connection with BCCI's involv[ement] in U.S. guarantee programs through the Department of Agriculture. The nature and extent of Rich's relationship with BCCI requires further investigation."

Rich was also deeply tied to the Mega Group, as he was one of the main donors to the Birthright Israel charity along with Mega Group co-founder Charles Bronfman and Mega Group member Michael Steinhardt. Steinhardt was particularly close to Rich, first meeting the commodities trader in the 1970s and then managing $3 million for Rich, Rich's then-wife Denise, and Rich's father-in-law from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s through his hedge fund. In the late 1990s, Steinhardt would enlist other Mega Group members, such as Edgar Bronfman, in the effort to settle the criminal charges against Rich, which eventually came to pass with Clinton's controversial pardon in 2001. Steinhardt claimed to have come up with the idea of a presidential pardon for Rich in late 2000.

Rich's pardon was controversial for several reasons, and many mainstream outlets asserted that it "reeked of payoff." As the New York Post noted in 2016, in the run-up to the presidential pardon the financier's ex-wife Denise had donated $450,000 to the fledgling Clinton Library and "over $1 million to Democratic campaigns in the Clinton era." In addition, Rich had hired high-powered lawyers with links to powerful individuals in both the Democratic and Republican parties as well as the Clinton White House, including Jack Quinn, who has previously served as general counsel to the Clinton administration and as former chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore.

However, per Clinton's own words and other supporting evidence, the main reason behind the Rich pardon was the heavy lobbying from Israeli intelligence, Israeli politicians and members of the Mega Group like Steinhardt, with the donations from Denise Rich and Quinn's access to the president likely sweetening the deal.

Among the most ardent lobbyists for Rich's pardon were then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, then-Mayor of Jerusalem Ehud Olmert, then-former Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and former Director of the Mossad Shabtai Shavit. According to Haaretz , Barak was so adamant that Clinton pardon Marc Rich that he was heard shouting at the president on at least one occasion. Former adviser to Barak, Eldad Yaniv, claimed that Barak had shouted that the pardon was "important Not only from the financial aspect, but also because he helped the Mossad in more than one instance."

The Israel lobbying effort had considerable help from Mega Group member Michael Steinhardt as well as Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which was at the time heavily funded by Mega Group members, including Ronald Lauder and Edgar Bronfman.

There has been speculation for years that Clinton's decision to pardon Rich may have been the result of "leverage" or blackmail that Israel had acquired on the then-president's activities. As was noted in Part III of this report, the Mossad-linked "Mega" spy scandal broke in 1997, whereby Israeli intelligence had been targeting Clinton's effort to broker a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine and had sought to go to "Mega," likely a reference to the Mega Group, to obtain a sensitive document.

In addition, Israel is known to have acquired phone conversations between Clinton and Monica Lewinsky before their affair was made public. Author Daniel Halper -- relying on on-the-record interviews with former officials and hundreds of pages of documents compiled in the event that Lewinsky took legal action against Clinton -- determined that Benjamin Netanyahu told Clinton that he had obtained recordings of the sexually-tinged phone conversations during the Wye Plantation talks between Israel and Palestine in 1998. Netanyahu attempted to use this information to get Clinton to pardon convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. Clinton considered pardoning Pollard but decided against it after CIA Director George Tenet threatened to resign if the pardon was given.

Investigative journalist and author Gordon Thomas had made similar claims years prior and asserted that the Mossad had obtained some 30 hours of phone-sex conversations between Lewinsky and Clinton and used them as leverage. In addition, a report in Insight magazine in May 2000 claimed that Israeli intelligence had "penetrated four White House telephone lines and was able to relay real-time conversations on those lines from a remote site outside the White House directly to Israel for listening and recording."

Those phone taps apparently went well beyond the White House, as revealed by a December 2001 investigative report by Carl Cameron for FOX News . According to Cameron's report :

[Israeli telecommunications company Amdocs] helped Bell Atlantic install new telephone lines in the White House in 1997 [and] a senior-level employee of Amdocs had a separate T1 data phone line installed from his base outside of St. Louis that was connected directly to Israel

[I]nvestigators are looking into whether the owner of the T1 line had a 'real time' capacity to intercept phone calls from both the White House and other government offices around Washington, and sustained the line for some time, sources said. Sources familiar with the investigation say FBI agents on the case sought an arrest warrant for the St. Louis employee but [Clinton] Justice Department officials quashed it."

https://content.jwplatform.com/players/yLU5qcWT-YuKiCfZc.html

According to journalist Chris Ketcham :

[Both Amdocs and Verint Inc. (formerly Comverse Infosys)] are based in Israel – having arisen to prominence from that country's cornering of the information technology market – and are heavily funded by the Israeli government, with connections to the Israeli military and Israeli intelligence

The companies' operations, sources suggest, have been infiltrated by freelance spies exploiting encrypted trapdoors in Verint/Amdocs technology and gathering data on Americans for transfer to Israeli intelligence and other willing customers (particularly organized crime)."

Given the extent of phone tapping of the U.S. government by Israeli intelligence-linked companies and Netanyahu's previous use of intercepted phone calls to pressure Clinton to pardon Jonathan Pollard, it is entirely reasonable to speculate that some other trove of intercepted communications could have been used to push Clinton to pardon Rich in the final hours of his presidency.

Also notable is the fact that several figures who heavily lobbied Clinton over the Rich pardon had ties to Epstein, who also had ties to Israeli intelligence and Israeli intelligence-linked tech companies, as discussed in Part III of this series. For example, Ehud Barak, a close friend and business associate of Epstein, and Shimon Peres, who introduced Barak to Epstein, were the major players in convincing Clinton to pardon Marc Rich.

Furthermore, as will be shown in a subsequent section of this report, Jeffrey Epstein had developed ties with the Clinton administration beginning in 1993 and those ties expanded, particularly in 1996, when Epstein's intelligence-linked sexual blackmail operation was underway. Clinton would later fly on Epstein's infamous private jet, nicknamed the "Lolita Express," and Epstein would later donate to the Clinton Foundation and claim to have played a key role in the creation of the Clinton Global Initiative.

In addition to the role of figures close to Epstein in securing Rich's pardon, Epstein himself appeared to share some level of connection with Rich's former business partners. For instance, Felix Posen -- who ran Rich's London operations for years and whom Forbes described as "the architect of Rich's immensely profitable but suddenly very controversial business with the Soviet Union" -- appears in Epstein's book of contacts . In addition, Epstein's offshore structured investment vehicle (SIV), Liquid Funding, has the same attorney and director as several Glencore entities : Alex Erskine of the law firm Appleby.

The significance of that connection, however, is unclear, given that Erskine was connected to a total of 274 offshore entities at the time of the "Paradise Papers" leak in 2014. Catherine Austin Fitts told MintPress that it could suggest that Epstein's Liquid Funding -- 40 percent of which had been owned by Bear Stearns , and which may have received a "secret" bail-out from the Federal Reserve -- is part of the same shadow economy "syndicate" as Glencore.

This possibility merits further investigation, given that Glencore is partially owned by British financier Nathaniel Rothschild, whose father, Jacob Rothschild, is on the board of advisers of Genie Energy, which includes Michael Steinhardt as well as several alleged associates of Epstein, such as Bill Richardson and Larry Summers. In addition, Nathaniel Rothschild's cousin by marriage, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, is a long-time associate of Jeffrey Epstein with considerable ties to the New York City "Roy Cohn machine." Marc Rich had long-standing ties to the Rothschild family, going back to the early 1970s when he began commodity trading at Philipp Brothers.

Lynn Forester de Rothschild's surprising interest in Epstein

After Epstein's arrests first in 2007 and then again last month, numerous media reports emerged detailing the links between Epstein and Clinton, with most asserting that they had met not long after Clinton left office in 2001 and, as recently mentioned, issued the controversial pardon of Marc Rich.

Those reports claimed that the Epstein-Clinton relationship had been facilitated by Epstein's long-time girlfriend and alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell. However, documents obtained from the Clinton presidential library have revealed that the ties between Epstein and Clinton date back years earlier and were facilitated by powerful individuals who have largely evaded scrutiny in connection with the Epstein case.

One major player who has been largely overlooked in bringing Epstein and the Clintons together is Lynn Forester de Rothschild. Notably, Forester de Rothschild has long been connected to neoconservative Reagan era officials -- the Lewis Rosenstiel/Roy Cohn network described in Parts 1 and 2 of this series, as well as the Mega Group, which was detailed in Part 3 of this series.

Lynn Forester de Rothschild became involved in the world of Democratic Party politics in the late 1970s when she worked on the 1976 campaign of hawkish Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) alongside now-notorious neoconservatives like Elliott Abrams , who would go on to play an important role in the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan era and later serve in the State Department under Trump. She was also introduced to her second husband, Evelyn de Rothschild, by Henry Kissinger at a Bilderberg conference. Several of the individuals connected to the Mega Group and the Mossad-linked media mogul Robert Maxwell -- including Mark Palmer, Max Fisher and John Lehman -- were one-time aides or advisers to Henry Kissinger.

Before marrying into the Rothschild family in 2000, Lynn had previously been married to Andrew Stein, a major figure in New York Democratic politics, with whom she had two sons. Andrew's brother, James Finkelstein, married Cathy Frank, the granddaughter of Lewis Rosenstiel, the mob-linked businessman who ran a sexual blackmail operation exploiting underage boys, as was discussed in Part 1 of this series. Rosenstiel's protege Roy Cohn was the lawyer for Cathy Frank and James Finkelstein and it was at their behest that Cohn attempted to trick a nearly comatose Rosenstiel to into naming Cohn, Frank and Finkelstein the executors and trustees of his estate, valued at $75 million (more than $334 million in today's dollars).

According to the New Yorker , Lynn Forester de Rothschild requested "financial help" from none other than Jeffrey Epstein in 1993 during her divorce from Andrew Stein.

As far as Forester de Rothschild's ties to the Mega Group go, she is currently on the board of directors of Estee Lauder companies, which was founded and is still owned by the family of Ronald Lauder -- a member of the Mega Group, a former Reagan official, a family friend of Roy Cohn, and the alleged source of Jeffrey Epstein's now-infamous Austrian passport. In addition, Forester de Rothschild also partnered with Matthew Bronfman -- son of Mega Group member Edgar Bronfman and grandson of Samuel Bronfman, who had close ties to Meyer Lansky -- in creating the investment advisory firm Bronfman E.L. Rothschild LP.

It is unclear when Lynn Forester de Rothschild first met Jeffrey Epstein, but she was one of his leading advocates and had the ear of then-President Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, speaking to Clinton specifically about Epstein during her "fifteen seconds of access" with the president and also introducing Epstein to lawyer Alan Dershowitz in 1996.

Living History by Hilary Clinton Book Party Hosted Lynn Forester and Evelyn De Rothschild pose with Bill and Hilary Clinton at the Kensington Palace in London. Photo | Alan Davidson

Forester de Rothschild is a long-time associate of the Clintons and has been a major donor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton since 1992. Their ties were so close that Forester de Rothschild spent the first night of her honeymoon at the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House while Clinton was president. Furthermore, a leaked email between Forester de Rothschild and Hillary Clinton saw Clinton request "penance" from Forester de Rothschild for asking Tony Blair to accompany Clinton on official business while she was secretary of state, preventing Blair from making a planned social visit to Forester de Rothschild's home in Aspen, Colorado. Humbly requesting forgiveness is not something Hillary Clinton is known for, given that her former bodyguard once said she could "make Richard Nixon look like Mahatma Gandhi."

In 1995, Forester de Rothschild, then a member of Clinton's National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council, wrote the following to then-President Clinton:

Dear Mr. President: It was a pleasure to see you recently at Senator Kennedy's house. There was too much to discuss and too little time. Using my fifteen seconds of access to discuss Jeffrey Epstein and currency stabilization, I neglected to talk to you about a topic near and dear to my heart. Namely, affirmative action and the future."

Forester de Rothschild then states that she had been asked to prepare a memo on behalf of George Stephanopoulos, former Clinton communications director and currently a broadcast journalist with ABC News . Stephanopoulos attended a dinner party hosted by Epstein at his now infamous Manhattan townhouse in 2010 after Epstein's release from prison for soliciting sex from a minor.

While it is unknown what Forester de Rothschild discussed with Clinton regarding Epstein and currency stabilization, a potential lead may lie in the links of both Forester de Rothschild and Epstein to Deutsche Bank. Journalist Vicky Ward reported in 2003 that Epstein boasted of "skill at playing the currency markets 'with very large sums of money'" and he appears to have done much of this through his long-standing relationship with Deutsche Bank.

The New York Times reported last month :

[Epstein] appears to have been doing business and trading currencies through Deutsche Bank until just a few months ago, according to two people familiar with his business activities. But as the possibility of federal charges loomed, the bank ended its client relationship with Mr. Epstein. It is not clear what the value of those accounts was at the time they were closed."

In the case of Forester de Rothschild, she served as an advisor to the Deutsche Bank Microfinance Consortium for several years and is currently a board member of the Alfred Herrhausen Society of International Dialogue of Deutsche Bank.

The same year that Forester de Rothschild made the above-noted comments to Bill Clinton about Jeffrey Epstein, Epstein attended another Clinton fundraiser , hosted by Ron Perelman at his personal home, that was very exclusive, as the guest list included only 14 people.

The evolution of the Epstein-Clinton relationship

Even before Forester de Rothschild's 1995 meeting with Clinton, Epstein was already an established Clinton donor. Records obtained by the Daily Beast revealed that Epstein had donated $10,000 to the White House Historical Association and attended a Clinton donor reception alongside Ghislaine Maxwell as early as 1993.

The Daily Beast suggests that Bill Clinton's long-time friend from his college days, A. Paul Prosperi, was the facilitator of that early relationship, as Prosperi had a decades-long relationship with Epstein and even visited Epstein at least 20 times while he was in jail in 2008. Prosperi was intimately involved with the 1993 fundraiser for the White House Historical Association noted above.

The relationship between Epstein and Clinton would continue well after Clinton left office in 2001, a fact well-documented by Bill Clinton's now-infamous flights on Epstein's (recently sold) private jet -- often referred to as the "Lolita Express." Clinton flew on the Lolita Express no less than 26 times in the early 2000s according to flight logs. On some of those flights, Clinton was accompanied by his Secret Service detail but he was unaccompanied on other flights.

Arguably the most infamous flight taken by Clinton on Epstein's jet was a lengthy trip to Africa, where actor Kevin Spacey, who has also been accused of raping minors ; Ghislaine Maxwell; and Ron Burkle, a billionaire friend of Clinton's who has been accused of soliciting the services of "super-high-end call girls," were also present. Clinton specifically requested that Epstein make his jet available for the trip well in advance, with Doug Band as the intermediary. President Donald Trump, also a friend of Epstein, is said to have flown on the plane but appears only once on flight logs.

In addition to flights, an Epstein-run foundation gave $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation according to the 2006 filing tax return of Epstein's former charity, the C.O.U.Q. Foundation. Notably, Epstein's lawyers, Alan Dershowitz among them, claimed in 2007 that Epstein had been "part of the original group that conceived the Clinton Global Initiative, which is described as a project 'bringing together a community of global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges.'"

Before the associations between Epstein and the Clinton White House in the early 1990s were made public, Ghislaine Maxwell was thought to have been the bridge between Epstein and the Clinton family because of her close relationship to the family. However, the close relationship between Maxwell and the Clintons appears to have developed in the 2000s, with Politico reporting that it began after Bill Clinton left office. Clinton associate Doug Band was also reportedly friendly to Maxwell, appearing at an exclusive dinner party she hosted at her residence in New York in 2005. Maxwell later became particularly close to Chelsea Clinton, vacationing with Chelsea in 2009 and attending her wedding a year later. Maxwell was also associated with the Clinton Global Initiative at least up until 2013.

Other close Clinton associates and officials in the early 1990s also had notable relationships with Jeffrey Epstein, including Mark Middleton, who was a special assistant to Clinton Chief of Staff Mack McClarty beginning in 1993, and met with Epstein on at least three occasions in the White House during the early Clinton years. In addition, White House social secretary under Clinton, Ann Stock, appears in Epstein's "little black book" as does Doug Band , once referred to by New York Magazine as "Bill Clinton's bag carrier, body man, fixer, and all-purpose gatekeeper." Band also appears several times in the flight logs of Epstein's private jet.

Epstein was also associated with both Bill Richardson, former ambassador to the UN and former secretary of energy under Clinton, and Larry Summers, secretary of the treasury under Clinton. Both Richardson and Summers sit on the advisory board of controversial energy company Genie Energy, alongside CIA director under Clinton, James Woolsey; Roy Cohn associate and media mogul, Rupert Murdoch; Mega Group member Michael Steinhardt; and Lord Jacob Rothschild. Genie Energy is controversial primarily for its exclusive rights to drill in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Bill Richardson also has ties to Lynn Forester de Rothschild as she was on the Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board while Richardson was secretary of energy.

Bill Richardson appears to be among the Clinton era officials closest to Jeffrey Epstein, having personally visited Epstein's New Mexico ranch and been the recipient of Epstein donations of $50,000 to his 2002 and 2006 gubernatorial campaigns. Richardson gave Epstein's donation in 2006 to charity after allegations against Epstein were made public. Richardson was also accused in recently released court documents of engaging in sex with Epstein's underage victims, an allegation that he has denied.

The Jeffrey Epstein scandal: A post-mortem

In 1990, Danny Casolaro began his fateful one-year investigation of "the Octopus," an investigation that played no small role in his untimely death. Shortly after he was found lifeless in a hotel bathtub, Casolaro's friend Lynn Knowles was threatened and told the following : "What Danny Casolaro was investigating is a business Anyone who asks too many questions will end up dead."

Nearly thirty years later, that same "Octopus" and its "business" remains with us and has become ever more wrapped around the levers of power -- particularly in the worlds of government, finance and intelligence.

This MintPress investigative series has endeavored to show the nature of this network and how the world of "the Octopus" is the same world in which Jeffrey Epstein and his predecessors -- Craig Spence, Edwin Wilson and Roy Cohn among them -- operated and profited. It is a world where all that matters is the constant drive to accumulate ever more wealth and ever more power and to keep the racket going at all costs.

While this network has long been able to ensure its success through the use of sexual blackmail, often acquired by the unconscionable exploitation of children, it has also been a driving force behind many other ills that plague our world and it goes far beyond human and child trafficking. Indeed, many of the figures in this same sordid web have played a major role in the illicit drug and weapons trades, the expansion of for-profit prisons, and the endless wars that have claimed an untold number of lives across the world, all the while enriching many of these same individuals.


BannedHipster , says: Website December 23, 2019 at 5:56 am GMT

The Jeffrey Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell sexual trafficking ring is the "Deep State" itself being revealed.

https://bannedhipster.home.blog/2019/12/23/how-republicans-and-democrats-are-misrepresenting-the-real-deep-state/

This is the MOST important story of our generation, and it is directly related to the 9/11 attacks.

Google "Richard Fuisz" for how the 9/11 attacks and the sexual trafficking of teenage girls are intimately related.

Thank you, Whitney Webb, for your courageous reporting on this issue.

Greg Bacon , says: Website December 23, 2019 at 7:51 am GMT

the network connected to Epstein is nothing less than a criminal enterprise that is willing to use and abuse children in the pursuit of ever more power, wealth and control.

Another aspect of this Mossad honey pot op being run by Epstein is this: How many of those teenage girls, due to being plied by alcohol and drugs so they could perform for dirty old men, how many of them broke down mentally and either committed suicide or were killed off to hide the evidence?

My guess is that there's an underwater burial spot near Epstein's Orgy Island or maybe they're buried under yards and yards of concrete, thanks to Epstein buying and moving that concrete truck to that island.

As for the Rose Law firm in Arkansas, at the same time Hillary was working there, one of her co-workers was Johnathan Pollard, the Israeli spy that did a tremendous amount of damage to our intelligence apparatus, even getting spies killed who he helped expose.

Hillary's Secrets

Most progressives tend to think of the sordid topic of Vince Foster's death as the exclusive domain of the Rush Limbaugh right wing radio circuit. But did you know that Vince Foster, Hillary Clinton, and Jonathan Pollard were all simultaneously partners at Rose Law Firm? Yes, that Jonathan Pollard, the unrepentant spy for Israel, arrested and sentenced to life in 1986 for espionage . Did you know that Vince Foster was under CIA scrutiny for the exact same crime at the time of his "suicide" in 1993?

https://rense.com/general80/hll.htm

Why is it that many of these kind of incidents always involve our friend and special ally, Israel?

Spectacular job of reporting, that the large majority of Americans will never see, as the MSM is too busy serving the needs of the CIA and Israel, and not interested in reporting actual news.

sarz , says: December 23, 2019 at 8:23 am GMT
Whitney, is it more likely that Epstein was killed by the Clintons or Trump? It would be helpful to have a short paragraph giving the thrust of your thinking.
Rebel0007 , says: December 23, 2019 at 10:08 am GMT
What we have not been told yet regarding the Epstein scandal is exactly what political and monetary favors were provided to whom as a result of this sick, sadistic, satanic cult of predators.

The motive must have been for political favors, and not merely sums of cash, would be my guess. Yes, Epstein benefitted from the cash, but if Epstein was acting on behalf of the Mossad, it was apparently for policy control.

So who were the individuals that were threatenning politicians with exposure for not enacting, or for enacting specific policies, and precisely which policies and businesses would be financially rewarded is what has not yet been disclosed and what I think that everyone would like to know.

With Epstein dead, we don't know if we will ever find out. Obviously, many people in the surveillance state know exactly who these individual policy threatenners were, and which policies were demanded and have remained silent on these issues.

Bert , says: December 23, 2019 at 11:57 am GMT
It is likely that Epstein's conspicuous cultivation and support of prominent scientists was in fact camouflage to help cover his real role as a covert operative specializing in blackmail. Comments by some scientists who attended his soirees indicate that Epstein was scientifically an ignoramus and was unserious in scientific discussions.
Alfred , says: December 23, 2019 at 2:01 pm GMT
Around '83, I was living Beaufort Gardens, Knightsbridge. Only a few steps away from the big building occupied by the BCCI at 171-175 Brompton Road. It was purpose-built for the bank. I was without a job. Enjoying myself the way one used to be able to do in one of the smartest areas of London.

My friends and I could not help noticing the smart Mercedes saloons gliding into the underground parking lot of the BCCI every morning. The guys driving seemed to be all Pakistanis. I passed on foot past their imposing building several times every day for almost a year. But I never saw a customer entering into their banking hall. I was bewildered. My finances were non-existent and I envied these bankers. I just could not work out what sort of scam was going on. It was all so obvious to anyone remotely streetwise.

Prester John , says: December 23, 2019 at 2:14 pm GMT
The Mena story was an open secret in Arkansas. Paul Greenberg (who bestowed the monicker "Slick Willie" upon The Boy Wonder) wrote extensively upon this subject. There have been rumors–never confirmed– that Clinton may have been recruited by Spook Inc. as early as his undergrad days at G-Town (it's still not clear how Clinton, a relatively unknown American college graduate, could gain entry into the USSR in the summer of '69 for a "vacation" at a time when our relations with that country were as low as they ever were).
Republic , says: December 23, 2019 at 2:54 pm GMT
@Greg Bacon Pollard did not work in that Little Rock law firm. He was not a lawyer.
Desert Fox , says: December 23, 2019 at 3:06 pm GMT
@Prester John Agree, see the book Compromised, Clinton , Bush and the CIA by Terry Reed can be had on amazon and see his videos on youtube.
Sean , says: December 23, 2019 at 3:36 pm GMT
Netanyahu's son says Barak has a drinking problem.

Epstein used to claim he worked for the CIA

What con man does not claim to be a secret agent?

Gone from corporate media are any hints of the larger scandal, revolving around the admission that Epstein had "belonged to intelligence."

Hearsay, and the person supposed to have said it refused to discuss it, probably because it was a lie intended to explain why he gave Epstein a soft plea deal, and he fears being required to testify about it on oath.

Epstein also claimed to be a blackmailer, He promoted himself as freelance secret agent, acting for governments or malefactors whichever paid most, when he was trying to get a journalist to write a book about him in the eighties. Last year Epstein told a NYT journalist that he had compromising material on top tech magnates (this was probably Elon Musk)

The Day Jeffrey Epstein Told Me He Had Dirt on Powerful People
https://www.nytimes.com › 2019/08/12 › business › jeffrey-epstein-interview
12 Aug 2019 – I went to Mr. Epstein's Manhattan mansion to talk about Tesla. 16, 2018, I visited Jeffrey Epstein at his cavernous Manhattan mansion. . .

There was another interview around the same time in which Epstein "rambled" about the big tech people he knew to business reporters at his mansion. Every reporter who was around him decided he was full of it.

Going on like this, Epstein would have been disposed of by his own organisation .. if it actually existed. The Mafia kill people for far less

Far from being the work of a single intelligence agency or a single country, the power structure revealed by this network connected to Epstein is nothing less than a criminal enterprise that transcends nationality and is willing to use and abuse children in the pursuit of ever more power, wealth and control. Existing for decades and willing to use any means necessary to cover its tracks

How brave of you to write about it.

annamaria , says: December 23, 2019 at 3:57 pm GMT
@BannedHipster The "deciders" of the US foreign and internal politics:

Wexner was one of five key managers of organized crime cash flows in the United States. many members of the so-called Mega Group, which Wexner co-founded, had direct ties to the Lansky crime syndicate. Meyer Lansky was a pioneer of sexual blackmail operations and was deeply connected to both U.S. intelligence and Israel's Mossad.

Criminal, ignorant, deviant. The face of the US highest echelons of power.

anonymous [922] Disclaimer , says: December 23, 2019 at 4:24 pm GMT
The tawdry sleaziness of both Clintons has been apparent for many years to anyone who would spend ten minutes to check. Yet the media have glossed over all that and promoted Hilary for president. She has millions of fans and has been relentlessly promoted as the second coming, making one wonder as to how stupid are Americans anyway? There's a connection between mafia-like criminality, intelligence services and the supposed legitimate aboveground government. There's plenty of money to be had for all playing the game with the bulk of the American people being the cash cow that can be milked.

They'll never give up living like kings and queens; anybody threatening that gets suicided or otherwise dies young. They'll take us all to the brink of Armageddon with other countries rather than lose their positions. Some commenters have theorized Epstein is alive and living incognito elsewhere. This is doubtful.

It's like the mafia: when someone becomes a liability he's got to go. They're not going to take any chances. Epstein became the weak link and so had to be shut up permanently.

Hugh Guccione , says: December 23, 2019 at 8:11 pm GMT
I don't buy a word of this. Too much emphasis on sex trafficking, the meaningless description underage and the so-called victims. For some reason everyone believed the story that Epstein was some kind of pervert. Only children trust the Government when it says sex crime, WMD, ISIS or UFO.

Christians burned people at the stake. I suppose lots of children in the USA would support the Government if they decided to start burning people at the stake for sex. Think of the children!

[Dec 21, 2019] Bill Clinton began humanitarian wars but it was Bush II and Obama who turned resource wars into routine practice and the USA into malignant overlords who decided when it is time to take it all.

Notable quotes:
"... oligarchic greed; a military dedicated to protecting the wealth of oligarchs; and, wars over resources. Granted Bill Clinton began the current charade about 'humanitarian wars' but it was Bush II and Obama who turned our focus into resource wars and the hegemons (Malignant Overlords) who decided it was time to take it all. ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com

rg the lg | Oct 22, 2016 8:25:27 PM | 33

http://empireexposed.blogspot.com/

Long ago (1968) after returning from Vietnam with a bullet hole in my leg (my 90 wonder, post-ROTC officer shot me when he panicked) I wondered off to a down-at-the-heel cow college. There I took a class and C Wright Mills 'The Power Elite' was required reading.

I had just finished 'War is a fraud' and read an article by Paul Ehrlich an then 'The Population Bomb' shortly thereafter. The three books created an interesting fusion in my mind:

  1. More or less after the year 2000 the world would be plagued by resource wars;
  2. The primary role of the military is to enforce what capitalists want; and
  3. Behind the alleged scenes of our form of government hovered oligarchs who would demand more and more.

I recently found a paper I had written long ago. It wasn't very well written, but even then the handwriting was on the wall: oligarchic greed; a military dedicated to protecting the wealth of oligarchs; and, wars over resources. Granted Bill Clinton began the current charade about 'humanitarian wars' but it was Bush II and Obama who turned our focus into resource wars and the hegemons (Malignant Overlords) who decided it was time to take it all.

I guess the point of all of this is (except for the details) Ehrlich, Mills and Butler warned us. As did Huxley and Orwell ... we were just too damned dumb (or distracted) to see it.

Maybe with the Queen of Chaos, the above will result in either annihilation or in a severe reduction in the numbers of people ... (hopefully including all of the oligarchic class) and the chance to start over?

Nah ... we'll just fuck it up again ... as a species we refuse to learn. Sigh ...

[Dec 19, 2019] Bill Black Lawrence O'Donnell Aims at Buttigieg, But Hits New Democrats

Notable quotes:
"... By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and co-founder of Bank Whistleblowers United. Originally published at New Economic Perspectives ..."
Dec 19, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Posted on December 18, 2019 by Yves Smith Yves here. What Black calls the New Democrats have more recently been called Blue Dogs and even (gah) frontliners, but whatever you want to call them, they are corporate stooges loyal to bad economic ideas, most notably deficit hawkery and austerity.

By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and co-founder of Bank Whistleblowers United. Originally published at New Economic Perspectives

On December 5, 2019, Lawrence O'Donnell made an impassioned attack on Pete Buttigieg on his " The Last Word " program on MSNBC. Buttigieg's statements criticizing the Democratic Party as historically soft on deficits enraged O'Donnell. The context was Buttigieg's effort to signal to New Hampshire voters that he was the most conservative Democratic candidate for the presidential nomination. Nothing signals 'responsible' so well to 'New Democrats' and the media as a candidate screaming 'deficits' in a crowded meeting room in a small New Hampshire town.

O'Donnell correctly pointed out that Buttigieg's claims about Democrats and deficits are 'Republican lies.' The truth is that New Democrats have been the only group in America dedicated to inflicting austerity on our Nation. Republicans only pretend to care about deficits when Democrats have power. Buttigieg knows this, but his political interests in portraying himself as a stalwart emerging leader of the New Democrats caused him to position himself (falsely) as unique among New Democrats in his dedication to inflict austerity.

O'Donnell (largely) correctly pointed out that New Democrats had been fighting federal deficits for Buttigieg's entire life. O'Donnell stressed the New Democrats actions in 1993, when Buttigieg was eleven. O'Donnell lauded the New Democrats for pushing austerity even when they knew doing so was likely to cause Democrats to lose elections.

O'Donnell's dominant message, measured by both length and passion, was the crippling price the Democrats paid for the New Democrats' pushing for austerity in 1993. He made clear it was not a "one-off" – Democrats paid that price again when President Obama, a self-described New Democrat, pushed to inflict austerity on the Nation in 2010.

O'Donnell describes the New Democrats (Bill Clinton and Al Gore) as knowingly taking a "grave political risk" in 1993 in voting in favor of austerity. The risk was that Democrats, not simply New Democrats, would lose scores of seats – and control of the House and Senate. O'Donnell stressed that no Republicans voted for the New Democrat's 1993 austerity program. O'Donnell explained the initial political results of austerity. "The Democrats lost the House because of that vote for the first time in 40 years." He then explained they also lost the Senate.

O'Donnell repeatedly explained that the New Democrats knew that their decision to inflict austerity on Americans would likely produce this political disaster – and "bravely" did so because of their belief that inflicting austerity on Americans was essential. He noted that he "watched with pride" this exercise of political suicide.

O'Donnell then cited President Obama's austerity efforts – during the weak recovery from the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). At a time when the need to provide stimulus, not inflict austerity, was obvious, Obama embraced what again proved the politically suicidal option.

As fate would have it, the death of Paul Volcker days after O'Donnell's takedown of Buttigieg extended O'Donnell's argument further back in time – to before Buttigieg's birth. In 1979, President Carter (a Democrat) appointed Volcker to Chair the Federal Reserve. Volcker soon unleashed powerful monetary austerity, raising interest rates to unprecedented levels for the United States. Volcker's obituary stressed the politically suicidal nature of inflicting austerity – and the Democrats' pride in knowingly losing elections because of their embrace of it.

The harsh Fed policy no doubt contributed to Mr. Carter's re-election defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan; he had to campaign when interest rates were at their peak, and before the inflation fever had begun to break. Mr. Carter, in his memoirs, would offer a typically understated assessment: "Our trepidation about Volcker's appointment was later justified."

***

"Paul was as stubborn as he was tall," Mr. Carter said in a statement on Monday morning, "and although some of his policies as Fed chairman were politically costly, they were the right thing to do.

O'Donnell's denunciation of Buttigieg for adopting dishonest Republican talking points about Democrats and deficits did not discuss several essential points. The first two points emerge from answering this question: what was the cost to the Nation – not the loss of Democratic seats – of the New Democrats' intransigent insistence on inflicting austerity? Shakespeare explained famously that "mercy" was "twice blest," because it blesses both the giver and the receiver. The quality of austerity, however, is typically at least thrice damned. It is not a "gentle rain from heaven," but a sandstorm from hell that batters the public and punishes the politicians who unleash the whirlwind. It is at least thrice damned because it causes three grave forms of harm on the public.

Inflicting austerity on the United States government has three likely consequences for the public. It is likely to cause or extend a recession. It forces Democrats into an unending series of "Sophie's choice[s]s." We cannot adopt any new program of consequence without budget 'scoring' – requiring new taxes or cutting other vital federal programs. Under austerity, Democrats must shrink existing overall federal spending. By extending existing recessions or leading to new ones, austerity causes economic harms that increase social and political breakdowns that can lead to the election of fanatics and corrupt fake-populists. The political parties that refuse to inflict austerity (at least when they are in power) will be the political winners.

Republican fiscal policies combine "wedge" offerings to fire up the worst of their base and massive tax breaks for the elites that fund their campaigns – leading to a recurrent cycle in which the New Democrats champion policies that cause the public to identify Democrats as the party most likely to raise taxes and cut vital federal programs. Republican political power and 'wedge' legislation and policies cause enormous harm, particularly to the poor and minorities. The larger the Republican deficits, the greater the New Democrats' urgency to inflict austerity – and embrace political suicide. It is a self-reinforcing cycle producing recurrent political disaster for Democrats.

O'Donnell does not address two other critical points. First, MSNBC's top commentators endlessly warn Democrats that they must nominate the presidential candidate most likely to defeat President Trump. MSNBC's commentators implore us not to focus on policy differences among the candidates. Their message is relentless realpolitik, particularly, you should never vote for the candidate whose policies you believe are far superior to the candidate the MSNBC commentators think is most electable. MSNBC and the New Democrats claim they share the same prime directive – Democratic Party electoral victories are the only imperative.

O'Donnell's anti-Buttigieg rant reveals the truth about MSNBC and the New Democrats' real prime directive – inflicting austerity even when doing so is economically irrational and politically suicidal is their sole imperative. The obvious questions, which O'Donnell never asked or attempted to answer, are why he and his MSNBC colleagues push the false prime directive (winning must be the sole paramount goal) as gospel while praising the New Democrats for repeatedly causing the Democratic Party to commit political suicide through inflicting austerity on our Nation. Logically, the only possible answer to that question is that O'Donnell and the New Democrats must view inflicting austerity as being of transcendent importance. It outweighs everything. Inflicting austerity is the New Democrats and MSNBC's sole prime directive. They are not simply willing to lose so many contests that they lose control of the presidency, the House, and the Senate – they are "proud" to do so when the reason for those losses is 'we committed political suicide to fight to inflict austerity.' The related questions are whether MSNBC and the New Democrats are actually blind to the contradiction between the real and phony prime directives and why they think viewers and voters will be too dumb to spot the obvious contradiction. Why do New Democrats and MSNBC insist on hiding their real prime directive?

A related question arises from this bizarre prime directive to inflict austerity even when it is politically suicidal. Why did New Democrats and MSNBC choose inflicting austerity as their holy grail? What is it about inflicting austerity that makes New Democrats so "proud" to cause the Democratic Party to commit political suicide and deliver control of the House, Senate, and Presidency to the likes of Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Mitch McConnell, and Donald Trump? Preventing Bush's invasion of Iraq, global climate disruption, and Trump's election would all make sense as overriding priorities. Those are things worthy of losing a House seat or even the entire House.

Inflicting austerity typically harms America and our people. A federal budget deficit is not bad. A federal budget surplus is not good. Clinton and Gore's budget surpluses were not good for America. They were likely harmful, as recessions soon followed our prior budget surpluses throughout our history. In each of the cases O'Donnell lauded, the New Democrats' insistence on inflicting austerity did not simply prove politically suicidal for the Democratic Party – austerity was a terrible economic policy that caused harm. How did inflicting austerity become the overriding priority of New Democrats, swamping all other policies? In 1993, when Clinton and Gore made O'Donnell "proud" by inflicting austerity, the inflation rate was three percent. That rate of inflation was trivially higher than what the Fed would adopt as its inflation target (2%) – the preferred rate of inflation. Even under neoclassical economic nostrums, there was no need, much less a compelling need, to inflict austerity.

In 2010, when Obama first sought to inflict austerity on us, the rate of inflation was 2.3 percent and the unemployment rate was 9.6 percent. The economic illiteracy of his austerity horrified even neoclassical economists. Fortunately, the Tea Party Republicans pushed so aggressively in the "Grand Bargain" negotiations with Obama that the tentative deal he reached with congressional Republicans collapsed. Otherwise, Obama's infliction of austerity would have ended the already weak recovery, plunged the Nation back into a Great Recession, and caused him and scores of congressional Democrats to lose their elections in 2012.

O'Donnell's presentation, implicitly, makes it clear that he thinks austerity is so obviously desirable, and the budget deficits of a fully sovereign nation so obviously the gravest conceivable threat that he need provide neither logic nor evidence to support the New Democrat's politically suicidal and economically illiterate austerity prime directive. O'Donnell's cheerleading for the austerity prime directive was never supported, but it has become facially indefensible over the last quarter-century. Trump's tax reduction scheme for the wealthiest was outrageous on multiple grounds, but O'Donnell can observe the present unemployment and inflation rates. Unemployment is at 3.5% and the inflation rate for 2018 was 1.9% -- less than the Fed's target rate. Inflation is the only logical bugaboo about federal budget deficits, so O'Donnell and Buttigieg's feverish fear that federal deficits are about to cause a catastrophe is beyond bizarre. The bond markets confirm that there is no expectation of material inflation.

The New Democrats remain transfixed by their 'virtue' and 'bravery' in losing control of all three branches of government by insisting on inflicting economically illiterate and politically suicidal austerity assaults on the voters – raising taxes and cutting vital services. They refuse to act on the real emergencies we face such as global climate disruption based on the economically illiterate fantasy that 'we cannot afford' to prevent the worsening catastrophe. The 'New Democrats' and their media enablers demand that we nominate candidates dedicated to enacting politically suicidal deficit hysteria policies and adopting tepid anti-environment policies that are suicidal towards the lives of our children and grandchildren. The most remarkable aspect of this insanity, however, is that the hucksters pitch their embrace of their prime directive as defining the concept of "responsible." Indeed, it is so obviously 'responsible' that O'Donnell and Buttigieg feel neither logic nor facts are necessary to prove the virtues of austerity. They omit the fact that austerity proponents' warnings and promises have repeatedly proved false and outright harmful as well as politically suicidal.


timotheus , December 18, 2019 at 7:52 am

Could it be that the New Democrats are not stupid or irrational at all but know what they are doing and happily play their role in the permanent professional wrestling spectacle as the hapless patsies who keep losing to the real tough guy? After all, they get paid handsomely in any case.

Adam1 , December 18, 2019 at 8:02 am

Not only did President Carter appoint Volcker, but he also vetoed a bill to raise the national debt ceiling. Thankfully Congress, run by a very different set of Democrats at the time, over-rode his veto.

NotTimothyGeithner , December 18, 2019 at 9:58 am

"Austerity" is basically the only policy Team Blue has undertaken without outside pressure. As bad as it is, it's the one thing they can point to over the last 25 years as something they did without mass mobilization or court cases embarrassing them into not being totally heinous.

Then little Mayo Pete is trying to deny Team Blue their only accomplishment.

shinola , December 18, 2019 at 12:25 pm

"New Democrat" = Neoliberal.

If Buttgag et al were really concerned about deficits, how about reverting to Eisenhower era tax rates & cutting back on "defense" spending?

Oh, wait – that would upset their real constituents – the 1% & the MIC.

[Dec 19, 2019] Lord Acton: Never underestimate the influence of stupidity on history

Notable quotes:
"... In a previous post I have compared the Clintons and their followers to be the 21st Century's version of Typhoid Mary. Anybody who works with the Clinton's is invariably infected with corruption. ..."
Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

GeorgeV , Dec 18 2019 22:04 utc | 21

Watching the House impeachment live on TV reminds me of what the 19th century writer, historian and political observer Lord Acton said: "Never underestimate the influence of stupidity on history." This exercise in political sado-masochism however, must traced back to Hillary Clinton and the Clintonista hold on the Democratic Party. It began when Hillary started crying sour grapes about her loss in the 2016 election.

In a previous post I have compared the Clintons and their followers to be the 21st Century's version of Typhoid Mary. Anybody who works with the Clinton's is invariably infected with corruption.

GeorgeV , Dec 18 2019 22:11 utc | 23

Oops! In my previous post I forgot to identify the author of that quote; it was Lord Acton. Many apologies to MoA readers.

[Dec 19, 2019] A joint French-Ukrainian journalistic investigation into a huge money laundering scheme using various shadow banking organizations in Austria and Switzerland, benefiting Clinton friendly Ukrainian oligarchs and of course the Clinton Foundation.

Highly recommended!
Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Lurker in the Dark , Dec 19 2019 1:49 utc | 56

My apologies if this has been posted before, but here is a news conference broadcast by Interfax a few days ago detailing a joint French-Ukrainian journalistic investigation into a huge money laundering scheme using various shadow banking organizations in Austria and Switzerland, benefiting Clinton friendly Ukrainian oligarchs and of course the Clinton Foundation.

The link is short enough to not require re-formatting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4309z--JcGk&feature=

Lurker in the Dark , Dec 19 2019 2:00 utc | 59

Forgive me for the somewhat redundant post, and again I hope this is not a waste of anyone's time, but this is the source of the Interfax report I posted just above currently at #56. It is relevant to the Ukrainegate impeachment fiasco.

https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/press-conference/631034.html (again, link brief enough not to require re-format).

The U.S. and lapdog EU/UK media will not touch this with a 10 foot pole.

KYIV. Dec 17 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine and the United States should investigate the transfer of $29 million by businessman Victor Pinchuk from Ukraine to the Clinton Foundation, Ukrainian Member of Parliament (independent) Andriy Derkach has said. According to him, the investigation should check and establish how the Pinchuk Foundation's activities were funded; it, among other projects, made a contribution of $29 million to the Clinton Foundation. "Yesterday, Ukrainian law enforcement agencies registered criminal proceeding number 12019000000001138. As part of this proceeding, I provided facts that should be verified and established by the investigation. Establishing these facts will also help the American side to conduct its own investigation and establish the origin of the money received by [Hillary] Clinton," Derkach said at a press conferences at Interfax-Ukraine in Kyiv on Tuesday, December 17.

According to him, it was the independent French online publication Mediapart that first drew attention to the money withdrawal scheme from Ukraine and Pinchuk's financing of the Clinton Foundation.

"The general scheme is as follows. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) lent money to Ukraine in 2015. The same year, Victor Pinchuk's Credit Dnepr [Bank] received UAH 357 million in a National Bank stabilization loan from the IMF's disbursement. Delta Bank was given a total of UAH 5.110 billion in loans. The banks siphoned the money through Austria's Meinl Bank into offshore accounts, and further into [the accounts of] the Pinchuk Foundation. The money siphoning scam was confirmed by a May 2016 ruling by [Kyiv's] Pechersky court. The total damage from this scam involving other banks is estimated at $800 million. The Pinchuk Foundation transferred $29 million to the Foundation of Clinton, a future U.S. presidential candidate from the Democratic Party," Derkach said.

[Dec 12, 2019] The FBI - Pushed By John Brennan - Lied To The Court Seven Times To Spy On The Trump Campaign

Highly recommended!
And behind Brennan we can can see the Nobel Peace Price winner.
Notable quotes:
"... A major role in directing the plot has fallen to Obama's consigliere John Brennan, the current director of the CIA. ..."
"... One part of the still ongoing deligitimization campaign was the FBI investigation of alleged Russian connections of four members of the Trump election campaign. ..."
"... The FBI agents and lawyers intentionally lied to the court. Their violations were not mistakes. All 51 of them were in favor of further spying on members of the Trump campaign and on everyone they communicated with. ..."
"... The FBI has used the Steele dossier to gain further FISA application even after it had talked with Steele's 'primary source' (who probably was the later 'buzzed' Sergei Skripal ) and after it had learned that the allegations in the dossier were no more than unconfirmed rumors. ..."
"... That the dossier was mere dreck was quite obvious to any sober person who read it when it was first published ..."
"... That summer, GCHQ's then head, Robert Hannigan, flew to the US to personally brief CIA chief John Brennan. The matter was deemed so important that it was handled at "director level", face-to-face between the two agency chiefs. ..."
"... (This is a Moon of Alabama fundraiser week. Please consider to support our work .) ..."
"... Occam's razor: CIA-MI6, with approval of US Deep State (Clintons, Bush, McCain, Brennan, Mueller, etc.), meddled to elect Trump and pointed fingers at Russia to initiate a new McCarthyism. ..."
"... "Sergey Lavrov: In my opinion, Congress sounds rather obsessed with destroying our relations. It continues pursuing the policy started by the Obama administration. As I mentioned, we are used to this kind of attack. We know how to respond to them. I assure you that neither Nord Stream-2 nor Turkish Stream will be halted." ..."
"... ... the current anti-Russian idiocy was started by Obama's team and was designed for Clinton to escalate ... ..."
"... It's Kissinger's WSJ Op-Ed of August 2014 that provides the answer. In this Op-Ed, Kissinger calls for a restored US Empire that is essentially Trump's MAGA. Kissinger is writing immediately after the Donbas rebels have won. The Russians refused to heed Kissinger's advice (to back down) and it has become apparent that Russia's joining the West is no longer an inevitability as the US elite had assumed. ..."
"... Good chance Steele had little to do with writing the Dossier. "Simpson-Ohr Dossier", anyone? Steele was needed as a credible looking intelligence officer with Russia ties and a past working relationship with US Intel, as cover to sell to FBI, FISA Court, and the public (meeting with Isikoff, Yahoo News story). ..."
"... Glenn Simpson and wife Mary Jacoby had written articles for the WSJ in 2007 and 2008 with a script and language similar to the Dossier. Devin Nunes seems to believe this scenario, and it is discussed in detail in books by Dan Bongino and Lee Smith, among others. ..."
"... physchoh @ 60; The difference, at least in my mind, is that, the "Russia did it" meme, is the weakest of all cases against DJT. Corbyn, on the other hand, may actually be hurt by the bogus charges. IMO, what this shows is coordination between the elites to bring down a progressive in the UK, who fancies public control over major finances instead of private concerns. ..."
"... So Horowitz was technically correct when he did not find bias. What he might have been reluctant to spell out is that he did find malice. ..."
Dec 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

On January 6 2017 this author concluded :

When Hillary Clinton was defeated in the U.S. presidential election the relevant powers launched a campaign to delegitimize the President elect Donald Trump.

The ultimate aim of the cabal is to kick him out of office and have a reliable replacement, like the Vice-President elect Pence, take over. Should that not be possible it is hoped that the delegitimization will make it impossible for Trump to change major policy trajectories especially in foreign policy. A main issue here is the reorientation of the U.S. military complex and its NATO proxies from the war of terror towards a direct confrontation with main powers like Russia and China.

...

A major role in directing the plot has fallen to Obama's consigliere John Brennan, the current director of the CIA.

One part of the still ongoing deligitimization campaign was the FBI investigation of alleged Russian connections of four members of the Trump election campaign.

The Inspector General of the U.S. Justice Department Michael Horowitz has investigated the FBI operation against the election campaign of Donald Trump. Yesterday he published his report, Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Investigation (pdf). It is 480 pages long and quite thorough but unfortunately very limited in its scope.

Horowitz finds that the FBI was within the law when it opened the investigation but that the FBI's applications to the FISA court, which decides if the FBI can spy on someone's communications, were based on lies and utterly flawed.

Your host unfortunately lacked the time so far to read more than the executive summary. But others have pointed out some essential findings.

Matt Taibbi remarks :

The Guardian headline reads: " DOJ Internal watchdog report clears FBI of illegal surveillance of Trump adviser ."

If the report released Monday by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz constitutes a "clearing" of the FBI, never clear me of anything. ...

Much of the press is concentrating on Horowitz's conclusion that there was no evidence of "political bias or improper motivation" in the FBI's probe of Donald Trump's Russia contacts, an investigation Horowitz says the bureau had "authorized purpose" to conduct.

...

However, Horowitz describes at great length an FBI whose "serious" procedural problems and omissions of "significant information" in pursuit of surveillance authority all fell in the direction of expanding the unprecedented investigation of a presidential candidate (later, a president).

...

There are too many to list in one column, but the Horowitz report show years of breathless headlines were wrong. Some key points:

The so-called "Steele dossier" was, actually, crucial to the FBI's decision to seek secret surveillance of Page. ...

...

The "Steele dossier" was "Internet rumor," and corroboration for the pee tape story was "zero." ...

John Solomon finds :

Appendix 1 identifies the total violations by the FBI of the so-called Woods Procedures, the process by which the bureau verifies information and assures the FISA court its evidence is true.

The Appendix identifies a total of 51 Woods procedure violations from the FISA application the FBI submitted to the court authorizing surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page starting in October 2016.

A whopping nine of those violations fell into the category called: "Supporting document shows that the factual assertion is inaccurate."

For those who don't speak IG parlance, it means the FBI made nine false assertions to the FISA court. In short, what the bureau said was contradicted by the evidence in its official file.

The FBI agents and lawyers intentionally lied to the court. Their violations were not mistakes. All 51 of them were in favor of further spying on members of the Trump campaign and on everyone they communicated with.

The FBI has used the Steele dossier to gain further FISA application even after it had talked with Steele's 'primary source' (who probably was the later 'buzzed' Sergei Skripal ) and after it had learned that the allegations in the dossier were no more than unconfirmed rumors.

That the dossier was mere dreck was quite obvious to any sober person who read it when it was first published . Here is what we wrote about it at that time:

The anonymous former British operator hears from an anonymous compatriot that two anonymous sources, asserted to have access to inner Russian circles, claimed to have heard somewhere that something happened in the Kremlin.

They assert that Trump was supported and directed by Putin himself five years ago while even a year ago no one would have bet a penny on Trump gaining any political significant position or even the presidency.

There is a lot more of such nonsense in these new Hitler diaries. It is bonkers from a to z.

Those who thought otherwise should question their judgment.

It is now claimed that the FBI is exculpated because the Horowitz report did not find "political bias or improper motivation". But that omits the fact that at least four high ranking people in the FBI and Justice Department who were involved in the case were found to be politically biased and were removed from their positions.

It also omits that the scope of Horowitz's investigation was limited to the Justice Department. He was not able to investigate the CIA and its former director John Brennan who was alleging Russia-Trump connections months before the FBI investigation started:

Contrary to a general impression that the FBI launched the Trump-Russia conspiracy probe, Brennan pushed it to the bureau – breaking with CIA tradition by intruding into domestic politics: the 2016 presidential election. He also supplied suggestive but ultimately false information to counterintelligence investigators and other U.S. officials.

The current CIA director Gina Haspel was CIA station chief in London during that time and while several of the entrapment attempts of Trump campaign staff by the FBI investigation happened. Horowitz spoke with neither of them.

Peter Van Buren concludes :

The current Horowitz Report, read alongside his previous report on how the FBI played inside the 2016 election vis-a-vis Clinton, should leave no doubt that the Bureau tried to influence the election of a president and then delegitimize him when he won. It wasn't the Russians; it was us.

That is correct, but the whole conspiracy was even deeper. It was not the FBI which initiated the case.

My hunch is still that the FBI investigation was a case of parallel construction which is often used to build a legitimate case after a suspicion was found by illegitimate means. In this case it was John Brennan who in early 2016 contacted the head of the British GCHQ electronic interception service and asked him to spy on the Trump campaign. GHCQ then claimed that something was found that was deemed suspicious :

That summer, GCHQ's then head, Robert Hannigan, flew to the US to personally brief CIA chief John Brennan. The matter was deemed so important that it was handled at "director level", face-to-face between the two agency chiefs.

The FBI was tipped off on the issue and on July 31 2016 started an investigation to construct a parallel legal case. It send out British and U.S. agents to entrap Trump campaign members. It used the obviously fake Steele dossier to gain FISA court judgments that allowed it to spy on the campaign. Downing Street was informed throughout the whole affair. A day after Trump's inauguration the UK's then Prime Minister Theresa May fired GHCQ chief Robert Hannigan.

One still open question is to what extend then President Barack Obama was involved in the affair.

There is another ongoing investigation by U.S. Prosecutor John Durham. That investigation is not limited to the Justice Department but will involve all agencies and domestic as well as foreign sources. Durham has the legal rights to declassify whatever is needed and he can indict persons should he find that they committed a crime. His report will hopefully go much deeper than the already horrendous stuff Horowitz delivered.

(This is a Moon of Alabama fundraiser week. Please consider to support our work .)

Posted by b on December 11, 2019 at 16:16 UTC | Permalink


Antoinetta III , Dec 11 2019 16:27 utc | 1

Do we have any idea when the Durham report will be coming out?

Antoinetta III

casey , Dec 11 2019 16:30 utc | 2
Anyone taking bets on Durham/Barr making indictments in this mess? My guess is a whole lot of horse trading is going on behind the scenes now, as in, "I'll trade you a censure for all potential indictments going down the memory hole."
Kabobyak , Dec 11 2019 16:54 utc | 3
Typical dog and pony show which will change nothing relating to interventionist foreign policy and the new cold war with Russia. Too many saw benefits from the corruption in Ukraine to dig deep there; the Bidens were just the most blatant, Lindsey Graham and others from both parties were involved so don't expect much from the Senate hearings. The bipartisan major goals are a fait accompli; universal acceptance that Russia worked to undermine our elections (and to destroy our "Democracy") and are thus an enemy we must fight, and it's universally accepted by all that we MUST provide Ukraine with Javelin missiles and other lethal aid to fight "Russian Aggression" (with little mention that even Obama balked at that reckless option). All of these proceedings are great distractions, but the weapons of war will not be diminished.
c1ue , Dec 11 2019 17:08 utc | 4
@Kabobyak #3

Very possibly, but the Afghanistan papers have made an impact on some people: American Conservative editor is outraged, including militating against his children serving in the military and taxpayers funding it

jayc , Dec 11 2019 17:10 utc | 5
Another candidate for Steele's "primary source" is Stefan Halper. Svetlana Lhokova suggested that this past Sunday.
Jackrabbit , Dec 11 2019 17:12 utc | 6
Unfortuneately, few will question the findings of these investigations or consider the possibility that the investigations themselves are misdirection/cover-up.

Repeating my comment from yesterday on the Open Thread :

IMO the Lavrov-Pompeo presser is notable mostly for Lavrov's discussion of Russiagate (about 6 minutes in).

Lavrov tells us that the Russian's repeatedly sought to clarify their noninterference by publishing correspondence - which the Trump Administration didn't respond to. And he actual mentions McCarthyism!

Wait, wot?

Yeah, during the worst of the Russiagate accusations, Trump wouldn't do things that would've helped to prove that Russiagate was a farce!!

So, during the election, Trump called on Putin to publish Hillary's emails (the very act of making such a request is likely illegal because at the time it was known that her emails contained highly classified info) but he wouldn't accept Russia's publication of exculpatory info about Russiagate?!?!

This would cause cognitive dissonance galore in an Americans that hear it - so one can be sure that it will not be reported.

Occam's razor: CIA-MI6, with approval of US Deep State (Clintons, Bush, McCain, Brennan, Mueller, etc.), meddled to elect Trump and pointed fingers at Russia to initiate a new McCarthyism.

Meanwhile in bizarroland (aka USA), Barr says Russiagate is a fantasy based on FBI "bad faith" - yet Pompeo still presses on with the "Russia meddled" bullshit.

!!

james , Dec 11 2019 17:24 utc | 7
thanks b... i like your example in the comment - ''those who thought otherwise should question their judgment''.. good example!

i am a bit concerned like @ 2 casey, that most of this is going to go down the memory hole and there will be that made in america stamp on it - ''no accountability''... i wish i was wrong, but getting worked up at the idea anyone is going to be held accountable for any actions of the usa, or the insiders playing the usa, is clearly a fools game at this point.. all i mostly see is the needed collapse and waiting for that to happen..

Kabobyak , Dec 11 2019 17:27 utc | 8
@c1ue #4

Thanks for that, there are definitely cracks in the armor and we should promote that narrative as you do in your link. Tulsi Gabbard has also expanded the awareness, hopefully she will make the upcoming debates despite strong efforts to silence her. I'll try more to focus on the positive!

james , Dec 11 2019 17:27 utc | 9
@ 6 jr.. there is a press release on all what was said here for anyone interested..

lavrov quote and etc. etc.. "We suggested to our colleagues that in order to dispel all suspicions that are baseless, let us publish this closed-channel correspondence starting from October 2016 till November 2017 so it would all become very clear to many people. However, regrettably, this administration refused to do so. But I'd like to repeat once again we are prepared to do that, and to publish the correspondence that took place through that channel would clear many matters up, I believe. Nevertheless, we hope that the turbulence that appeared out of thin air will die down, just like in 1950s McCarthyism came to naught, and there'll be an opportunity to go back to a more constructive cooperation."

evilempire , Dec 11 2019 17:44 utc | 10
I continue to believe that the FBI and Horowitz perjured themselves in the FISA report. To correct a mistake in a previous post I made, I believe they lied when the claimed the Steele Dossier was not a predicate for opening crossfire hurricane. How can the Steele dossier not be instrumental in the opening of the investigation when bruce ohr's wife nellie ohr was working at fusion gps when bruce ohr met with steele to discuss the dirty dossier.

In other words, the FBI was concocting Operation Crossfire Hurricane prior to the time they had any knowledge of the phony Papadopoulus predicate that the russians were proferring the clinton emails to the trump campaign.

The FISA report claim that Operation Crossfire Hurricane was predicated solely on the Papadopolous allegations is therefore a lie. There was, in fact, no real predicate for Operation Crossfire Hurricane. The predications cited were all fictions and inventions fabricated in a conspiracy between MI6(the FFC or

friendly foreign country cited in the Horowitz report), the DOJ and the FBI. Operation Crossfire Hurricane was a massive Psyop from its inception.

Jackrabbit , Dec 11 2019 18:19 utc | 12
james @9

What major publications have picked up this info from the State Dept PR? Which of them are questioning why Trump didn't agree to let the Russians publish the exonerating information? And how many of those are linking this strange fact to other strange facts and thus raising troubling questions about the 2016 election?

<> <> <> <> <> <>

It's not just that Trump refused to publish exculpatory material. Anyone that's been reading my comments (and/or my blog) knows that Trump also:

- hired Manafort - whose work for pro-Russian candidates in Ukraine had drawn the ire of CIA - despite Manafort's having no recent experience with US elections;

- helped Pelosi to be elected Speaker of the House by inviting her to attend a White House meeting about his border wall (along with Chuck Schumer) prior to the House vote to elect a Speaker.

- initiated Ukrainegate by talking with Ukraine's President about investigating an announced candidate - he didn't have to do this(!) he could've let subordinates work behind the scenes .

And then there's a set of suspicious activity that is difficult to explain, such as: ...

- Kissinger's having called for MAGA in August 2014 (Trump announced his campaign 10 months later and he was the ONLY MAGA candidate and the ONLY populist in the Republican primary) ;

- London as a nexus for the US 2016 campaign (Cambridge Analytica; GPS Fusion; Halper, etc.) ;

- Hillary's making mistakes in the 2016 campaign that no seasoned politician would make;

- the settling of scores via entrapments of Flynn, Manafort, and Wikileaks/Assange (painted as a hostile intelligence agency and Russian agent).

All of these and more support the conclusion that CIA-MI6 elected MAGA Trump and initiated Russiagate.

!!

Piotr Berman , Dec 11 2019 18:28 utc | 13
The anonymous former British operator hears from an anonymous asserted compatriot what two anonymous sources, asserted to have access to inner Russian circles, claim to have heard somewhere that something happened in the Kremlin. <-- Perhaps it is too much to add that the entire conversation happen in a pub, like an eyewitness account of a trout caught by an angler that was larger than a tiger shark [the trout was so large, not the angler].

Really?? , Dec 11 2019 18:31 utc | 14
James #11

I am a great fan of Dmitri Orlov and have just read a large portion of his linked post.

What I do not see Orlov doing is taking into account--in his takedown of "scientific" models---evidence of global warming/change such as *actual* observations of *actual, current* phenomena that are being measured today, such as the condition of the world's coral reefs; the rate of melting of permafrost and release of methane gas; the melting of Greenland (and other) glaciers and release of fresh water into the oceans; acidification of oceans; and quite a lot of evidence for sea level rise, such as saltwater intrusion into freshwater swamps, aquifers, etc.

karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 18:38 utc | 15
More can be gleaned by the manner in which BigLie Media spin the investigation's results. At The Hill , Jonathon Turley makes that clear in the first paragraph:

"The analysis of the report by Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz greatly depends, as is often the case, on which cable news channel you watch. Indeed, many people might be excused for concluding that Horowitz spent 476 pages to primarily conclude one thing, which is that the Justice Department acted within its guidelines in starting its investigation into the 2016 campaign of President Trump."

The further he goes the worse it gets for the Ds. And he's 100% correct about the biases present in reporting about the Report. Remarks made by Lavrov at the presser were likely done prior to anyone from Russia's delegation having digested any of the Report. What I found important was the following revelation by Lavrov:

"Let me remind you that at the time of the first statements on this topic, which was on the eve of the 2016 US presidential election, we used the communications channel that linked back then Moscow and the Obama administration in Washington to ask our US partners on numerous occasions whether these allegations that emerged in October 2016 and persisted until Donald Trump's inauguration could be addressed. The reply never came. There was no response whatsoever to all our proposals when we said: look, if you suspect us, let's sit down and talk, just put your facts on the table. All this continued after President Trump's inauguration and the appointment of a new administration. We proposed releasing the correspondence through this closed communications channel for the period from October 2016 until January 2017 in order to dispel all this groundless suspicion. This would have clarified the situation for many. Unfortunately, this time it was the current administration that refused to do so. Let me reiterate that we are ready to disclose to the public the exchanges we had through this channel . I think that this would set many things straight. Nevertheless we expect the turbulence that appeared out of thin air to calm down little by little, just as McCarthyism waned in the 1950s, so that we can place our cooperation on a more constructive footing." [My Emphasis]

Lavrov on Mueller Report: "It contains no confirmation of any collusion." End of story. But we do have all this compiled evidence within our communications we're ready to publish is the USA

agrees.

The Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) organization has yet to publish anything about the report. However, Matt Taibbi often writes for that outlet, so his reporting at Rolling Stone ought to be seen as a proxy FAIR report.

Michael Droy , Dec 11 2019 18:42 utc | 16
Great stuff as ever. How useful is it that Skripal is Unavailable but not Dead? For example does it affect redaction of material linked to him?
Jon Carter , Dec 11 2019 18:59 utc | 17
Now that we know Carter Page was working for the CIA as an informant in 2016, is it reasonable to speculate that Page was planted in the Trump campaign by the CIA?
GeorgeV , Dec 11 2019 19:11 utc | 18
The Inspector General of the Department of Justice, Micheal Horowitz's report on the move to delegitimize the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is clear proof of the massive rot that lies at the heart of the US' political system. If this matter is whitewashed over by the MSM, then one more step will have been taken to a violent and bloody revolution in the US of A.
JR , Dec 11 2019 19:41 utc | 20
By now Steele's credibility is zero. Time to revisit Steele's involvement with the debunked "Russia bought the soccer World Champion games", the Litvinenko polonium poisening and the Skripal novichok poisening. The timing of the Skripal matter deserves some scrutiny in relation to Skripal possibly being Steele's source for the infamous Trump dossier. There might be a motive hidden there.
Jackrabbit , Dec 11 2019 19:44 utc | 21
Jon Carter @17:
... is it reasonable to speculate that Page was planted in the Trump campaign by the CIA?

And then there's Simon Bracey Lane in the Sanders campaign as described here: British Spies Infiltrated Bernie Sanders' Campaign?

Plus we have the strange goings-on of Halper and Mifsud as well as Gina Haspel in London also.

!!

uncle tungsten , Dec 11 2019 20:04 utc | 22
karlof1 #15

Thank you for posting Lavrov's words. Between those words and the IG report the kabuki farce is revealed. Why was Trump ignoring the Russian offer you might ask. Because it suited him to have this nonsense dominate the news cycle, you might conclude. Trump and Comey and Brennan deserve each other.

Lavrov's words condemn the three of them.

S , Dec 11 2019 20:25 utc | 24
Twitter account @Techno_Fog lists MSM shills who assured the public the FISA warrant on Page was not based on Steele dossier (h/t Zero Hedge).
james , Dec 11 2019 20:26 utc | 25
just like 9-11... this is an inside job... does anyone really think the truth is going to come to light in any of it?? i'm still with @ 2 caseys view...
karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 20:48 utc | 27
uncle tungsten @22--

Thanks for your reply! Yes, agreed, and I'd add Obama and Clinton. Lavrov also held another presser at the conclusion of his visit that provides additional info not covered in the first. The following is one I thought important:

"Question: The day before, US Congress agreed on a draft military budget, which includes possible sanctions against Nord Stream-2 and Turkish Stream. Have you covered this topic? The Congress sounds very determined. How seriously will the new restrictions affect the completion of our projects?

"Sergey Lavrov: In my opinion, Congress sounds rather obsessed with destroying our relations. It continues pursuing the policy started by the Obama administration. As I mentioned, we are used to this kind of attack. We know how to respond to them. I assure you that neither Nord Stream-2 nor Turkish Stream will be halted."

I must emphatically agree with Lavrov's opinion and was very pleased he answered forthrightly. What seems quite clear is the current anti-Russian idiocy was started by Obama's team and was designed for Clinton to escalate, with bipartisan Congressional backing. That she lost didn't stop the anti-Russian wheel from being turned. So, logic tells us to discover the reason for Obama to alter policy. Over the years I've written here why I think that was done--to continue the #1 policy goal of attaining Full Spectrum Dominance over the planet and its people regardless of its impossibility given the Sino-Russo Alliance made reality by that policy goal. That a supermajority in Congress remain deluded is clearly a huge problem, and those continuing to vote for the War Budget need to be removed.

ben , Dec 11 2019 21:03 utc | 28
b posted, in part;"When Hillary Clinton was defeated in the U.S. presidential election the relevant powers launched a campaign to delegitimize the President elect Donald Trump."

It doesn't take HRC and her resident scum-bag sycophants to deligitimize DJT, his sorry life-style, and his past record do that quite nicely, IMO.

karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 21:07 utc | 29
This tweet sums up things nicely in ways BigLie Media won't:
  • "Let me get this straight:
  • "A Congress with a 9% approval rate
  • "Is trying to remove a president with a 52% approval rate that 63 million Americans voted for
  • "As a part of an impeachment process that 51% of voters don't want
  • "All while claiming to be fighting 'for the people'"

With only 9% approval, it ought to be easy to toss out most Congresscritters, excepting that part of the Senate not up for reelection.

ben , Dec 11 2019 21:18 utc | 30
Jrabbit @ 12 said; "All of these and more support the conclusion that CIA-MI6 elected MAGA Trump and initiated Russiagate."

YEP!!!!!

Paul Damascene , Dec 11 2019 21:24 utc | 32

Karlof1 @ 29--

Are you aware of any means by which a member of congress or of a congressional committee can be impeached or otherwise censured for the misconduct of official duties? That would at least be Schiff...

Posted by: Paul Damascene | Dec 11 2019 21:24 utc | 32

james , Dec 11 2019 21:25 utc | 33
@ 31 john.. i didn't know i had to read the orlov article to say what i did to you!! your post @11 never make any internet link to orlov... what am i missing? does this mean i can only speak with you after i have read another orlov article? lol...
james , Dec 11 2019 21:27 utc | 34
i see it now.. my comment still stands though... people seem especially pugnacious today..
William Gruff , Dec 11 2019 21:27 utc | 35
"It doesn't take HRC and her resident scum-bag sycophants to deligitimize DJT, his sorry life-style, and his past record do that quite nicely, IMO." --ben @28

Ah, but that would be legitimate deligitimization, like attacking his actual policies. Those are rocks that would break the Democrats' own windows as well as Trump's.

karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 21:30 utc | 36
29 Cont'd--

And Congress continues to alienate allies :

"So far on Dec 11:

1. Senate Foreign Relations Comm passed Turkey sanctions bill

2. Pentagon Chief warned Turkey moving away NATO

3. U.S. lawmakers introduce legislation to curb Turkey's nuclear weapon obtainment"

Finally, the pretense of being nice to Turkey has come to an end. It will now intensify its looking East, and pursue its national interests. IMO, the Eastern Med's energy issues will now become a major headache.

ben , Dec 11 2019 21:40 utc | 37
karlof @ 29: The head Dems know their pushing the " Russia did it"meme is weak, but the PTB

insist on it, to keep the MIC funds flowing.

The "no-brainer" charges should be; "Obstruction" and "Emoluments" violations. Charges the public can grasp.

What happens if you, or any average person, ignores a summons to appear? They are arrested.

Funneling govt. funds for personal gain is a violation of law, if you are POTUS.

These are violations average Americans can grasp, not the current circus of he said, she said, going on in D.C. lately.

Guess my point is, this hearings are built to fail, because most of our so-called leaders like things the way they are. The rape of the workings classes will continue.

karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 21:41 utc | 38
Paul Damascene @32--

Yes. The impeachment process is the same as for Trump. Censuring is much easier but doubt it will occur as too many are deserving. We're seeing the reason Congressional elections are held every two years--vote 'em out if they're no good!

Jackrabbit , Dec 11 2019 22:01 utc | 40
karlof1 @27:

... the current anti-Russian idiocy was started by Obama's team and was designed for Clinton to escalate ...

I don't agree that the baton would be passed to Clinton. The Deep State uses the two-party system as a device. It's not tied to partisan concerns. If the Deep State and the establishment really wanted Clinton elected, they would've made that happen. Few expected Trump to win and few would've been outraged if he had lost. Yet he won. Against all odds. Furthermore, Clinton wasn't the MAGA candidate as called for by Kissinger - Trump was. And he was from the beginning of his candidacy.

Russiagate was based on suspicions of a populist that was compromised by Russia. Hillary has too much baggage to play populist or nationalist - including Bill's involvement with Epstein.

Also, you're forgetting the set ups of Manafort, Flynn, and Wikileaks/Assange - which were important parts of Russiagate and also a convenient way of settling scores. These set-ups required the Russiagate-tainted candidate (Trump) to win.

And Trump's beating Hillary makes him the classic come-from-behind hero - giving Trump a certain legitimacy that an establishment candidate wouldn't have. That's important when contemplating taking the country to war in the near future.

It's strange to me that people can think that Hillary was the 'chosen candidate', and be OK with that but find a possible selection of a different candidate (Trump, as it turns out) to be outrageous and inconceivable.

=

... with bipartisan Congressional backing . That she lost didn't stop the anti-Russian wheel from being turned.

Since the Deep State and the Establishment desired an effort to restore the Empire, they would turn to whomever could most effectively accomplish that task.

Once again: It didn't have to be Hillary that was selected. In fact, for many reasons (that I've previously expressed) Hillary would have been a poor choice.

=

So, logic tells us to discover the reason for Obama to alter policy. Over the years I've written here why I think that was done--to continue the #1 policy goal of attaining Full Spectrum Dominance over the planet and its people ...

FSD is US Mil policy, not a political goal. It states that US Mil will strive to have superiority in weapons and capability in every sphere of combat.

Politically, FSD is just one of several means to an end. IMO that end is the maintenance and expansion of the Anglo-Zionist Empire (aka New World Order).

Also, your dominance theory doesn't answer the question of WHY NOW? (more on that below)

... regardless of its impossibility given the Sino-Russo Alliance ...

Firstly, US Deep State believes that it is possible. And I personally don't buy the notion that Russia and China are fated to prevail. If that were obvious, then the moa bar would have no patrons.

Secondly (and again), WHY NOW? The Sino-Russo Alliance was long in the making. Why did USA suddenly take note?

It's Kissinger's WSJ Op-Ed of August 2014 that provides the answer. In this Op-Ed, Kissinger calls for a restored US Empire that is essentially Trump's MAGA. Kissinger is writing immediately after the Donbas rebels have won. The Russians refused to heed Kissinger's advice (to back down) and it has become apparent that Russia's joining the West is no longer an inevitability as the US elite had assumed.

<> <> <> <> <> <>

I've written many times of Kissinger's Op-Ed and of indications that the Deep State selected MAGA Trump to be President while also initiating a new McCarthyism. Why is it STILL so difficult to believe a theory that makes so much sense?

!!

karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 22:08 utc | 41
ben @37--

Yes, the status quo is very generous to the Current Oligarchy and its tools, but not so for the vast public majority which is clamoring for change. IMO, much can be learned from the UK election tomorrow, of which there's been very little discussion here despite its importance. I suggest following the very important developments from the past few days at Criag Murray's Twitter and at his website , the linked article being a scoop of sorts.

Also harder to follow but important as well are ballot initiatives within the states. This site has current listing . I just looked over those for California where there are a few good ones, but the threshold for signatures is getting higher, close to one million are now needed in CA.

Cortes , Dec 11 2019 22:34 utc | 43
Lavrov's comments about the offers to open up normally closed communications really only highlight two obvious issues:
  • The previous US Administration had no interest in shutting off the oxygen to the "Trump = Moscow's Man" campaign; and
  • The current US Administration cannot afford to be perceived as receiving help in this matter from the country he is alleged to be beholden to for his election.
AshenLight , Dec 11 2019 22:38 utc | 44
@ Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 11 2019 21:07 utc | 29
With only 9% approval, it ought to be easy to toss out most Congresscritters, excepting that part of the Senate not up for reelection.

You'd think so, but somehow the numbers pretty much reverse when these same people consider their own rep, and the incumbency reelection rate is shockingly high (haven't looked recently but IIRC it has hovered around 90% for decades). Apparently it is amazingly easy to convince the masses that their guy is the one good apple in the bunch.

karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 22:39 utc | 45
Jon Schwartz reminds me why I don't stop and peruse magazine stands anymore. Seeing the words and this picture would've sparked lots of unpleasant language:

"The best part of Michelle Obama explaining she shares the same values as George W. Bush is she was being interviewed on network TV by Bush's daughter. There's nothing more American than our ruling class making us watch them discuss how great they all are."

And the escalation wasn't rigged for Clinton to initiate--yeah, sure, whatever the rabbit says.

steven t johnson , Dec 11 2019 22:42 utc | 46
Until there is some comparison of how the FISA court usually works, none of this chatter means a thing. Violations of Woods procedures and assertions not supported by documents are SOP. The FISA court is always a joke.

Delgeitimizing Trump, reversing the election, all simple-minded drviel, as only nitwits see Trump as anything but the loser.

Jackrabbit , Dec 11 2019 23:08 utc | 48
Jen, that's a really interesting post. Thanks.

Skripal knows something that US-UK either 1) don't want the Russians to know OR 2) don't want ANYONE to know.

What could that be? 1) That Steele dossier is bullshit? We know that. 2) That Steele dossier was meant to be bullshit ? Well, that raises a whole host of questions, doesn't it?

!!

Kabobyak , Dec 12 2019 0:45 utc | 51
Good chance Steele had little to do with writing the Dossier. "Simpson-Ohr Dossier", anyone? Steele was needed as a credible looking intelligence officer with Russia ties and a past working relationship with US Intel, as cover to sell to FBI, FISA Court, and the public (meeting with Isikoff, Yahoo News story).

Glenn Simpson and wife Mary Jacoby had written articles for the WSJ in 2007 and 2008 with a script and language similar to the Dossier. Devin Nunes seems to believe this scenario, and it is discussed in detail in books by Dan Bongino and Lee Smith, among others.

daffyDuct , Dec 12 2019 2:26 utc | 56
c1ue @4

The Afghanistan report outlines a *massive fraud*. $14 billion/month, 90% of the world's opium, no "progress", oh, and lying to Congress for two decades.

ben , Dec 12 2019 3:24 utc | 59
OT, but this seems to be going around..Eh?

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/11/jeremy-corbyn-faces-russiagate-smear-campaign-before-uk-vote/#more-17822

ben , Dec 12 2019 4:47 utc | 62
physchoh @ 60; The difference, at least in my mind, is that, the "Russia did it" meme, is the weakest of all cases against DJT. Corbyn, on the other hand, may actually be hurt by the bogus charges. IMO, what this shows is coordination between the elites to bring down a progressive in the UK, who fancies public control over major finances instead of private concerns.
Piotr Berman , Dec 12 2019 5:03 utc | 63
Fox News, now: Biden blames staff, says nobody 'warned' him son's Ukraine job could raise conflict. In a TV comedy Seinfeld, one of the main characters, George, is a compulsive liar with a knack of getting in trouble. Sometimes he has a job. Final scene of one of those jobs:
  • Boss: "You have been seen after hours making sex with the cleaning lady on the top of your desk."
  • George (after a measured look at his boss): "If I was only told that this kind of things is being frown upon..." [and she had cleaned the desk both before AND after!]
evilempire , Dec 12 2019 5:34 utc | 64
I have theory about why Horowitz did not bias in the FBI. The definition of bias is to harbor a deeply negative feeling that clouds one's judgement about a person or subject. However, the conspirators' judgement was not clouded in this case. Their negative feelings focused their intent to destroy the object of

their feeling. The precise term for this is malice.

So Horowitz was technically correct when he did not find bias. What he might have been reluctant to spell out is that he did find malice.

Perimetr , Dec 12 2019 6:03 utc | 65
Re Really?? | Dec 11 2019 18:31 utc | 14 and AshenLight | Dec 11 2019 19:36 utc | 19

I agree with you. Orlov is a brilliant, insightful analyst, who is also very funny. But he is off the mark with his dismissal of global warming and also with his endorsement of nuclear power. The immense amounts of waste from uranium mining all the way to hundreds of thousands of tons of high-level waste in spent fuel pools pose a huge threat to current and future generations . . . like the next 3000 generations of humans (and all other forms of life) that will have to deal with this. Mankind has never built anything that has lasted a fraction of the 100,000 years required for the isolation of high-level wastes from the biosphere. Take a look at Into Eternity which is a great documentary on the disposal of nuclear waste in Finland.

Orlov's analysis is superficial, unfortunately, in these areas.

[Dec 10, 2019] Those geriatric crazies like Pelosi, or Hillary, or completly corrupt, bought by lobbies politicos like Schumer or Schiff, and their stooges like "linguist" Ciaramella, "politruk", master of arts in Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian studies Vindman, or Soros-connected rabid neocon Fiona Hill do not know what seven minutes on launch means

They poisoned with the USA with Russophobia for decades to come, and that really increases the risk of nuclear confrontation, which would wipe out all this jerks, but also mass of innocent people.
Notable quotes:
"... The only way to prevent it, IMHO, is having a Western public shifting just 5 % of their "breads and circuses" paradigm to that issue. Just 5. Not holding my breath I am afraid. ..."
"... Which proves the main point of mine: access to information means shit in the real world of power play. Sheeple didn't care then; they care even less now (better distractions). ..."
Dec 10, 2019 | www.unz.com

peterAUS , says: December 10, 2019 at 8:07 pm GMT

O.K.

I was, actually, thinking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pershing_II#Protests Or, just follow this trend of "who has a bigger dick" as it is.

Sooner or later you'll have this, IMHO: Reaction time 7 minutes . You know, decision-making time to say "launch" or not. The decision-maker in the White House, Downing Street and Elysees Palace either a geriatric or one of this new multiracial breed. Just think about those people

Add to that the level of overall expertise by the crews manning those systems, its maintenance etc. Add increased automation of some parts of the launch process with hardware/software as it's produced now (you know, quality control etc.).

It will take a miracle not to have that launch sooner or later. Not big, say .80 KT. What happens after that is anybody's guess. Mine, taking the second point from the fourth paragraph .a big bang.

The only way to prevent it, IMHO, is having a Western public shifting just 5 % of their "breads and circuses" paradigm to that issue. Just 5.
Not holding my breath I am afraid.

My 2 cents, anyway.

Anon [138] Disclaimer , says: December 10, 2019 at 9:30 pm GMT
@peterAUS The rational actor false supposition has it that the biologics can't be used because they don't recognize friend from foe.

Rational actors? Where? Anthrax via the US mail.

One rational actor point of view is that you have to be able to respond to anything. Anything. In a measured or escalating response. Of course biologics are being actively pursued to the hilt. Just like you point out about Marburg.

But, the view from above is that general panic in the population cannot be allowed, and so all biologics have to be down played. "of course we would never do anything like that, it would be insane to endanger all of humanity". Just like nukes. So professors pontificate misdirection, and pundits punt.

So don't expect real disclosure, or honest analysis. "We only want the fear that results in more appropriations. Not the fear that sinks programs." Don't generate new Church commissions. Hence the fine line. some fear yes, other fears, no.

peterAUS , says: December 10, 2019 at 10:23 pm GMT
@Anon

Rational actors? Where?

Well Washington D.C.
Hahahahaha sorry, couldn't resist.

So don't expect real disclosure, or honest analysis.

I don't.

But I also probably forgot more about nuclear war than most of readers here will ever know. And chemical, when you think about it; had a kit with atropine on me all the time in all exercises. We didn't practice much that "biologics" stuff, though. We knew why, then. Same reason for today. Call it a "stoic option" to own inevitable demise.

Now, there is a big difference between the age of those protests I mentioned and today. The Internet. The access to information people, then, simply didn't have.

Which proves the main point of mine: access to information means shit in the real world of power play. Sheeple didn't care then; they care even less now (better distractions).

Well, they will care, I am sure. For about ..say in the USA ..several hours, on average.

We here where I am typing from will care for "how to survive the aftermath" .. for two months.Tops.

[Nov 28, 2019] WSJ story reopens the claim Comey had a report there was an email exchange between Loretta Lynch and Clinton claiming Lynch promised her the DOJ would go easy on Clinton.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... does the author think this alleged Lynch-Clinton campaign exchange will be part of the upcoming Horowitz report? ..."
Nov 28, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Factotum , 27 November 2019 at 11:57 AM

WSJ columnist today raises an old obscure issue today about the Clinton emails and Comey's calculated exoneration of Clinton's culpability.

This story reopens the claim Comey had a report there was an email exchange between Loretta Lynch and Clinton claiming Lynch promised her the DOJ would go easy on Clinton. Comey claimed when confronted with this memo, Lynch merely smiled like the Cheshire cat and nothing more was done.

This memo was later discredited as an alleged planted Russian hoax. Yet the memo story is again put in lead position on the opinion pages of the WSJ this very morning. Why was that? Not clear, but does the author think this alleged Lynch-Clinton campaign exchange will be part of the upcoming Horowitz report?

(WSJ: 11/27/19 - Holman Jenkins, Jr. - "Who will turn over the 2016 rocks")

[Nov 24, 2019] Chris Hedges on Death of the Liberal Class - YouTube

Highly recommended!
Jan 04, 2011 | www.youtube.com

riccardo estavans , 4 months ago

Colin Shaw , 5 months ago Think Mackay , 5 months ago

Bill Clinton destroyed the USA economy and middle class like no president has ever done. Bush II and Obama exacerbated the destruction by the hundred folds.

Orion's Ghost , 5 months ago

I believe Hedges statement that "the true correctives to society were social movements that never achieved formal political power" is perhaps one of the most important things for each of us to understand.

Fred Slocombe , 3 months ago (edited)
  • 15:05 The subjugation of Education
  • 21:15 Theatrical Manipulation of Expectations
  • 24:08 U.S. Debt and Borrowing
Ali Naderzad , 3 months ago (edited)

16:50 GENIUS. WELL DONE. So true.go Chris !!!

cubismo85 , 4 weeks ago

hauntingly accurate in every aspect, im speehless

Eris123451 , 3 days ago

I watched this with interest and curiosity and growing skepticism although he makes some killer points and cites some extremely disturbing facts; above all he accepts and uncritically so the American narrative of history.

Brian Valero , 4 months ago

The message from democrats is "hey we're not bigots". Most people (repubs+dems) aren't. If they keep calling on that for energy the Dems will forever continue to lose. If they don't come back to the working class they might as well just call themselves conservatives.

jimmyolsenblues , 4 months ago

he did/wrote this in 2011, he really understood then how things are in 2019.

Andy Russ , 3 years ago (edited)

Prescient 'post-mortem' of the 2016 election

2009starlite , 5 months ago (edited)

Those of us who seek the truth can't stop looking under every stone. The truth will set you free but you must share it with those who are ready to hear it and hide it from those who can hurt you for exposing it. MT

Aubrey De Bliquy , 2 days ago (edited)

"A Society that looses the capacity for the sacred cannibalizes itself until it dies because it exploits the natural world as well as human beings to the point of collapse."

Clark WARS News , 1 day ago

I learned something from watching this thank you powerful teacher love you ⭐

Rebel Scum , 5 months ago

I think he meant Washington State University which is in Pullman. The University of Washington is in Seattle. 16:43

phuturephunk , 6 years ago

Damn, he's grim...but he makes a whole lot of sense.

davekiernan1 , 2 weeks ago

Like Mr bon ribentrof said in monty Python. He's right you know...

Rich Keal , 5 months ago

Search YouTube for Dr. Antony Sutton the funding of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Act of 1871 as well. Take the Red Pill and go deeper.

kevin joseph , 5 days ago

loony republicans? did they open the borders, legalize late abortions and outright infanticide?

Michael Maya , 5 months ago

I've listened to this twice both twice it played on accident bcuz I had you tube on autoplay, it woke me up while I was sleeping but I'm glad it did.

Bryce Hallam , 1 week ago

Set the Playback Speed to: 1.25 . Great lecture.

Buddy Aces , 5 months ago

It makes sense and we can smell it! Those varmints must be shown no mercy.

VC YT , 5 months ago

To get in the mood, I watched this lecture from behind some Hedges. :-)

Orion's Ghost , 5 months ago

I believe Hedges statement that "the true correctives to society were social movements that never achieved formal political power" is perhaps one of the most important things for each of us to understand.

Fred Slocombe , 3 months ago (edited)

15:05 The subjugation of Education 21:15 Theatrical Manipulation of Expectations 24:08 U.S. Debt and Borrowing

Ali Naderzad , 3 months ago (edited)

16:50 GENIUS. WELL DONE. So true.go Chris !!!

cubismo85 , 4 weeks ago

hauntingly accurate in every aspect, im speehless

Eris123451 , 3 days ago

I watched this with interest and curiosity and growing skepticism although he makes some killer points and cites some extremely disturbing facts; above all he accepts and uncritically so the American narrative of history. The Progressive movement, for example, (written into American history as being far more important that it ever really was,) unlike Socialism or Communism was primarily just a literary and a trendy intellectually movement that attempted, (unconvincingly,) to persuade poor, exploited and abused Americans that non of those other political movements, (reactive and grass-roots,) were needed here and that capitalism could and might of itself, cure itself; it conceded little, promised much and unlike either Communism or Socialism delivered fuck all. Personally I remain unconvinced also by, "climate science," (which he takes as given,) and which seems to to me to depend far too much on faith and self important repeatedly insisting that it's true backed by lurid and hysterical propaganda and not nearly enough on rational scientific argument, personally I can't make head nor tail of the science behind it ? (it may well be true, or not; I can't tell.) But above all and stripped of it his pretensions his argument is just typical theist, (of any flavor you like,) end of times claptrap all the other systems have failed, (China for example somewhat gives the lie to death of Communism by the way and so on,) the end is neigh and all that is left to do is for people to turn to character out of first century fairly story. I wish him luck with that.

penny kannon , 5 months ago

CHRIS HEDGES YOUR BOOK MUST BE HIGH SCHOOL STUDY!!! wtkjr.!!!

Brian Valero , 4 months ago

The message from democrats is "hey we're not bigots". Most people (repubs+dems) aren't. If they keep calling on that for energy the Dems will forever continue to lose. If they don't come back to the working class they might as well just call themselves conservatives.

jimmyolsenblues , 4 months ago

he did/wrote this in 2011, he really understood then how things are in 2019.

Andy Russ , 3 years ago (edited)

Prescient 'post-mortem' of the 2016 election

Jean Lloyd Bradberry , 5 months ago

Shared! Excellent presentation!

Mike van Wijngaarden , 4 months ago

What if, to fail is the objective? That would mean they planned everything that's happened and will happen.

Michael Hutz , 1 month ago (edited)

Loved Chris in this one. First time I've heard him talking naturally instead of reading verbatim from a text which makes him sound preachy.

Bill Mccloy , 4 months ago (edited)

Chris is our canary in a coal mine! Truly a national treasure and a champion for humanity. And he's more Christian than he thinks he is.

Herr Pooper , 4 months ago

I have always loved Chris Hedges, but ever since becoming fully awake it pains me to see how he will take gigantic detours of imagination to never mention Israel, AIPAC or Zionism, and their complete takeover of the US. What a shame.

ISIS McCain , 4 months ago

Hey Chris, please look up Dr. Wolfe and have a big debate with him!!! I believe you guys would mostly hit it off, but please look him up!

UtopiaMinor666 , 8 years ago

The reality of this is enough to make you want to cry.

Terri Pebsworth , 3 months ago

Excellent! And truer today (2019) than even in 2010.

Russell Olausen , 4 months ago

Notes From the Underground,my favourite book.

John Doe , 3 weeks ago

Gosh I thought it was being broadcasted today. Then I heard it and it was really for today.

George C. May , 2 months ago

Not once did I hear the word corruption which in this speech sums up the bureaucratic control of the country !

L N , 5 months ago

I think Chris Has saved my life! ✊🏼✌️ 👍🏼🌅

Laureano Luna , 4 months ago

43:53 Cicero did not even live the imperial period of Rome...

andrew domenitz , 4 months ago

The continued growth of unproductive debt against the low or nonexistent growth of GDP is the recipe for collapse, for the whole world economic system.

Thomas Simmons , 5 months ago

I agree with Chris about the tragedy of the Liberal Church. Making good through identity politics however, is every bit as heretical and tragic as Evangelical Republican corrupted church think, in my humble, Christian opinion.

Alexandros Aiakides , 2 weeks ago (edited)

The death of the present western hemisphere governments and "democratic" institutions must die right now for humanity to be saved from the zombies that rule it. 'Cannibalization" of oikonomia was my idea, as well as of William Engdahl. l am glad hearing Hedges to adopt the expression of truth. ( November 2019. from Phthia , Hellas ).

Heathcliff Earnshaw , 4 months ago div cl

ass="comment-renderer-text-content expanded"> Gosh , especially that last conclusion ,was terrific so I want to paste the whole of that Auden poem here:- September 1, 1939 W. H. Auden - 1907-1973

... ... ...

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

[Nov 15, 2019] Milken, who was convicted of trading on information that the hedge fund firm Galleon Group would acquire an Italian airline and put it on a stock exchange, was also said to have paid Epstein $450,000 to have sex with an underage girl.

Nov 15, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

librul , Nov 14 2019 6:26 utc | 75

@Posted by: S | Nov 14 2019 5:55 utc | 73

Thanks for the interesting link.

However, my first try did not go quite so well - mixed results.
I entered: Epstein did not commit suicide

The project outputted this:

"The news of his death brought back memories of Epstein's death at the hands of a 27-year-old lawyer in 1998, when Michael Milken, who was then a top hedge fund manager, was convicted of insider trading and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Milken, who was convicted of trading on information that the hedge fund firm Galleon Group would acquire an Italian airline and put it on a stock exchange, was also said to have paid Epstein $450,000 to have sex with an underage girl.

Epstein has never been charged in the case.

The scandal has also caused many to question whether the Clintons' political career might have been ruined had they lived in Washington D.C. and Epstein was their friend."

S , Nov 14 2019 11:00 utc | 89

@librul #75: I had better luck with my query (in bold):
Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself , he did not shoot himself, he was murdered by the Clintons and their henchmen.


Bill Clinton had Epstein locked up on a pedophilia charge that Epstein was actually acquitted of in 2008 due to "technicalities".

There is an entire chapter on the Epstein sex ring in a book called "Lolita".

http://www.amazon.com/Lolita-Jeffrey-Epstein/dp/0393322139/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467154983&sr=1-1&keywords=lolita

The book is very graphic and discusses Epstein's sexual encounters with many of the young girls that he had brought to America.

According to the book, the girls were given drugs and alcohol and then abused by Epstein's friend and masseuse Ghislaine Maxwell.

Of course, Bill Clinton never had Epstein locked up and there's no book called "Lolita" about Epstein -- this is the AI making things up. But the text is quite convincing until you start fact-checking it, isn't it? Also, the example shows that the AI is not propagandistic. It's the way you choose the starting words that produces pro-Empire or pro-truth results.

[Nov 12, 2019] It already is "Obamagate : John Brennan's CIA Trump Task Force by Philip Giraldi

Notable quotes:
"... Obama orchestrated the destruction of a political rival and he will get away scott free .because he's an oppressed and downtrodden dindu. ..."
"... But in fact Obama too is CIA nomenklatura, with the same depth of dynastic ties as GW Bush, albeit not at the same lofty level. ..."
"... This past election was CIA office politics, nothing more. Russigate is simply CIA eminence Hillary, the Queen of Mena, ratfucking a bumptious queue-jumper. She outranks Trump, who was merely a junior money-launderer for the CIA agents who looted the Soviet Union. It was her turn to take the figurehead head-of-state sinecure. She and Bill earned it with their lucrative Clinton Foundation covert-ops slush fund. ..."
"... And has been since the early 1950s when the Allen Dulles-Frank Wisner-James Jesus Angleton crew got rolling. They managed to thoroughly penetrate federal and state bureaucracies, the court systems, major corporations, the financial sector, and the mockingbird media. ..."
"... Clapper revealed that the preparers of the ICA were "handpicked analysts" from only the FBI, CIA, and NSA. He explained rather unconvincingly during an interview on May 28, 2017, that "the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique," adding later that "It's in their DNA." ..."
Nov 12, 2019 | www.unz.com

Justvisitingsays: November 12, 2019 at 5:09 am GMT 100 Words The magic words are "FISA warrants".

The entire FISA court process has been exposed as an insane sham.

"The Secret Team" just took the absurdity of the process and raised it to the next level–injecting it into a political campaign.

It would be wonderful if they could fill a jail with every empty suit who touched those warrants–but I would be stunned if even one of them gets paraded around in the orange jump-suit they so richly deserve. Read More Replies: @Moi Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments


AWM , says: November 12, 2019 at 5:44 am GMT
It already is "Obamagate."

... ... ...

Alfred , says: November 12, 2019 at 7:09 am GMT
Looking on at this affair from outside the USA, it is clear that the power and influence of the USA is waning a lot faster than most people expected.

The replacement of the US military by mercenaries who are called other names was a first step. The sanctioning and punishing of allies for stepping out of line is the second step. BTW, it is notable how Japan and Australia are very keen to stay in line but the Europeans less so.

I suspect the third step will be to encourage a collapse of the Euro – so as to make wealthy Europeans shift their money to the USA in a panic.

It seems to me that the US public will be the last to learn of what is really happening. Even on this website there are sometimes letters or articles that mention 9/11 as a "terrorist" or "Saudi" act. How can one take anything such a person writes seriously?

The control of media and the internet seems to be the last part of the collapse. They will hang on to that to the very last moment.

Gall , says: November 12, 2019 at 9:37 am GMT
In the old days they used to give traitors the option of being hung or shot. Now they work for the CIA and become TV celebrities.
gotmituns , says: November 12, 2019 at 11:01 am GMT
I campaigned for Trump but was tricked. The die is caste now. There must be civil war and secession.
Realist , says: November 12, 2019 at 11:37 am GMT

John Brennan's CIA Trump Task Force
Could it become Obamagate?

Perhaps, but what is the point? All this bullshit is engineered to make dumbass Americans think justice is being served. Nothing will come of it no one will go to prison.

Realist , says: November 12, 2019 at 11:45 am GMT
@NPleeze

As if Trump weren't part and parcel of the Deep State.

His actions in Syria, Bolivia, Hong Kong, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, etc. all prove incontrovertibly that he is (and has always been) a member in fine standing of the Deep State. If he is a Manchurian Candidate, he is the true puppet of the Deep State, not the people or of Russia.

Exactly. I voted for Trump, but, as long ago as mid April 2017, I determined that he was a Deep Stater his actions are just too obvious to ignore.

Robert Dolan , says: November 12, 2019 at 11:47 am GMT
The Magic Negro cannot be touched and that is why nothing will be done about the biggest crime in the history of our nation Obama orchestrated the destruction of a political rival and he will get away scott free .because he's an oppressed and downtrodden dindu.
Realist , says: November 12, 2019 at 11:57 am GMT

There is considerable evidence that the American system of government may have been victimized by an illegal covert operation organized and executed by the U.S.

Which one are you referring to, Iran 1953, Kennedy assassination 1963, Gulf of Tonkin 1964 or the other dozens of examples?

Sbaker , says: November 12, 2019 at 12:25 pm GMT
@Realist

Exactly. I voted for Trump, but, as long ago as mid April 2017, I determined that he was a Deep Stater his actions are just too obvious to ignore.

This certainly explains the incessant attacks on Trump by the deep state.

onebornfree , says: Website November 12, 2019 at 12:38 pm GMT
"And this was not a CIA-only operation. Personnel from the FBI also were assigned to the Task Force "

This just in: both the CIA and FBI are unconstitutional, agencies.Get rid of them -and all of the other unconstitutional alphabet-soup agencies[FDA,EPA,SEC etc.etc.etc.]. No downsizing-trash them all- NOW!

This also just in: "Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft [taxes], and counterfeiting [via central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at their very cores, 100% corrupt criminal scams which cannot be "reformed","improved", simply because of their innate, unchangeble criminal nature." onebornfree

"Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class." Albert J. Nock

Regards, onebornfree

i

Biff , says: November 12, 2019 at 12:42 pm GMT
@Robert Dolan

The Magic Negro cannot be touched

That's pretty much it in a nutshell – put him on a shelf with the Clintons, and the Bush's.

Hapalong Cassidy , says: November 12, 2019 at 12:53 pm GMT
John Brennan just looks sinister. It would not surprise me if he were in the top 1% of most evil persons alive.
RVBlake , says: November 12, 2019 at 12:53 pm GMT
17 intelligence agencies. Really?
Anonymous [381] Disclaimer , says: November 12, 2019 at 12:57 pm GMT
@Alfred Your point about 9/11 can't be made forcefully enough. We're going straight to hell unless Israel and its American confederates are brought to justice, these wars ended, and order restored. Clapper, Comey, Brennan, Mueller, Chertoff and the whole traitorous bunch are probably guilty as principals but almost certainly they're at least complicit as accessories before and after the fact. So naturally all we hear about is Russiagate.

The evidence overwhelmingly implicates Israel and not Saudi Arabia as you point out. That Building 7 was brought down by explosives has been proved beyond doubt by Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth, and as Dr. Alan Sobrosky put it, if Building 7 was brought down by explosives, so too were the Twin Towers. The official NIST reports and all related government narratives are preposterous. They're fairytales for fools inasmuch as the official mechanisms rely on a suspension of the laws of physics more fanciful than Jack and the Beanstalk. The story of the nineteen Arabs who couldn't handle Cessna 150s magically flying jetliners into precise targets is more absurd than fairytale tropes about flying carpets.

Yet for Conservatism Inc and Fox News, which both claim to oppose the Deep State and its narratives, there's no standard of evidence so low or preposterous that these cucks won't cling to it to cover up what they must now know is Israel's guilt. We can assume it's precisely because they're aware of Israel's guilt that they rule out the overwhelmingly conclusive circumstantial evidence pointing to Israel on the grounds such evidence is "anti-Semitic" and consequently false on apriori grounds. Moreover, any expert investigator qualified in the relevant field who uncovers and presents evidence implicating Israel is cast as the actual terrorist. It should go without saying they've reversed a millennium in the development of Western thought regarding the connection between evidence and conclusion, and they've done so for the basest of reasons. At least Conservatism Inc is being daily exposed for the controlled opposition and worthless club of preppy snots it's always been.

Ilyana_Rozumova , says: November 12, 2019 at 1:15 pm GMT
Brilliant Article.
The question is when deep state will finally admit that Globalism after all that sacrifice and evildoing are just sour grapes. As fox said in Ezops tale.
Phil the Fluter , says: November 12, 2019 at 1:16 pm GMT
Trump isn't so much a Manchurian candidate as a Khazarian candidate, dancing to the merry tune of his Zionist handlers.
Gracchus Babeuf , says: November 12, 2019 at 1:20 pm GMT
@NPleeze Agree. Only proviso, let's stop calling it the "Deep State". I prefer Kiriakou's term, the Federal Bureaucracy.
Gracchus Babeuf , says: November 12, 2019 at 1:22 pm GMT
@Realist Indeed tRump is just the NY street corner mobster being told what to do by the"godfather".
Greg Bacon , says: Website November 12, 2019 at 1:25 pm GMT

"the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique," adding later that "It's in their DNA."

Right, along with drinking vodka and eating borscht.

The one nation that did interfere in the 2016 election, and has inserted themselves into other elections to get their candidate elected, Israel remains untouched by this (((Deep State))).
There's plenty of evidence for the Zionists and Israeli-Firsters corrupting the election process for their fav nation, Israel, but the Operation Mockingbird asshats in the MSM won't go near that, not if they want to keep their cushy job, 5th Avenue penthouse and that chauffeured limo.

Anytime AIPAC comes to town, Congress gets into a fight with each other, trying to be the one that shows the most slavish loyalty to the nation that has attacked the USA numerous times, spies constantly on us, stealing our military, business and industrial secrets, had a hand in both murdering JFK, RFK and masterminded the 9/11 FF, and has an overwheling presence on the FED, yet most Americans don't know that, because the MSM keeps reporting lies, distortions and half-truths, and always presenting a boogeyman to hate, sometimes Russia, most times Muslims.

But fear not, that will soon come to an end, for when those TBTF Wall Street banks–in collusion with the FED–again crash the stock market and drag the economy down with their greed, that coming crash will make the one of 1929 seem like a picnic.
When that happens, what's left won't be of any interest to Israel to steal or manipulate.

steinbergfeldwitzcohen , says: November 12, 2019 at 1:31 pm GMT
The Deep State murdered Kennedy.
He planned on destroying the Fed and the CIA.
The Deep State required a president that COLLABORATED, like LBJ.
Then they figured, "why not put our guy in?'
Thus Bush 1.
Then Clinton (Bush 1 was his 'mentor') a pervert stooge.
Then Bush 2, a gaymail stooge.
Then Obomber, the gay Kenyan C_A stooge.
Then America says 'Enough', rejects the Witch and elects Trump.
Now the Deep State wants to kill America.
I think it's time for America to kill its' Deep State.
It is, after all, self-defense. Besides, hasn't this gone on long enough?
The alternative is to end up as the modern parallel of Rome.
Really No Shit , says: November 12, 2019 at 1:47 pm GMT
Clapper, Brennan and Comey " may not have operated on their own." Duh! You just remember, a donkey won't carry a heavy burden unless it's fed regularly. Find out who owns the beast and you will have the culprit!
Z-man , says: November 12, 2019 at 2:09 pm GMT
Phil, you should offer your services to the Trump defense/attack team*. Just stay away from Giuliani (grin). Good article and salvo against Brennan and the rest who deserve all the pain thay can get.

*Hey money is good especially around Christmas time. (Grin)

Realist , says: November 12, 2019 at 2:14 pm GMT
@Sbaker

This certainly explains the incessant attacks on Trump by the deep state.

You have no concept of a charade being perpetrated on the American people. You don't find it a little strange that Trump keeps hiring the Deep State denizens he purports to be fighting? You are incapable of detecting the friend/foe, psychological tactic used to deceive?

Patrikios Stetsonis , says: November 12, 2019 at 2:16 pm GMT
@Ilyana_Rozumova ..Aesop's tail
Sbaker , says: November 12, 2019 at 2:20 pm GMT
@Anonymous That's it. Your hearsay trumps thousands of eyewitnesses and conversations of the victims on flight 93 and in the pentagon.. You must be a first responder too. Talk about easily influenced–you are why the old media gets away with their corruption. Some anonymous source writes, says it on TV, and the lemmings follow.
Really No Shit , says: November 12, 2019 at 2:23 pm GMT
@Biff As we write, Obama probably is banging away some groupie in a DC mansion basement while the gorrila is frying chicken upstairs for Oprah.

And Bubba, most likely, is watching porn in the garage in Westchester and the wicked witch is massaging mrs. Wiener.

But it's Dubya worth looking into because he is out in the cowshed, buck naked save the cowboy boots and the ten-gallon hat, whipping himself silly for the "mission accomplished!"

Dave Sullivan , says: November 12, 2019 at 2:45 pm GMT
Or, Obama and the police agencies investigated a known organized crime stooge when it became apparent the GOP could offer no other candidate. Ironically, this was the original intent of the creation of the FBI. Don't play into the "victim trump" brand, he needs no help with it.
The other other other shoe drops , says: November 12, 2019 at 3:01 pm GMT
Thanks much for the most comprehensive précis yet of this bungled CIA putsch. The articles in sequence teasingly open Gina's kimono, giving us horripilating glimpses of her bushy penetralia. The question of Obama's involvement is the next step. CIA bots have been pushing a partisan perspective for some time. Those darn Democrats!

But in fact Obama too is CIA nomenklatura, with the same depth of dynastic ties as GW Bush, albeit not at the same lofty level. Just look at the oppo research, the best of which comes from sanitized glimpses of the errands candidates run for CIA. Obama's other passport is not Kenyan but Indonesian. It facilitated the youngster's schooling during Mom's year of living dangerously in Indonesia. Obama's dad and stepdad were CIA skins on the wall. Grandma was not in fact a drunk – she laundered the money for forcible overthrow and genocide in Indonesia at her bank job in Hawaii. Grandpa was a "furniture salesman," like Bibi, travelling around Asia under the hoariest old chestnut of NOC cover.

Young Barack was groomed as carefully as Bush minor. His only real job was BIC, a sheepish front perennially stuffed to bursting with NOCs. While he was still wet behind the ears he sported at falconry with a future head of state of Pakistan, for chrissakes, at a time when nobody could get in there. And he got out without getting his head sawed off. How? The youthful promise of this sullen stoner was somewhat obscure at that time. His GF was the Aussie daughter of Mike Barry's opposite number. And the Mockingbird unison of ecstatic acclaim when he rose to public prominence out of nowhere is the proof. His empty suit belings to CIA.

This past election was CIA office politics, nothing more. Russigate is simply CIA eminence Hillary, the Queen of Mena, ratfucking a bumptious queue-jumper. She outranks Trump, who was merely a junior money-launderer for the CIA agents who looted the Soviet Union. It was her turn to take the figurehead head-of-state sinecure. She and Bill earned it with their lucrative Clinton Foundation covert-ops slush fund.

Don't overthink it. Your government is CIA.

Buck Ransom , says: November 12, 2019 at 3:13 pm GMT
@Rabbi Zaius They sense the rumblings of White solidarity among "the forgotten men and women" of Trump's base and they do not cotton to this one little bit. Solidarity is forbidden to Whites. It is only for the coalition of the fringes, all of those groups whose alienation can be stoked to weaponize them against the descendants of those who founded and built the United States.
Justvisiting , says: November 12, 2019 at 3:21 pm GMT
@Dave Sullivan The FISA warrants had nothing to do with organized crime.

On second thought, that is not correct.

They _were_ organized crime.

(It is not necessary to defend Trump to understand this. FISA warrants based on known fake "evidence" are a stunning abuse of power–even within the slime-pit of DC.)

BL , says: November 12, 2019 at 3:27 pm GMT
Anyone at all familiar with Brennan knows that he was and remains the driver of the conspiracy to destroy first candidate, then President -Elect, and then POTUS Trump.

The same cannot be said of Comey and Clapper (especially).

It literally makes me sick to my stomach whenever I think about what it says about this great republic that seditious filth like him rose to such a powerful position. It's rather obvious he was willing to do anything including, I would submit, gift Russia and God Knows Who Else anything they wanted in return for helping him destroy our constitutional republic.

As I'm sure most here know, long before his 2016 election malefactions he had brazenly engaged in spying on Congress and, most despicably, had debased President Obama and the Office of the President through NYT revelations that every week Obama picked from his list of drone assassination targets.

. . . and it inevitably leads to the question "What did Obama know?"

Yes, though more important than that was what Obama was told (by Brennan) and what real options did he have as president given that Brennan had him by the short hairs.

I've long considered anyone's efforts to prematurely direct liability to President Obama as a bald attempt to protect Brennan. That worked for the purposes of a general, earlier on, cover up. It won't at this stage because it isn't even a close call when it comes to Democrats, elected and rank and file, choosing between the first black president and Brennan, the American Beria.

SunBakedSuburb , says: November 12, 2019 at 4:45 pm GMT
@The other other other shoe drops "Your government is CIA."

And has been since the early 1950s when the Allen Dulles-Frank Wisner-James Jesus Angleton crew got rolling. They managed to thoroughly penetrate federal and state bureaucracies, the court systems, major corporations, the financial sector, and the mockingbird media.

anon [113] Disclaimer , says: November 12, 2019 at 4:51 pm GMT
So Phil, was there any cooperation/communication between the Trump Task Force and the DNC dirt-diggers in Ukraine (Ali Chalupa et al), or were they completely independent actions?

... ... ...

Digital Samizdat , says: November 12, 2019 at 4:59 pm GMT

it was plausible to maintain that [the Russians] would have hoped that a weakened Clinton would be less able to implement the anti-Russian agenda that she had been promoting.

Not sure I follow this line of reasoning. If the Russians had tried unsuccessfully to throw the election to Trump and Hellary won anyway, how exactly would that leave her "weakened"? And wouldn't she have that much more reason to go after Russia?

My theory is that Hellary and her deep-swamp creatures only messed with Trump because they were certain he was going lose. And if they could then plausibly claim after the election that the Russians had interfered (albeit unsuccessfull) in the election, Hell-bitch could've used that as a pretext for well, I don't know. War? More sanctions? Inducting Ukraine into NATO? Invading Syria?

Clapper revealed that the preparers of the ICA were "handpicked analysts" from only the FBI, CIA, and NSA. He explained rather unconvincingly during an interview on May 28, 2017, that "the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique," adding later that "It's in their DNA."

I had no idea Clapper was into HBD. Damn, he's biased!

PetrOldSack , says: November 12, 2019 at 5:11 pm GMT
@NPleeze There is a theater play going on, unending series, each episode catching some other superficial drift. A-l-l actors in the public view, their dialogues and declamations are scripted. Trump´s also. He is not the major character, just a single, temporary one. All media opinion pieces, what is news, are prompt readings. Rectal extraction is close.

Why is this possible? The public is beyond understanding. The ones who do, at least part of what is going on, being closer to some sectors of society where a whiff of the smell of power is perceived at clouded times, are interested. The middle classes are scraping and grabbing and bickering for the scraps of the table of the powerful. It takes them most of their career to even get to under the table. They are happy dogs, and scraps comparing to scraps makes them a diverse world of nothings.

It is hard work to come up with alternative policies, not rail into historical models proven wrong as to long term interests and goals of society. A path not to venture into, against instinct.

That makes for a fine world, while it lasts, and is upended by another cycle. The empty drum feeling in the head of most is stuffed with images and sound-bites that makes for a life behind a velvet curtain(Apple´s i-phone).

There is very little cognitive difference between the individuals at the top and the glorious bottom undesirables, they both like the sniff of the glue.

Carroll Price , says: November 12, 2019 at 5:12 pm GMT
Donald Trump's election (which was not supposed to be allowed to happen) forced into public view, the existence of a Deep State that's been in existence for more than 75 years. Although not widely recognized as such, JFK'S election accomplished the same thing, but to an even greater extent. Leaving me puzzled as to why Trump has been allowed to remain in office as long as he has without the Deep State subjecting him to a similar fate.

With one logical explanation being that, at this point in time, it would become obvious, even to the brain dead, who's actually in control of the US government.

[Nov 09, 2019] Visitor Logs Reveal Whistleblower And DNC Contractor Visited Obama White House Multiple Times

Nov 09, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Visitor Logs Reveal 'Whistleblower' And DNC Contractor Visited Obama White House Multiple Times by Tyler Durden Sat, 11/09/2019 - 13:30 0 SHARES

Authored by Sara Carter via SaraACarter.com,

A controversial whistleblower who allegedly reported second-hand on President Donald Trump's private conversation with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the Obama White House on numerous occasions, according to Obama era visitor logs obtained by Judicial Watch.

Last week Real Clear Investigation's first reported the whistleblower's name. It is allegedly CIA officer Eric Ciaramella. His name, however, has been floating around Washington D.C. since the leak of Trump's phone call. It was considered an 'open secret' until reporter Paul Sperry published his article. Ciaramella has never openly stated that he is the whistleblower and most news outlets are not reporting his name publicly.

He was detailed to the National Security Counsel during the Obama Administration in 2015 and was allegedly sent back to the CIA in 2017, after a number of people within the Trump White House suspected him of leaking information to the press, according to several sources that spoke with SaraACarter.com .

Further, the detailed visitor logs reveal that a Ukrainian expert Alexandra Chalupa , a contractor that was hired by the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election, visited the White House 27 times.

Chalupa allegedly coordinated with the Ukrainians to investigate then candidate Trump and his former campaign manager Paul Manafort. Manafort was forced out of his short tenure as campaign manager for Trump when stories circulated regarding business dealings with Ukrainian officials. Manafort was later investigated and convicted by a jury on much lesser charges then originally set forth by Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation. He was given 47 months in prison for basically failing to pay appropriate taxes and committing bank fraud.

Both Ciaramella and Chalupa are of interest to Republican's investigating the what some conservatives have described as the second Trump 'witch-hunt.' And many have called for the whistleblower to testify to Congress.

They are absolutely correct and within the law. There is so much information and evidence that reveals that this was no ordinary whistleblower complaint but one that may have been based on highly partisan actions targeting Trump.

Here's just one example : Ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes said its impossible to have a fair impeachment inquiry without the testimony of the alleged whistleblower because he is a 'fact foundational witness' who had met with Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-CA, previously. Schiff had originally denied that he had any contact with his committee and then had to walk back his statements when it was revealed that the whistleblower had met with the Democrats prior to filing his complaint to the Intelligence Inspector General about the President.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, said the visitor logs reveal that there is much lawmakers or the American public don't know about what happened during the 2016 presidential elections and moreover it raises very significant questions about the apparent partisan nature of the whistleblower.

"Judicial Watch's analysis of Obama White House visitor logs raises additional questions about the Obama administration, Ukraine and the related impeachment scheme targeting President Trump," said Fitton, in a press release Friday.

"Both Mr. Ciaramella and Ms. Chalupa should be questioned about the meetings documented in these visitor logs."

Read Below From Judicial Watch

The White House visitor logs revealed the following individuals met with Eric Ciaramella while he was detailed to the Obama White House:

  • Daria Kaleniuk: Co-founder and executive director of the Soros-funded Anticorruption Action Center (AntAC) in Ukraine. She visited on December 9, 2015

The Hill reported that in April 2016, during the U.S. presidential race, the U.S. Embassy under Obama in Kiev, "took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and (AntAC)."

  • Gina Lentine: Now a senior program officer at Freedom House, she was formerly the Eurasia program coordinator at Soros funded Open Society Foundations. She visited on March 16, 2016.
  • Rachel Goldbrenner: Now an NYU law professor, she was at that time an advisor to then-Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. She visited on both January 15, 2016 and August 8, 2016.
  • Orly Keiner: A foreign affairs officer at the State Department who is a Russia specialist. She is also the wife of State Department Legal Advisor James P. Bair. She visited on both March 4, 2016 and June 20, 2015.
  • Nazar Kholodnitzky: The lead anti-corruption prosecutor in Ukraine. He visited on January 19, 2016.

On March 7, 2019, The Associated Press reported that the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch called for him to be fired.

  • Michael Kimmage: Professor of History at Catholic University of America, at the time was with the State Department's policy planning staff where specialized in Russia and Ukraine issues. He is a fellow at the German Marshall Fund. He was also one of the signatories to the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group Statement of Principles. He visited on October 26, 2015.
  • James Melville: Then-recently confirmed as Obama's Ambassador to Estonia, visited on September 9, 2015.

On June 29, 2018, Foreign Policy reported that Melville resigned in protest of Trump.

  • Victoria Nuland: who at the time was assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs met with Ciaramella on June 17, 2016.

(Judicial Watch has previously uncovered documents revealing Nuland had an extensive involvement with Clinton-funded dossier . Judicial Watch also released documents revealing that Nuland was involved in the Obama State Department's "urgent" gathering of classified Russia investigation information and disseminating it to members of Congress within hours of Trump taking office.)

  • Artem Sytnyk: the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Bureau director visited on January 19, 2016.

On October 7, 2019, the Daily Wire reported leaked tapes show Sytnyk confirming that the Ukrainians helped the Clinton campaign.

The White House visitor logs revealed the following individuals met with Alexandra Chalupa, then a DNC contractor:

  • Charles Kupchan: From 2014 to 2017, Kupchan served as special assistant to the president and senior director for European affairs on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) in the Barack Obama administration. That meeting was on November 9, 2015.
  • Alexandra Sopko: who at the time was a special assistant and policy advisor to the director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, which was run by Valerie Jarrett. Also listed for that meeting is Alexa Kissinger, a special assistant to Jarrett. That meeting was on June 2, 2015.
  • Asher Mayerson: who at the time was a policy advisor to the Office of Public Engagement under Jarrett had five visits with Chalupa including December 18, 2015, January 11, 2016, February 22, 2016, May 13, 2016, and June 14, 2016.

Mayerson was previously an intern at the Center for American Progress. After leaving the Obama administration, he went to work for the City of Chicago Treasurer's office.

Mayerson met with Chalupa and Amanda Stone, who was the White House deputy director of technology, on January 11, 2016.

On May 4, 2016, Chalupa emailed DNC official Luis Miranda to inform him that she had spoken to investigative journalists about Paul Manafort in Ukraine.

[Nov 07, 2019] Note on the the degradation of the elite.

Notable quotes:
"... There is a collection of Democratic and Republican politicians and think tanks funded by various corporations and governments and bureaucrats in the government agencies mostly all devoted to the Empire, but also willing to stab each other in the back to obtain power. They don't necessarily agree on policy details. ..."
"... They don't oppose Trump because Trump is antiwar. Trump isn't antiwar. Or rather, he is antiwar for three minutes here and there and then he advocates for war crimes. ..."
"... He is a fairly major war criminal based on his policies in Yemen. But they don't oppose him for that either or they would have been upset by Obama. They oppose Trump because he is incompetent, unpredictable and easily manipulated. And worst of all, he doesn't play the game right, where we pretend we intervene out of noble humanitarian motives. This idiot actually say he wants to keep Syrian oil fields and Syria's oil fields aren't significant to anyone outside Syria. ..."
"... Our policies are influenced in rather negative ways by various foreign countries, but would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about Russian influence ..."
Nov 07, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

Donald 11.07.19 at 4:37 am 64

" In a sense, the current NeoMcCartyism (Russophobia, Sinophobia) epidemic in the USA can partially be viewed as a yet another sign of the crisis of neoliberalism: a desperate attempt to patch the cracks in the neoliberal façade using scapegoating -- creation of an external enemy to project the problems of the neoliberal society.

I would add another, pretty subjective measure of failure: the degradation of the elite. When you look at Hillary, Trump, Biden, Warren, Harris, etc, you instantly understand what I am talking about. They all look like the second-rate, if not the third rate politicians. Also, the Epstein case was pretty symbolic."

I had decided to stay on the sidelines for the most part after making a few earlier comments, but I liked this summary, except I would give Warren more credit. She is flawed like most politicians, but she has made some of the right enemies within the Democratic Party.

On Trump and " the Deep State", there is no unified Deep State. There is a collection of Democratic and Republican politicians and think tanks funded by various corporations and governments and bureaucrats in the government agencies mostly all devoted to the Empire, but also willing to stab each other in the back to obtain power. They don't necessarily agree on policy details.

They don't oppose Trump because Trump is antiwar. Trump isn't antiwar. Or rather, he is antiwar for three minutes here and there and then he advocates for war crimes.

He is a fairly major war criminal based on his policies in Yemen. But they don't oppose him for that either or they would have been upset by Obama. They oppose Trump because he is incompetent, unpredictable and easily manipulated. And worst of all, he doesn't play the game right, where we pretend we intervene out of noble humanitarian motives. This idiot actually say he wants to keep Syrian oil fields and Syria's oil fields aren't significant to anyone outside Syria.

But yes, scapegoating is a big thing with liberals now. It's pathetic. Our policies are influenced in rather negative ways by various foreign countries, but would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about Russian influence .

For the most part, if we have a horrible political culture nearly all the blame for that is homegrown.

Donald 11.07.19 at 4:40 am (no link)

Sigh. Various typos above. Here is one --

Our policies are influenced in rather negative ways by various foreign countries, but would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about Russian influence.
--

I meant to say I would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about Russian influence.

[Nov 02, 2019] What, if anything, is neoliberalism

Nov 02, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

Because it is primarily based on a critique of social democracy, neoliberalism places much more weight on economic freedom than on personal freedom or civil liberties, reversing the emphasis of classical liberalism. Indeed, it is fair to say that on matters of personal freedom, neoliberalism is basically agnostic, encompassing a range of views from repressive traditionalism to libertarianism.

In terms of economic policy, neoliberalism is constrained by the need to compete with the achievements of social democracy. Hence, it is inconsistent with the kind of dogmatic libertarianism that would leave the poor to starvation or private charity, and would leave education to parents. Neoliberalism seeks to cut back the role of the state as much as possible while maintaining public guarantees of access to basic health, education and income security.

The core of the neoliberal program is

(i) to remove the state altogether from 'non-core' functions such as the provision of infrastructure services

(ii) to minimise the state role in core functions (health, education, income security) through contracting out, voucher schemes and so on

(iii) to reject redistribution of income except insofar as it is implied by the provision of a basic 'safety net'.

With this definition, a reasonably pure form of neoliberalism (except for some subsidies to favored businesses) is embodied in the program of the US Republican Party, and particularly the Contract with America proposed by Gingrich in 1994. The ACT Party in New Zealand also takes a fairly clear neoliberal stance, as do the more ideologically consistent elements of the British Conservative Party and the Australian Liberal Party.

My claim that neoliberalism has failed therefore uses several different meanings of the term 'failure'. In Europe, apart from Britain, neoliberalism has mostly failed in sense (i). The EU is inherently social democratic in its structure and attempts by poltical groups in some Eastern European countries (notably the Czech Republic and Estonia) to pursue a free market line have failed in the light of the superior attractions of the EU. It is true that the European social democracies have given some ground, notably with respect to privatisation, but no genuinely neoliberal party has arisen or seems likely to. The political right has moved back to the older and more fertile ground of law and order and xenophobia.

In Britain, neoliberalism has failed in sense (ii). The Conservative party is hovering on the edge of extinction and, as I have arged previously, the 'New Labour' government has shifted steadily away from neoliberalism and towards a mildly modernised form of social democracy. The same is true in New Zealand, where the advocates of neoliberalism, once dominant, are now completely marginalised.

Although the Australian government started out with a clearly neoliberal framework it has gradually dropped it in favor of the kind of law and order/xenophobia/militarist position that characterises the traditional right. The repeated resort to ad hoc levies as fixes for industry-specific problems is indicative of a government that has lost its economic bearings. Moreover, the Liberals look like being in semi-permanent opposition in most of the states and the Howard government is unlikely to survive the end of the housing bubble (although given the quality of Federal Labor, anything could happen).

Finally, in the US, neoliberalism remains the dominant ideology but is increasingly failing in sense (iii). Three years ago, American pundits could seriously predict a never-ending economic boom. The combination of continued prosperity and 'the end of welfare as we know it' seemed to be on the verge of eliminating crime and unemployment. Now the most charitable assessment of US economic performance is 'better than average' and even this cannot be sustained of the current recession/stagnation drags on much longer. The basic problem is that, given high levels of inequality, very strong economic performance is required to match the levels of economic security and social services delivered under social democracy even with mediocre growth outcomes.

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likbez 11.02.19 at 11:28 pm ( 1 )

(i) to remove the state altogether from 'non-core' functions such as the provision of infrastructure services

I respectfully disagree. My feeling is that neoliberals are statists "par excellence" and use the state to enforce the neoliberal ideology on population "from above", using coercion, if necessary Although they prefer soft methods (Wolin's "inverted totalitarism" captures this difference)

Neoliberal revolutions are almost always revolutions from above (often using support of domestic or foreign intelligence agencies), a coup d'état either via internal fifth column (Simon Johnson's "The Quiet Coup" model -- like happened in the USA and GB ) or via external interference (color revolution model like in Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Argentina, Brazil, etc)

In essence, neoliberalism can be viewed as "Trotskyism for the rich" with the same hegemonic drive toward global dominance (the "World Revolution" in Trotskyism terms) and substitution of Marxists slogan "proletarians of all countries unite" with more realistic and devious "Financial oligarchy of all countries unite." Unfortunately for classic neoliberalism, the latter proved to be unsustainable, as contradictions between various groups of financial oligarchy are too great, and the quest for capturing the foreign markets pits them against each other.

After "Triumphal march of neoliberal over the globe" (which ended in 2000 with the rejection of neoliberal model in Russia) neoliberalism repositioned itself as a "secular religion" (only complete idiot after 2007 can believe in its key postulates and, in particular, neoclassic economics with all its mathiness). The capture of the university education and MSM, like for Bolsheviks before them, were two high priority tasks and they were essentially complete at the end of Clinton administration.

Like Bolsheviks before them, after coming to power, neoliberal junta quickly moves to capture key positions in government institutions, in case of the USA -- Treasury, FED (Greenspan), the Department of State (neocons), and economic departments at universities (Friedman, Greg Mankiw, Summers, Bernanke, DeJong, Krugman, etc) , in a typical ruthless Trotskyites/Bolsheviks fashion.

While initially it strived just to completely eliminate New Deal regulations to get the economy boost and restore the power of financial oligarchy, later neoliberalism morphed into supported by the state "secular religion" (much like Marxism in the USSR) in which those who do not want to became "high priest of the cult ("soldies of of the Party" in USSR terms), or, at lease, pretend to believe in this ideology are ostracized, send to the periphery (the State Department), and (in universities) deprived of any funding. Much like was the case (in a more brutal form) under Bolshevism.

Summers advice to Warren about "insiders-outsiders" dichotomy clearly illustrates this policy ( https://bulletin.represent.us/elizabeth-warren-exposes-larry-summers-game-rigged/ )

Now classic neoliberalism tried to defend itself against the ascendance of "national neoliberalism" using dirty methods like Ukrainegate, using the full power of captured by them state institutions, including, but not limited to, intelligence agencies.

Please note that, historically, neoliberalism ascendance started with the coup in Chile, in which repressions were of the scale typical for a fascist regime, including mass killings of opponents. That's where Friedman Chicago boys cut their teeth.

Also neocon scum (Cheney, Wolfowitz, and company) got in high level government positions only under Reagan and quickly switched the USA foreign policy in completely imperial direction, although the process started under Carter (Carter Doctrine, creation of political Islam to fight Soviets, etc.). The State Department remains a neocon viper nest since this period. And they recently managed to sting Trump (Taylor and Volker testimonies are nice examples here)

[Nov 01, 2019] How The Obama Administration Set In Motion Its Coup Against Trump by Lee Smith

Notable quotes:
"... "To any rational person," says Nunes, "it looks like they were scheming to produce a get-out-of-jail-free card -- for the president and anyone else in the White House. They were playing Monopoly while the others were playing with fire. Now the Obama White House was in the clear -- sure, they had no idea what Comey and Brennan and McCabe and Strzok and the rest were up to." ..."
"... Meanwhile, Obama added his voice to the Trump-Russia echo chamber as news stories alleging Trump's illicit relationship with the Kremlin multiplied in the transition period. He said he hoped "that the president-elect also is willing to stand up to Russia." ..."
"... After refusing to act while the Russian election meddling was actually occurring, Obama responded in December. He ordered the closing of Russian diplomatic facilities and the expulsion of thirty- five Russian diplomats. The response was tepid. The Russians had hacked the State Department in 2014 and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2015. And now Obama was responding only on his way out. ..."
"... Even Obama partisans thought it was weak. "The punishment did not fit the crime," said Michael McFaul, Obama's former ambassador to Russia. "The Kremlin should have paid a much higher price for that attack." ..."
"... But the administration wasn't retaliating against Russia for interfering in a US election; the action was directed at Trump. Obama was leaving the president-elect with a minor foreign policy crisis in order to box him in. Any criticism of Obama's response, never mind an attempt to reverse it, would only further fuel press reports that Trump was collaborating with the Russians. ..."
"... Obama's biggest move against Trump was to order CIA director John Brennan to conduct a full review of all intelligence relating to Russia and the 2016 elections. He requested it on December 6 and wanted it ready by the time he left office on January 20. But the sitting president already knew what the intelligence community assessment (ICA) was going to say, because Brennan had told him months before. ..."
"... Brennan's handpicked team of CIA, FBI, and NSA analysts had started analyzing Russian election interference in late July. In August, Brennan had briefed Harry Reid on the dossier and may have briefed Obama on it, too. Earlier in August, Brennan sent a "bombshell" report to Obama's desk. ..."
Nov 01, 2019 | thefederalist.com

The following is an excerpt from Lee Smith's book out October 29, " The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History ."

AFTER DONALD TRUMP was elected forty-fifth president of the United States, the operation designed to undermine his campaign transformed. It became an instrument to bring down the commander in chief. The coup started almost immediately after the polls closed.

Hillary Clinton's communications team decided within twenty-four hours of her concession speech to message that the election was illegitimate, that Russia had interfered to help Trump.

Obama was working against Trump until the hour he left office. His national security advisor, Susan Rice, commemorated it with an email to herself on January 20, moments before Trump's inauguration. She wrote to memorialize a meeting in the White House two weeks before.

On January 5, following a briefing by IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. Vice President Biden and I were also present.

President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities "by the book." The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.

From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia. . . .

The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team. Comey said he would.

The repetition of "by the book" gave away the game -- for there was nothing normal about any of it.

Rice wrote an email to herself. It commemorated a conversation from two weeks before. The conversation was about the FBI's investigation of the man who was about to move into the White House -- an investigation from which Obama was careful to distance himself. During the conversation, the outgoing president instructed his top aides to collect information ("ascertain") regarding the incoming administration's relationship with Russia.

"To any rational person," says Nunes, "it looks like they were scheming to produce a get-out-of-jail-free card -- for the president and anyone else in the White House. They were playing Monopoly while the others were playing with fire. Now the Obama White House was in the clear -- sure, they had no idea what Comey and Brennan and McCabe and Strzok and the rest were up to."

Boxing Trump in on Russia

Meanwhile, Obama added his voice to the Trump-Russia echo chamber as news stories alleging Trump's illicit relationship with the Kremlin multiplied in the transition period. He said he hoped "that the president-elect also is willing to stand up to Russia."

The outgoing president was in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss everything from NATO to Vladimir Putin. Obama said that he'd "delivered a clear and forceful message" to the Russian president about "meddling with elections . . . and we will respond appropriately if and when we see this happening."

After refusing to act while the Russian election meddling was actually occurring, Obama responded in December. He ordered the closing of Russian diplomatic facilities and the expulsion of thirty- five Russian diplomats. The response was tepid. The Russians had hacked the State Department in 2014 and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2015. And now Obama was responding only on his way out.

Even Obama partisans thought it was weak. "The punishment did not fit the crime," said Michael McFaul, Obama's former ambassador to Russia. "The Kremlin should have paid a much higher price for that attack."

But the administration wasn't retaliating against Russia for interfering in a US election; the action was directed at Trump. Obama was leaving the president-elect with a minor foreign policy crisis in order to box him in. Any criticism of Obama's response, never mind an attempt to reverse it, would only further fuel press reports that Trump was collaborating with the Russians.

Spreading Intelligence to Spring Leaks

In the administration's last days, it disseminated intelligence throughout the government, including the White House, Capitol Hill, and the intelligence community (IC). Intelligence was classified at the lowest possible levels to ensure a wide readership. The White House was paving the way for a campaign of leaks to disorient the incoming Trump team.

The effort, including the intended result of leaks, was publicly acknowledged in March 2017 by Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration.

Obama's biggest move against Trump was to order CIA director John Brennan to conduct a full review of all intelligence relating to Russia and the 2016 elections. He requested it on December 6 and wanted it ready by the time he left office on January 20. But the sitting president already knew what the intelligence community assessment (ICA) was going to say, because Brennan had told him months before.

Brennan's handpicked team of CIA, FBI, and NSA analysts had started analyzing Russian election interference in late July. In August, Brennan had briefed Harry Reid on the dossier and may have briefed Obama on it, too. Earlier in August, Brennan sent a "bombshell" report to Obama's desk.

When Brennan reassembled his select team in December, it was to have them reproduce their August findings: Putin, according to Brennan, was boosting the GOP candidate. And that's why only three days after Obama ordered the assessment in December, the Washington Post could already reveal what the intelligence community had found.

"The CIA," reported the December 9 edition of the Post , "has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system."

The story was the first of many apparently sourced to leaks of classified information that were given to the Post team of Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima, and Greg Miller. The reporters' sources weren't whistle-blowers shedding light on government corruption -- rather, they were senior US officials abusing government resources to prosecute a campaign against the newly elected commander in chief. The article was the earliest public evidence that the coup was under way. The floodgates were open, as the IC pushed more stories through the press to delegitimize the president-elect.

A Wave of Leak-Sourced Stories All Saying the Same Thing

The same day, a New York Times article by David E. Sanger and Scott Shane echoed the Post 's piece. According to senior administration officials, "American intelligence agencies have concluded with 'high confidence' that Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of the presidential campaign to harm Hillary Clinton's chances and promote Donald J. Trump."

A December 14 NBC News story by William M. Arkin, Ken Dilanian, and Cynthia McFadden reported that "Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News."

The ICA that Obama ordered gave political operatives, the press, and his intelligence chiefs a second shot at Trump. They'd used the Steele Dossier to feed the echo chamber and obtain surveillance powers to spy on the Trump campaign. The dossier, however, had come up short. Trump had won.

But now, on his way out of the White House, Obama instructed Brennan to stamp the CIA's imprimatur on the anti-Trump operation. As Fusion GPS's smear campaign had been the source of the preelection press campaign, the ICA was the basis of the postelection media frenzy. It was tailored to disrupt the peaceful transition of power and throw the United States into chaos.

Because Trump hadn't been elected by the US public, according to the ICA, but had been tapped by Putin, he was illegitimate. Therefore, the extraconstitutional and illegal tactics employed by anti-Trump officials were legitimate. The ultimate goal was to remove Trump from office.

"If it weren't for President Obama," said James Clapper, "we might not have done the intelligence community assessment . . . that set off a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today."

Nunes agrees. "The ICA," he says, "was Obama's dossier."

Changing the Intelligence Assessment

Nunes is sitting in his office in the Longworth House Office Building along with his communications director, Jack Langer, a forty-six-year-old former book editor and historian with a PhD from Duke University.

"The social media attacks on Devin began shortly after the election," Langer remembers. "They're all hinting at some vast conspiracy involving Russia that the chairman of the Intelligence Committee is part of. And we have no idea what they're talking about."

Nunes points out that his warnings about Russia fell on deaf ears for years. "And all of a sudden I'm a Russian agent," says the congressman.

Now Langer and Nunes see that the attacks were first launched because the congressman had been named to Trump's transition team. "I put forward [Mike] Pompeo for CIA director," says Nunes. "He came from our committee."

The attacks on Nunes picked up after the December 9 Washington Post article. The assessment provided there was not what the HPSCI chairman had been told. The assessment had been altered, and Nunes asked for an explanation. "We got briefed about the election around Thanksgiving," he says. "And it's just the usual stuff, nothing abnormal. They told us what everyone already knew: 'Hey, the Russians are bad actors, and they're always playing games, and here's what they did.'"

By providing that briefing, the IC had made a mistake. When it later changed the assessment, the November briefing was evidence that Obama's spy chiefs were up to no good. "I bet they'd like to have that back," says Nunes. "They briefed us before they could get their new story straight."

'They Kept Everyone Else Away from It'

Nunes acknowledges that he was caught off guard by many things back then. "We still thought these guys were on the up and up," he says. "But if we knew, we'd have nailed them by mid-December, when they changed their assessment. 'Wait, you guys are saying this now, but you said something else just a few weeks ago. What's going on?'"

After the Post story, Nunes wanted an explanation. "We expressed deep concern, both publicly and privately," says Langer. "We demanded our own briefing to try to determine whether that Post story was true or false. They refused to brief us. They said, 'We're not going to be doing that until we finish the ICA.'"

Nunes says the fact that the IC conducted an assessment like that was itself unusual. "I don't know how many times they'd done that in the past, if ever," he says. "But if the IC is operating properly, when someone says what can you tell me on X or Y or Z, they have it ready to pull up quickly. The tradecraft is reliable, and the intelligence products are reliable." That was not the case with the ICA. There were problems with how the assessment had been put together.

"If you really were going to do something like an assessment from the intelligence community, then you'd get input from all our seventeen agencies," says Nunes. "They did the opposite. It was only FBI, CIA, NSA, and DNI. They siloed it, just like they had with Crossfire Hurricane. They kept everyone else away from it so they didn't have to read them in."

'Manipulation of Intelligence for Political Purposes'

Nunes released several statements in the middle of December. The HPSCI majority, read a December 14 statement, wanted senior Obama intelligence officials "to clarify press reports that the CIA has a new assessment that it has not shared with us. The Committee is deeply concerned that intransigence in sharing intelligence with Congress can enable the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes."

After the statements warned of political foul play in the IC's assessments, the social media attacks on Nunes became more regular. "They were constant," says Langer.

Anti-Trump operatives recognized that Nunes was going to be a problem. The HPSCI chair had previously called out the IC for politicizing intelligence. "They said that we had defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria," says Nunes, "and I knew that wasn't true. Then they withheld the Osama bin Laden documents to conceal that Al Qaeda worked with Iran, because the administration was protecting the Iran deal. So when I saw them changing this assessment of the 2016 election in midstream, I knew it was the same old trick: they were politicizing intelligence."

The speed with which Brennan's handpicked analysts produced the ICA and then got a version of it declassified for public consumption was another sign that something wasn't right. "All throughout Obama's two terms, his IC chiefs aren't paying attention to Russian actions," says Nunes. "We give them more money for Russia, which they don't use. But now they know so much about Putin that they manage to produce a comprehensive assessment of Russian intentions and actions regarding election interference in a month -- at Christmastime, when everything slows down. And then they produce a declassified version in a manner of weeks. None of this is believable."

Three different versions of the ICA were produced: an unclassified version, a top secret one, and another highly compartmentalized version. According to a January 11, 2017, Washington Post story by Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima, and Karen DeYoung, an annex summarizing the dossier was attached to the versions that were not declassified.

'Designed to Have a Political Effect'

The FBI had been working from Steele's reports for more than half a year. Including the dossier along with the ICA would provide Comey with ammunition to take on the president-elect. Both he and Brennan were manipulating intelligence for political purposes.

"A lot of the ICA is reasonable," says Nunes. "But those parts become irrelevant due to the problematic parts, which undermine the entire document. It was designed to have a political effect; that was the ICA's sole purpose."

The assessment's methodological flaws are not difficult to spot. Manufacturing the politicized findings that Obama sought meant not only abandoning protocol but also subverting basic logic. Two of the ICA's central findings are that:

  • Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.
  • Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.

To know preferences and intentions would require sources targeting Putin's inner circles -- either human sources or electronic surveillance. As Nunes had previously noted, however, US intelligence on Putin's decision-making process was inadequate.

But even if there had been extensive collection on precisely that issue, it would be difficult to know what was true. For instance, the closest you can get to Putin's inner circle is Putin himself. But even capturing him on an intercept saying he wanted to elect Trump might prove inconclusive. It is difficult to judge intentions because it is not possible to see into the minds of other people. How would you know that Putin was speaking truthfully? How would you know that the Russian president didn't know his communications were under US surveillance and wasn't trying to deceive his audience?

Quality control of information is one of the tasks of counterintelligence -- to discern how you know what you know and whether that information is trustworthy. There was no quality control for the Trump-Russia intelligence. For instance, Crossfire Hurricane lead agent Peter Strzok was the FBI's deputy assistant director of counterintelligence. Instead of weeding out flawed intelligence on Russia, the Crossfire Hurricane team was feeding Steele's reports into intelligence products. Yet the ICA claimed to have "high confidence" in its assessment that "Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President- elect Trump." What was the basis of that judgment?

According to the ICA:

Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him.

"Most likely" and "almost certainly" are rhetorical hedges that show the assessment could not have been made in "high confidence." Putin may have held a grudge against Clinton, but there is no way of knowing it.

The supporting evidence deteriorates more the farther the ICA purports to reach into Putin's mind.

Beginning in June, Putin's public comments about the US presidential race avoided directly praising President-elect Trump, probably because Kremlin officials thought that any praise from Putin personally would backfire in the United States.

This is absurd. Part of the evidence that Putin supported Trump is that he avoided praising Trump. It is difficult enough to determine intentions by what someone says. Yet the ICA claims to have discerned Putin's intentions by what he did not say.

There is no introductory philosophy class in logic where reasoning like that would pass muster. Yet Brennan's handpicked group used it as the basis of its assessment that Putin had helped Trump.

Moscow also saw the election of President-elect Trump as a way to achieve an international counterterrorism coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

This may be an accurate description of how Putin saw Trump. But Trump's predecessor also wanted to coordinate anti- ISIS operations with Moscow. On this view, Trump would have represented a continuation of Obama's ISIS policy. Why would this make Trump's victory suspicious to Obama's intelligence chiefs?

Curious Inaccuracies about Russia's RT Network

The ICA also pointed to documentary evidence of Putin's intentions: English-language media owned by the Russian government, the news site Sputnik, and the RT network, were critical of Clinton.

State-owned Russian media made increasingly favorable comments about President-elect Trump as the 2016 US general and primary election campaigns progressed while consistently offering negative coverage of Secretary Clinton.

Curiously, just days before the election, the informant the US government sent after the Trump campaign praised the Democratic candidate in an interview with Sputnik. "Clinton would be best for US-UK relations and for relations with the European Union," Stefan Halper told the Kremlin-directed media outlet. "Clinton is well-known, deeply experienced, and predictable. US-UK relations will remain steady regardless of the winner although Clinton will be less disruptive over time."

The ICA includes a seven-page appendix devoted to RT, the central node, according to the document, of the Kremlin's effort to "influence politics, fuel discontent in [ sic ] US."

Adam Schiff appeared on RT in July 2013. He argued for "making the FISA court much more transparent, so the American people can understand what's being done in their name in the name of national security, so that we can have a more informed debate over the balance between privacy and security."

RT's editor in chief, Margarita Simonyan, is a master propagandist, according to the ICA. The document fails to mention that Simonyan heads another Moscow-owned media initiative, Russia Beyond the Headlines , a news supplement inserted into dozens of the West's leading newspapers, including the New York Times . Russia Beyond the Headlines has been delivered to millions of American homes over the last decade. By contrast, RT's US market share is so small that it doesn't qualify for the Nielsen ratings. Virtually no one in the United States watches it.

Taking the logic of Brennan's handpicked team seriously would mean that the publishers of the New York Times played a major role in a coordinated Russian effort to elect Donald Trump.

'It Was an Operation to Bring Down Trump'

Nunes realized even then the purpose of Obama's dossier. "Devin figured out in December what was going on," says Langer. "It was an operation to bring down Trump."

There was no evidence that any Trump associate had done anything improper regarding the Russians, and Nunes was losing patience. "We had serious things the committee wanted to do," he says. "With Trump elected, we could do some big stuff, like with China."

Still, it was important for HPSCI to maintain control of the Russia investigation. Otherwise, Democrats and Never Trump Republicans were likely to get their wish to convene a bipartisan commission to investigate Russian interference -- with the purpose of turning it on Trump.

"Before they started floating the idea of a special counsel, the big idea was a special commission like the 9/11 Commission," says Langer. It was outgoing secretary of state John Kerry who first came forward with the proposal.

The point was to change the power dynamic. "In a normal committee," says Langer, "the majority has the power, and that happened to be us. They wanted to strip our power and make it fifty-fifty."

"Bipartisan" was a euphemism for "anti-Trump." "It would have been a complete joke," says Nunes. "A combination of partisan hacks from the left and people who hated Trump on the right."

Democrats led by Schiff and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer were joined by the late John McCain, the most active of the Never Trump Republicans. After the election, the Arizona senator had instructed his aide David Kramer to deliver a copy of the Steele Dossier to Comey.

"God only knows who they'd have populated that committee with," says Nunes. "Anyone they could control. It would have been a freak show."

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan defended HPSCI's independence. On the Senate side, Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr had only one move. To deflect demands for an independent commission, he effectively ceded control of the Senate investigation to his vice chair, Democrat Mark Warner.

No Evidence of Collusion Years Later

Still, Nunes believed that all the talk of Trump and Russia was a waste of time. "They kept promising us evidence of collusion, week after week, and they came up with nothing."

Nunes's disdain for the ICA forced the Crossfire Hurricane team's hand. "Right around the time that they came out with the ICA, they kept saying that we were waiting on something to show us, something important that was coming in," he says. "They said it was some significant figure who they couldn't quite track down yet."

But the FBI knew exactly where its missing link was, the piece of evidence that they thought would convince hardened skeptics like Nunes that collusion was real. They didn't have to chase him down, because he was sitting at home in Chicago. He submitted to a voluntary interview January 27 and without a lawyer because he had no idea what the FBI had in store for him.

The Crossfire Hurricane team was figuring how they were going to set up the Trump adviser they'd used to open up the investigation in July 2016: George Papadopoulos. Lee Smith is the media columnist at Tablet.

[Oct 02, 2019] The Self-Set Impeachment Trap naked capitalism

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... If Biden is innocent of corruption, why does it look like he's not? What does that say about the nature of corruption itself in the entire DC establishment? ..."
"... One scenario that Neuburger hasn't considered: perhaps the Democrats are trying impeachment now because they are out of ammo and getting scared about 2020. Rather than lose the election, they are attempting a pre-emptive strike. ..."
"... Or is it a pre-emptive defensive strike by the CIA/Blob? With Trump seeming to ask Ukraine about Crowdstrike, and Barr asking for help from Australia on the Mueller investigation origins (as well as investigating the way the dossier was used), Trump and Barr might be trying to turn TrumpRussia into a counterattack on their establishment enemies, just in time for the election. Buckle up, indeed. ..."
"... The CIA credentials of the "whistleblower" are somehow too convenient, too familiar. The Dems are already more or less in bed with the CIA/Blob, so it is as if they are acting more to aid a "messenger" ..."
"... The intelligence community is rife with dissension and conflict; not over their need to service the multi-national firms and their congressional sycophants they really represent, but rather the speed at which they need to react to challenges coming from our limited free flow of information that contradicts their "stories" and propaganda. ..."
"... Yup, but this is still mislabeled "whistleblowing", which would be such if he/she were ratting on the CIA. ..."
"... I assumed that the much delayed Mueller report finally came out when it did and with the conclusion it did because the CIA was finally convinced that it had Trump sufficiently cowed. The July 27 phone call made it clear to them that it didn't. ..."
"... And Pelosi, when asked by the CIA to jump, immediately responded, "How high?" ..."
"... There are several plausible explanations. If you consider Pelosi's motivations, you have to look no further than her constituency, the donor class. ..."
"... Indeed, we might as well argue that Obama should have been impeached for turning the Espionage Act against reporters. I see that as more damaging to the US than most of Trump's harmful acts to date. ..."
"... Obama successfully convinced people that he WANTED to do the right things but was prevented from doing them by the evil Republicans. Despite the insurance/drug company friendly implementation of ObamaCare, assertion of the most transparent administration, ever, brutally coming down on government whistleblowers, killing overseas citizens via drone, not prosecuting financial misdeeds, and destroying Libya, Obama is seen as righteous. ..."
"... In my view, a truly great con man remains unacknowledged/undetected. ..."
"... Once is the intra-elite competition between the intelligence community and Trump. ..."
"... Trump is more acceptable to Wall Street than the left agenda. These attacks serve to consolidate Trumps base; I've seen more Trump 2020 bumper stickers in my very-blue town than any other candidates. ..."
"... I'm not sure that the Democrats yelling "impeachment!" will register loud enough to overcome the substance of the election campaign. Not enough people care about it. ..."
"... The public discourse is presently in the hands of partisan hacks, of mainly one ideology; Rentier Capitalism. One main American political faction will characterize the obscurantist process as "White Noise. The other main faction will characterize it as "Rainbow Noise." Both will be correct about the "Noise" part. ..."
"... The current equation of Warren and Sanders is the point problem of that coherence. Sanders is weak on foreign policy particulars (Middle East, Venezuela, Ukraine are waffled responses, more afraid to alienate rather than state), Warren is totally absent because she has supported those policies in the past. ..."
"... Both committed to regulation, Warren wanting existing govt. style while Sanders wants the beginning of a bottom-up approach. Details are left on the "debate-stage floor", as what we have had so far is a Sideshow Bob presentation of policy, a Q&A for the media, which leads us nowhere unless you are fanatically political, which most of the nation has been educated/innoculated against. ..."
"... And not a word about Clinton approving arms sales while Secretary of State and accepting gifts to their foundation? ..."
"... What you are seeing is called "hypocrisy", writ large. The Democrats are finally discovering that they actually need the voters that they've been dissing for decades, and they really don't want to admit how badly they've screwed the pooch. ..."
"... That she has shoved the bankeresque Schiff to the fore in place of the more irascible and prosecutorial Nadler suggests she does not want to give the public a clear narrative, so much as to keep them calm, as if the Trump administration were in charge instead of being in office. ..."
"... Yes, Pelosi put the Intelligence Committee (Schiff) in charge, as opposed to the Judiciary Committee (Nadler). Odd. ..."
"... Don't forget too that Pelosi is related by marriage to Governor Gavin Newsom (his aunt was married to Ron Pelosi, brother-in-law to Nancy). It's one big happy Resistance family! Corruption is okay as long as they do it. Their hypocrisy has no limits. ..."
"... Just imagine if corrupt California elites could rule the United States! ..."
"... Nor was it in 2006, when, after recapturing the House, Pelosi took impeachment "off the table," even though the Bush Administration committed multiple felonies in its warrantless surveillance program, in addition to completely destroying the Fourth Amendment. (Obama later normalized and rationalized all this, of course.) ..."
"... In a very real sense, it is a partisan war where there are penalties for losing. ..."
"... Pelosi has clearly seen the dangers of democrat complicity and corruption before; what's changed? If she was acutely (off the table) aware of the dirty utterly filthy linen danger before, then why not now when it's, if anything, more obvious than ever? ..."
"... It's the ill conceived nature of this, the mess the democrats are creating for themselves, that suggests to me that shifting the focus away from popular programs such as medicare for all is unintended even if successful. It's like stabbing yourself in the arm to divert attention from robbing the church collection. Not a good analogy but anyway ..."
"... a world in which it's perfectly acceptable for the children of elites to trail around after their parents and help smooth the wider asset-grabbing through personal enrichment. ..."
"... Pelosi wants the scope very narrow. That's quite telling. Even more telling, and offensive, when you think about it, is her decision to have this inquiry be led by the House Intelligence Committee. This pretty much guarantees that at least some of the proceedings will happen behind closed doors. ..."
"... Revenge, like any addiction, doesn't brook common sense. The author of the article is spot on when he points out that it's just too late to impeach on the high road even if the democrat party did have something, anything, to distinguish them ethically from the republicans or Trump (other than bombast). ..."
"... Team Blue elites need #resistance happy because it's their base. ..."
"... As far as the primary is concerned, it reaffirms support for Biden by party leadership. His campaign requires "electability in the general", so not clear how that's helping the cause. ..."
"... Perhaps they figured Biden was gonna get hit anyway for making Poroshenko fire the guy running the office prosecuting Biden's son (whereupon the investigation was, by coincidence, halted). Thus get everything together hit back in the month or so before the details emerged in US media? ..."
"... I think it's a colossal mistake, and now Pelosi is all-in (together with a bunch of Representatives in deep purple congressional districts roped into going on record supporting the impeachment investigation), so all this ain't going nowhere. ..."
"... Maybe I missed it, and so I (as a veteran) must make sure it is said: if the Congress will not list, as the first Article of Impeachment, the slaughter of innocent people in wars not declared by Congress, then I don't see how any other possible Article would matter ..."
"... Here, Trump has aided and abetted the slaughter and unending misery for hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, in a country against which the U.S. never declared war, by keeping the House of Saud armed. And this reasoning would include the killing of innocent people outside any consideration of war and peace, a crime which can be incontrovertibly attributed to decisions emanating from the Oval Office regarding people who come to our borders to seek economic or political refuge. ..."
"... The problem, of course, is that the war in Yemen started under O'Bomber. One of those rare achievements of the Trump administration, in fact, is that he hasn't actually started any brand-spanking new wars at all–just continued the old ones started by Bushbama. ..."
"... Well, bush got congress to approve Iraq, so impeaching him would have been on account of the lies. Libya is on Obama Hillary. It wasn't 'we came, we saw, he died', cackle, it was 'a peaceful, prosperous country died', one with equal Ed for women, a rarity in ME. ..."
"... I have been hoping and praying that disgraced former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe has gone "John Dean" (of Watergate infamy) and the National Security State knows it. If that dream is a reality then maybe, just maybe, I'll have to buy a television set to watch that theater live on a 60 inch screen. ..."
Oct 02, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

"We've got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden," said Biden's brother James according to this Politico story about how the Biden family cashes in on their well-placed relative.

... ... ...

If Biden is innocent of corruption, why does it look like he's not? What does that say about the nature of corruption itself in the entire DC establishment?

Two traps for a party that much of the nation depends on to rid them of the man the last election elevated to power. Two reasons for independent voters -- those not Party loyalists, not blue-no-matter-who, not Never-Trumpers, voters who never turn out for elections or rarely do -- to not turn out for this one, when their voice and vote is needed most in this greatest of watershed years .

What's decided now, in this year and the next, will set the course of the nation and the world for a dozen years to come -- or a dozen millennia if the chaos predicted by the most pessimistic among us takes root and grows. After all, social and political chaos is a breeding ground for authoritarian "solutions." We don't need any of those, and this may be the last electoral chance to avoid them.

Acacia , October 2, 2019 at 5:02 am

To reiterate a comment in the recent Water Cooler (this article is a better forum):

One scenario that Neuburger hasn't considered: perhaps the Democrats are trying impeachment now because they are out of ammo and getting scared about 2020. Rather than lose the election, they are attempting a pre-emptive strike.

dcrane , October 2, 2019 at 5:20 am

Or is it a pre-emptive defensive strike by the CIA/Blob? With Trump seeming to ask Ukraine about Crowdstrike, and Barr asking for help from Australia on the Mueller investigation origins (as well as investigating the way the dossier was used), Trump and Barr might be trying to turn TrumpRussia into a counterattack on their establishment enemies, just in time for the election. Buckle up, indeed.

Acacia , October 2, 2019 at 7:46 am

Yes, I've been wondering this also. The CIA credentials of the "whistleblower" are somehow too convenient, too familiar. The Dems are already more or less in bed with the CIA/Blob, so it is as if they are acting more to aid a "messenger", as @InquiringMind put it during the latest Water Cooler.

Mike , October 2, 2019 at 9:03 am

A recent decision was made by the intelligence organs to allow reporting of second-hand information and be titled a whistleblower for your efforts. it is acceptable to spy (which this is an example of, since it is not whistleblowing) and listen to conversations saying they heard this or that was happening, report that through legal channels, and have it accepted BECAUSE IT APPEALS POLITICALLY to the agency or the particular representative.

The intelligence community is rife with dissension and conflict; not over their need to service the multi-national firms and their congressional sycophants they really represent, but rather the speed at which they need to react to challenges coming from our limited free flow of information that contradicts their "stories" and propaganda. We're getting wise – not completely, not with any assuredness that our info is complete, but enough to cause tremendous doubt and distrust of the messaging coming from government and media propagandists.

To me, the danger of this period is exactly the lack of organized opposition, politically at home and among the nations of the globe, to this onslaught and flooding of the ears with lies that become real due to that repetition. We are not united, and the convenient and quick answers are flawed. The Communist Party was deeply flawed, and the International a craven defender of Stalin, but we could certainly use some organization similar to fight this neocon cancer now, before it metastisizes into worse, if that is possible. That being said, impatience drives tribal thinking, already invading academia and the few public intellectuals existing. I await the working classes hitting their limit. Buckle up, indeed

Acacia , October 2, 2019 at 10:00 am

Thanks for this comment. Agree completely.

Strategies are badly needed to dislodge people from duopolistic and partisan groupthink.

Mike , October 2, 2019 at 12:05 pm

Hey, I'm not posing an answer, and see fear of one everywhere, so don't thank me. There is a inchoate and diffuse anger brewing "out there", but it does not reflect our measured, rather moderate knowledge of crime and abuse of power we observe daily. It will, given the money and influence of the right wing, push over to such violent reaction it will make the 1930s seem like a birthday party. The left, or what is loosely left of it, badly needs discipline and structure, but its traditional organs have been rent asunder and are not trustworthy.

A thinktank? New party? Dunno it has to have room to grow, and our secret-sauce parties and intel outfits have "six ways from Sunday" to mess with any of it. Clarity of political thought seems to come from crisis and being cornered, but that clarity is not guaranteed to be "healthy", babies going with the bath water-wise. Bernie is a short-term stopgap to the bleeding IF he can wrap his mind around the movement and an understanding of the immediate threats to its existence- i.e., the DNC.

marym , October 2, 2019 at 10:56 am

Regarding the first sentence of your comment: The requirements of the law never changed, the whistleblower used an old form anyway, and the recently changed form has been replaced.

WaPo :

In any case, the IG's process for handling whistleblower allegations is determined not by a form but by the law and related policy documents. The key document, ICD 120, has been virtually unchanged since 2014. Contrary to the speculation, the whistleblower used the 2018 form, not the new online form. The IG then investigated and found that his allegations were credible and that Congress should be notified.

Mike , October 2, 2019 at 12:16 pm

Yup, but this is still mislabeled "whistleblowing", which would be such if he/she were ratting on the CIA. This hearsay would be laughed out of a court of law absent other proof. Further, I think we can dismiss the IG investigation as being anything not pressured by establishment types threatened by Trump's vendetta against Obama and his wing of the neo-lib global corporation, as it promises to open the can of worms that both parties are united in foreign policy and who we deal with, and that unity spills over into McCarthy-like reaction to any unpredictability and unreliability such as Trump's. We can't "get him" on his real crimes, as that would leave all "them guys" exposed.

polecat , October 2, 2019 at 1:50 pm

I'll bet that whistling 'blowviator' is a THEY !

.. as in a 'composite' entity manufactured by the C•I•A committee to de-elect the president.

JohnH , October 2, 2019 at 11:01 am

I assumed that the much delayed Mueller report finally came out when it did and with the conclusion it did because the CIA was finally convinced that it had Trump sufficiently cowed. The July 27 phone call made it clear to them that it didn't.

And Pelosi, when asked by the CIA to jump, immediately responded, "How high?" It will be extremely interesting to see how much influence the CIA has over Republican Senators who will be casting decisive votes. Thirty-three Republicans Senators will be excused and given cover. Is there a thirty-fourth with the cojones to vote against removal and against the CIA's efforts to impose a color revolution on American soil?

Peter Moritz , October 2, 2019 at 11:52 am

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/09/30/john-kiriakou-what-was-this-cia-officer-thinking/

Big River Bandido , October 2, 2019 at 6:25 am

If this is really about 2020 then Democrats are even more stupid than I'm inclined to believe. Krystal Ball said this morning that only 35% of the public supports impeachment. All this effort will do is rile up Trump supporters. I recall what happened in the 1998 midterms after the Clinton impeachment. There's every reason to believe this will turn around and bite the Democrats in 2020.

Pelosi and Schumer are fine with that. If Democrats were to actually win, they'd have to govern, and they can't do that.

epynonymous , October 2, 2019 at 1:57 pm

You'd think the Clintons would remember just how little impeachment did to them

Michael , October 2, 2019 at 10:18 am

The question of "why now" haunts me, too.

There are several plausible explanations. If you consider Pelosi's motivations, you have to look no further than her constituency, the donor class.

From their perspective there has been too many uncomfortable policy debates, including climate change, occurring on the campaign trail. As with Russiagate all of these discussions will vanish from the corporate media.

Also, some of the donors have stated they will not donate to the Dems, and may in fact donate to Trump, if Warren gets nominated.

Finally, purely for display of party unity, protecting Joe Biden, even if it brings him down will have value. Also, this specific charge will not bring up any of other former "suits" illegal actions.

Inasmuch as polling showing the combined popularity of Sanders and Warren exceed 30% while Biden is down to 19%, if you can end with a inconclusive first round of voting at the Democratic Convention, you can bring in the Supers and name the person of your choice.

lyman alpha blob , October 2, 2019 at 1:46 pm

As to the question of 'why now?', my guess is because the 'resistance' types see the writing on the wall that they are going to lose with anybody but Sanders as the candidate, and they aren't about to allow Sanders to win. RussiaRussiaRussia, porn stars, and everything else they tried didn't work and they've got nothing else that would give the public at large something to vote for .

As to that writing on the wall, I will offer some very anecdotal evidence, but I found it telling. A few days ago I went to a rural county fair. Now granted these fairs likely attract a more conservative crowd, however this particular fair was in the most liberal county in the state. Took a look at the exhibition hall at the fair, full of quilts, 4th grade artwork, canned tomatoes, etc. as well as booths for both the Republican and Democrat parties.

At the Democrat party booth, they had put out poster boards with a list of issues and you were supposed to put a little round sticker next to the issue you felt was most important. Boring policy wonk stuff. I don't even remember if anyone was manning the booth when we stopped by, but if they were they made no attempt whatsoever to speak with us. My wife put one sticker on a poster and walked away and we were the only people there at the time. In fairness, clearly there had been people there earlier since there were a lot of stickers stuck to posters.

At the Republican booth, there were a number of people in line engaging with those manning the booth. And rather than just pining little stickers on a poster, the Republicans were handing out Trump 2020 swag and letting people get photos with a big Trump cutout. IDoing fun stuff. Walking around the fair later I saw one of the few Hispanics in attendance (this is a very white county in an extremely white state) sporting a Trump 2020 tote bag as he and his wife walked through the fair.

If I were to base a prediction on the evidence alone, I would say Trump and the Elephants are going to hand the Asses their asses in 2020 and they can feel it coming.

I really don't see how this doesn't blow up in their faces, but they've got nothing else.

PKMKII , October 2, 2019 at 1:33 pm

This is my feeling on it. It's the Democrats' Benghazi, a string of congressional hearings designed to produce dirt on Trump to sink him in the election. Actual impeachment and removal is nahgunnahappen, as that requires 67 senators, which would require all Democrats in the Senate, both independents, and 20 Republicans . It would be a minor miracle if five Republicans signed onto impeachment.

However, with dirt slinging as the only useful outcome possible, it shows how incompetent Pelosi is by limiting the inquiry to just the Ukraine business. The damning dirt could come in any form out of any corner of Trump's ongoings, so why would you limit the dirt digging to something that, on the face of it, doesn't scream it went any deeper than Trump's implication. Especially as it didn't happen that long ago.

The Rev Kev , October 2, 2019 at 5:26 am

God, this is so stupid. Look, perhaps it is because I live in a different continent or I have a twisted turn of mind but I am seeing something completely different at work here. Is Trump Corrupt? Of course he is but in a completely ham-fisted way that makes it blatantly obvious. With Trump you always have low expectations. But Thomas Neuburger talks about ICE deaths, Puerto Rico, the Muslim ban but so what? Obama was guilty of far worse but no Democrats will criticize him for any of it. An example? If you cover up an international war crime such as torture, that is an international crime too and Obama definitely covered up for the CIA tortures and "looked forward". And one ramification for that was the US now having a ex-torturer as head of the CIA.

So here is my take. The past few months Americans were finally having subjects like healthcare and college debt forgiveness getting some air time and some serious traction. The Democrat candidates were being forced to give answers on their positions on such ideas. But now? The Democrats have introduced impeachment which has all the success prospects of Russiagate. Expect copious amounts of verbal diarrhea in the next few months which will allow for no time for discussion of subjects like healthcare anymore. The DNC will shout down anyone trying to do so by shouting "Impeachment!". And when the elections rock around in a year's time and there is finally some minor space to start talking about such subjects, the DNC will tell progressives "You know, you should have really brought this up in 2019 while there was time to talk about it. Your bad."

dcrane , October 2, 2019 at 5:33 am

Indeed, we might as well argue that Obama should have been impeached for turning the Espionage Act against reporters. I see that as more damaging to the US than most of Trump's harmful acts to date.

John Wright , October 2, 2019 at 12:05 pm

I tell people that Trump is a minor league con man because so many people assert that he is a con man

Obama successfully convinced people that he WANTED to do the right things but was prevented from doing them by the evil Republicans. Despite the insurance/drug company friendly implementation of ObamaCare, assertion of the most transparent administration, ever, brutally coming down on government whistleblowers, killing overseas citizens via drone, not prosecuting financial misdeeds, and destroying Libya, Obama is seen as righteous.

In my view, a truly great con man remains unacknowledged/undetected.

Obama is in a con man league of his own, as he benefits from the left's form of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

John k , October 2, 2019 at 1:37 pm

Best comment.

Interesting that attacking trump on this is attacking Biden did dem elites give up on him? don't see how he can survive, which seems to open the field for Warren sanders if so, not what donors want, pelosi musta been forced by blue dogs cia.

Maybe good for sanders he needs rest, the stents will require recovery msm can't focus away from impeach to celebrate his health problems
How long? Say one month?

Hopefully the dems great white hope Biden will be down and out by primaries Bernie might find help in the south this time where it was a wall last time

Ca dem elites don't want Bernie, but electorate doesn't want Kamala

And Tulsi back on stage with her useful to focus on wars.

Steve H. , October 2, 2019 at 6:09 am

I think this vectors the right direction, Rev Kev. White noise to drown out clearly articulated messages. If any of this were about actual evidence, Binney would've been called to undercut the Crowdstrike assertions.

There are a couple of things that seem real. Once is the intra-elite competition between the intelligence community and Trump. Epstein cracked a door and some light got through. Trump seems to have taken the standard operating procedures personally.

Despite this, Trump is more acceptable to Wall Street than the left agenda. These attacks serve to consolidate Trumps base; I've seen more Trump 2020 bumper stickers in my very-blue town than any other candidates.

The endgame comes with the primaries. Sander's campaign income has a verisimilitude with greater weight than the polls. Even polls which aren't specifically rigged can't cope with modern communications. The problem is, with electronic vote-flipping on top of old-school methods, unless the paper ballots get in (which is against status quo interests), how can it be made clear the vote is being rigged? Could public gatherings outside the polling places be enough to offer an alternative count?

Plus, Sanders has set himself up as TINA. He has not spread his wealth of four decades of credibility to anyone else. No Hindu is getting the Oval, so Gabbard is a gadfly, not an option. Trump and the top three Democratic candidates could all actually die of old age.

The only thing I'd actually put a bet on in all this is that Trump will not be removed from office via impeachment.

Big River Bandido , October 2, 2019 at 6:28 am

I'm not sure that the Democrats yelling "impeachment!" will register loud enough to overcome the substance of the election campaign. Not enough people care about it.

ambrit , October 2, 2019 at 6:41 am

"Not enough people care about it."

The real determinate is which people 'care' about it. The public discourse is presently in the hands of partisan hacks, of mainly one ideology; Rentier Capitalism. One main American political faction will characterize the obscurantist process as "White Noise. The other main faction will characterize it as "Rainbow Noise." Both will be correct about the "Noise" part.

Big River Bandido , October 2, 2019 at 7:42 am

According to Ball in the "Rising" video, the percentage of people who support impeachment is 35%. That pretty much covers all the "partisan hacks" you refer to.

To the average voter? This is just noise and nonsense. Regardless of how impeachment ends (and one doesn't have to be a genius to figure out that it will go nowhere), the concerns and the anger of average voters are not going away.

ambrit , October 2, 2019 at 9:10 am

Aye, but, can someone effectively harness that anger to a coherent ideology, much less a set of policies?

Mike , October 2, 2019 at 2:04 pm

Ditto, Ambrit- a rational response bestride the not caring noise.

The current equation of Warren and Sanders is the point problem of that coherence. Sanders is weak on foreign policy particulars (Middle East, Venezuela, Ukraine are waffled responses, more afraid to alienate rather than state), Warren is totally absent because she has supported those policies in the past.

Both committed to regulation, Warren wanting existing govt. style while Sanders wants the beginning of a bottom-up approach. Details are left on the "debate-stage floor", as what we have had so far is a Sideshow Bob presentation of policy, a Q&A for the media, which leads us nowhere unless you are fanatically political, which most of the nation has been educated/innoculated against.

Whatever it is, I'm agin it

inode_buddha , October 2, 2019 at 12:37 pm

And not a word about Clinton approving arms sales while Secretary of State and accepting gifts to their foundation?

petal , October 2, 2019 at 12:58 pm

None, of course! Go figure. It was hard being there. Was surrounded by full-on TDS from all speakers to the crowd.

Mike , October 2, 2019 at 1:53 pm

Right now, probably true. However, we've been victim to propaganda many times before – WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, etc.etc. We have an apparatus that has honed its abilities to reach millions immediately through TV, press, video, websites, that puts former agit-prop to shame. We have been swarmed with the same message, basically allowing those caught in lies previously to suddenly be believed today, "because"

The truth of any proposition comes down to its provenance and our ability to get tired of the repetition and cacophony surrounding us, thus surrendering the ground. If enough believe the initial message, if enough see their bread buttered by it, then the rest of us are prone to that surrender unless an outside agency we CAN rely on exists.

It is sad to say that "not caring" becomes a positive. 50% of the voting public does not vote, and most who vote do not care if their vote is even counted properly. Do not care equals no democracy at all.

notabanker , October 2, 2019 at 6:48 am

Agreed, most disappointing post. As if Congress, or past admins have no culpability, all Trump, therefore impeachment, sigh.

inode_buddha , October 2, 2019 at 3:01 pm

What you are seeing is called "hypocrisy", writ large. The Democrats are finally discovering that they actually need the voters that they've been dissing for decades, and they really don't want to admit how badly they've screwed the pooch.

EoH , October 2, 2019 at 5:27 am

Perhaps Ms. Pelosi's caucus finally made her do what she despises doing. That it should benefit her party leadership's choice to replace Donald Trump is, of course, coincidental.

There's still the nit that there's been no congressional vote authorizing her impeachment inquiry, which will keep the process in the courts and delay proceedings longer than necessary.

Ms. Pelosi's actions bring to mind the contradictory naval order, proceed with all deliberate speed. It is a sign that the admirals acknowledge the necessity of doing something, but tell their commanders it's on them if it goes South.

That she has shoved the bankeresque Schiff to the fore in place of the more irascible and prosecutorial Nadler suggests she does not want to give the public a clear narrative, so much as to keep them calm, as if the Trump administration were in charge instead of being in office.

Lambert Strether , October 2, 2019 at 5:28 am

> That she has shoved the bankeresque Schiff

Yes, Pelosi put the Intelligence Committee (Schiff) in charge, as opposed to the Judiciary Committee (Nadler). Odd.

KM in California , October 2, 2019 at 11:43 am

California is the vanguard of the "Resistance" to Trump. Pelosi is from California, as is Schiff. Two of the Intelligence Committee members are also from California (Jackie Speier and Eric Swalwell) as the LA Times pointed out a few days ago (" California to play an outsize role in impeachment inquiry of Trump "). This is probably why the whole impeachment inquiry is centered in the Intelligence committee and not the Judiciary.

Various Obama officials live or work in California. For example, Eric Holder was hired by the California Legislature to fight Trump. David Plouffe, who works with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative among other Silicon Valley groups, is helping a liberal group called ACRONYM with anti-Trump digital messaging.

Don't forget too that Pelosi is related by marriage to Governor Gavin Newsom (his aunt was married to Ron Pelosi, brother-in-law to Nancy). It's one big happy Resistance family! Corruption is okay as long as they do it. Their hypocrisy has no limits.

Just imagine if corrupt California elites could rule the United States! The Wash Post even had a fantasy piece about "President Pelosi" just a few days ago.

smoker , October 2, 2019 at 3:27 pm

Thanks for that, saved me a bit of rushed commenting because I was going to quickly comment on it before I noticed you had already.

California has 6 of the 24 members of the House Intelligence Committee: 4 of those 6 members hold 100% of Democratic (Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff) and Republican (Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes) leadership roles; there are 4 out of 14 in the total Democratic membership, and 2 out of 10 in the Republican membership.

Also, Californian members make up 100% of the House membership of the Gang of Eight, , 2 Democratic and 2 Republican: respectively, Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff; and Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes.

And lastly, both California Senators Dianne Feinstein, and Kamala Harris (despite her newbiness), are on the Senate Intelligence Committee, the only State to have both Senators as members.

As a decades long California resident, what sickens me the most about this is California legislators (overwhelmingly Democratic Party, but may as well be Republican given the stunning inequality/austerity imposed in California) preside over the highest numbers of unsheltered homeless in the country. A full third of California residents have been forced onto Medi-Cal (where millions can't find a treating doctor for the life of them), or don't qualify (despite not being able to afford their rents), yet can't afford any insurance. Concurrently, State Legislators and that duplicitous, slimy creep Newsom just signed off on an Obama inspired California Healthcare Mandate Penalty , although there were crickets at California's Franchise Tax Board when it came to following the IRS in going after Facebook's stunning and blatant 2010 Ireland Asset transfers Tax evasion (to the tune of billions now, and next to impossible to determine what the current status of it is), they would much rather go after their increasingly impoverished populace who can't afford a CPA, let alone an attorney.

Lambert Strether , October 2, 2019 at 5:27 am

> In other words, the rightness of impeachment was never a consideration for Democratic Party leaders.

Nor was it in 2006, when, after recapturing the House, Pelosi took impeachment "off the table," even though the Bush Administration committed multiple felonies in its warrantless surveillance program, in addition to completely destroying the Fourth Amendment. (Obama later normalized and rationalized all this, of course.)

So one would not have expected principle or the "rule of law" or any of those other shibboleths to enter into the liberal Democrat decision-making process. It never does.

ambrit , October 2, 2019 at 6:25 am

Wow. Just wow. The Woo is strong with this one.

This person starts out with an establishing remark that convicts Trump, and goes on from there. Unlike a true impeachment process, no 'real' groundwork is laid down. Furthermore, by half-heartedly mentioning "issues" with the Pelosi formulation, in effect, that Biden is just as bad as Trump, the author lays the groundwork for the 'impeachment' of both Party's "main" candidates. The piece reminds me of the logic of the Alice in Wonderland trial: "Sentence first – verdict afterwards." All this, my cynical sensibility reminds me, sotto voice, for an insane Queen.

Impeachment has always been a political process. After all, it is a function of the Congress, the prototype of politics. To take the authors buttressing point, that the 'essence' of impeachment should be the pure logic of the deeds in question casts the entire process of impeachment in the light of virtue signalling. How else would a disinterested observer characterize a process where the process itself is not initiated with the anticipation of a useful outcome? In a very real sense, it is a partisan war where there are penalties for losing.

This piece, if any, shows plainly the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the American political process today. The two "leading" candidates of the "rival" Partys are both delineated to be frauds, figuratively and literally. Turning the mentioning of the earlier English Parliamentary 'version' of impeachment on, as it were, it's head, one is lead to consider that only something as all encompassing and determinative as an actual bloodletting will be of any use to the Nation.

Be very careful what you ask for. You might get it.

Ook , October 2, 2019 at 6:31 am

"Impeachment is the Constitution's version of the English Civil War, minus the war."

It could be argued that getting rid of a Prime Minister via a vote of no confidence is orders of magnitude simpler than impeachment. In fact, it seems to happen about every ten or twenty years on average in the UK. And no civil war required either.

ambrit , October 2, 2019 at 6:36 am

The best analogue of today with then is that the English Civil War did not just remove the Royalist leadership of the time, but an entire generation of Royalists. Does America really want a twenty year interregnum?

Anarcissie , October 2, 2019 at 10:37 am

We are already in the Interregnum. Trump was 'none of the above'. People talked about a 'clown car' and then Trump showed that a clown could actually accede to power, insofar as a clown can manage the role. The Democrats responded with a clown show of their own. It's a circus, although the clowns are pretty malign. Maybe people like that. Meanwhile, serious people with serious political proposals, like Sanders, are on the outside looking in. Someone's going to have to break a window.

Brooklin Bridge , October 2, 2019 at 6:50 am

Pelosi has clearly seen the dangers of democrat complicity and corruption before; what's changed? If she was acutely (off the table) aware of the dirty utterly filthy linen danger before, then why not now when it's, if anything, more obvious than ever?

All I can think of is that the Clinton derangement syndrome – the bitterness and perceived injustice that the anointed one didn't get anointed – still has an iron grip on the psyche of the DC Daristocrats. They're stone drunk on hatred, spite, and lust for revenge and are hallucinating in broad daylight that they've got the hook to sell it.

I like the idea that this is all a clever ruse to keep the focus away from sanity in health care etc., but it just doesn't look like they have that much sense. From the UK to the the US, everyone's going nuts.

tegnost , October 2, 2019 at 9:06 am

I bet it's good for fund raising, those I know who are most embarrassed by trump have a fair amount of money and currently they are very excited. Whatever it is, it's not bernie (or should I say &@cking bernie), it's not M4A, and it's not student loans, as commented on above this line

Brooklin Bridge , October 2, 2019 at 10:05 am

It's the ill conceived nature of this, the mess the democrats are creating for themselves, that suggests to me that shifting the focus away from popular programs such as medicare for all is unintended even if successful. It's like stabbing yourself in the arm to divert attention from robbing the church collection. Not a good analogy but anyway

There is a huge amount of pressure from the public to get rid of Trump any way possible and a lot of that, ironically, has been manufactured by the democrats themselves. That, I suspect, combined with Hillary syndrome, is more what's behind this than the criminal, but lucid, plan to obscure the popularity of programs benefiting the public.

inode_buddha , October 2, 2019 at 3:19 pm

Perhaps you should go back and re-read the last 5 years of commentary then -- there's been plenty of substance offered by those who are just as powerless as you.

John A , October 2, 2019 at 7:08 am

Imagine Trump were to overthrow Maduro in a coup. He installs his puppet Guido who immediately gives Ivanka a seat on the board of a Venezuelan oil company at 50K a month, or more. Would the Democrats be screaming 'nothing to see here' in that scenario?

Brooklin Bridge , October 2, 2019 at 7:57 am

It's not clear the Democrats would notice any impropriety. What would be tearing them apart is that they didn't get a seat at the trough (on the board) as well.

NotTimothyGeithner , October 2, 2019 at 8:27 am

Yes. In that case. Kicking foreign brown people is bipartisan. Schiff would organize Trump's ticker tape parade in that case.

Mattski , October 2, 2019 at 7:21 am

I would say 'Joe Biden's son's integrity' and 'the dubious right-wing Democratic Party CIA-led arms sales-drive policy in the Ukraine.'

I don't think that Biden himself is particularly corrupt; the guy really is a terrible hack. And I don't think legal corruption is necessarily what's at issue, but a world in which it's perfectly acceptable for the children of elites to trail around after their parents and help smooth the wider asset-grabbing through personal enrichment.

The wider context–villifying Russia, cleaning up Ukraine enough to justify consorting with fascists and the far-right to keep all the balls in the air, needs to be exposed.

voteforno6 , October 2, 2019 at 7:54 am

There is a right way to do impeachment, and this ain't it. They could investigate the Trump administrator for its rampant corruption – it's a very target-rich environment. Instead, Pelosi wants the scope very narrow. That's quite telling. Even more telling, and offensive, when you think about it, is her decision to have this inquiry be led by the House Intelligence Committee. This pretty much guarantees that at least some of the proceedings will happen behind closed doors.

So, they think that they're going to remove the duly elected President behind closed doors, and they think the population will be okay with this? Do they really live in such a bubble that they think people trust their judgment enough to do this? It boggles the mind.

Brooklin Bridge , October 2, 2019 at 8:25 am

Do they really live in such a bubble[ ]

Revenge, like any addiction, doesn't brook common sense. The author of the article is spot on when he points out that it's just too late to impeach on the high road even if the democrat party did have something, anything, to distinguish them ethically from the republicans or Trump (other than bombast).

Also, just a thought, having this discussion behind closed doors makes sense if Pelosi is hoping they will come to their senses.

As to the right or wrong way to do impeachment, I think the democrats like the republicans are simply beyond that or any notion of it other than the residue of dim memory that ends up entirely as the decorative part in public speeches. I suspect they are quite simply oblivious to such niceties as anything being wrong with using impeachment as a weapon rather than as a means for justice.

NotTimothyGeithner , October 2, 2019 at 8:42 am

I'm pretty sure Pelosi doesn't want it and wanted to repeat her 2007 play, but she doesn't have 2008 certainty to offer (keep the powder dry I know but this was what that was about).

Team Blue elites need #resistance happy because it's their base. The people who missed brunch aren't exactly rationale or going to have this explained to them behind closed doors. Pelosi has been slowly losing with the caucus, but most of the members are terrible and vulnerable to an AOC-esque challenge especially in safe seats which most of the seats are. Again without theven #resistance, safe seat Team Blue types are very vulnerable.

marym , October 2, 2019 at 9:09 am

Thank you, I agree with this perspective.

Adding that, imo, the rank and file voters did the work of electing Democrats to a House majority, motivated partly by Clinton revenge, but also by policy issues. There's been noticeable dismay in the corners of twitter where I wander at Pelosi's taking so long to act, the inept performances of the few hearings so far, and now the proposed narrow focus.

ptb , October 2, 2019 at 8:02 am

my take is they're never actually going to pass articles of impeachment, which would hand the process over to McConnell in the Senate. It will stay in the House and they will attempt to nab Trump or perhaps one of his sidekicks like Giuliani on obstruction of the House investigation. This is by now a fairly transparent strategy, and we will find out what the elusive PA swing voter thinks of it soon enough.

As far as the primary is concerned, it reaffirms support for Biden by party leadership. His campaign requires "electability in the general", so not clear how that's helping the cause.

Perhaps they figured Biden was gonna get hit anyway for making Poroshenko fire the guy running the office prosecuting Biden's son (whereupon the investigation was, by coincidence, halted). Thus get everything together hit back in the month or so before the details emerged in US media?

I think it's a colossal mistake, and now Pelosi is all-in (together with a bunch of Representatives in deep purple congressional districts roped into going on record supporting the impeachment investigation), so all this ain't going nowhere.

ptb , October 2, 2019 at 8:09 am

correction – investigating the company, not prosecuting the son.

LowellHIghlander , October 2, 2019 at 10:53 am

Maybe I missed it, and so I (as a veteran) must make sure it is said: if the Congress will not list, as the first Article of Impeachment, the slaughter of innocent people in wars not declared by Congress, then I don't see how any other possible Article would matter.

Here, Trump has aided and abetted the slaughter and unending misery for hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, in a country against which the U.S. never declared war, by keeping the House of Saud armed. And this reasoning would include the killing of innocent people outside any consideration of war and peace, a crime which can be incontrovertibly attributed to decisions emanating from the Oval Office regarding people who come to our borders to seek economic or political refuge.

Wasn't the power to go to war exclusively reserved for Congress, to try to make sure that the country wouldn't go to war on a lark? And wasn't the Bill of Rights enshrined to make sure that the U.S. Government could not put people to death, at least without due process?

I realize that this might mean that Congress would have had to impeach presidents left and right. So be it; enlisted women and men can be severely punished for killing innocent people (and for far less, such as disobeying orders). Why should presidents and vice-presidents escape responsibility for high crimes of unjustifiable homicide (and, I must add, countenancing torture)?

Seamus Padraig , October 2, 2019 at 1:06 pm

The problem, of course, is that the war in Yemen started under O'Bomber. One of those rare achievements of the Trump administration, in fact, is that he hasn't actually started any brand-spanking new wars at all–just continued the old ones started by Bushbama.

John k , October 2, 2019 at 1:53 pm

Well, bush got congress to approve Iraq, so impeaching him would have been on account of the lies. Libya is on Obama Hillary. It wasn't 'we came, we saw, he died', cackle, it was 'a peaceful, prosperous country died', one with equal Ed for women, a rarity in ME.

Levi Tate , October 2, 2019 at 1:35 pm

Has it already happened?

Is this the last desperation Hail Mary by the Democratic Party and the National Security State to save themselves?

Has it already happened?

I have been hoping and praying that disgraced former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe has gone "John Dean" (of Watergate infamy) and the National Security State knows it. If that dream is a reality then maybe, just maybe, I'll have to buy a television set to watch that theater live on a 60 inch screen.

Roy G , October 2, 2019 at 3:38 pm

Well, if 'centrist' Lanny Davis sees no problem with Hunter Biden's business that really settles it, doesn't it? /sarcasm #emeraldcityethics

[Sep 17, 2019] The roots of the criminogenic environment go much deeper. Where was the DOJ in the prosecution of the massive banking fraud that led to the great financial crisis ? Busy prosecuting poor people while the big fish criminals were rescued by the corrupt institutions.

Clintonism was the introduction of mafia style in the US justice system and conversion of the key law enforcement agency -- FBI -- in mafia style organization.
Sep 17, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

Mr. Bill , September 15, 2019 at 06:14 PM

Re: Krugman's article on the death of American Democracy he asserts: " In less than three years it has been transformed from an agency that tries to enforce the law to an organization dedicated to punishing Trump's opponents."

I think that I agree with Bill Black that the roots of the criminogenic environment go much deeper. Where was the DOJ in the prosecution of the massive banking fraud that led to the great financial crisis ? Busy prosecuting poor people while the big fish criminals were rescued by the corrupt institutions. I agree that Democracy dies when the institutions become corrupt and the beneficiaries of the same corrupt institutions become smugly comfortable in control of the narrative.

A troubling article by the New Yorker, "Clarence Thomas's Radical Vision of Race",

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/clarence-thomass-radical-vision-of-race

Points to a real world example: The profound corruption of the conservative SCOTUS that led to Citizens United. The angst of the entitled bemoaning their good fortune, like spoiled children.

[Sep 15, 2019] USA foreign policy since 70th was controlled by neocons who as a typical Trotskyites (neoliberalism is actually Trotskyism for the rich) were/are hell-bent of world domination and practice gangster capitalism in foreign policy

The USA might eventually pay the price for the economic rape and alienation of Russia by criminal Clinton and his coterie
Notable quotes:
"... Madeline "not so bright" Allbright was the first swan. As well as Clinton attempts to bankrupt and subdue Russia and criminal (in a sense of no permission from the UN) attack on Yugoslavia. Both backfired: Russia became permanently hostile. The fact he and his coterie were not yet tried by something like Nuremberg tribunal is only due to the USA dominance at this stage of history. ..."
"... The truth is that after the dissolution of the USSR the USA foreign policy became completely unhinged. And inside the country the elite became cannibalistic, as there was no external threat to its dominance in the form of the USSR. ..."
"... Still as an imperial state and the center of neoliberal empire the USA relies more on financial instruments and neoliberal comprador elite inside the country. ..."
Sep 15, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

likbez -> anne... , September 14, 2019 at 08:30 PM

"The US served as a benevolent hegemon, administering the occasional rap on the knuckles to those acting in bad faith"

USA foreign policy since 70th was controlled by neocons who as a typical Trotskyites (neoliberalism is actually Trotskyism for the rich) were/are hell-bent of world domination and practice gangster capitalism in foreign policy.

Bolton attitude to UN is very symptomatic for the neocons as a whole.

Madeline "not so bright" Allbright was the first swan. As well as Clinton attempts to bankrupt and subdue Russia and criminal (in a sense of no permission from the UN) attack on Yugoslavia. Both backfired: Russia became permanently hostile. The fact he and his coterie were not yet tried by something like Nuremberg tribunal is only due to the USA dominance at this stage of history.

The truth is that after the dissolution of the USSR the USA foreign policy became completely unhinged. And inside the country the elite became cannibalistic, as there was no external threat to its dominance in the form of the USSR.

The USA stated to behave like a typical Imperial state (New Rome, or, more correctly, London) accepting no rules/laws that are not written by themselves (and when it is convenient to obey them) with the only difference from the classic imperial states that the hegemony it not based on the military presence/occupation ( like was the case with British empire)

Although this is not completely true as there are 761 US Military Bases across the planet and only 46 Countries with no US military presence. Of them, seven countries with 13 New Military Bases were added since 09/11/2001.In 2001 the US had a quarter million troops posted abroad.

Still as an imperial state and the center of neoliberal empire the USA relies more on financial instruments and neoliberal comprador elite inside the country.

I recently learned from https://akarlin.com/2010/04/on-liberasts-and-liberasty/ that the derogatory term for the neoliberal part of the Russian elite is "liberasts" and this term gradually slipping into English language ( http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/liberast ;-)

With the collapse of neoliberal ideology in 2008 the USA centered neoliberal empire experiences first cracks. Brexit and election of Trump widened the cracks in a sense of further legitimizing the ruling neoliberal elite (big middle finger for Hillary was addressed to the elite as whole)

If oil price exceed $100 per barrel there will yet another crack or even repetition of the 2008 Great Recession on a new level (although we may argue that the Great Recession never ended and just entered in Summers terms "permanent stagnation: phase)

Although currently with a bully at the helm the USA empire still going strong in forcing vassals and competitors to reconsider their desire to challenge the USA that situation will not last. Trump currently is trying to neutralize the treat from China by rejecting classic neoliberal globalization mechanism as well as signed treaties like WTO. He might be successful in the short run but in the "long run" that undermines the USA centered neoliberal empire and speed up its demise. .

In the long run the future does not look too bright as crimes committed by the USA during triumphal period of neoliberalism hangs like albatross around the USA neck.

EU now definitely wants to play its own game as Macron recently stated and which Merkel tacitly supports. If EU allies with Russia it will became No.1 force in the world with the USA No. 2. With severe consequences for the USA.

If Russia allied with China the USA Np.1 position will hinge of keeping EU vassals in check and NATO in place. Without them it will became No.2 with fatal consequences for the dollar as world reserve currency and sudden change of the USA financial position due to the level of external debt and requires devaluation of the dollar.

Looks like 75 year after WWII the world started to self-organize a countervailing force trying to tame the USA with some interest expressed by such players as EU, Russia, China, India, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and even Saudi Arabia. As well as ( in the past; and possibly in the future as neoliberal counterrevolutions in both countries probably will end badly) by Brazil and Argentina.

Only Canada, Australia and probably UK can be counted as the reliable parts of the USA empire. That's not much.

[Sep 07, 2019] 14 Strange Facts Exposed As General Flynn's Endgame Approaches

Sep 07, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Here are just some of the twists and turns in the case, which has gone on for more than three years.

  1. Flynn's trip to Russia in 2015, where it was claimed Flynn went without the knowledge or approval of the DIA or anyone in Washington, was proven not to be true .
  2. Flynn was suspected of being compromised by a supposed Russian agent, Cambridge academic Svetlana Lokhova, based on allegations from Western intelligence asset Stefan Halper. This was also proven to be not true.
  3. Flynn's phone calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were framed as being incredibly shady and a potential violation of the Logan Act . This allegation was always preposterous .
  4. Unnamed intelligence officials leaked the details of the Flynn-Kislyak phone calls to The Washington Post.
  5. FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joseph Pientka were dispatched by Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe to interview Flynn at the White House, even though the FBI had already reviewed the transcripts of the calls and cleared Flynn of any crimes .
  6. Both FBI Director James Comey and McCabe testified to Congress that Flynn didn't lie.
  7. Despite what McCabe and Comey both testified to under oath before Congress, the Mueller special counsel's office decided to prosecute Flynn for perjury in November of 2017 .
  8. The very strange post-dated FD-302 form on the FBI's January 2017 interview of Flynn that wasn't filled out until August 2017, almost seven months afterward, is revealed in a court filing by Flynn's defense team .
  9. FBI agent Pientka became the "DOJ's Invisible Man," despite the fact that Congress has repeatedly called for him to testify. Pientka has remained out of sight and out of mind more than a year and a half since his name first surfaced in connection with the Flynn case.
  10. Judge Rudolph Contreras was removed from the Flynn case immediately after accepting Flynn's guilty plea and was replaced by Judge Emmit Sullivan .
  11. Sullivan issued what's known as a Brady order to prosecutors -- which ordered them to immediately turn over any exculpatory evidence to Flynn's defense team. Flynn's team then made a filing alleging the withholding of exculpatory evidence .
  12. Flynn was given a chance to withdraw his guilty plea by Judge Sullivan but refused , and insisted to go forward with sentencing.
  13. Flynn suddenly fired his lawyers for the past two years and hired Sidney Powell to lead his new legal team following special counsel Robert Mueller's disastrous testimony to Congress . And now, the latest startling development:
  14. Flynn filed to have the Mueller prosecution team replaced for having withheld exculpatory evidence , despite Sullivan having directly ordered them to hand any such evidence over months ago.

Now, it's not that far-fetched of an idea that the Mueller special counsel prosecutors would hide exculpatory evidence from the Flynn defense team, since they've just admitted to having done exactly that in another case their office has been prosecuting .

The defense team for Internet Research Agency/Concord, more popularly known as "the Russian troll farm case," hasn't been smooth going for the Mueller prosecutors.

First, the prosecution team got a real tongue-lashing from Judge Dabney L. Friedrich in early July , when it turned out they had no evidence whatsoever to prove their assertion that the Russian troll farms were being run by the Putin government.

Then, in a filing submitted to the court on Aug. 30, the IRA/Concord defense team alerted Judge Friedrich that the prosecutors just got around to handing them key evidence the prosecutors had for the past 18 months. The prosecution gave no explanation whatsoever as to why they hid this key evidence for more than a year.

It's hard to see at this point how the entire IRA/Concord case isn't tossed out.

What would it mean for Flynn's prosecutors to have been caught hiding exculpatory evidence from him and his lawyers, even after the presiding judge explicitly ordered them in February to hand over everything they had?

It would mean that the Flynn case is tossed out, since the prosecution team was caught engaging in gross misconduct.

Now you can see why Flynn refused to withdraw his guilty plea when Judge Sullivan gave him the opportunity to do so in late December 2018.

A withdrawal of the guilty plea or a pardon would let the Mueller prosecution team off the hook.

And they're not getting off the hook.

Flynn hired the best lawyer he possibly could have when it comes to exposing prosecutorial misconduct. Nobody knows the crafty, corrupt, and dishonest tricks federal prosecutors use better than Powell, who actually wrote a compelling book about such matters, entitled " License to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice ."

Everything this Mueller prosecution team did in withholding exculpatory evidence from Flynn's defense team -- and continued to withhold even after Judge Sullivan specifically issued an order about it -- is going to be fully exposed.

Defying a federal judge's Brady order is a one-way ticket to not only getting fired, it's a serious enough offense to warrant disbarment and prosecution.

If it turns out Mueller special counsel prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence -- not only in the IRA/Concord case, but also in the cases against Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, and others -- that will have a huge impact.

If they are willing to withhold exculpatory evidence in one case, why wouldn't they do the same thing in other cases they were prosecuting? Haven't they have already demonstrated they are willing to break the rules? Tags


Tirion , 3 minutes ago link

We have become a third-world country. Even throwing Mueller and his entire prosecutors' team in jail would not be enough to restore confidence in our legal system. But it would be a start.

consistentliving , 2 hours ago link

On or about December 28, 2016, the Russian Ambassador contacted FLYNN.

c. On or about December 29, 2016, FLYNN called a senior official of the Presidential Transition Team ("PTT official"), who was with other senior ·members of the Presidential Transition Team at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian Ambassador about the U.S. Sanctions. On that call, FLYNN and 2 Case 1:17-cr-00232-RC Document 4 Filed 12/01/17 Page 2 of 6 the PTT official discussed the U.S. Sanctions, including the potential impact of those sanctions on the incoming administration's foreign policy goals. The PIT official and FLYNN also discussed that the members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to escalate the situation. d. Immediately after his phone call with the PTT official, FLYNN called the Russian Ambassador and requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner. e. Shortly after his phone call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with the PTT official to report on the substance of his call with the Russian Ambassador, including their discussion of the U.S. Sanctions. f. On or about December 30, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin released a statement indicating that Russia would not take retaliatory measures in response to the U.S. Sanctions at that time. g. On or about December 31, 2016, the Russian Ambassador called FLYNN and informed him that Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to FL YNN's request. h. After his phone call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with senior members of the Presidential Transition Team about FL YNN's conversations with the Russian Ambassador regarding the U.S. Sanctions and Russia's decision not to escalate the situation.

https://www.justice.gov/file/1015126/download

Charlie_Martel , 2 hours ago link

The coup plot between the international intelligence community (which includes our FBI-CIA-etc) and their unregistered foreign agents in the multinational corporate media is slowly being revealed.

Mah_Authoritah , 2 hours ago link

The truth is so precious that it must be spoon fed.

Transmedia001 , 3 hours ago link

Here’s another possibility... elites in the US Gov set on running a soft coup against a duly elected president and his team made up a whole pile of **** and passed it off as truth.

spoonful , 2 hours ago link

Agreed, so long as you put Flynn on the side of the elites

Boris Badenov , 3 hours ago link

The Manafort thing has me totally riled since HRC's "Password" guy and his brother were PARTNERS with manafort, did the same damn things, and were NOT investigated.

Donald Trump is many things to many people, but is not his social personna to be patient. He is being VERY patient to let this unfold, to "give a man enough rope" or political party and its owner, as it may be....

Donna Brazile's book is under-rated: it holds they keys as to who ran the DNC and why after Obie bailed.

TheAnswerIs42 , 3 hours ago link

Our local community rag (Vermont) had an opinion piece last week about "The slide towards Facism", where the author breathlessly stated that she had learned from a MSNBC expose by Rachel Maddow that the administration was firing researchers at NASA and EPA as well as cutting back funding for LGBTQ support groups. Oh the horror. The author conveniently forgot that the same dyke had lied for 2 years about Russia,Russia,Russia but it's still OK to believe any **** that drops out of her mouth.

This is the level of insanity happening around here. Of course it is Bernie's turf.

People who are so stupid and gullible deserve everything they are gonna get.

LEEPERMAX , 4 hours ago link

14 Strange Facts About Mueller's "Michael Flynn Scam"

https://youtu.be/ksb8VsOMqQg

LEEPERMAX , 4 hours ago link

MUELLER and his "Band of Legal Clowns" have played us all for "Absolute Fools" again and again.

THE U.S. IS A CAPTURED OPERATION

Drop-Hammer , 4 hours ago link

Poor Flynn. Rail-roaded by ZOG and Obama and Hillary and Co. I hope beyond hope that the truth is revealed and that he can sue the **** out of the seditionists/(((seditionists))) who put him into this mess such that his great-great-grandchildren will never have to work.

I also blame Trump for throwing Flynn under the bus.

Westcoastliberal , 3 hours ago link

Trump didn't throw Flynn under the bus, I think he would pardon him later, but Trump needs to let this play out. Otherwise the left will bury him.

just the tip , 36 minutes ago link

trump threw flynn under the bus when trump said the reason he let flynn go was flynn lied to pence.

Homer E. Rectus , 4 hours ago link

If they are willing to withhold exculpatory evidence in one case, why wouldn’t they do the same thing in other cases they were prosecuting? Haven’t they have already demonstrated they are willing to break the rules?

Duh! Because it's easy and the media never covers it and AG Barr and FBI director Wray will cover it all up. America no longer operates under rule of law, and now we all know it. Never cooperate with them!

Roger Casement , 4 hours ago link

Mike Flynn stands for us. Help him put handicapped trolls out of work.

Buy lunch for Sidney Powell. o7

https://mikeflynndefensefund.org/

ztack3r , 4 hours ago link

flynn didn't rape children, to buzy trying to fight liberators of iraq and afganistan from invasion... that's his major crime.

I guess, kelly, mattis, mcmaster neither are on the child rape trend. but what can they do? when the entire cia and doj and fbi are full on controlled and run by the pedos? it's like when all the cardinals and the pope are pedos, what a bishop to do...

Why would CIA Rothschild'd up puppet Trump pick only the best William Barr?

Who told Acosta to cut no prosecution deal with Epstein? George Bush? Robert Mukasey? or Bob Mueller?

Trump, Barr, Bush, Mueller all on the same no rule of law national no government pys op , for Epstein & 9/11 clean op team Poppa Bush, Clinton, & Mossad.

Barr: CIA operative

It is a sobering fact that American presidents (many of whom have been corrupt) have gone out of their way to hire fixers to be their attorney generals.

Consider recent history: Loretta Lynch (2015-2017), Eric Holder (2009-2015), Michael Mukasey (2007-2009), Alberto Gonzales (2005-2007), John Ashcroft (2001-2005),Janet Reno (1993-2001), **** Thornburgh (1988-1991), Ed Meese (1985-1988), etc.

Barr, however, is a particularly spectacular and sordid case. As George H.W. Bush’s most notorious insider, and as the AG from 1991 to 1993, Barr wreaked havoc, flaunted the rule of law, and proved himself to be one of the CIA/Deep State’s greatest and most ruthless champions and protectors :

  • Barr was a full-time CIA operative, recruited by Langley out of high school, starting in 1971. Barr’s youth career goal was to head the CIA.
  • CIA operative assigned to the China directorate, where he became close to powerful CIA operative George H.W. Bush, whose accomplishments already included the CIA/Cuba Bay of Pigs, Asia CIA operations (Vietnam War, Golden Triangle narcotics), Nixon foreign policy (Henry Kissinger), and the Watergate operation.
  • When George H.W. Bush became CIA Director in 1976, Barr joined the CIA’s “legal office” and Bush’s inner circle, and worked alongside Bush’s longtime CIA enforcers Theodore “Ted” Shackley, Felix Rodriguez, Thomas Clines, and others, several of whom were likely involved with the Bay of Pigs/John F. Kennedy assassination, and numerous southeast Asian operations, from the Phoenix Program to Golden Triangle narco-trafficking.
  • Barr stonewalled and destroyed the Church Committee investigations into CIA abuses.
  • Barr stonewalled and stopped inquiries in the CIA bombing assassination of Chilean opposition leader Orlando Letelier.
  • Barr joined George H.W. Bush’s legal/intelligence team during Bush’s vice presidency (under President Ronald Reagan) Rose from assistant attorney general to Chief Legal Counsel to attorney general (1991) during the Bush 41 presidency.
  • Barr was a key player in the Iran-Contra operation, if not the most important member of the apparatus, simultaneously managing the operation while also “fixing” the legal end, ensuring that all of the operatives could do their jobs without fear of exposure or arrest.
  • In his attorney general confirmation, Barr vowed to “attack criminal organizations”, drug smugglers and money launderers. It was all hot air: as AG, Barr would preserve, protect, cover up, and nurture the apparatus that he helped create, and use Justice Department power to escape punishment.
  • Barr stonewalled and stopped investigations into all Bush/Clinton and CIA crimes, including BCCI and BNL CIA drug banking, the theft of Inslaw/PROMIS software, and all crimes of state committed by Bush
  • Barr provided legal cover for Bush’s illegal foreign policy and war crimes
  • Barr left Washington, and went through the “rotating door” to the corporate world, where he took on numerous directorships and counsel positions for major companies. In 2007 and again from 2017, Barr was counsel for politically-connected international law firm Kirkland & Ellis . Among its other notable attorneys and alumni are Kenneth Starr, John Bolton, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and numerous Trump administration attorneys. K&E’s clients include sex trafficker/pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital.

A strong case can be made that William Barr was as powerful and important a figure in the Bush apparatus as any other, besides Poppy Bush himself.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/ciabushiran-contra-covert-operative-fixer-william-barr-nominated-attorney-general/5662609

my new username , 4 hours ago link

That's FBI lawfare: either you plead guilty of crimes you did not commit, or we frame your son, as well as bankrupt you.

Roger Casement , 5 hours ago link

Mike Flynn stands for us. Going to buy guns or butter for the cause?

These consiglieres went after his son. They aren't lawyers. They are hitmen.

https://mikeflynndefensefund.org/

ztack3r , 4 hours ago link

there is a war on america, and the DoD and men like flynn are too arrogant, dumb, and proud to admit they have been fucked and conned deeply by men way smarter than them...

we don't need ******* brains, but killers to wage this revolution against the american pedostate.

and that, what they master, they don't want to do.

if they want money, they should have learned to trade and not kill...

[Sep 07, 2019] "Certain key unknown figures in the Federal Reserve may have 'conspired' with key unknown figures at the Bank of New York to create a situation where $240 billion in off balance sheet securities created in 1991 as part of an official covert operation to overthrow the Soviet Union, could be cleared without publicly acknowledging their existence.

Sep 07, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Tunga , 12 minutes ago link

Oh those securities!

""Certain key unknown figures in the Federal Reserve may have 'conspired' with key unknown figures at the Bank of New York to create a situation where $240 billion in off balance sheet securities created in 1991 as part of an official covert operation to overthrow the Soviet Union, could be cleared without publicly acknowledging their existence. These securities, originally managed by Cantor Fitzgerald, were cleared and settled in the aftermath of September 11th

through the BoNY. The $100 billion account balance bubble reported by the Wall Street Journalas being experienced in the BoNY was tip of a three day operation, when these securities were moved from off-balance-sheet to the balance sheet.

Tunga , 12 minutes ago link

https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/02v08n2/0211flempdf.pdf

pparalegal , 3 minutes ago link

Oops. Building 7 and all the records gone in a collapsed vertical pancake. What a shame.

[Sep 02, 2019] Where is Margaret Thatcher now?

Highly recommended!
Sep 02, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

ambrit , , August 31, 2019 at 11:55 am

Thatcher was an English politico. It is not what she said, but what she did that counts. She is probably down in Dante's Inferno, Ring 8, sub-rings 7-10. (Frauds and false councilors.) See, oh wayward sinners: http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/circle8b.html

The Rev Kev , , September 2, 2019 at 12:37 am

Ring 8, sub-rings 7-10? She will probably find Milton Friedman in the basement there.

ambrit , September 2, 2019 at 7:09 am

Ah, you think that Milton should be at the bottom, eh? Then, I hope that he knows how to ice skate. (He was the worst kind of 'class traitor.' [His parents were small store owner/managers.])

Ring 8 of the Inferno is for 'frauds' of all sorts, sub-rings 7-10 are reserved for Thieves, Deceivers, Schismatics, and Falsifiers. Maggie should feel right at home there.

[Aug 31, 2019] Honor and integrity in the [neoliberal] presidency? Since when?

Probably since Bill Clinton with his sexapades, bombing of Yugoslavia and deregulation of financial institutions.
Such posts is yet another sign of the growing level of the de-legitimization of the ruling neoliberal elite in the USA
Notable quotes:
"... Honor and integrity in the presidency? Since when? ..."
Aug 31, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

steverino999 , 45 minutes ago link

On a more important note -

Donald Trump will be remembered as a humorous yet sad 4-year blip in the history of America, where the People regrettably admit that this "entertainment age" was responsible for their lack of judgement in 2016, and they learned that they shouldn't play games with something as important to our country's honor and integrity as the office of the Presidency. Fool me twice, shame on me.....

https://i.imgflip.com/1mey9n.jpg

ohm , 38 minutes ago link

something as important to our country's honor and integrity as the office of the Presidency

Honor and integrity in the presidency? Since when?

[Aug 27, 2019] How to Enlarge NATO The Debate inside the Clinton Administration, 1993 95

The main problem was the the USA elite after the dissolution of the USSR was hell-bent on world dominance. And Clinton was in the vanguard of this trend.
Clinton has pretty destructive, toxic legacy, is not he? He and his administration essentially acted as a short sited and greedy gangster and he sowed the teeth of dragon into US-Russia relations.
Clinton tried to exploit Russian weakness during this period to the fullest extent possible,. This is the policy similar to policy of GB toward Germany after WWI. In short Clinton was a typical imperialist from the very beginning and like all subsequent Presidents valued international treaties and obligation only when they benefited the USA. The stance that illegal bombing of Serbia only confirmed. At this point by Nuremberg standards he and all top official ion his administration and first of all Madeline not so bright Albright became war criminals. The fact they they were not prosecuted is just a historical aberration stemming from the dominant USA position at this time.
Essentially Clinton transformed NATO into aggressive alliance which is an expansion of the USA military.
Notable quotes:
"... As President Bill Clinton repeatedly remarked, the two key questions about enlargement were when and how ..."
Aug 27, 2019 | www.mitpressjournals.org

Newly available sources show how the 1993–95 debate over the best means of expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization unfolded inside the Clinton administration. This evidence comes from documents recently declassified by the Clinton Presidential Library, the Defense Department, and the State Department because of appeals by the author.

As President Bill Clinton repeatedly remarked, the two key questions about enlargement were when and how . The sources make apparent that, during a critical decision making period twenty-five years ago, supporters of a relatively swift conferral of full membership to a narrow range of countries outmaneuvered proponents of a slower, phased conferral of limited membership to a wide range of states.

Pleas from Central and Eastern European leaders, missteps by Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and victory by the pro-expansion Republican Party in the 1994 U.S. congressional election all helped advocates of full-membership enlargement to win.

The documents also reveal the surprising impact of Ukrainian politics on this debate and the complex roles played by both Strobe Talbott, a U.S. ambassador and later deputy secretary of state, and Andrei Kozyrev, the Russian foreign minister.

Finally, the sources suggest ways in which the debate's outcome remains significant for transatlantic and U.S.-Russian relations today.

... ... ...

In other words, the Bush administration performed the first “ratcheting down” of options, a process not without its costs. It raised the question, controversial to this day, of whether the Bush administration promised Moscow that, in exchange for tolerating the extension of NATO across a united Germany, the alliance would not seek further expansion eastward. Opinions on this topic range from absolutely not to absolutely yes.15

... ... ...

Without advance warning, Yeltsin decided to vent his frustrations publicly at the Budapest summit with Clinton in attendance. The Russian president accused the United States, in the interest of NATO expansion, of risking a “‘cold peace’” to follow the Cold War.108 On the flight back from Budapest to Washington, Talbott recalled that the president “was furious at his foreign-policy team for dragging him across the Atlantic to serve as a punching bag for Yeltsin.”

... ... ...

The shift in U.S. thinking unsurprisingly contributed to more tensions with Moscow, as evidenced by Talbott's subsequent negotiations. Kozyrev tried to convince Talbott that a better idea would be to transform NATO into “a collective security organization rather than a vehicle for containment” by amending the North Atlantic Treaty.122 Talbott rejected the idea, saying “no way are we going to entertain the possibility of redefining NATO in any way that compromises its basic mission.”123 Put bluntly, “We're not in the business of having to ‘compensate’ Russia or buy it off. Russia is not doing us a favor by allowing NATO to expand.”124

...Finally, interacting with the other five factors was President Clinton's increasing sympathy to the appeals of CEE leaders, which inclined him toward those aides pushing for full Article 5 expansion, and his personal optimism that Russia would eventually tolerate enlargement.

...In Perry's view, arms control—most notably, START II, which would have eliminated two-thirds of the U.S. and Russian arsenals, but never went into effect—ended up being “‘a casualty of NATO expansion’” and of fighting between the Kremlin and the Duma.139 START III suffered a similar fate, not even progressing to a signing. Looking back in 2015, Perry concluded: “The downsides of early NATO membership for Eastern European nations were even worse than I had feared.”140

.... Viewed from twenty-five years on, with U.S.-Russian confrontation on the rise, democracy crumbling in Hungary and Poland, and U.S. tanks returning to Europe, there is room for doubt. Given that the window of opportunity for changes is now firmly shut, however, NATO must make the best of the status quo; for the foreseeable future, confrontation with Russia is once again the order of the day.

[Aug 26, 2019] What we need to know from the Horowitz report by Byron York

Notable quotes:
"... And what did the spying involve? In such intelligence work, wiretaps are recorded; transcripts are made. The same can be true for person-to-person conversations between FBI informants and Trump campaign figures. In May, Trey Gowdy, the former Republican congressman who read deeply into Trump-Russia materials when he was in the House, strongly implied the FBI had transcripts of informant communications. ..."
"... "If the bureau is going to send an informant in, the informant is going to be wired," Gowdy told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo. "And if the bureau is monitoring telephone calls, there's going to be a transcript of that." ..."
"... "Where are the transcripts, if any exist," Gowdy continued, "between the informants and the telephone calls to George Papadopoulos?" ..."
"... And then the biggest questions: If there was evidence gained from the wiretapping and informing, what was it? Was it valuable? What did it tell the FBI about Russia and the Trump campaign? And did it prove that the Justice Department was right all along to spy on the campaign -- that the spying was, in the words of Attorney General William Barr, "adequately predicated"? ..."
"... Here is why Republicans are skeptical. Special counsel Robert Mueller had access to the results of the FBI's spying, and Mueller could not establish that there was any conspiracy or coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. After a two-year investigation with full law enforcement powers, Mueller never alleged that any American took part in any such conspiracy or coordination. ..."
"... And even if it were entirely declassified, Horowitz will not tell the whole story of spying and the 2016 election. Horowitz is the inspector general of the Justice Department and does not have the authority to investigate outside the department. For example, he cannot probe the actions of the Central Intelligence Agency and its then-director John Brennan during the period in question. ..."
Aug 20, 2019 | www.washingtonexaminer.com

There will be much to learn in Inspector General Michael Horowitz's upcoming report on the Trump-Russia investigation, but most of it will likely boil down to just two questions. One, how much did the Obama Justice Department spy on the Trump campaign? And two, was it justified?

Many Democrats would immediately protest the word "spying." But the public already knows the FBI secured a warrant to wiretap low-level Trump adviser Carter Page a few months after Page left the campaign. The public also knows the FBI used informant Stefan Halper to gather information on other Trump campaign figures. And the public knows the FBI sent an undercover agent who went by the alias "Azra Turk" to London to tease information out of another low-level Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos.

Was that all? Were there more? Horowitz should give definitive answers.

And what did the spying involve? In such intelligence work, wiretaps are recorded; transcripts are made. The same can be true for person-to-person conversations between FBI informants and Trump campaign figures. In May, Trey Gowdy, the former Republican congressman who read deeply into Trump-Russia materials when he was in the House, strongly implied the FBI had transcripts of informant communications.

"If the bureau is going to send an informant in, the informant is going to be wired," Gowdy told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo. "And if the bureau is monitoring telephone calls, there's going to be a transcript of that."

"Where are the transcripts, if any exist," Gowdy continued, "between the informants and the telephone calls to George Papadopoulos?"

The "if any exist" was Gowdy's way of casting his statements as a hypothetical, but there was no doubt he was speaking from the knowledge he gained as a congressional investigator.

And then the biggest questions: If there was evidence gained from the wiretapping and informing, what was it? Was it valuable? What did it tell the FBI about Russia and the Trump campaign? And did it prove that the Justice Department was right all along to spy on the campaign -- that the spying was, in the words of Attorney General William Barr, "adequately predicated"?

Here is why Republicans are skeptical. Special counsel Robert Mueller had access to the results of the FBI's spying, and Mueller could not establish that there was any conspiracy or coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. After a two-year investigation with full law enforcement powers, Mueller never alleged that any American took part in any such conspiracy or coordination.

So, Republicans know the end result of the investigation, but they don't know how it began. Yes, they know the official story of the start of what the FBI called Crossfire Hurricane -- that it began with a foreign intelligence service (Australia) telling U.S. officials that Papadopoulos appeared to have foreknowledge of a Russian plan to release damaging information about Hillary Clinton. But they don't think it's the whole story.

That's where Horowitz comes in.

There's one big potential problem that people on Capitol Hill are talking about, and that is the issue of classified information. Everyone expects a significant amount of Horowitz's report to be classified. How much, no one is quite sure. But the fact is, the report was done to tell the American people what the nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies did during the 2016 election. Issuing a report with page after page blacked out would not be a good way to do that. But no one will know the extent of the classification issue until Horowitz is ready to go public.

And even if it were entirely declassified, Horowitz will not tell the whole story of spying and the 2016 election. Horowitz is the inspector general of the Justice Department and does not have the authority to investigate outside the department. For example, he cannot probe the actions of the Central Intelligence Agency and its then-director John Brennan during the period in question.

That will be the role of another investigator, John Durham, the U.S. attorney appointed by Barr to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. Durham is working with the support of top Republicans on Capitol Hill, like Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, who recently said, "I really am very curious about the role that the CIA played here."

But first, the Horowitz report. It will be an important step in answering the questions of how much spying took place and whether it was justified. It's long past time Americans learned what happened.

[Aug 25, 2019] Supposed talk between Bill Clinton and Netanyahu

Aug 25, 2019 | www.unz.com

Sean O'Farrell , says: August 24, 2019 at 6:56 am GMT

Netanyahu: "Bill, can I have a word with you?"

Clinton: "Sure, Bibi, what's up?"

Netanyahu: "Listen, I've got a bit of bad news. A tape recording has recently surfaced of you and Monica having phone sex. The good news is that one of my most trusted lieutenants has tracked it down. He assures me that he has the original tape and that there are no known copies. No one else knows about the tape but my lieutenant and me. Of course, I ordered him to destroy the tape and to never speak of it again. It will be like it never even happened. All that remains is our friendship."

Clinton: "Thank you, Bibi. Your friendship means the world to me."

Netanyahu: "I know, Bill. I feel the same way about you."

[Aug 19, 2019] Does insanity of Maher reflects insanity of the US neoliberal elite as a whole

Aug 19, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Whoa Molly! , July 28, 2018 at 7:31 am

Maher comes across as literally unhinged. Insane.

As James Howard Kunstler said recently, " I think that the thinking class in the United States has literally lost its mind. Donald Trump's persona is so odious that it's just driven them mad and he's like a giant splinter in the eye of the thinking class ."

I don't get it. Either Maher is part of the thinking class that has lost it's mind, or he's a destructive, cynical (familyblog) who is deliberately inflaming his 'Liberal Goodthinking' audience and gaslighting Wilkerson.

The LIberal Goodthinkers have gone so crazy they are making Trump look good.

Dangerous times.

PS: Thanks for term "Liberal Goodthinkers". Pretty good.

juliania , July 28, 2018 at 10:35 am

It's the thinking class versus the deplorables. And the former is enabling the latter in no uncertain terms. This period of lunacy won't be forgotten come voting time. Whereas, had the dems gracefully accepted defeat and concentrated on real issues that concern us all, they might have had a shot at the midterm merrygoround. Instead, they chose to keep the failed slurs of the last campaign a topic of conversation all the way through, as in fact the term 'transition' on these boards does as well. Transition = transitory.

Something is making Trump a very viable stayer through these turbulent times, and the minefield that these people have turned being President into is a sad commentary on the state of our union. But like the sanctions that are unthinkingly dispersed hither and yon, the blowback can be supercharged, and I can't think of more worthy recipients.

Damson , July 29, 2018 at 10:43 am

The Chattering Class is the UK term.. 'Thinking' is rather too generous for the mind-drool exemplified by Maher and his ilk

NotTimothyGeithner , July 28, 2018 at 9:09 am

Maher was a long time libertarian, and with the rightward shift of Team Blue and medical Marijuana (after all we still need to arrest minorities), Bill became a "liberal" type. He's still the same POS he was in the 90's.

Ur-Blintz , July 28, 2018 at 10:03 am

Bingo! How he ever fooled anyone into thinking he was less than a narcissistic, libertarian. money grubbing sociopath is beyond me. First time I saw him, way back when, he was railing against Social Security and he is perhaps most responsible for making a celebrity out of Arianna Huffington, giving her a nationwide pulpit on his original show when she was repulsively right-wing.

[Aug 18, 2019] The fundamental problem in politics is not the opposition of wickedness, but the restraint of righteousness. Hillary has always loved to kill people is distant lands

Aug 18, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

stevek , 18 minutes ago link

Hillary has always loved to kill people. Its in her (evil) blood.

Creative_Destruct , 22 minutes ago link

"This damn Serbian war is a symbol of all that is wrong with the righteous approach to the world and to problems within this nation."

Story of the last several decades (fill in the blank with your pick of the name of a US war or a SJW cause):

This damn _________ war is a symbol of all that is wrong with the righteous approach to the world and to problems within this nation.

Kissinger had many flaws, but he hit the nail on the head when he said:

"The fundamental problem in politics is not the opposition of wickedness, but the restraint of righteousness"

TheDayAfter , 1 hour ago link

We all know the Hypocrisy of that War. Clinton had to distract the masses from MonicaGate and Hillary had to prove to the MIC that she could be beneficial to them.

Result : Those Kosovo Albanians had a state handed to them, and instead of building it(with uncle Sam's and EU help) as prosperous country, they used their weapons and "expertise" in becoming the low level gangsters of Europe. Every Europol analysis points to the direction of Kosovo Albanians as the criminal thugs in prostitution and drug trade and protection rackets. The largest percentage of a single ethnic group in European jails is that of Albanians.

TeaClipper , 1 hour ago link

The most unjust and illegal of wars in the late 20c.

There was only one reason to bomb white Christian brothers in Serbia thereby aiding the Muslim of Kosovo and Albania, and that was Russia, which by that stage had got its act together and dealt with the traitorous oligarchs who had sold their country out to the west.

Hillary and her cronies no doubt lost a lot of money when the Russians shut their rat lines down.

I hope I live long enough to see those fuckers swing, and Tony Blair, Alistair Campnell and Peter Mandelson as well.

PKKA , 3 hours ago link

Again, your Muslims are to blame for everything. Muslims are all different. And it is necessary to separate the faithful Muslims from the bandits who are only covered by Muslim slogans.
NATO and your godless government are to blame!

An Afghan Freedom Fighter in Donbass - ENG SUBTITLE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc2KeSkl5H0

Joe A , 3 hours ago link

It happened at the time of the Lewinsky affair and the possible impeachment of Clinton. They needed a distraction.

Milosevic btw. agreed to all conditions imposed on the FR of Yugoslavia except for one condition that nobody would accept: the full and unhindered access to the territory of FRY by NATO troops. That effectively meant an occupation. Nobody would agree to that. NATO and Albright deliberately came up with that condition for they knew it was unacceptable. Even Kissinger said that condition was over the top. NATO and Albright wanted that war. Serbia btw. saved Albright twice when she was still a little Slovakian Jewish girl whose family found refuge twice in Serbia. Once they escaped the Nazis that way and the second time the communists.

NATO thought they would need 48 hours but they needed 78 days and Milosevic only gave in after NATO switched from hitting military targets to civilian targets: Hospitals, commuter trains, civilian industry, an open market, random houses in random villages. After Milosevic pulled out his troops out of Kosovo, the KLA started killing Serbs and moderate Albanians, not to mention engage in organ trafficking (...). As the article said, well over 200k Serbs, moderate Albanians, Roma and other minorities were ethnically cleansed from Kosovo.

The US also used cluster bombs and DU weapons. Of the 4000 Italian KFOR troops that went into Kosovo after the bombing, 700 are dead from cancer and leukemia with several hundreds more seriously ill. The American KFOR troops wore hazmat suits. The Italians did not have them and were not warned. Today, many people in southern Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo itself are sick and dying.

HoyeruNew , 3 hours ago link

yes just like USA tried to help Vietnam against communists... by killing 2 million Vietnamese. and tried to help Korea by killing 20 % of the population. and by helping Iraq get rid of "bad" Saddam Hussein by killing 2 million Iraqies.

Oh, the Americans are oh so helpfiul!

ItsDanger , 2 hours ago link

Not disagreeing with you but lets remember that communists were killing a lot of people in other areas not long before those wars in SE Asia. May have been a wash in the end.

seryanhoj , 1 hour ago link

13 million gallons of agent orange dropped on Vietnamese forests was our way of saying we love you. The genetic deformities are still widespread.

So glad they kicked the US out of there.

Magnum , 3 hours ago link

That conflict led to hundreds of thousands of BOSNIANS moving to USA. Gotta keep the refugees flowing no matter what....

JoeBattista , 3 hours ago link

Bring back the draft. On the whole Americans have no idea what the carnage of combat produces. Combat vets do. And the ones that aren't natural psychopaths never want to experience it again. This volunteer army we have is over loaded with a them. A military draft will actually bring some sort civilian control.

seryanhoj , 1 hour ago link

They killed the draft so they would no longer be embarrassed by student protests and having to mow them down.

It worked. Today's snowflakes don't care about slaughter , only mini verbal aggressions against perverts.

seryanhoj , 1 hour ago link

Such ********. Do the millions we kill have any human rights? It's been going on for 4000 years. Ruthless pursuit of empire and fabricating phony justifications.

He–Mene Mox Mox , 3 hours ago link

Hillary seems to enjoy killing people. If it wasn't Gaddaffi, it was all the people on her body bag count, and now it's known she encouraged killing people in Serbia. Someone needs to take that old cow out into the center of the town and burn her at the stake.

Red Corvair , 4 hours ago link

Partially true, otherwise as usually excellent Dr. Paul, ... The Pandora's box situation was opened years before Clinton's bombing of Serbia, which was part of a larger scheme started nearly a decade before.

That was when the US armed the religious extremists in Bosnia, in order to bring war, "civil war" and chaos, and disintegration, the way they more recently tried to do with Syria, or "succeeded" in doing in Libya, bringing chaos and open-air slave markets in a country that was one of the most developed on the African continent under Gaddafi (a truth that was so easily erased by propaganda).

And the whole neocon scheme started two decades before, with the Zbigniew Brzezinski doctrine, when the US started arming the mujahedin in Afghanistan, provoking the trap for the Soviet invasion of 1979, which was the real opening of US neocon's Pandora's box we are regrettably so familiar with by now. We've all fallen in that old neocon/military-industrial-congressional-complex trap by now. And there seems to be no end in sight to those eternal wars "for civilization" (the old colonial trope dressed under new fatigues). Unless serious societal and political changes take place in the US to put an end to the US "imperial" death drive.

[Aug 17, 2019] America s Benevolent Bombing of Serbia by James Bovard

By all measures Clinton is a war criminal... Hilary is a female sociopath or worse.
Notable quotes:
"... Hillary Clinton revealed to an interviewer in the summer of 1999, "I urged him to bomb. You cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major holocaust of our time. What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life?" ..."
"... The Kosovo Liberation Army's savage nature was well known before the Clinton administration formally christened them "freedom fighters" in 1999. ..."
"... Sen. Joe Lieberman whooped that the United States and the KLA "stand for the same values and principles. Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values." ..."
"... Clinton administration officials justified killing civilians because, it alleged the Serbs were committing genocide in Kosovo. After the bombing ended, no evidence of genocide was found, but Clinton and Britain's Tony Blair continued boasting as if their war had stopped a new Hitler in his tracks. ..."
Aug 16, 2019 | www.fff.org

Twenty years ago, President Bill Clinton commenced bombing Serbia in the name of human rights, justice, and ethnic tolerance. Approximately 1,500 Serb civilians were killed by NATO bombing in one of the biggest sham morality plays of the modern era. As British professor Philip Hammond recently noted, the 78-day bombing campaign "was not a purely military operation: NATO also destroyed what it called 'dual-use' targets, such as factories, city bridges, and even the main television building in downtown Belgrade, in an attempt to terrorise the country into surrender."

Clinton's unprovoked attack on Serbia, intended to help ethnic Albanians seize control of Kosovo, set a precedent for "humanitarian" warring that was invoked by supporters of George W. Bush's unprovoked attack on Iraq, Barack Oba-ma's bombing of Libya, and Donald Trump's bombing of Syria.

Clinton remains a hero in Kosovo, and there is an 11-foot statue of him standing in the capitol, Pristina, on Bill Clinton Boulevard. A commentator in the United Kingdom's Guardian newspaper noted that the statue showed Clinton "with a left hand raised, a typical gesture of a leader greeting the masses. In his right hand he is holding documents engraved with the date when NATO started the bombardment of Serbia, 24 March 1999." It would have been a more accurate representation if Clinton was shown standing on the corpses of the women, children, and others killed in the U.S. bombing campaign.

Bombing Serbia was a family affair in the Clinton White House. Hillary Clinton revealed to an interviewer in the summer of 1999, "I urged him to bomb. You cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major holocaust of our time. What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life?" A biography of Hillary Clinton, written by Gail Sheehy and published in late 1999, stated that Mrs. Clinton had refused to talk to the president for eight months after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. She resumed talking to her husband only when she phoned him and urged him in the strongest terms to begin bombing Serbia; the president began bombing within 24 hours. Alexander Cockburn observed in the Los Angeles Times,

It's scarcely surprising that Hillary would have urged President Clinton to drop cluster bombs on the Serbs to defend "our way of life." The first lady is a social engineer. She believes in therapeutic policing and the duty of the state to impose such policing. War is more social engineering, "fixitry" via high explosive, social therapy via cruise missile . As a tough therapeutic cop, she does not shy away from the most abrupt expression of the therapy: the death penalty.

I followed the war closely from the start, but selling articles to editors bashing the bombing was as easy as pitching paeans to Scientology. Instead of breaking into newsprint, my venting occurred instead in my journal:

  • April 7, 1999: Much of the media and most of the American public are evaluating Clinton's Serbian policy based on the pictures of the bomb damage -- rather than by asking whether there is any coherent purpose or justification for bombing. The ultimate triumph of photo opportunities . What a travesty and national disgrace for this country.
  • April 17: My bottom line on the Kosovo conflict: I hate holy wars. And this is a holy war for American good deeds -- or for America's saintly self-image? Sen. John McCain said the war is necessary to "uphold American values." Make me barf! Just another Hitler-of-the-month attack.
  • May 13: This damn Serbian war is a symbol of all that is wrong with the righteous approach to the world and to problems within this nation.

The KLA

The Kosovo Liberation Army's savage nature was well known before the Clinton administration formally christened them "freedom fighters" in 1999. The previous year, the State Department condemned "terrorist action by the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army." The KLA was heavily involved in drug trafficking and had close to ties to Osama bin Laden. Arming the KLA helped Clinton portray himself as a crusader against injustice and shift public attention after his impeachment trial. Clinton was aided by many congressmen eager to portray U.S. bombing as an engine of righteousness. Sen. Joe Lieberman whooped that the United States and the KLA "stand for the same values and principles. Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values."

In early June 1999, the Washington Post reported that "some presidential aides and friends are describing [bombing] Kosovo in Churchillian tones, as Clinton's 'finest hour.'" Clinton administration officials justified killing civilians because, it alleged the Serbs were committing genocide in Kosovo. After the bombing ended, no evidence of genocide was found, but Clinton and Britain's Tony Blair continued boasting as if their war had stopped a new Hitler in his tracks.

In a speech to American troops in a Thanksgiving 1999 visit, Clinton declared that the Kosovar children "love the United States because we gave them their freedom back." Perhaps Clinton saw freedom as nothing more than being tyrannized by people of the same ethnicity. As the Serbs were driven out of Kosovo, Kosovar Albanians became increasingly oppressed by the KLA, which ignored its commitment to disarm. The Los Angeles Times reported on November 20, 1999,

As a postwar power struggle heats up in Kosovo Albanian politics, extremists are trying to silence moderate leaders with a terror campaign of kidnappings, beatings, bombings, and at least one killing. The intensified attacks against members of the moderate Democratic League of Kosovo, or LDK, have raised concerns that radical ethnic Albanians are turning against their own out of fear of losing power in a democratic Kosovo.

American and NATO forces stood by as the KLA resumed its ethnic cleansing, slaughtering Serbian civilians, bombing Serbian churches, and oppressing non-Muslims. Almost a quarter million Serbs, Gypsies, Jews, and other minorities fled Kosovo after Clinton promised to protect them. In March 2000 renewed fighting broke out when the KLA launched attacks into Serbia, trying to seize territory that it claimed historically belonged to ethnic Albanians. UN Human Rights Envoy Jiri Dienstbier reported that "the [NATO] bombing hasn't solved any problems. It only multiplied the existing problems and created new ones. The Yugoslav economy was destroyed. Kosovo is destroyed. There are hundreds of thousands of people unemployed now."

U.S. complicity in atrocities

Prior to the NATO bombing, American citizens had no responsibility for atrocities committed by either Serbs or ethnic Albanians. However, after American planes bombed much of Serbia into rubble to drive the Serbian military out of Kosovo, Clinton effectively made the United States responsible for the safety of the remaining Serbs in Kosovo. That was equivalent to forcibly disarming a group of people, and then standing by, whistling and looking at the ground, while they are slaughtered. Since the United States promised to bring peace to Kosovo, Clinton bears some responsibility for every burnt church, every murdered Serbian grandmother, every new refugee column streaming north out of Kosovo. Despite those problems, Clinton bragged at a December 8, 1999, press conference that he was "very, very proud" of what the United States had done in Kosovo.

I had a chapter on the Serbian bombing campaign titled "Moralizing with Cluster Bombs" in Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton–Gore Years (St. Martin's Press, 2000), which sufficed to spur at least one or two reviewers to attack the book. Norman Provizer, the director of the Golda Meir Center for Political Leadership, scoffed in the Denver Rocky Mountain News, "Bovard chastises Clinton for an illegal, undeclared war in Kosovo without ever bothering to mention that, during the entire run of American history, there have been but four official declarations of war by Congress."

As the chaotic situation in post-war Kosovo became stark, it was easier to work in jibes against the debacle. In an October 2002 USA Today article ("Moral High Ground Not Won on Battlefield") bashing the Bush administration's push for war against Iraq, I pointed out, "A desire to spread freedom does not automatically confer a license to kill . Operation Allied Force in 1999 bombed Belgrade, Yugoslavia, into submission purportedly to liberate Kosovo. Though Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic raised the white flag, ethnic cleansing continued -- with the minority Serbs being slaughtered and their churches burned to the ground in the same way the Serbs previously oppressed the ethnic Albanians."

In a 2011 review for The American Conservative, I scoffed, "After NATO planes killed hundreds if not thousands of Serb and ethnic Albanian civilians, Bill Clinton could pirouette as a savior. Once the bombing ended, many of the Serbs remaining in Kosovo were slaughtered and their churches burned to the ground. NATO's 'peace' produced a quarter million Serbian, Jewish, and Gypsy refugees."

In 2014, a European Union task force confirmed that the ruthless cabal that Clinton empowered by bombing Serbia committed atrocities that included murdering persons to extract and sell their kidneys, livers, and other body parts. Clint Williamson, the chief prosecutor of a special European Union task force, declared in 2014 that senior members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had engaged in "unlawful killings, abductions, enforced disappearances, illegal detentions in camps in Kosovo and Albania, sexual violence, forced displacements of individuals from their homes and communities, and desecration and destruction of churches and other religious sites."

The New York Times reported that the trials of Kosovo body snatchers may be stymied by cover-ups and stonewalling: "Past investigations of reports of organ trafficking in Kosovo have been undermined by witnesses' fears of testifying in a small country where clan ties run deep and former members of the KLA are still feted as heroes. Former leaders of the KLA occupy high posts in the government." American politicians almost entirely ignored the scandal. Vice President Joe Biden hailed former KLA leader and Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci in 2010 as "the George Washington of Kosovo." A few months later, a Council of Europe investigative report tagged Thaci as an accomplice to the body-trafficking operation.

Clinton's war on Serbia opened a Pandora's box from which the world still suffers. Because politicians and pundits portrayed that war as a moral triumph, it was easier for subsequent presidents to portray U.S. bombing as the self-evident triumph of good over evil. Honest assessments of wrongful killings remain few and far between in media coverage.

This article was originally published in the July 2019 edition of Future of Freedom .

Category: Foreign Policy & War

James Bovard is a policy adviser to The Future of Freedom Foundation. He is a USA Today columnist and has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, New Republic, Reader's Digest, Playboy, American Spectator, Investors Business Daily, and many other publications. He is the author of Freedom Frauds: Hard Lessons in American Liberty (2017, published by FFF); Public Policy Hooligan (2012); Attention Deficit Democracy (2006); The Bush Betrayal (2004); Terrorism and Tyranny (2003); Feeling Your Pain (2000); Freedom in Chains (1999); Shakedown (1995); Lost Rights (1994); The Fair Trade Fraud (1991); and The Farm Fiasco (1989). He was the 1995 co-recipient of the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought, and the recipient of the 1996 Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. His book Lost Rights received the Mencken Award as Book of the Year from the Free Press Association. His Terrorism and Tyranny won Laissez Faire Book's Lysander Spooner award for the Best Book on Liberty in 2003. Read his blog . Send him email .

[Aug 16, 2019] Nice guy(Bill Clinton) uhhh got a lot of problems coming up, in my opinion, with the famous island with Jeffrey Epstein lot of problems

Aug 16, 2019 | www.unz.com

Assad al-islam , says: August 13, 2019 at 8:51 pm GMT

@Junior

"Nice guy(Bill Clinton) uhhh got a lot of problems coming up, in my opinion, with the famous island with Jeffrey Epstein lot of problems."
-Donald Trump at 2015 CPAC conference

https://youtu.be/kEnkJNEMLH0

How does the Candidate Trump knew in 2015 that, "Nice guy(Bill Clinton) uhhh got a lot of problems coming up, in my opinion, with the famous island with Jeffrey Epstein lot of problems."?

What does the above tell us about Candidate Trump and his foreknowledge to things to come?

[Aug 16, 2019] The Perverted Face of Elite America by Matt Purple

Notable quotes:
"... Bill Clinton flew ..."
"... dozens of times ..."
"... on the Lolita Express; was it really beyond him to order a hit? ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... Are the Elites the arch villains from the comic books, probably not, but then again many of them operate corporations that cause suffering to economically deprived populations all over the world. ..."
"... Why is this surprising? Aristocrats have always behaved this way. ..."
"... The sexual abuse of children and kids in their early teens is a very democratic crime. While physical abuse and neglect are linked to lower-income parents, sexual abuse occurs in all strata of society. It is not confined to the elites or to money changers. Nor to Jews, if that is what you are implying. ..."
"... Unconcerned about negative consequences, these people have become increasingly brazen. They certainly know that the laws that apply to you and me do not apply to them. ..."
"... In the words of George Carlin, "it's a big club, and you ain't in it." I stopped reading after the first two para's on this, tone is exactly the same as the sneering disdain from the empire's various MSM propaganda arms aimed at those "not in the club." ..."
"... 1) Either our intelligence agencies knew what was going on with Epstein and did nothing to stop him. Or... ..."
"... 2) They had no clue .. ..."
"... Occam's Razor says Possibility No. 1 is more likely to be the truth. But what would such a truth tell us? ..."
"... "What I am saying is that Epstein's direct testimony – AND ONLY EPSTEIN'S DIRECT TESTIMONY – had the potential to create a Common Knowledge moment that could bring down – not just specific sociopathic oligarchs like Mob Boss Donald or Mob Boss Bill or Mob Boss Andrew if they were the specific targets of that testimony – but the entire Mob system of sociopathic oligarchy. ..."
"... One strongly suspects that Ghislaine Maxwell knows just as much as Epstein did. Her participation was just as important to the operation of this "trafficking" ring. She was the lead recruiter, handled logistics, "grooming" and also was Epstein's "in" to many of his VIP associates (who were really clients). If witness accounts are accurate, she was also a participant in a good number of these depraved, criminal acts. ..."
"... The fact she has not been charged is quite the tell about our system of "justice." ..."
"... This is a dangerous slope. People once bowed to the elites because there was a principle of enforcement called nobless oblige. Society felt that elites had to be held to a higher standard because they carried greater responsibilities and burdens for society and the welfare of the national good. ..."
"... Since the 1960s nobless oblige has been downgraded to sound bites and photo ops for publicity and marketing. The elites have all but abandoned their responsibilities to support religion, to support education (except to indocrinate), to support tradition and society and the national good. The elites have become inward looking, inbred and narcissistic with little to no outward focus except in a marxist totalitarian vein of thought which serves their interest, indulges their hungers, preserves their wealth and power. ..."
"... My point was that as popolo minuti transform into popolo grossi in terms of access to power, they tend to start to transform into them in terms of moral character as well. (Inequality of) power corrupts, and absolute (inequality of) power corrupts absolutely. Thus, it seems that the over-representation of psychopaths in positions of power is because the psychopathy is acquired (and plenty of studies show drastic declines in empathy with even a little priming for power), rather than because it is easier for psychopaths to rise to the top. The worst of the popolo grossi tend to be hereditary. ..."
"... I think we're a lot closer to 1789 France than we want to believe. Read some Chris Hedges to see how the socialists see the current situation. Here's an example. https://www.commondreams.or... ..."
"... "given that all available evidence points to gross negligence on the part of the jail." How is gross negligence different from deliberate negligence? ..."
Aug 16, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

In our tense populist moment, Jeffrey Epstein's crimes land like a grenade. August 15, 2019

Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in Cambridge, MA on 9/8/04. (Photo by Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images) Hands up, those of you who made a Fort Marcy Park joke last Saturday. Anyone? Surely there were a few. Fort Marcy Park was the Washington, D.C. woodland where White House attorney Vince Foster was found dead in 1993, and while his demise was repeatedly ruled a suicide, certain conservatives spent years afterwards hallucinating that the Clintons had him killed. Now, a quarter century later, both right and left are back in conspiracy mode. Mere hours after pedo-to-the-stars Jeffrey Epstein was reported to have killed himself, the hash tag #ClintonBodyCount began circulating on Twitter, followed closely by #TrumpBodyCount. Both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump had been associates of Epstein's; both, the thinking went, might have been desperate for him not to take the stand.

It is wrong, of course, to publicly speculate that Epstein was whacked, given that all available evidence points to gross negligence on the part of the jail. But can you really blame people? Twenty-five years ago, if you'd said that a roll call of America's elites, everyone from a former president to the most famous lawyer in the country, would be implicated in a sex trafficking ring masterminded by an enigmatic Wall Street financier who was also a member of the Trilateral Commission , you would have been laughed into the darkest corner of the local subway platform (next to the guy holding the "Vatican Hides Pedophiles" sign, presumably). Today, you'd be reading AP copy. Validate an improbable conspiracy theory, and you grant license to all the related improbable conspiracy theories: Bill Clinton flew dozens of times on the Lolita Express; was it really beyond him to order a hit?

And if we know one thing about the Epstein story, it's that everything about it is utterly improbable. Epstein stands credibly accused of assembling a veritable underage harem . One of his victims, Virginia Guiffre, has already implicated Prince Andrew , the third-born of Queen Elizabeth II, and a picture has since emerged showing the royal with his arm around the then-teenager's waist. Guiffre says she was also ordered to have sex with , among others, a "foreign president," a "well-known prime minister," and a "large hotel chain owner." Such an open secret was all this perversion that the current president of the United States made cheeky reference to it back in 2002. So invincible did Epstein think himself that he discussed underage sex openly, telling a New York Times reporter that laws against pedophilia were a "cultural aberration."

That Epstein looked to other cultures to rationalize his behavior is nothing new -- Oscar Wilde wrapped his similar predilections in lofty talk about the Greek ideal. What is different is that rather than being hunted and exposed by the powerful, as Wilde was, Epstein was protected by them for decades. Even after he was convicted of soliciting an underage prostitute in 2008, he was sentenced to only 18 months in prison, held in a private wing of the Palm Beach County stockade, and let out on generous "work release."

Study the Epstein case long enough and you end up at Alex Jones's favorite conclusion: they're all sons of bitches. Everyone who was anyone seemed to be in on this, or at least acting at the behest of someone who was. The essence of the conspiratorial mindset is that powerful shadowy forces are, first, capable of and engaged in the most dastardly skullduggery imaginable, and, second, in cabal-like cooperation with each other across all levels of power. The Epstein case seems to affirm both planks. It makes our elites seem like aliens, of a different culture, a different moral code, a different species -- how else could they have let slide what none of us ever would? Mary Colum's remark to Ernest Hemingway, "The only difference between the rich and other people is that the rich have more money," has rarely rang less true.

There's been for some time now a sense of drift between most Americans and their elites, driven by factors like income inequality, geographic enclaving, and cultural differences. We are living in a populist moment, to be sure, an era when the usual purveyors of class warfare sound more apt than they otherwise would. In such a fraught environment, the Epstein revelation lands like a grenade. Not only are America's gentry hitching rides on the Acela while mumbling about deplorables -- so the feeling goes -- they're also running cover for a Caligula who's preying on little Susie down the street. Suddenly the populist divide doesn't just run between classes or races or regular toast versus avocado, but between ethical extremes, good and literal evil.

This is, of course, what most populists profess: the people as a group are wholesome, the elites as a group are venal, and the former has to be vaulted over the latter in order for society to be made whole again. Yet Epstein's crimes are so wicked as to potentially set this moral chasm ablaze like never before. That's why, though Trump may have associated with Epstein, he's unlikely to be damaged by him: everything that's happened only confirms what he's been saying for years. In fact, you might view the Epstein fracas as a dialectic between two of his former associates, Trump's throw-them-out populism versus Clinton's benevolent stewardship of society by the smart set. And Trump won out.

Just as populisms aren't driven entirely by economic causes, so too are revolutions often about more than bread. Consider the Russian Revolution, sparked at least in small part by the people's perception of Rasputin as a sexual deviant. Consider, too, the French Revolution's rage against the profligate "Madame Déficit" Marie Antoinette. In such cases, the moral tends to get intertwined with the economic; license is seen as enabling decadence while the people pray and starve. This can be a blind spot in traditional conservative thinking. We rightly detest (most) revolutions and the tremors they cause, but we sometimes fail to notice that the Jacobins have good reason to be angry and that the ruling classes they overthrow really are that loathsome.

America is nowhere near 1789 France, or armed revolution in general. But we are anxious, restive, hungry for justice. A republic likes ours depends on the harmonious coexistence of its people and its elites, a matter that our Founders spent a good deal of time worrying about. Now we have a hideous face f0r elite corruption, one that's enabled fever in the national mind and dehumanized those around him. For those of us who prize stability and liberty in a polity, who think populism is always best in modest doses, the weeks ahead may be reason for worry.

Because it seems there's only more to come. On Wednesday, another victim came forward , alleging that Epstein raped her when she was 14 after she turned down sex with him. That this carnal omega, this pathetic loser, this finger-sniffing pervert from every teen comedy lurking outside the pretty girl's home longing for a piece of discarded lingerie was somehow elevated into a Teflon-coated Wall Street sun god is beyond comprehension. My friend Michael Davis calls Epstein and company the Hellfire Club , but just how much will they torch on their way down?

Matt Purple is the managing editor of .


Amy Ehlers a day ago • edited

When I started to see what was going on in this country, which was my journey, I was amazed to find out that there is sex trafficking 8 blocks from the White House and I learned of this in 2011. Lisa Ling did a great documentary on it. "Night time traffic greater than the day time." Pimps attempting to recruit girls walking home from school. If you pay attention it is also a journey of the food chain of Corporate America that supports this.
This is a Money Changer issue, that is about the closing of eyes from both parties. and please don't tell me this is not so. I know better than that.
Krazy Uncle a day ago
To be absolutely, clear there was speculation that Epstein was going to be assassinated weeks before it happened. For the most part citizens aren't so much surprised, as disappointed that Justice is once again foiled.

Are the Elites the arch villains from the comic books, probably not, but then again many of them operate corporations that cause suffering to economically deprived populations all over the world.

When the World's 26 richest people own as much as poorest 50%, just how close do they seem to achieve a god like status when looking up from the bottom? Maybe that's one reason that people are so angry when it seems that the most vulnerable among us, our children, are the victims of a limited number of the Elites and their twisted and horrific appetites.

I personally doubt much will come of the Epstein affair it will most likely be just one more myth added to the tally of injustice, and the people will have to bitterly swallow it whole. It will probably take many more cases like this being exposed before the people actually have their fill, and decide to do something about it. In the meantime, prepare to see more of the same by the laughing and mocking Elites

Krazy Uncle Bill In Montgomey 15 hours ago
In this day and age, I doubt a reporter will touch this story, and if they did, the real story would never make it into the Main Stream Media. And, most likely the reporter would be permanently black balled, and never work in Journalism again. It's happened many times before, because it doesn't fit within the approved propaganda message.

Give the story a couple decades or more, and it may come out, but otherwise it will be handled as a whack-job Conspiracy Theory.

The Fourth Estate is the only business that is protected by the Constitution, and yet it has been neutered, and those in the Press, who were supposed to be the Watchdogs for the people, have become the Lapdogs of the Elites.

What passes as News today is formulaic programming, passed on from the Propagandist to the Media, both nationally and locally.

Have you ever seen Conan O'Brian's local news videos?
Newscasters Agree: Rising Gas Prices Edition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAkxR9T01pw
There is one reporter, Julie K. Brown, of the Miami
Herald that actually brought to light the Epstein story again.
Here's the Thing: How Julie Brown broke the Jeffrey Epstein story
https://www.wrvo.org/post/heres-thing-how-julie-brown-broke-jeffrey-epstein-story

So, there is at least one reporter that has the guts to do investigative journalism hope her life insurance policy is up to date.

p.s. I didn't listen to the broadcast in the second link I just posted it in case others are interested. I've read the story elsewhere.

polistra24 a day ago
Why is this surprising? Aristocrats have always behaved this way.
minsredmash a day ago
Two Republican state senators and two New York City Policemen died violently within 72 hours ....

1. On June 4, former Arkansas Senator Linda Collins-Smith, 57, was found dead outside her home, her body unrecognizable on discovery. Police are now investigating her death as a homicide. On June 5, the county prosecutor announced that the circuit judge sealed the documents and statements obtained by police.
2. On June 5, Deputy Chief Steven Silks, 62, weeks away from retirement, was found in an unmarked police car with a gunshot wound to the head. News reports reported indicate it seemed self-inflicted.
3. On June 5, former Oklahoma Sen. Jonathan Nichols, 53, was found shot dead in his home. Police have not announced whether they are investigating a suicide or homicide..
4. On June 6, Detective Joseph Calabrese, 58, was found near his police car on a Brooklyn, NY beach, dead of a gunshot wound in what one report called an apparent suicide.
RIP.
Many other Americans died violently this past week. Why link these four together?

The answer comes down to a dark suspicion and a few hard facts which suggest that one or more of these four deaths might have had something to do with these individuals' work against pedophiles and human trafficking, or the official corruption so often surrounding both.

Source .

Now Jeffrey Epstein...

Jessica Ramer Amy Ehlers a day ago
The sexual abuse of children and kids in their early teens is a very democratic crime. While physical abuse and neglect are linked to lower-income parents, sexual abuse occurs in all strata of society. It is not confined to the elites or to money changers. Nor to Jews, if that is what you are implying.

Just about everyone in America has a family member who was sexually abused by someone who was usually not elite. Therefore, I cannot get worked up about class issues because of Jeffrey Epstein.

What I can get worked up about are the way elites start wars for poor people to die in and the way poor people get cruel sentences while the elite either walk or get the Epstein treatment--private wing, generous work release.

mrscracker Jessica Ramer 16 hours ago
I agree. Young girls are trafficked in more circles than the elite. I don't understand the connection to any particular social class. But better connected people do have better lawyers and can get away with more. Until like Mr. Epstein , they don't.
Bill In Montgomey a day ago • edited
The true character of these people is starting to be revealed. This (lack of) character is not only displayed when these men travel to Pedo Island, it's on display everywhere they go, in everything they do. Every organization they lead, or have anything to do with, is likely rotten to the core.

Unconcerned about negative consequences, these people have become increasingly brazen. They certainly know that the laws that apply to you and me do not apply to them.

If the system is so corrupt to have protected Epstein for decades, who else is being protected? Who else is getting away with figurative rape in every department of government, or house of finance?

The sooner the public recognizes the "true face" of our elites and rulers the better. Left to their own devices, these people - who think they have class but in reality are the worst kind of trash - can bring down a nation.

Krazy Uncle Bill In Montgomey a day ago
who else is being protected?

Good point... who else indeed... and how many more children are suffering?

prodigalson a day ago
Literally no one I know thought this guy would make it to trial alive with the exception of me, as I still had some hope in the system, and I was proven wrong. I've lost whatever remaining faith I had in the system.

In the words of George Carlin, "it's a big club, and you ain't in it." I stopped reading after the first two para's on this, tone is exactly the same as the sneering disdain from the empire's various MSM propaganda arms aimed at those "not in the club."

Sid Finster a day ago
There are two possibilities here:

1) Either our intelligence agencies knew what was going on with Epstein and did nothing to stop him. Or...

2) They had no clue ... which would mean our much vaunted intelligence community knew nothing about the travel habits of the "ruling class" of the world, about Jeff Epstein's real activities, had received no tips, had no insiders, and were incapable of "putting two and two together," etc. In short, Big Brother - with all its resources and intelligence and sources - with capabilities that put the Gestapo or the KGB to shame - had no idea.

Occam's Razor says Possibility No. 1 is more likely to be the truth. But what would such a truth tell us?

Mccormick47 Sid Finster a day ago
The third possibility is that BigBrother was in on it and didn't object to sacrificing teenage girls to get compromising information on people they wanted tp blackmail.
Sid Finster a day ago
"What I am saying is that Epstein's direct testimony – AND ONLY EPSTEIN'S DIRECT TESTIMONY – had the potential to create a Common Knowledge moment that could bring down – not just specific sociopathic oligarchs like Mob Boss Donald or Mob Boss Bill or Mob Boss Andrew if they were the specific targets of that testimony – but the entire Mob system of sociopathic oligarchy.

Jeffrey Epstein was the Missionary to bring down the monsters behind the monster, to bring down the SYSTEM of monsters. Jeffrey Epstein's books and records are not. The individual voices of Jeffrey Epstein's victims are not.

And that's what makes me angriest of all.

That while the individual victims of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes will maybe (maybe!) get some smattering of "justice" and recompense from the show trial of a monster's estate, there will be no Justice served against the monsters behind the monster, that the Mob system of sociopathic oligarchy that CREATED this Jeffrey Epstein and the next Jeffrey Epstein and the next and the next will continue unabated. Untouched. Golden."

https://www.epsilontheory.c...

Bill In Montgomey Sid Finster a day ago
One strongly suspects that Ghislaine Maxwell knows just as much as Epstein did. Her participation was just as important to the operation of this "trafficking" ring. She was the lead recruiter, handled logistics, "grooming" and also was Epstein's "in" to many of his VIP associates (who were really clients). If witness accounts are accurate, she was also a participant in a good number of these depraved, criminal acts.

The fact she has not been charged is quite the tell about our system of "justice."

Tony55398 a day ago
Whether Epstein was killed or committed suicide I don't know. I would however like to know who these elites were who participated in the rapes of these young girls. They are just as guilty as Epstein whether they knew the ages of these girls or not, it was there responsibility to find out.
ChristopherRobin1 a day ago
This is a dangerous slope. People once bowed to the elites because there was a principle of enforcement called nobless oblige. Society felt that elites had to be held to a higher standard because they carried greater responsibilities and burdens for society and the welfare of the national good.

Since the 1960s nobless oblige has been downgraded to sound bites and photo ops for publicity and marketing. The elites have all but abandoned their responsibilities to support religion, to support education (except to indocrinate), to support tradition and society and the national good. The elites have become inward looking, inbred and narcissistic with little to no outward focus except in a marxist totalitarian vein of thought which serves their interest, indulges their hungers, preserves their wealth and power.

What you are have been seeing since the 1960s is the veneer being pulled off the rich and powerful. I would say Nixon and Princess Diana and Ted Kennedy did the most to pull down the veneer from the rich and powerful but it could be argued that Nixon and Princess Diana and Ted Kennedy were accidental victims of circumstance. However Epstein's human trafficking of children for sex and blackmail .... breaks the most because his crimes were no accident nor was he a victim of circumstance. Epstein planned this and created an organization around it elevating his elitist crimes to a level no that I dont think anyone in modern history can match.

atimoshenko ChristopherRobin1 a day ago
I doubt that history's elites were ever any better. It's just that with far less transparency and access, it was much easier for them to hide how awful they were. The 1960s was the start of mass media, and so the veneer started to crack.
Bill In Montgomey ChristopherRobin1 a day ago
I do think this COULD qualify as "the story of the century." That is, If the story was told in its entirety - all "names" exposed.

If fully told, the swamp might, in fact, be "drained."

Now the people in said swamp have a strong incentive to protect their domain. Which is why so many of us are skeptical the true story will ever be told.

If there was ever a time where brave and patriotic whistleblowers were needed ...

BXVI a day ago • edited
"This is, of course, what most populists profess: the people as a group are wholesome, the elites as a group are venal, and the former has to be vaulted over the latter in order for society to be made whole again."

Sorry, but take a look at the average American. The so-called "people" are for the most part just as morally obtuse as the "elites" but they carry the additional burden of being not only ignorant but also stupid. Just look around. Best recent example of the utter stupidity of the American people: a recent survey shows they think 23% of the population is gay. Really.

johnhenry a day ago
"Hands up, those of you who made a Fort Marcy Park joke last Saturday."

Matt, are you tired of people making jokes about *purple prose*?
Just wondering :)

atimoshenko a day ago
But isn't the issue exactly that the "only difference between the rich and other people is that the rich have more money" comment is perfectly true?

The rich and powerful are us, but corrupted by riches and power. Many of them behave the way many of us would quickly start to behave if we found ourselves in their shoes. If the gap in power between you and most other people is so huge that you can do anything to them and get away with it, your morals stop applying to them because you start to view them as somewhat subhuman. In this sense, I'm sure Epstein never even thought of raping the underage daughters of other elites.

Thus, the issue is stratospheric inequality of power (by whatever fungible measure you choose - money, political, religious, social, etc). And we see it happen ALL the time throughout history and across geographies - as soon as the power gap is in excess of social boundaries, as soon as there is a group of people you can do pretty much anything you want to and get away with it, you start going a little crazy. Exploitation, rape, torture, murder, slavery - everything starts looking justified. Then it's just a matter of degree, with tin-pot dictators on one end and Epstein somewhere in the middle.

Cosmin Visan atimoshenko 20 hours ago
Read Machiavelli. He observed that the popolo minuti (regular folks) just wished to be left alone by authorities whereas popolo grossi (fat cats) were of a different psychological composition: they delighted in deception, were vain, greedy and hungry for power.

Centuries later, studies of psychopaths reveal these creatures are different from regular humans at the brain level. The elites are psychopathic (the key ones are) and no, they ain't like regular people. They are literally a different kind.

atimoshenko Cosmin Visan 11 hours ago • edited
My point was that as popolo minuti transform into popolo grossi in terms of access to power, they tend to start to transform into them in terms of moral character as well. (Inequality of) power corrupts, and absolute (inequality of) power corrupts absolutely. Thus, it seems that the over-representation of psychopaths in positions of power is because the psychopathy is acquired (and plenty of studies show drastic declines in empathy with even a little priming for power), rather than because it is easier for psychopaths to rise to the top. The worst of the popolo grossi tend to be hereditary.

In my opinion, there is nothing so dangerous as to believe that evil people are a different breed from the rest of us. Instead, they tend to simply be us, but in different circumstances. History tends to show that revolutions aimed at replacing the evil people with better people end up with corrupted revolutionaries, rather than a fundamentally less abusive system.

minsredmash atimoshenko 6 hours ago • edited
"It reminds me of a well known speech by a defense counsel, who pleaded his client's poverty as an excuse of robbing and murdering six of his victims, on the lines that "My client's poverty drove him to murder six people, everybody else would have done the same!"

Dostoevsky, The Idiot.

phreethink a day ago
Outstanding article. However, I think we're a lot closer to 1789 France than we want to believe. Read some Chris Hedges to see how the socialists see the current situation. Here's an example. https://www.commondreams.or...
Zsuzsi Kruska a day ago
Elites, that is those with more wealth and/or power than the rest of the masses have always been this way. Remember how decadent the European aristocracy was with their sport of "wenching"? that is going around in groups raping young peasant girls. Also, there was the Hellfire Club which you can research if you want details. This scandal will get less and less coverage in the MSM until it fades away like all the others involving the rich and powerful.
Jr. a day ago
The Global "Elite" control our Ruling Class by means of blackmail. A person does not get raised to high truly influential positions of power(Politicians, Judges, Hollywood, etc.) unless they have enough dirt on you to know that they can control you without question. The most powerful form of blackmail that they have is ped0filia because it is THE most abhorrent crime that someone can commit, so much so that even criminals in prison refuse to allow ped0 scumbags to be housed near them.

Trump has an obvious penchant for beautiful WOMEN not kids. He was helping and somewhat part of the "Elite" in that he was joining in with them to buy politicians for influence but Trump neutralized that being over his head by openly admitting to buying politicians. They thought it was safe to allow him to run because they thought it was a joke and he would never get elected. They were wrong. In my opinion, they don't have enough dirt on him to get him to go along with their agenda of selling out the USA to the highest bidder hence the all-out attacks on him.

The key to understanding the "Elite"/Ruling Class dynamic is not conflating the two and realizing that blackmail is the main tool used by the one to keep the other under their control.

*Sorry about the Trump tangent above but it's absolutely ridiculous that people are trying to tie Trump to Epstein even though Trump has been trying to bring national attention to the Epstein case FOR YEARS.

Cosmin Visan 20 hours ago
"given that all available evidence points to gross negligence on the part of the jail." How is gross negligence different from deliberate negligence?

You can tell? And btw the WaPo just came out with news that broken bones in Epstein's neck are more usual in cases of homicide.
I generally see anyone who belittles

'Conspiracy theorists' as part of an Establishment that uses 'incompetence' as the perennial excuse for everything that goes wrong.

stevek9 19 hours ago • edited
The old accusation, that you are a 'conspiracy theorist' (a term invented by the CIA after the Kennedy assassination) is holding less and less weight. The irrational kooks now seem to be the people who think Epstein committed suicide. Jokes were everywhere about how 'we were shocked to hear about the suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, next Tuesday' when a day later we hear, 'Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide'.

By the way, this equivalence between Trump and Clinton is bogus, I believe. There isn't much evidence of any involvement of Trump (some evidence to the contrary in fact), but there is a load of evidence suggesting 'Wild Bill' was availing himself.

JeffK from PA stevek9 5 hours ago • edited
Remember when Maxine Waters was labelled a kook for saying the CIA was bringing cocaine into her LA district? She was mocked and ridiculed. Now we know she was right. You can't make this stuff up.
YoungHegelian2020 18 hours ago
I'm sorry, but this case stinks to high heaven, and if you're ready to accept "gross negligence" as the explanation you're likely to believe ANYTHING the authorities tell you. Epstein was either murdered, as the autopsy and reports of shrieking from his cell indicate, or subbed out by intelligence services and replaced by a murdered homeless person who received plastic surgery. Study the history of modern intelligence services: appearances are deceiving, and systemic disinformation is endemic to politics. Careful public speculation, acknowledging where we're uncertain, is very much the responsible thing to do; otherwise there is no hope of democratic accountability. The investigation we're being promised will be conducted by the exact same institution -- the US Department of Justice -- that was responsible for keeping Epstein safe and securing his public testimony about his criminal network. These are the people you want us to trust? Come on, a little critical reasoning, please!
Bryan 10 hours ago
The most ridiculous part is the idea that being rich and powerful gives you a predilection to turn a blind eye. My wife's family turned a blind eye to a perverted uncle that molested multiple family members over decades. No one stood up, it would've been a shame to them to admit it. How is this any different?
Will Thomas 10 hours ago • edited
No one really cares. He was pretty rich. Talk radio and weird cable conspiracies shows will benefit. Truth is irrelevant.

[Aug 12, 2019] From the point of view of The Establishment, Epstein suiside is far from convenient. It will redound to the advantage of many individuals but in the long run it will contribute to an increase in popular distrust of the entire system.

Notable quotes:
"... And at no point will there be any of the damage limitation that a trial, requiring and weighing evidence, would have put on the mushrooming of charges, rumours and speculations which has been taking and will continue to take place. ..."
"... In realistic terms the damage to the system of a few outliers, like Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew or Dershowitz being driven, red faced from public life, would be minimal. In fact it could easily be spun as am indication that the system worked and that, in the end, an obscure former masseur could be vindicated against Princes and ex-Presidents. ..."
Aug 12, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

bevin , Aug 12 2019 1:54 utc | 41

The Epstein case is very simple: had a trial taken place-and proper trials are increasingly rare in the USA, as the record of his Florida 'trial' shows- it had the potential of being extremely embarrassing to a number of prominent and powerful people.

On the other hand, now that he is dead, there can be no limit to the enormous number of allegations that can be made against him and them.

From the point of view of The Establishment, this death is far from convenient. It will redound to the advantage of many individuals but in the long run it will contribute to an increase in popular distrust of the entire system. And at no point will there be any of the damage limitation that a trial, requiring and weighing evidence, would have put on the mushrooming of charges, rumours and speculations which has been taking and will continue to take place.

In realistic terms the damage to the system of a few outliers, like Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew or Dershowitz being driven, red faced from public life, would be minimal. In fact it could easily be spun as am indication that the system worked and that, in the end, an obscure former masseur could be vindicated against Princes and ex-Presidents.

The danger is that this sordid but very routine 'scandal' will blot out real and important matters that require public debate. How many US Presidents and English princes have not been involved in the sort of things said to have been facilitated by Epstein? So far as Princes go, I can think of none. And many of them, including future Kings, have done a lot worse things than fuck teenage girls, though that has been routine for all who didn't prefer boys.

It would be interesting to learn what lessons it is thought this affair should teach us? Should the age of consent laws be revised to ban sexual relations between rich and poor? Or to legislate against sexual partnerships involving an age differential of more than, say, ten years?

Or should class society and the capitalist system, which commodifies everything and puts the poor majority in positions in which they are vulnerable to prostitution, be abolished? This would involve something a little more substantial than a lynch mob led by unprincipled, loudmouth demagogues feeding off the obsessions and frustrations of the sexually disfranchised.

These last we have had in America since the Pilgrim Fathers stumbled ashore, clutching their Old Testaments angrily and looking for others to blame. And be punished.

As to the nonsense that Epstein has been spirited away, is not really dead and will, like Merlin, one day return...that way madness lies.

[Aug 11, 2019] The party of JFK and RFK is dead. The leading present Democrats do not believe in countries

Notable quotes:
"... Joe Biden is both sadly demented and deeply compromised to the Chinese Communist Party through his use of his office as VP to fund his son's investment fund with money from China's government owned and run central bank. His condition and his compromised state will keep him from the WH. ..."
"... Gabbart is the only person that seems rational and slightly honest. Harris traded sex for political advancement I understand why she would be a favorite. No moral or ethical standards willing to do anything for what she wants. Perfect useful idiot. ..."
Aug 11, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Tulsi Gabbard is an exception to the subject of my title, but she is not going to be nominated. I am currently contributing to her campaign as a tribute to a gallant lady.

Joe Biden is both sadly demented and deeply compromised to the Chinese Communist Party through his use of his office as VP to fund his son's investment fund with money from China's government owned and run central bank. His condition and his compromised state will keep him from the WH.

They will both be irrelevant in the 2020 election as will as the Zombie candidates like Bullock, Delaney, etc. i.e. the "moderates."

The rest of the pastiche of 2020 "Democrat" candidates are essentially Globalist advocates of reduced US sovereignty as a step toward their "ideal" of a world socialist state in which they will be part of the new Nomenklatura and will enjoy exemptions from the inevitable shortages of everything resulting from universal "sharing" with the unfortunate masses who will be proletarians engaged in slave labor or doing the gardening at the dachas of people like Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O'Roarke and the like.

The barely hidden opposition by the leftist Democrats to border control is telling. The leftist Democrats want to take down the SW border of the US until it is nothing but a line on the map. They want to do that that in order to flood the country with illegals who can be voted for Democrat majorities in states where they control the state governments. Remember, the states run federal elections.

California is an example of dirty dealing intended to further rig election outcomes. Gavin Newsom, the apparent present leader of the Sacramento cabal, has signed into law a statute seeking to bar Trump from the ballot if he will not surrender his federal tax returns for public inspection. Was the possibility of illegally voting millions of non-citizens by driver licensing of illegals and their simultaneous voter-registration at the DMV not enough to ensure victory? Thank god that a change in the number of presidential electors allotted to California is not within the capability of the Sacramento cabal.

Americans and other people who will vote in 2020 will have a stark choice. Do you wish to remain living in a sovereign state or do you wish to become a building bloc in a world socialist empire?

Unfortunately the only choice available to the US sovereignty side will be Donald Trump, the real estate hustler from New York City. Weld is not a serious candidate. pl

Stueeeeee , 11 August 2019 at 05:58 PM

Both parties seem inclined to bring about "paradise on earth". To understand these internationalists, I cite Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor conversation with Christ:

..."'So that, in truth, Thou didst Thyself lay the foundation for the destruction of Thy kingdom, and no one is more to blame for it. Yet what was offered Thee? There are three powers, three powers alone, able to conquer and to hold captive for ever the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness those forces are miracle, mystery and authority. Thou hast rejected all three and hast set the example for doing so. When the wise and dread spirit set Thee on the pinnacle of the temple and said to Thee, "If Thou wouldst know whether Thou art the Son of God then cast Thyself down, for it is written: the angels shall hold him up lest he fall and bruise himself, and Thou shalt know then whether Thou art the Son of God and shalt prove then how great is Thy faith in Thy Father." But Thou didst refuse and wouldst not cast Thyself down. Oh, of course, Thou didst proudly and well, like God; but the weak, unruly race of men, are they gods? Oh, Thou didst know then that in taking one step, in making one movement to cast Thyself down, Thou wouldst be tempting God and have lost all Thy faith in Him, and wouldst have been dashed to pieces against that earth which Thou didst come to save. And the wise spirit that tempted Thee would have rejoiced. But I ask again, are there many like Thee? And couldst Thou believe for one moment that men, too, could face such a temptation? Is the nature of men such, that they can reject miracle, and at the great moments of their life, the moments of their deepest, most agonising spiritual difficulties, cling only to the free verdict of the heart? Oh, Thou didst know that Thy deed would be recorded in books, would be handed down to remote times and the utmost ends of the earth, and Thou didst hope that man, following Thee, would cling to God and not ask for a miracle. But Thou didst not know that when man rejects miracle he rejects God too; for man seeks not so much God as the miraculous. And as man cannot bear to be without the miraculous, he will create new miracles of his own for himself, and will worship deeds of sorcery and witchcraft, though he might be a hundred times over a rebel, heretic and infidel. Thou didst not come down from the Cross when they shouted to Thee, mocking and reviling Thee, "Come down from the cross and we will believe that Thou art He." Thou didst not come down, for again Thou wouldst not enslave man by a miracle, and didst crave faith given freely, not based on miracle. Thou didst crave for free love and not the base raptures of the slave before the might that has overawed him for ever. But Thou didst think too highly of men therein, for they are slaves, of course, though rebellious by nature. Look round and judge; fifteen centuries have passed, look upon them. Whom hast Thou raised up to Thyself? I swear, man is weaker and baser by nature than Thou hast believed him! Can he, can he do what Thou didst? By showing him so much respect, Thou didst, as it were, cease to feel for him, for Thou didst ask far too much from him- Thou who hast loved him more than Thyself! Respecting him less, Thou wouldst have asked less of him. That would have been more like love, for his burden would have been lighter. He is weak and vile. What though he is everywhere now rebelling against our power, and proud of his rebellion? It is the pride of a child and a schoolboy. They are little children rioting and barring out the teacher at school. But their childish delight will end; it will cost them dear. Mankind as a whole has always striven to organise a universal state. There have been many great nations with great histories, but the more highly they were developed the more unhappy they were, for they felt more acutely than other people the craving for world-wide union. The great conquerors, Timours and Ghenghis-Khans, whirled like hurricanes over the face of the earth striving to subdue its people, and they too were but the unconscious expression of the same craving for universal unity. Hadst Thou taken the world and Caesar's purple, Thou wouldst have founded the universal state and have given universal peace. For who can rule men if not he who holds their conscience and their bread in his hands? We have taken the sword of Caesar, and in taking it, of course, have rejected Thee and followed him. Oh, ages are yet to come of the confusion of free thought, of their science and cannibalism. For having begun to build their tower of Babel without us, they will end, of course, with cannibalism. But then the beast will crawl to us and lick our feet and spatter them with tears of blood. And we shall sit upon the beast and raise the cup, and on it will be written, "Mystery." But then, and only then, the reign of peace and happiness will come for men. Thou art proud of Thine elect, but Thou hast only the elect, while we give rest to all. And besides, how many of those elect, those mighty ones who could become elect, have grown weary waiting for Thee, and have transferred and will transfer the powers of their spirit and the warmth of their heart to the other camp, and end by raising their free banner against Thee. Thou didst Thyself lift up that banner. But with us all will be happy and will no more rebel nor destroy one another as under Thy freedom. Oh, we shall persuade them that they will only become free when they renounce their freedom to us and submit to us. And shall we be right or shall we be lying? They will be convinced that we are right, for they will remember the horrors of slavery and confusion to which Thy freedom brought them. Freedom, free thought, and science will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves, others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another, while the rest, weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet and whine to us: "Yes, you were right, you alone possess His mystery, and we come back to you, save us from ourselves!"

"'Receiving bread from us, they will see clearly that we take the bread made by their hands from them, to give it to them, without any miracle. They will see that we do not change the stones to bread, but in truth they will be more thankful for taking it from our hands than for the bread itself! For they will remember only too well that in old days, without our help, even the bread they made turned to stones in their hands, while since they have come back to us, the very stones have turned to bread in their hands. Too, too well will they know the value of complete submission! And until men know that, they will be unhappy. Who is most to blame for their not knowing it?-speak! Who scattered the flock and sent it astray on unknown paths? But the flock will come together again and will submit once more, and then it will be once for all. Then we shall give them the quiet humble happiness of weak creatures such as they are by nature. Oh, we shall persuade them at last not to be proud, for Thou didst lift them up and thereby taught them to be proud. We shall show them that they are weak, that they are only pitiful children, but that childlike happiness is the sweetest of all. They will become timid and will look to us and huddle close to us in fear, as chicks to the hen. They will marvel at us and will be awe-stricken before us, and will be proud at our being so powerful and clever that we have been able to subdue such a turbulent flock of thousands of millions. They will tremble impotently before our wrath, their minds will grow fearful, they will be quick to shed tears like women and children, but they will be just as ready at a sign from us to pass to laughter and rejoicing, to happy mirth and childish song. Yes, we shall set them to work, but in their leisure hours we shall make their life like a child's game, with children's songs and innocent dance. Oh, we shall allow them even sin, they are weak and helpless, and they will love us like children because we allow them to sin. We shall tell them that every sin will be expiated, if it is done with our permission, that we allow them to sin because we love them, and the punishment for these sins we take upon ourselves. And we shall take it upon ourselves, and they will adore us as their saviours who have taken on themselves their sins before God. And they will have no secrets from us. We shall allow or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have children according to whether they have been obedient or disobedient- and they will submit to us gladly and cheerfully. The most painful secrets of their conscience, all, all they will bring to us, and we shall have an answer for all. And they will be glad to believe our answer, for it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free decision for themselves. And all will be happy, all the millions of creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we, we who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity. Though if there were anything in the other world, it certainly would not be for such as they. It is prophesied that Thou wilt come again in victory, Thou wilt come with Thy chosen, the proud and strong, but we will say that they have only saved themselves, but we have saved all. We are told that the harlot who sits upon the beast, and holds in her hands the mystery, shall be put to shame, that the weak will rise up again, and will rend her royal purple and will strip naked her loathsome body. But then I will stand up and point out to Thee the thousand millions of happy children who have known no sin. And we who have taken their sins upon us for their happiness will stand up before Thee and say: "Judge us if Thou canst and darest." Know that I fear Thee not. Know that I too have been in the wilderness, I too have lived on roots and locusts, I too prized the freedom with which Thou hast blessed men, and I too was striving to stand among Thy elect, among the strong and powerful, thirsting "to make up the number." But I awakened and would not serve madness. I turned back and joined the ranks of those who have corrected Thy work. I left the proud and went back to the humble, for the happiness of the humble. What I say to Thee will come to pass, and our dominion will be built up. I repeat, to-morrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock who at a sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders about the pile on which I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For if anyone has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou. To-morrow I shall burn Thee. Dixi.'"*...

Sbin , 11 August 2019 at 06:33 PM
Dem candidate clown car is every bit as vile as the Gop clown car in 16.

Gabbart is the only person that seems rational and slightly honest. Harris traded sex for political advancement I understand why she would be a favorite. No moral or ethical standards willing to do anything for what she wants. Perfect useful idiot.

[Aug 03, 2019] Democratic Party under Clinton and Obama was converted into the party of war and neocolonialism

Aug 03, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

nottheonly1 , Aug 2 2019 19:08 utc | 9

While I am aware of Eric Zuesse being somewhat controversial to some people, I do concur with his assessment of the party that should be stripped of the 'Democratic' prefix. There is nothing democratic in this organization and its members are either willful stooges, or the most gullible people on earth - responsible for heinous crimes against humanity under the cover of 'humanitarian aid'.

To even consider to allow this organization to continue in its deception of the American electorate, shows the deepest infiltration of foreign influence, for whom this deception is not only natural, but also compulsive. You may have guessed it, it's not the Russians.

The Democratic Party's AIPAC Candidates

However, an article by the Strategic Culture Organization, linked to on MOA yesterday

The 'Special Relationship' is collapsing , goes even further. It makes obvious the unholy filth that has been plaguing humanity for a very long time. And while some may find it questionable, it turns out that the Queen does appear to be the longest sitting Fascist in the history of mankind.

Sometimes it is necessary to connect the dots beyond personal beliefs in regards to the real conspiracy against working people all over the world.

[Aug 02, 2019] Flight logs show Bill Clinton flew on Lolita Express more than previously known by Malia Zimmerman

May 16, 2016 | www.foxnews.com

Former President Bill Clinton was a much more frequent flyer on a registered sex offender's infamous jet than previously reported, with flight logs showing the former president taking at least 26 trips aboard the "Lolita Express" -- even apparently ditching his Secret Service detail for at least five of the flights, according to records obtained by FoxNews.com.

Clinton's presence aboard Jeffrey Epstein's Boeing 727 on 11 occasions has been reported, but flight logs show the number is more than double that, and trips between 2001 and 2003 included extended junkets around the world with Epstein and fellow passengers identified on manifests by their initials or first names, including "Tatiana." The tricked-out jet earned its Nabakov-inspired nickname because it was reportedly outfitted with a bed where passengers had group sex with young girls.

"Bill Clinton associated with a man like Jeffrey Epstein, who everyone in New York, certainly within his inner circles, knew was a pedophile," said Conchita Sarnoff, of the Washington, D.C. based non-profit Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking, and author of a book on the Epstein case called "TrafficKing." "Why would a former president associate with a man like that?"

... ... ...

Virginia Roberts, 32, who claims she was pimped out by Epstein at age 15, has previously claimed she saw Clinton at Epstein's getaway in 2002, but logs do not show Clinton aboard any flights to St. Thomas, the nearest airport capable of accommodating Epstein's plane. They do show Clinton flying aboard Epstein's plane to such destinations as Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, China, Brunei, London, New York, the Azores, Belgium, Norway, Russia and Africa.

Among those regularly traveling with Clinton were Epstein's associates, New York socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein's assistant, Sarah Kellen, both of whom were investigated by the FBI and Palm Beach Police for recruiting girls for Epstein and his friends.

Official flight logs filed with the Federal Aviation Administration show Clinton traveled on some of the trips with as many as 10 U.S. Secret Service agents. However, on a five-leg Asia trip between May 22 and May 25, 2002, not a single Secret Service agent is listed. The U.S. Secret Service has declined to answer multiple Freedom of Information Act requests filed by FoxNews.com seeking information on these trips. Clinton would have been required to file a form to dismiss the agent detail, a former Secret Service agent told FoxNews.com.

In response to a separate FOIA request from FoxNews.com, the U.S. Secret Service said it has no records showing agents were ever on the island with Clinton.

[Jul 29, 2019] Longtime NYPD said as a father it was one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen.

Jul 29, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Chris Dakota -> Pairadimes Feb 19, 2017 5:54 PM

http://yournewswire.com/district-attorney-obama-treason/

and then kill them all, every damn one of them!

You better be tough to watch this, not for women unless you are like me who will watch it and spread it.

Warning: you can't unwatch this and will need to claim your space after and pray.

This IS John Podesta. This IS what I said was coming to him last summer/fall.

What did I say about this coming eclipse? It is in Pisces, water, water pourer, dams, leaks, secrets and film. Note the color purple which is the Pisces color.

People are saying this is John Podesta torturing a boy in a shower. I had to turn the sound off it was so horrific. This came from Weiners laptop, the cops must be leaking now Life insurance file.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud_TJe0v6IY

John Podesta's voice a match!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=29&v=qzRcPK571mI

divingengineer -> Chris Dakota Feb 19, 2017 6:04 PM

Is this what Comey showed the Senate group this week when they came out looking like they were seasick?

Chris Dakota -> divingengineer Feb 19, 2017 6:13 PM

Yes and longtime NYPD said "as a father it was one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen."

because it is evil.

I am thinking it is MKULTRA stuff, designed with strobe light to split the personality. vulcanraven Pinto Currency Feb 19, 2017 1:47 PM I fucking hope so. I just wonder what the hell they are waiting for, but the more I think about it this is the best I can come up with:

If Pedogate is finally blown wide open, it is going to rip a hole through the fabric of reality for the unawashed sheeple. It will also destroy any and all faith in the US government, and full blown chaos will erupt everywhere.

So whoever is holding the goods on PG, also knows that reality hangs in the balance upon opening that can of worms. I also believe when the dam finally does break and people are getting led away in handcuffs on national TV, a large majority of the population will still be in full blown denial... finding any and every reason to somehow blame the scandal on Trump/Russia/The Flying Spaghetti Monster

[Jul 28, 2019] Another Epstein Domino Trump's National Security Advisor tied to Epstein Maxwell Cabal

Notable quotes:
"... Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of Robert Maxwell and girlfriend and "Nazi guard" for Epstein"s child sex stable also ran a fake charity closed day ago called Terra Mar. The FBI is now investigating if the charity was used to pay off Epstein/Maxwell child rape victims. ..."
"... The UK Guardian and Transparify.org list the think tank now run by General McMaster and tied to Platero, Maxwell and Epstein as invisibly funded and "deceptive." ..."
Jul 28, 2019 | www.veteranstoday.com

Following the bread crumbs from Epstein has led to a fake charity and from there to General McMaster, former National Security Advisor to Donald Trump, who now heads a reputedly fake London based think tank secretly funded by money laundered through the repressive Bahraini royal family.

But there is more.

Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of Robert Maxwell and girlfriend and "Nazi guard" for Epstein"s child sex stable also ran a fake charity closed day ago called Terra Mar. The FBI is now investigating if the charity was used to pay off Epstein/Maxwell child rape victims.

The charity takes us further into Maxwell's den of Mossad partnerships. Most serious of all are those through her lifelong friend Calfo Platero, who ties Epstein and Maxwell to the highly disreputable London based Institute for Strategic Studies. The UK Guardian and Transparify.org list the think tank now run by General McMaster and tied to Platero, Maxwell and Epstein as invisibly funded and "deceptive." However, in 2016, the organization that McMaster joined when he left the Trump White House in 2018 admitted to taking secret funding from the rulers of Bahrain under an agreement that they would keep the funding secret.

Bahrain has been cited with numerous human rights abuses and an attempt to murder an American diplomat and blame it on Iran. Middle East Eye confirmed Bahrain's involvement, a major "revolving door" scandal for a high level Trump appointee.

[Jul 27, 2019] Understanding the Roots of the Obama Coup Against Trump by Larry C Johnson

Highly recommended!
Evidence accumulates that Obama was the real leader of this color revolution against Trump with Brannan as his chief lieutenant and Comey as a willing accomplice.
Now that the dust has settled, one must ask why the Deep State wanted Trump gone. Why does the Obama-Clinton mafia hates him so much? Is this due to Trump committed an unforgivable sin in suggesting we “get along with Russia” and thus potentially cut the revenues of military-industrial complex ? This is not true -- Trump inflated the Pentagon budget to astronomical height. Then why ?
Notable quotes:
"... The full details of the plot to take out Donald Trump remain to be revealed. But there should now be no doubt that his effort was not the work of a few rogue intelligence and law enforcement officials acting on their own. This was a full blown covert action undertaken with the full knowledge and blessing of Barack Obama. ..."
"... Operation Crossfire Hurricane was launched the end of July 2016. CIA Director John Brennan briefed key Democrat members of Congress in early August on allegations that Donald Trump was colluding with Vladimir Putin. And Peter Strzok traveled to London in early August 2016 to meet with the CIA and with Alexander Downer, who was claiming that George Papadopolous was talking up the Russians. Following that trip Strozk texted the following to his mistress, Lisa Page : ..."
"... We also know that Senior Obama Administration officials, such as NSC Director Susan Rice and UN Ambassdor Samantha Power, were pushing to "unmask" Trump campaign officials who were named in US intelligence documents. ..."
"... Let us look at this from another angle. If the Russians were actually trying to interfere in the 2016 election, then it was known to both US intelligence and law enforcement. Hell, we are told in the Mueller report that the FBI detected the Russians trying to hack the DNC way back in 2015. If there really was intelligence on Russian efforts to meddle why did the Obama Administration do nothing other than sanction FBI's Crossfire Hurricane? ..."
"... On what basis did Barack Obama insist it was impossible to rig the US Presidential election? This is a critical anomaly. Why was the Obama team asleep at the switch, especially on the intel front, it the Russians actually were engaged in rigging the election to install Donald Trump? ..."
"... Obama seemed to have got a taste for spying on his domestic political opponents from monitoring Israeli attempts to block the Iran nuclear deal. I think the lock her up stuff really scared the Obama people, who had much to hide. ..."
Jul 27, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

The full details of the plot to take out Donald Trump remain to be revealed. But there should now be no doubt that his effort was not the work of a few rogue intelligence and law enforcement officials acting on their own. This was a full blown covert action undertaken with the full knowledge and blessing of Barack Obama.

As I have written previously , the claim that Russia tried to hijack our election is a damn lie. But you do not have to take my word for it. Just listen to Barack Obama speaking in October 2016 in response to Donald Trump's expressed concerns about election meddling :

"There is no serious person out there who would suggest that you could even rig America's elections, in part because they are so decentralized. There is no evidence that that has happened in the past, or that there are instances that that could happen this time," the president said to the future president in October 2016.

"Democracy survives because we recognize that there is something more important than any individual campaign, and that is making sure the integrity and trust in our institutions sustains itself. Becasue Democracy works by consent, not by force," Obama said.

"I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history, any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place. It is unprecedented. It happens to be based on no fact. Every expert regardless of political party... who has ever examined these issues in a serious way will tell you that instances of significant voter fraud are not to be found. Keep in mind elections are run by state and local officials."

It is important to remember what had transpired in the Trump/Russia collusion case by this point. Operation Crossfire Hurricane was launched the end of July 2016. CIA Director John Brennan briefed key Democrat members of Congress in early August on allegations that Donald Trump was colluding with Vladimir Putin. And Peter Strzok traveled to London in early August 2016 to meet with the CIA and with Alexander Downer, who was claiming that George Papadopolous was talking up the Russians. Following that trip Strozk texted the following to his mistress, Lisa Page :

Strzok: And hi. Went well, best we could have expected. Other than [REDACTED] quote: " the White House is running this. " My answer, "well, maybe for you they are." And of course, I was planning on telling this guy, thanks for coming, we've got an hour, but with Bill [Priestap] there, I've got no control .

Page: Yeah, whatever (re the WH comment). We've got the emails that say otherwise.

The White House clearly knew. But Strzok's text is not the only evidence. We also know that Senior Obama Administration officials, such as NSC Director Susan Rice and UN Ambassdor Samantha Power, were pushing to "unmask" Trump campaign officials who were named in US intelligence documents.

There are only two possibilities:

  1. Obama was being briefed by Susan Rice and DNI James Clapper and CIA Director about the project to take out Trump, or
  2. Obama was kept in the dark.

Let us look at this from another angle. If the Russians were actually trying to interfere in the 2016 election, then it was known to both US intelligence and law enforcement. Hell, we are told in the Mueller report that the FBI detected the Russians trying to hack the DNC way back in 2015. If there really was intelligence on Russian efforts to meddle why did the Obama Administration do nothing other than sanction FBI's Crossfire Hurricane?

On what basis did Barack Obama insist it was impossible to rig the US Presidential election? This is a critical anomaly. Why was the Obama team asleep at the switch, especially on the intel front, it the Russians actually were engaged in rigging the election to install Donald Trump?


turcopolier , 26 July 2019 at 04:19 PM

All

My wife was for many years an election official in Virginia. IMO Obama was right in saying that a US presidential election is impossible to "rig." The US Constitution requires that federal elections be run by the states WITHOUT federal supervision. As a result the methods and equipment in the states and the various parts of the states vary widely and the state systems are not tied together with a national electronic network as, for example, the system is in France where the result of a national election is reported on TeeVee immediately when the polls close.

Bill H , 26 July 2019 at 04:51 PM
Asking the question, "Can you cite one specific case where a single vote was definitively changed by Russian meddling?" causes panic in a person who is declaiming about the evils of Russian meddling in our elections.
Alexandria , 26 July 2019 at 07:02 PM
Bill H,

When you ask that question, the invariable retort is that the Russians are so clever that you wouldn't know that you were being gulled; or, when I say that I have never seen a Russian produced facebook ad, the rejoinder is that the Russians concentrated on Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and, of course, I would have been privy to the bot-sent emails and facebook ads generated by the Internet Research Agency.

Jack said in reply to The Twisted Genius ... , 27 July 2019 at 12:41 AM
TTG

You've maintained all along that the Russians interfered in the election, yet I believe it is your position that the Russians did not change a single vote. Is that correct or do you believe the Russians changed the votes before tabulation?

What did the Russians do that the Trump and Hillary campaigns did not do? Did they also turnout the tens of thousands who showed up for Trump rallies that Hillary could never muster? Are they still turning out thousands at recent Trump rallies? I'm curious how come Brennan and Clapper could not turn out thousands to Hillary's rallies when according to our German friend "b", the omnipotent US Intel services just turned out a quarter of the population of Hong Kong to protest CCP authoritarianism?

Did the Israeli, Saudi and Chinese governments interfere in the election? How would you compare what they did to what you believe the Russians did?

uieter about it. All that is very different from the absolute covert nature of the Russian IO in the 2016 election. I have no idea what China did or is doing.

Larry Johnson -> The Twisted Genius ... , 27 July 2019 at 11:36 AM
You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication. The lies on this are enormous. If the FBI really had detected GRU hacking of the DNC in 2015, which is claimed in the fabricated meme, then you would expect the FBI and the other counter intel elements of the USG to take action. THEY DID NOTHING.

The issue of Russian hacking only emerged when Hillary and the DNC learned that DNC emails were going to be put out by WIKILEAKS. Again, not one shred of actual evidence that the Russians did it, but blaming the Russians became a convenient excuse in a bid to divert attention from the real story--i.e,. Hillary and the DNC colluded to defeat Bernie Sanders.

The only real solid evidence of colluding with foreigners, in this case the Ukraine, comes courtesy of Hillary and her campaign. Hiring a foreign intel officer (ie. Steele) who then takes info from Russians of questionable background and spread it around as "truth". That was not a Russian IO. Pure Clinton IO.

blue peacock said in reply to The Twisted Genius ... , 27 July 2019 at 12:29 PM
"What the Russians did was insert misattributed information and disinformation into the election cycle...That is what separates the Russian IO from anything Clinton, Trump or any of their supporters did."

I believe supporters of both candidates did exactly what you say the Russians did - insert misattributed information & disinformation into the media stream. If you watch MSNBC or Fox on any given day there is much assertion & opinion masquerading as news. And the Twitter & Facebook and blog universe are teeming with stories and innuendo that are more fiction than fact all from anonymous accounts.

The Russia Collusion hysteria is replete with examples of "misattributed information and disinformation". It seems that yellow journalism is as American as apple pie.

The whole opaque PAC structure with names like "Americans for Democracy" funded by chain structures hiding the real financiers and calling up down is something that we see growing in every election cycle and is already of significant scale both in terms of financing and dubiousness.

It is also rather common that "experts" who are called upon to opine on issues routinely never disclose their conflicts of interest. Jeffrey Sachs and so many others on the payroll of CCP entities never disclose those payments as they extoll the virtues of offshoring our industrial base to China and are apologists for CCP espionage.

The Twisted Genius -> blue peacock... , 27 July 2019 at 01:42 PM
Blue peacock, supporters of Clinton and Trump did not put out misattributed info. They both put out truth, innuendo, exaggerations, misleading info and even outright lies, but they put it out as themselves. They didn't represent themselves as someone other than who they were. The PAC structure comes close to skirting this requirement for truthful attribution, but a quick internet search blows away the facades of these PACs. What the Russians did was pure black propaganda.
Fred -> The Twisted Genius ... , 27 July 2019 at 09:23 AM
TTG,

You mean the kindly grandmother, Loretta Lynch, Attorney General of the United States, did not inform President Obama that the FBI had obtained a FISA warrant to surveil the Republican candidate for the presidency and members of his staff becasue he was working with Russians? Or do you mean that James Comey failed to tell his boss, Loretta Lynch; or do you mean John Brennan failed to tell Obama about that Steele dossier from Fusion GPS that Mueller know anything about; or do you mean that James Clapper failed to tell Jeh Johnson about that too? The Russians made them do all those things as part of an interference campaign, right? It couldn't have been they were corrupt and incompetant.

"Instead, Obama...." made an "If you like your doctor, you can keep you doctor" statement that he knew was completely false. Trump didn't win, Russians influenced Americans to vote for Trump, just ask the losers of the election, their paid sources and their colleagues in Congress. In fact Americans love Hilary so much she's just where in the polls right now?

catherine , 27 July 2019 at 12:20 AM
I continue to be astounded by the outrage at "Russian meddling". So some Russians used the internet to post true or false information on candidates in a election.... so what?...millions of American partisan trolls were doing the same thing for or against a candidate. We had tons of fake info written by American bloggers and posters all over the net, Facebook, twitter etc..

Its not like Putin came to the US and gave a speech to congress in favor of Trump ...as Netanyahu did in appearing before the US congress and urging them to go against President Obama's Syria policy for heaven's sake.
It is so ridiculous I have given up hope of finding enough IQs above that of a cabbage to form a sane government.

LondonBob , 27 July 2019 at 06:57 AM
Obama seemed to have got a taste for spying on his domestic political opponents from monitoring Israeli attempts to block the Iran nuclear deal. I think the lock her up stuff really scared the Obama people, who had much to hide.
J , 27 July 2019 at 12:27 PM
This has shown two things IMO

1. The FBI cannot be trusted to uphold defend and protect our Constitution, as they sought actively to overturn a duly elected POTUS.; and

2 - Mueller's incompetence is astounding.

Is the only entity of the Defense Department called the U.S. Army the only ones left actually upholding, defending, and protecting our Constitution and our Constitution processes? I don't see the other entities of the DOD called Navy and Air Force doing their jobs upholding our Constitution!

Thumbs up to the Army, thumbs down to the Navy and Air Force!

Mark Logan said in reply to J... , 27 July 2019 at 02:14 PM
J,

I'm a little more charitable to the FBI. The Trumps lied their asses off to the FBI about their foreign contacts. Which IMO, wrong or right, left the FBI all but no recourse but to investigate those lies. Even if the lies were simply based in long-seated personal habits, it takes investigation to prove that is the case.

plantman , 27 July 2019 at 12:55 PM
I believe Larry Johnson is right when he says:

"You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication." In fact, Putin rejects the claim many times publicly saying that Russia does not meddle in foreign elections as a matter of policy. Maybe I'm gullible, but I find his disclaimer pretty convincing....

My question for Larry Johnson requires some speculation on his part: How did the claims of "Russia meddling" which began with the DNC and Hillary campaign, take root at the FBI, CIA and NSA???

Is there an unseen connection between the Democrat leadership and the Intel agencies??? And --if there is-- does that mean we are headed for a one-party system???

rg , 27 July 2019 at 01:46 PM
Larry, sorry to nitpick, but I have such regard for your work that it pains me to see the typographical error in your second sentence, where you say "his error" shortly after referring to Trump. I'm guessing that you meant to say "this error", but it reads as if it means "Trump's error".

And while I'm at it, your last sentence has "it" instead of "if".

Keep up your great work for this excellent website.

turcopolier , 27 July 2019 at 03:35 PM
Mark Logan

Sadly naive in that you think the conspirators were actually acting in good faith. You think they were right when they used the Steele Dossier in applying for a FISA warrant in Colyyer's Star Chamber? Steele was a paid informant for the FBI as was Page.

turcopolier , 27 July 2019 at 03:35 PM
Mark Logan

How do you know "they lied their asses off?" Mueller's report stated that no American had conspired with the Russians,

[Jul 26, 2019] Of Two Minds - Epstein and the Explosive Crisis of the Deep State

Jul 26, 2019 | www.oftwominds.com

https://eus.rubiconproject.com/usync.html

https://acdn.adnxs.com/ib/static/usersync/v3/async_usersync.html

https://c.deployads.com/sync?f=html&s=2344&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.oftwominds.com%2Fblogjuly19%2Fcrisis-deep-state7-19.html Epstein and the Explosive Crisis of the Deep State

July 15, 2019

Since the battle is for the legitimacy of the state, it must be waged at least partially in the open.

Speculations by outsiders must give Deep State insiders many opportunities to chuckle, "if only they knew." We don't know, of course, and public leaks are engineered to misdirect our attention from what's actually going on or "frame" our understanding in a positive way.

Decades later, history reveals a very ordinary mix of great successes and horrific failure in secret operations , caused by errors of judgment, faulty intelligence, poor planning and so on. In other words, life isn't tidy, either inside or outside the Deep State.

Nonetheless we can postulate a few things with some certainty. One is that the Deep State-- the unelected, permanent government which includes not just the intelligence community but a vast array of agencies and institutions as well as the top-level structures of diplomacy, finance and geopolitics--is not monolithic. There are different views and competing camps, but the disagreements and bureaucratic wars are kept out of sight.

Two, we know that at critical junctures of history one camp wins the narrative battle and establishes the over-riding direction of state policy. Put another way, one camp's understanding of the era's most pressing problems becomes the consensus, and from then on disagreements are within the broad outlines of the dominant ideology.

The end of World War II was a critical juncture. The proper role of the U.S. in the postwar era was up for grabs, and over the course of a few years, the CIA and other intelligence agencies were established and the doctrine of containment of the Soviet Union became the dominant narrative, a narrative that held with remarkable consistency for four decades until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

This collapse was another critical juncture, and debates over America's role in this "unipolar era" were finally settled in favor of the geopolitical-activist ideology of neoconservatism (Neocons).

This globalist ideology led to a variety of policy disasters and is now discredited in many circles, and has been under attack within the Deep State for some time. This is the divided Deep State I've written about for the past five years.

Is the Deep State Fracturing into Disunity? (March 14, 2014)

Is the Deep State at War--With Itself? (December 14, 2016)

The failures of Neocon globalism have ushered in another critical juncture. What is America's proper role in a multi-polar world that is fracturing across multiple faultlines? This critical juncture is a manifestation of a broader profound political disunity in America and many other nations.

The corporate media has obligingly portrayed this profound political disunity as a contest between "good globalism" and "bad populism," a clear attempt to smear all those who see the dark side of globalism as a threat to the nation and indeed the world. This bias reflects the continued dominance of the Neocon-globalist camp.

But the cracks are now visible. The mainstream "influential" press has recently been publishing critiques admitting the failures of Neocon globalism and agonizing about how to "save" the globalist agenda despite its failures.

Globalization's Wrong Turn--And How It Hurt America (Foreign Affairs)

I have long held that there is a camp within the Deep State that grasps the end-game of Neocon globalism, and is busy assembling a competing nation-centric strategy. There is tremendous resistance to the abandonment of Neocon globalism, not just from those who see power slipping through their fingers but from all those firmly committed to the hubris of a magical faith in past success as the guarantor of future success.

Michael Grant described this complacent clinging to what's failed in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire , a short book I have been recommending since 2009:

There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. (The Status Quo) attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.

This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance.

This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions, there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all.

The faction within the Deep State that no longer accepts traditional fictions is gaining ground, and now another fracture in the Deep State is coming to the fore: the traditionalists who accept the systemic corruption of self-serving elites and those who have finally awakened to the mortal danger to the nation posed by amoral self-serving elites.

The debauchery of morals undermines the legitimacy of the state and thus of the entire power structure. As I recently noted in Following in Rome's Footsteps: Moral Decay, Rising Inequality (June 29, 2019), America's current path of moral decay and soaring wealth/power inequality is tracking Rome's collapse step for step.

Enter the sordid case of Jeffrey Epstein, suddenly unearthed after a decade of corporate-media/elitist suppression. It's laughable to see the corporate media's pathetic attempts to glom onto the case now, after actively suppressing it for decades: Jeffrey Epstein Was a Sex Offender. The Powerful Welcomed Him Anyway. (New York Times) Where was the NYT a decade ago, or five years ago, or even a year ago?

Of all the questions that are arising, the signal one is simply: why now? There are many questions, now that the dead-and-buried case has been dug up: where did Epstein get his fortune? Why did he return to the U.S. from abroad, knowing he'd be arrested? Why was the Miami Herald suddenly able to publish numerous articles exposing the scandalous suppression of justice after 11 years of silence? Years later, victims recount impact of Jeffrey Epstein abuse .

Here's my outsider's take: the anti-Neocon camp within the Deep State observed the test case of Harvey Weinstein and saw an opportunity to apply what it learned. If we draw circles representing the anti-Neocon camp and the moralists who grasp the state's legitimacy is hanging by a thread after decades of amoral exploitation and self-aggrandizement by the ruling elites, we would find a large overlap.

But even die-hard Neocons are starting to awaken to the danger to their power posed by the moral collapse of the ruling elites. They are finally awakening to the lesson of history, that the fatal danger to empires arises not from external foes but from inside the center of power as elite corruption erodes the legitimacy of the state.

The upstarts in the Deep State have united to declare open war on the degenerates and their enablers, who are everywhere in the Deep State: the media, the intelligence community, and on and on.

Since the battle is for the legitimacy of the state, it must be waged at least partially in the open. This is a war for the hearts and minds of the public, whose belief in the legitimacy of the state and its ruling elites underpins the power of the Deep State.

If this wasn't a war over the legitimacy of the state, the housecleaning would have been discrete. Insiders would be shuffled off to a corporate boardroom or do-nothing/fancy title office, or they'd retire, or if necessary, they'd die of a sudden heart attack or in a tragic accident ( if only they knew ).

The cockroaches are scurrying, and the challenge now is to crush as many as possible before they find cover. Bullies are at heart cowards, and once the bullies who were untouchable due to powerful friends in powerful places are exposed to an accounting of their behavior, they will spill the beans on everyone in a craven attempt to lighten the consequences of their corruption and debauchery.

Power is a funny thing: when it dissipates suddenly, it dissipates completely.

All those who were confident they were untouchable might want to heed this sign: carefully fall into the cliff .

The hidden conflicts within the Deep State are emerging, and the resulting crisis will be explosive. Remember, the housecleaning must be public or the legitimacy of the state will go over the cliff. If the Deep State wants to retain its power, it must root out the corrupt degenerates before they bring down the entire rotten structure.

[Jul 26, 2019] Of Two Minds - Our Ruling Elites Have No Idea How Much We Want to See Them All in Prison Jumpsuits

Jul 26, 2019 | www.oftwominds.com

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https://acdn.adnxs.com/ib/static/usersync/v3/async_usersync.html The Nobility of the feudal era had some reciprocal obligation to its serfs; our New Nobility has no obligation to anyone but themselves. It is painfully obvious that there are two sets of laws in America: bankers can rip off billions and never serve time, and members of the Protected Class who sexually exploit children get a wrist-slap, if that.

Here's the sad reality: everybody in the Ruling Elites looked the other way: all the self-described "patriots" in the Intelligence services, all the technocrats in the Departments of Justice, State, etc., the Pentagon, and on and on. Everybody with any power knows the whole class of Ruling Elites is completely corrupt, by definition: to secure power in the U.S., you have to sell your soul to the Devil , one way or the other.

Like all Ruling Elites, America's Elites are absolutely confident in their power: this is hubris taken to new heights.

That the citizenry could finally have enough of their corrupt, self-serving Overlords does not seem in the realm of possibility to the Protected Few. There's always a way to lawyer-up and plea-bargain for a wrist-slap, a way to bend another "patriot" (barf), a way to offer a bribe cloaked as a plum position in a philanthro-capitalist NGO (non-governmental organization), and so on.

The possibility that moral outrage could spark a revolt seems improbable in such a distracted culture, but consider the chart below: even the most distracted, fragmented tribe of the peasantry eventually notices that they're not in the top 1%, or the top 0.1%, and that the Ruling Elites have overseen an unprecedented concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the few at the expense of the many:

[Jul 25, 2019] Epstein Visited Clinton White House Multiple Times In The 1990s

Notable quotes:
"... And according to the Beast , "Clinton also failed to mention the intimate 1995 fundraising dinner at the Palm Beach home of Revlon mogul Ron Perelman, where Clinton hobnobbed with the likes of Epstein, Don Johnson, and Jimmy Buffett. (Nearby, at Epstein's own Palm Beach mansion, the money man allegedly abused hundreds of underage girls.)" ..."
"... Meanwhile, Clinton's college friend A. Paul Prosperi visited Epstein at least 20 times while he was in the Palm Beach county jail after pleading guilty to procuring an underage prostitute in 2008. Prosperi was also present at a 1995 Perelman fundraiser at which both Clinton and Epstein were present. ..."
"... Over that same time period, a source with knowledge of the situation told The Daily Beast, Middleton met with Epstein in the White House at least three times . It is unclear what they discussed, or for how long. Middleton did not respond to repeated calls and emails for comment, or to a reporter who visited his home in Arkansas. ..."
Jul 25, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Bill Clinton's attempts to distance himself from convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein have taken yet another blow - after a Daily Beast investigation reveals that the financier - who came highly recommended by Lynn Forester de Rothschild - visited the Clinton White House multiple times .

As early as 1993, records show, Epstein donated $10,000 to the White House Historical Association and attended a donors' reception hosted by Bill and Hillary Clinton. Around the same time, according to a source familiar with the connection, Epstein visited presidential aide Mark Middleton several times at the White House . Two years later, businesswoman Lynn Forester de Rothschild wrote a personal letter to Clinton thanking him for their talk about the financier . - Daily Beast

On July 8, the former president sought to distance himself from Epstein, claiming that the two crossed paths just six times beginning in 2002; "four flights on the billionaire's private jet, a single trip to his Harlem office, and one "brief visit" to his New York apartment, all with staff and security detail in tow," per the Beast .

"President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York," Clinton spokesperson, Angel Ureña, told the Beast. " Any suggestion to the contrary is both factually inaccurate and irresponsible."

Clinton's denial flies in the face of flight logs from Epstein's now-sold 'Lolita Express' 727 jet at least 26 times .

When the president released his initial statement on Epstein, he did not explain the multiple other trips he appears to have taken on the financier's plane -- including one flight to Westchester with Epstein, his alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell, and an "unnamed female." - Daily Beast

And according to the Beast , "Clinton also failed to mention the intimate 1995 fundraising dinner at the Palm Beach home of Revlon mogul Ron Perelman, where Clinton hobnobbed with the likes of Epstein, Don Johnson, and Jimmy Buffett. (Nearby, at Epstein's own Palm Beach mansion, the money man allegedly abused hundreds of underage girls.)"

While Politico claimed in a piece last week that the Clintons and Epstein connected through Epstein's longtime confidant and alleged procurer of young women - Ghislaine Maxwell, after Clinton left office, documents in the Clinton Library attest to much earlier links .

In late September of 1993, Bill and Hillary Clinton hosted a reception for supporters who had contributed to recent White House renovations. The nearly $400,000 overhaul -- which included new gold draperies and a 13-color woven rug for the Oval Office -- was funded entirely by donations to the White House Historical Association, a private organization that helps preserve and promote the White House as a historical monument.

The reception took place at the White House residence from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m., according to a copy of the president's daily schedule. White House Social Secretary Ann Stock -- who appears in Epstein's little black book of phone numbers -- was listed as the point of contact . According to multiple attendees, the evening included an intimate tour of the newly refurbished residence, followed by a receiving line with the president and first lady. Dessert was served in the East Room, where the couple thanked everyone for attending and announced the Committee for the Preservation of the White House.

Guests for the event , according to the invitation list, included the journalist and philanthropist Barbara Goldsmith, heiress Jane Engelhard, political consultant Cynthia Friedman, and " Mr Jeffrey Epstein and Ms. Ghislaine Maxwell ." Epstein and Maxwell do not appear on the 'regret list,' and there is a letter 'A' next to both of their names, indicating they planned to attend . A press release from the event, put out by Hillary Clinton's office, lists Epstein as a White House Historical Association donor. - Daily Beast

Meanwhile, Clinton's college friend A. Paul Prosperi visited Epstein at least 20 times while he was in the Palm Beach county jail after pleading guilty to procuring an underage prostitute in 2008. Prosperi was also present at a 1995 Perelman fundraiser at which both Clinton and Epstein were present.

Another Clinton connection with Epstein comes through White House aide Mark E. Middleton - a friend of Clinton's from his beginnings in Arkansas who joined the administration in 1993 as special assistant to Chief of Staff Mack McClarty (another Arkansas insider, per the Beast ). Middleton would rise to the level of "Deputy to the Counselor" in 1994.

Over that same time period, a source with knowledge of the situation told The Daily Beast, Middleton met with Epstein in the White House at least three times . It is unclear what they discussed, or for how long. Middleton did not respond to repeated calls and emails for comment, or to a reporter who visited his home in Arkansas.

Middleton and Epstein also appear to have shared a famous friend in common. Donald Trump -- who once called Epstein a "terrific guy" -- sent Middleton a signed copy of his book , The Art of the Deal , while the lawyer was working in the White House. The inscription read, " To Mark -- Best wishes. Your mom is the best ."

Hobnobbing with businessmen like Epstein and Trump was part and parcel of Middleton's White House job , according to a 1999 report from the House Committee on Government Reform. ("In the course of his duties, Middleton was in contact with many prominent business people and contributors to the President," the report states.) But it also got the lawyer in trouble with the administration once he left. - Daily Beast

Rothschild letter

In 1995, Lynn Forester de Rothschild writes ""Dear Mr. President: It was a pleasure to see you recently at Senator Kennedy's house. There was too much to discuss and too little time. Using my fifteen seconds of access to discuss Jeffrey Epstein and currency stabilization, I neglected to talk to you about a topic near and dear to my heart. Namely, affirmative action and the future."

Of note, former Epstein attorney and pal Alan Dershowitz previously said that Forester de Rothschild introduced him to Epstein at a party on Martha's Vineyard for Lord Rothschild in the summer of 1996.

"He was feisty, he was utterly politically incorrect," said Dershowitz in a recent interview with New York magazine. "He was interesting to be with."

He was also sexually molesting underage girls.


Bounder , 7 minutes ago link

He should have just said:

"I didnt have sex with those under age girls" and shook his finger at us.

Schroedingers Cat , 9 minutes ago link

Bill Clinton and that vicious evil **** of a wife Hillary have done more to **** this country up and the entire world than any other human beings. No contest.

Give Me Some Truth , 19 minutes ago link

Remember when Harvey Weinstein was the "scum" of the moment? During these "15 minutes," director Quentin Tarantino acknowledged his regret in not exposing Weinstein. Basically, he gave an interview where he admitted he knew what his producer friend had been doing - or must have been doing - all these years, and yet Taratino did nothing. Taratino gets credit in my book for acknowledging this. In other words, he COULD have done something to stop his activities/crimes, but did not.

Compare and contrast Tarantino's "mea culpa" to the HUNDREDS of VIPs who must have known what Epstein was doing - for decades. And remained silent and never considered going to authorities.

Scores or hundreds of people COULD have stopped this, but did not.

This tells us much about our system and the "leaders" who rule us. Also about our "watchdog" press corps, which had no interest in exposing this person or his operation.

Tunga , 21 minutes ago link

Affirmative action? Ha! 1 year later Clinton signs into law permission for the Attorney General to traffic in little kids without Judicial oversight;

SEC. 604. ASYLUM REFORM.

(a) Asylum Reform.--Section 208 (8 U.S.C. 1158) is amended to read as follows: ... (D) No judicial review.--There shall be no judicial review of a determination of the Attorney General under subparagraph (A)(v). ..." - excerpt from https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-104publ208/html/PLAW-104publ208.htm

Give Me Some Truth , 36 minutes ago link

Bill Richardson seems to be getting a pass so far on this story. While he has been identified as being in Epstein's "black book" and receiving a couple of $50,000 campaign donations from Epstein, what hasn't been mentioned is Richardson's key role as a Clinton "fixer" and sycophant. Typically, he is identified only as a "former New Mexico governor."

But prior to being elected governor of New Mexico, he served (if memory is correct) as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under Bill Clinton. It was in this role that he "found" a job for Monica Lewinsky, when Clinton had to move her out of the White House.

No telling what he did for Clinton before he was rewarded with this plum appointment.

I'm sure if a real investigation ever occurred we would learn that New Mexico leaders were as "bought off" as the U.S. Virgin Island leaders had to be.

Epstein bought his 7,500 acre "ranch" from a former New Mexico governor. Richardson admits he visited this place one time (yeah right). The "ranch" has no cattle and has its own air strip. Hasn't anyone in this state, or this county, investigated what was going on at this place?

But if Richardson and Clinton are both involved (and they are), we know they were both up to no good, and we're trying to keep something secret.

Distant_Star , 48 minutes ago link

" Clinton's college friend A. Paul Prosperi visited Epstein at least 20 times while he was in the Palm Beach county jail . . ."

Just checking on Epstein's well-being and morale. A true humanitarian. There is no chance that Mr. Prosperi was acting as a cut-out for the Clinton family. /S

FUG , 15 minutes ago link

Paul must have visited him at night since Epstein was hardly in his cell during the daytime due to the allowance of liberal furloughs 6.5 days per week and "business trips" he was allowed to take that lasted several days.

Give Me Some Truth , 56 minutes ago link

Virginia Roberts is on the record - in sworn affidavits - of saying she had sex with Prince Andrew on three occasions. She even mention the places and time frames she was at these places with Prince Andrew.

Can't reporters or investigators simply see if Prince Andrew was at these places at the same time she was? Wouldn't this corroborate (or disprove/impeach) her story?

They won't even do this.

Distant_Star , 45 minutes ago link

Absolutely not. "Journalists" have no time to check on the Prince Andrew story, or the allegation that Bill Clinton flew with Epstein 26 times. They are too busy pursuing false allegations against Trump and putting spin on Mueller's train-wreck testimony from yesterday.

Give Me Some Truth , 35 minutes ago link

I think it would be easy to prove that Clinton "dismissed" his Secret Service detail on many occasions, right?

Doesn't he have to sign some kind of release when he does this?

Simply check the dates he did this and cross-reference to Epstein's schedule. Simply find out who he travelled with and to where on these occasions.

Plenty of ex Secret Service might grant interviews, even off the record or anonymously, right?

Give Me Some Truth , 52 minutes ago link

This story intimates that Bill Clinton and Jeff Epstein knew one another long before Clinton says they knew one another. And were much closer to one another than we have been led to believe.

And anyone who spent a lot of time with Epstein knew exactly what commodity/service Epstein offered.

Even if Clinton never availed himself of the services offered by one of Epstein's girls, he had to know exactly what business Epstein "trafficked" in. Of course, the notion that Clinton never "sampled the product" is laughable.

The little voice inside my head , 7 minutes ago link

The story also opens the door to a vast amount of connections previously unknown, you could follow the people mentioned in the article and see what became of them and start building a web... Many posts here are starting to do that. Hopeful

Give Me Some Truth , 1 hour ago link

This was some real investigative journalism. All reporters had to do was check White House records that show who attended what events. This story PROVES Clinton was lying if he indeed said he didn't know Epstein until after he was out of office. This alone is grounds to investigate him further. (Things he said in the past have now been proven to be lies - Investigation 101).

Reporters then showed Clinton's long-time buddy (who ran his political campaign at Georgetown) was also an associate of Epstein. And this person visited Epstein 20 times (!) while Epstein was in jail (over a 13-month period).

These CAN'T be coincidences.

Anyway, most of these people will say "no comment" or will refuse to respond to requests for comments. But this doesn't mean reporters can't find incriminating sources or stories from other avenues.

For example, Vanity Fair reporters simply interviewed people who worked at the Virgin Islands airport. They then asked these people: "Did you happen to see a large number of young girls boarding or getting off Epstein's planes?"

Answer: Yes. Definitely. All the time.

I mean, what are we to make of this?

Why were so many young girls traveling to and from Epstein's island?

There can only be one answer.

PrivetHedge , 1 hour ago link

Lynn Forester de Rothschild

The connections to the elite go deep. Very deep. This is an interesting test of their grip on the narrative.

Give Me Some Truth , 35 minutes ago link

I'd like to learn more about all the news organizations that "took a pass" on investigating this story.

The Palm Beach Police Chief can give the names of several of these organizations.

According to the Miami Herald story, he grew "tired" of all these reporters talking to him and never publishing a single story.

Well, which reporters from which news organizations did he talk to who subsequently dropped the story?

This is another story where the "investigators" should also be investigated.

[Jul 25, 2019] The Epstein Case Is A Rare Opportunity To Focus On The Depraved Nature Of America s Elite

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... When scanning the news most days, I see a constant amplification of wedge issues by mass media, blue-check pundits and even many in the so-called alternative media. I see people increasingly being encouraged to demonize and dehumanize their fellow citizens. Anyone who voted for Trump is automatically a Nazi, likewise, anyone who supports Sanders is an anti-American communist. The reality is neither of these things is even remotely true, so why are people so quick to say them? ..."
"... The Epstein case shines a gigantic spotlight on just how twisted and sociopathic the highest echelons of U.S. society have become. This is exactly what happens when you fail to put wealthy and powerful super predators behind bars. They get more brazen, they get more demented and, ultimately, they destroy the very fabric that holds society together. We are in fact ruled by monsters. ..."
Jul 25, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Michael Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Perhaps, at long last, a serial rapist and pedophile may be brought to justice , more than a dozen years after he was first charged with crimes that have brutalized countless girls and women. But what won't change is this: the cesspool of elites, many of them in New York, who allowed Jeffrey Epstein to flourish with impunity.

For decades, important, influential, "serious" people attended Epstein's dinner parties, rode his private jet, and furthered the fiction that he was some kind of genius hedge-fund billionaire. How do we explain why they looked the other way, or flattered Epstein, even as they must have noticed he was often in the company of a young harem? Easy: They got something in exchange from him , whether it was a free ride on that airborne "Lolita Express," some other form of monetary largesse, entrée into the extravagant celebrity soirées he hosted at his townhouse, or, possibly and harrowingly, a pound or two of female flesh.

– From the New York Magazine article: Who Was Jeffrey Epstein Calling?

An honest assessment of the current state of American politics and society in general leaves little room for optimism regarding the public's ability to accurately diagnose, much less tackle, our fundamental issues at a root level. A primary reason for this state of affairs boils down to the ease with which the American public is divided against itself and conquered.

Though there are certain issues pretty much everyone can agree on, we simply aren't focusing our collective energy on them or creating the mass movements necessary to address them. Things such as systemic bipartisan corruption, the institutionalization of a two-tier justice system in which the wealthy and powerful are above the law, a broken economy that requires both parents to work and still barely make ends meet, and a military-industrial complex consumed with profits and imperial aggression not national defense. These are just a few of the many issues that should easily unite us against an entrenched power structure, but it is not happening. At least not yet.

We currently find ourselves at a unique inflection point in American history. Though I agree with Charles Hugh Smith's assessment that " Our Ruling Elites Have No Idea How Much We Want to See Them All in Prison Jumpsuits, " we have yet to reach the point where the general public is prepared to do something about it. I think there are several reasons for this, but the primary obstacle relates to how easily the citizenry is divided and conquered. The mass media, largely owned and controlled by billionaires and their corporations, is highly incentivized to keep the public divided against itself on trivial issues, or at best, on real problems that are merely symptoms of bipartisan elitist plunder.

The key thing, from a plutocrat's point of view, is to make sure the public never takes a step back and sees the root of society's problems. It isn't Trump or Obama, and it isn't the Republican or Democratic parties either. These individuals and political gangs are just useful vehicles for elitist plunder. They help herd the rabble into comfortable little tribal boxes that results in made for tv squabbling, while the true forces of power carry on with the business of societal pillaging behind the scenes.

You're encouraged to attach your identity to team Republican or team Democrat, but never unite as one voice against a bipartisan crew of depraved, corrupt and unaccountable power players molding society from the top. While the average person living paycheck to paycheck fashions themselves part of some biblical fight of good vs. evil by supporting team red or blue, the manipulative and powerful at the top remain beyond such plebeian theater (though they certainly encourage it). These folks know only one team -- team green. And their team keeps winning, by the way.

When scanning the news most days, I see a constant amplification of wedge issues by mass media, blue-check pundits and even many in the so-called alternative media. I see people increasingly being encouraged to demonize and dehumanize their fellow citizens. Anyone who voted for Trump is automatically a Nazi, likewise, anyone who supports Sanders is an anti-American communist. The reality is neither of these things is even remotely true, so why are people so quick to say them?

Why is most of the anger in this country being directed at fellow powerless Americans versus upward at the power structure which nurtured and continues to defend the current depraved status quo? I don't see any upside to actively encouraging one side of the political discussion to dehumanize the other side, and I suggest we consciously cease engaging in such behavior. Absolutely nothing good can come from it.

Which is partly why I've been so consumed by the Jeffrey Epstein case. For once, it allows us to focus our energy on the depraved nature of the so-called American "elite," rather than pick fights with each other. How many random Trump or Sanders supporters do you know who systematically molest children and then pass them off to their wealthy and powerful friends for purposes of blackmail?

The Epstein case shines a gigantic spotlight on just how twisted and sociopathic the highest echelons of U.S. society have become. This is exactly what happens when you fail to put wealthy and powerful super predators behind bars. They get more brazen, they get more demented and, ultimately, they destroy the very fabric that holds society together. We are in fact ruled by monsters.

Unfortunately, by being short-sighted, by fighting amongst ourselves, and by taking the easy route of punching down versus punching up, we allow such cretins to continue to rape and pillage what remains of our civilization.

If we can truly get to the bottom of exactly what Epstein was up to, I suspect it has the potential to focus the general public (beyond a few seconds) on the true nature of what's really going on and what makes the world tick. Revelations of such a nature could provide the proverbial tipping point that's so desperately needed, but this is also why the odds of us actually getting the whole story is quite low. There's simply too much at stake for those calling the shots.

* * *

Side note: I've been consistently updating my Epstein twitter thread as I learn new information. I suggest checking back in from time to time.

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Ali Tarpate , 23 minutes ago link

> ...f urthered the fiction that he was some kind of genius hedge-fund billionaire

He wasn't - he was set up by Mossad

Mossad Epstein Connection

Notice the Bronfman involvement...

giovanni_f , 32 minutes ago link

If we can truly get to the bottom of exactly what Epstein was up

1. We can't.
2. Epstein was in the business to set up people with kompromat material ...
3. ...and did it for someone else , it appears as he was protected from above for many years.
4. These " elses " won't allow that the support of the Americans to forever fight Israels wars gets shattered.
5. I expect operation diversion & coverup soon. My hunch is that they will pull a 9/11 hoax as a last resort if things get out of hand fast.
6. They did it in the past, they will do it in the future.
7. Human lives don't matter to them.

He–Mene Mox Mox , 35 minutes ago link

Michael Krieger said: "It's sad and mind-boggling how easy it is to divide and conquer the American public. Manipulating the masses in this country is trivial. The next few years will not be pretty".

Despite all the news of how the elites have manipulated the American public, it still goes on, unabated. Americans, for the most part, are dumb and fat couch potatoes. They are not going to rise up against their elite masters, because they don't have the wherewithal to do so. So, the show continues on, and the elites don't seem to have anything to worry about, and do as they will.

If Americans were truly energetic about reigning in the abuses of the elites, they would have done so back in the 1870's, when Mark Twain wrote about the Gilded Age Elites. Here it is, 149 years later, and nothing has changed in America today. The elites still rule, and everyone else is an indentured servant. Of course, there are benefits for the elites to keep the American masses dumbed down, and letting them lead couch potato life styles. Doing so, keeps them in power.

Give Me Some Truth , 14 minutes ago link

I suspect it was the CIA or FBI. But the goal was to keep Acosta from investigating Virginia Roberts' claims. If authorities did this they would have had to investigate Prince Andrew.

If they found her to be truthful, they might even have to arrest Prince Andrew (can you imagine this happening?). Or at least ask him to testify in a trial.

If the truth came out, this would humiliate the British nation, and Great Britain was (still is) one of America's most important allies in the "war on terror" and all our other neocon initiatives.

Acosta was essentially told to "back off" Prince Andrew (not necessarily Epstein, who was best buddies with "Andy.")

This doesn't mean Israel intelligence was not involved in some way. It just means that American intelligence was involved, or wanted to protect key people. Hell, they still do.

We can be almost certain that the exact same thing that happened with Acosta is happening right now. Some prosecutor is being told to "back off. Don't go here. Focus only on Epstein and Epstein only."

This is why Ghislaine Maxwell has not been charged and will not be charged. This is why the FBI has not raided Pedo Island or Pedo Ranch. This is why Epstein's four "co-accomplices" have not been charged.

Prosecutors have again been told that "intelligence" is saying that it's okay to do this (charge Epstein with sex crimes), but NOT okay to do this (investigate and arrest any fellow predators).

phillyla , 38 minutes ago link

It isn't just the elites and we need to stop pretending it is

"Child sex trafficking which is the buying and selling of women, young girls and boys for sex, some as young as 9 years old, has become big business in America. It is the fastest growing business in organized crime and the second-most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns.
Adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.
It's not just young girls who are vulnerable to these predators, either.
According to a 2016 investigative report, "boys make up about 36% of children caught up in the U.S. sex industry (about 60% are female and less than 5% are transgender males and females)."
Who buys a child for sex?
Otherwise, ordinary men from all walks of life. "They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse."

https://www.groundzeromedia.org/7-17-19-apex-predator-den-of-vipers-heart-of-darkness-w-ed-Opperman/

Obamanism666 , 45 minutes ago link

If Epstein was muslin would this be a crime? Of course not it would be part of Muslim Culture. Look into the Abuse done to young girls in the Rotherham abuse case. BTW I am no sticking up for Epstein but the ruling elites and certain minorities are treated different from Joe and Jane Public

Give Me Some Truth , 53 minutes ago link

The headline for this story is great:

"The Epstein Case Is A Rare Opportunity To Focus "On The Depraved Nature Of America's Elite"

This IS a "rare opportunity' for Americans to do just this (focus on how deprived our elite leaders really are).

If Americans really started to do this, for an extended period of time, and got, you know, kind of pissed off about this state of affairs, we might even throw all the bums out. We might really "drain the swamp."

So this is a BIG story. Potentially.

Of course, the Powers that Be are going to do everything they can to make sure Americans do NOT focus on this story for too long. Or that the "narrative" is controlled. (For example by focusing only on Epstein, not his hundreds of depraved buddies and corrupt institutions).

Give Me Some Truth , 26 minutes ago link

I've been posting for 10 days that there are "too many" of these people. And they are too powerful.

Seems to me if authorities went after one of the "johns," they would have to go after ALL of the "Johns." And this includes Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, former senators, governors, CEOs, secretaries of the treasury, bankers, etc.

It's the massive numbers of possible offenders that is probably keeping all of these people "safe."

And I still think Prince Andrew is the biggest fish the authorities don't want to humiliate/charge.

Even more so than Clinton. Half the country would throw a party if Clinton was charged. But in the UK, 90 percent of British citizens would be mortified and greatly embarrassed if one of their Princes was proven to have done all the things that have been alleged he did.

[Jul 24, 2019] The degradation of political elites is a universal phenomenon. Of course, first of all it is noticeable in relation to the Western elites (American, European), but this can also be found in the post-Soviet space

Jul 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

alaff , Jul 23 2019 20:00 utc | 90

The degradation of political elites is a universal phenomenon. Of course, first of all it is noticeable in relation to the Western elites (American, European), but this can also be found in the post-Soviet space (Georgia, Armenia, Moldova etc). Ukraine is generally a special case - real freaks and Nazis in power, the speaker of parliament with the mental retardation certificate, the Attorney General of the country (btw, previously convicted) without a legal education etc.

So I join and also express my condolences to the people of Great Britain.

O , Jul 23 2019 22:07 utc | 105

Posted by: Ort | Jul 23 2019 21:42 utc | 99

The entire world political class and most of the commentariat of the political class indulges in kayfabe.

"In professional wrestling, kayfabe /ˈkeɪfeɪb/ (also called work or worked) is the portrayal of staged events within the industry as "real" or "true", specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not of a staged or predetermined nature of any kind. The term kayfabe has evolved to also become a code word of sorts for maintaining this "reality" within the direct or indirect presence of the general public.[1]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe

[Jul 24, 2019] Like his hero Winston Churchill, Boris Johnson believes history will treat him kindly because HE intends to write it."

Jul 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Jul 23 2019 16:50 utc | 52

So, what options do the UK citizenry have until the next general election? IMO, Corbyn encapsulated it well in his two tweets :

"Boris Johnson has won the support of fewer than 100,000 unrepresentative Conservative Party members by promising tax cuts for the richest, presenting himself as the bankers' friend, and pushing for a damaging No Deal Brexit.

"But he hasn't won the support of our country."

And:

"Johnson's No Deal Brexit would mean job cuts, higher prices in the shops, and risk our NHS being sold off to US corporations in a sweetheart deal with Donald Trump.

"The people of our country should decide who becomes the Prime Minister in a General Election."

George Galloway on BoJo :

"In this sense Boris Johnson is a throwback to former times – not quite to the 19th century like his aide-de-camp Jacob Rees-Mogg but at least to the middle of the 20th century. On the face of it, Harold MacMillan, the then British PM, was a straight-laced, slightly eccentric upper-class Englishman. That his wife was upstairs in bed, for years, with one of his parliamentary colleagues Sir Robert Boothby didn't seem to faze him. Or us, but then we weren't to know about it.

"In deference to the new age, Boris Johnson has skipped the straight-laced bit; he has cuckolded his colleagues, even leaving cuckoos in their nests, has left a trail of lurid love-life stories to make a thriller-writer blush, and will likely bed down in Downing Street on Wednesday night with his 31 year-old girlfriend. But the rest is just the same. Johnson is (or has fashioned himself) as an upper-class English eccentric and will be hoping the deference is not dead amongst 21st century Britons.

"To be fair it should be said that Johnson is as colourful as his predecessor Mrs May was bloodless. He is clever and quick-witted (you get what you pay for at Eton), is well read and is a good writer too (he should be, he is Britain's most expensive newspaper columnist). Like his hero Winston Churchill, he believes history will treat him kindly because HE intends to write it."

George will soon be on RT's InQuestionRT as per his tweet at 5pm BST.


O , Jul 23 2019 17:43 utc | 59

The Anglo-Zionist have elevated another buffoon to entertain the masses. Trump was just the tip of the iceberg. It will not be long before President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho will soon be leading the global masses.

Didn't I hear something about Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson having presidential aspirations?

Uncle Jon , Jul 23 2019 18:22 utc | 68
b,

Boris Johnson's ascension to power in UK is just a clown act in a tragic circus. But a circus nonetheless. A none-story. A nothingburger.

I implore you to stay focused on Jeffery Epstein. That is the real story of our time. One that could bring down AIPAC/Israel and all of its' spies, the Clintons, Trump, and certain elements of the deep state once and for all, and free US from the shackles of Zionism.

Do not let this story die by way of side shows like the story above and etc.

By Phillip Giraldi from his article http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/israels-agents-of-influence/

"It's a big job to uncover Israeli subversion, but somebody needs to start doing it."

Let it be you. We trust your reporting and I hope you don't take your eyes off the ball. Forget about BoJo, Russiagate (it is really Israelgate) and Ukraine. Epstein is the story of the ages. One that could change the realm forever.

[Jul 24, 2019] The world's "leadership class" really is bereft of any level of competence or standing: trump, boris, macon, ursula (and remaining eucom and IMF "leaders"), pompeo, bolton, pence, nitenyahoo,et al. and on and on.

Jul 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Thomas , Jul 23 2019 15:06 utc | 25

It is starting to appear to be very much a contest of buffoons, which country has the more outrageous buffoon. At this point, it is a close race between the us and the uk but who is to judge.

The world's "leadership class" really is bereft of any level of competence or standing: trump, boris, macon, ursula (and remaining eucom and IMF "leaders"), pompeo, bolton, pence, nitenyahoo,et al. and on and on.

IMHO, Putin, lavrov, shoigu stand out head and shoulders above the aforementioned "leadership class."

jared , Jul 23 2019 15:24 utc | 30

@ Thomas | Jul 23 2019 15:06 utc | 25

That's because Putin and Xi (and some others) are in fact leaders, making rational decisions for the benefit of their nations.
Those others are just figureheads - ability is not so important as reliability and entertainment value.

Hoarsewhisperer , Jul 23 2019 15:33 utc | 34
It'll be interesting to see if BoJo can fake solemnity and diplomacy as convincingly as Trump can when in the company of other national leaders. I'm confident that Zelenski, being an actor, will be able to make it look easy.

There's a sort of precedent for this switch to comedy-based leadership.
I half-remember that when Ronnie Raygun offered himself as a candidate for POTUS, he answered the critics of his lack of experience by asserting that he had played many leadership roles during his movie career - making him the superior candidate.
And the sheeple bought it!

It seems that this is the dawn of a new "Anything's Possible" era.

Sad Canuck , Jul 23 2019 19:28 utc | 88
@70 O

Always thought professional wrestling provided a good analogy for our current situation. Trump and BoJo (and the nations they represent) do indeed represent classic "heels". In particular the USA is clearly now a "closet champion" or the "term for a heel in possession of a title belt who consistently dodges top flight competition and attempts to back down from challenges". What a world we inhabit.

[Jul 21, 2019] Bill Clinton was one of the most famous and frequent passengers on Epstein s Lolita Express and a guest on his private island

Notable quotes:
"... The **** smell of all of this is simply overwhelming. He is not just a pedophile. He was and probably still is a Mossad agent whose purpose it was to entrap mainly US politicians and power bookers with the extremely compromising film evidence he was later found to be obtaining from the various elite junkets to his little island. ..."
Feb 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Implied Violins , 2 hours ago link

Just posting this for posterity, as I've seen this information before:

"Bill Clinton was one of the most famous and frequent passengers on Epstein's "Lolita Express" and a guest on his private island. When Roberts asked Epstein about Clinton's presence on the island, he simply laughed it off, and said, "Well, he owes me a favour."[37] Epstein also donated money to the Clinton Foundation even after his conviction. In early 2015, a photo emerged showing Ghislaine Maxwell at the wedding of Chelsea Clinton to Jewish investment banker Marc Mezvinsky in July 2010.

An annotated copy of the address book turned up in court proceedings after Epstein's former house manager Alfredo Rodriguez tried to sell it in 2009. Rodriguez characterized it as containing the "Holy Grail" or "Golden Nugget" to unraveling Epstein's child-sex network."[38] The book, which was eventually obtained by the FBI, listed well-known political figures such as Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, Tony Blair, Senator Edward Kennedy, and Henry Kissinger, Ehud Barak, John Kerry, David Rockefeller and even Donald Trump."

http://www.conspiracyschool.com/blog/kompromat-trump-hollywood-sex-parties-and-russian-oligarchs-part-i

So...Kraft goes down, and there are supposedly even more "interesting" names on the list of those who were serviced by those toothless asian whores. Could this be part of some unreal blackmail scheme against Trump?? Or is this **** TRUE, and we have a pedophile in our highest office??

I don't know what the truth is any more. Maybe someone smarter than me can make sense of this ****. I sure can't.

navy62802 , 5 hours ago link

Don't get your hopes up. This guy is an operative of the Secret Team. He will never be held to justice. Neither will his associates.

navy62802 , 5 hours ago link

By "associates" I really mean those he compromised in the course of his operation.

MadHatt , 5 hours ago link

https://www.foxnews.com/us/billionaire-sex-offender-epstein-once-claimed-he-co-founded-clinton-foundation

FBaggins , 4 hours ago link

The **** smell of all of this is simply overwhelming. He is not just a pedophile. He was and probably still is a Mossad agent whose purpose it was to entrap mainly US politicians and power bookers with the extremely compromising film evidence he was later found to be obtaining from the various elite junkets to his little island.

He and his Israeli handlers simply have too much on too many people for Epstein to really pay for any of his crimes, which crimes many spy agencies around the world engage in frequently. However, what should really piss Americans off is that Epstein was doing his dirt mainly against Americans for Israel, and Israel was supposed to be a trusted friend and ally of the US, working in close concert with US spy agencies and forces in destroying nations like Iraq and Syria and pulling off false flag operations like 9/11.

Treason Season , 2 hours ago link

Mossad + Mayfia = 9/11

[Jul 21, 2019] Charge of epstein procuring underaged girls for sex

Notable quotes:
"... A court filing in a civil case in Florida last week included new allegations against Jeffrey E. Epstein, a businessman who pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution, and two other high-profile men: a member of the British Royal family and an American lawyer. ..."
"... About the royal: Some of you may argue that if there was an encounter, the Prince may have been unaware of the girl's age. He has people . People who make arrangements for him. One can see how such a fellow might hear the same knock on the door that Neil Bush once heard. Perhaps, upon opening the door, his first reaction was something other than "May I see your ID, Miss?" ..."
"... On Saturday, Mr. Dershowitz said he "categorically and unequivocally" denied all of the allegations. He said he would file disbarment proceedings against the lawyers who filed the motion, Bradley J. Edwards, a lawyer in Florida, and Paul G. Cassell, a former federal judge and a law professor at the University of Utah. ..."
"... The full court filing was published on Mondoweiss a couple of days ago. We learn that the complainant, Jane Doe #3, was 15 years of age, and that she was recruited by an Epstein associate named Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of Robert Maxwell (the late news tycoon and known Mossad asset). The photo to the left shows the Prince with the girl who seems to have been Jane Doe #3. ..."
Mar 03, 2017 | cannonfire.blogspot.ca">
Underaged sex with Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew...and Bill Clinton...? (If the claims are true, Hillary is OVER.) Wow.

A court filing in a civil case in Florida last week included new allegations against Jeffrey E. Epstein, a businessman who pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution, and two other high-profile men: a member of the British Royal family and an American lawyer.

The motion filed in United States District Court in the Southern District of Florida alleges that Mr. Epstein forced a teenage girl to have sexual relations with several men, including Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth's second son, and Alan M. Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. Both men have denied the allegations.

Jeffrey Epstein is not just a businessman. He's a billionaire, and he has already been convicted of soliciting underaged prostitution.

About the royal: Some of you may argue that if there was an encounter, the Prince may have been unaware of the girl's age. He has people . People who make arrangements for him. One can see how such a fellow might hear the same knock on the door that Neil Bush once heard. Perhaps, upon opening the door, his first reaction was something other than "May I see your ID, Miss?"

That scenario seems plausible. However, as we shall see, that scenario is not what has been alleged.

We will get to the Prince in a bit. For now, let's focus on Dershowitz.

On Saturday, Mr. Dershowitz said he "categorically and unequivocally" denied all of the allegations. He said he would file disbarment proceedings against the lawyers who filed the motion, Bradley J. Edwards, a lawyer in Florida, and Paul G. Cassell, a former federal judge and a law professor at the University of Utah.

"They are lying deliberately, and I will not stop until they're disbarred," Mr. Dershowitz said in a phone interview.

The very predictability of that furious reaction means that no lawyer would have filed such charges against Dershowitz frivolously. Cassell has an impressive resume. He's not a young go-getter out to make a name for himself.

I understand that there are a lot of women who have made iffy claims against famous people. But this case seems different. Epstein has already pled guilty. Moreover, Dershowitz was part of Epstein's legal team.

The full court filing was published on Mondoweiss a couple of days ago. We learn that the complainant, Jane Doe #3, was 15 years of age, and that she was recruited by an Epstein associate named Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of Robert Maxwell (the late news tycoon and known Mossad asset). The photo to the left shows the Prince with the girl who seems to have been Jane Doe #3. Allegedly, the shot was taken by Epstein. (Note: In what follows, the term NPA refers to non-prosecution agreement .)

Epstein then became enamored with Jane Doe #3, and with the assistance of Maxwell converted her into what is commonly referred to as a "sex slave." Epstein kept Jane Doe #3 as his sex slave from about 1999 through 2002, when she managed to escape to a foreign country and hide out from Epstein and his co-conspirators for years. From 1999 and 2002, Epstein frequently sexually abused Jane Doe #3, not only in West Palm Beach but also in New York, New Mexico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, in international airspace on Epstein's private planes, and elsewhere.

Epstein also sexually trafficked the then-minor Jane Doe, making her available for sex to politically-connected and financially-powerful people. Epstein's purposes in "lending" Jane Doe (along with other young girls) to such powerful people were to ingratiate himself with them for business, personal, political and financial gain, as well as to obtain potential blackmail information.

One such powerful individual that Epstein forced then-minor Jane Doe #3 to have sexual relations with was former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, a close friend of Epstein's and well-known defense attorney. Epstein required Jane Doe #3 to have sexual relations with Dershowiz on numerous occasions while she was a minor, not only in Flroida but also on private planes, in New York, New Mexico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In addition to being a participant in the abuse of Jane Doe #3 and other minors, Dershowitz was an eye-witness to the sexual abuse of many other minors by Epstein and several of Epstein's co-conspirators. Dershowitz would later play a significant role in negotiating the NPA on Esptein's behalf. Indeed, Dershowitz helped negotiate an agreement that provided immunity from federal prosecution in the Southern District of Florida not only to Epstein, but also to "any potential co-conspirators of Epstein." NPA at 5. Thus, Dershowitz helped negotiate an agreement with a provision that provided protection for himself against criminal prosecution in Florida for sexually abusing Jane Doe #3. Because this broad immunity would have been controversial if disclosed, Dershowitz (along with other memebers of Epstein's defense team) and the Government tried to keep the immunity provision secret from all of Epstein's victims and the general public, even though such secrecy violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act.

There's a third named participant in these doings, one Jean Luc Brunel, a close Epstein friend and a scout for various modelling agencies.
He would bring young girls (ranging from ages as young as twelve) to the United States for sexual purposes and farm them out to his friends, especially Epstein. Brunel would offer the girls "modeling" jobs. Many of the girls came from poor countries or impoverished backgrounds, and he lured them in with a promise of making good money.
The Government was well aware of Jane Doe #3 when it was negotiating the NPA, as it listed her as a victim in the attachment to the NPA. Moreover, even a rudimentary investigation of Jane Doe #3's relationship with Epstein would have revealed the fact that she had been trafficked throughout the United States and internationally for sexual purposes. Nonetheless, the Government secretly negotiated a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein precluding any Federal prosecution in the Southern District of Florida of Epstein and his co-conspirators. As with Jane Doe #1 and Jane Doe #2, the Government concealed the non-prosecution agreement from Jane Doe #3 -- all in violation of her rights under the CVRA -- to avoid Jane Doe #3 from raising powerful objections to the NPA that would have shed tremendous light on Epstein and other powerful individuals that would likely have prevented it from being conlcuded in the secretive manner in which it was.
The document also mentions a Jane Doe #4, an impoverished sixteen year old who was told that she could make $300 by giving a "massage" to an old man in Palm Beach.

This matter seems very serious. We have too many details, too many corroborating witnesses (in the form of four Jane Does). We have a photo. We have reports of the existence of many, many more photos. The hugger-mugger involving the NPA seems downright ghastly -- yet all too credible.

Frankly, I would not rule out the possibility that Epstein was working for an intelligence agency -- either Mossad or one of our own. The Maxwell connection points to Mossad.

This whole business has "honeytrap" written all over it.

The Clinton connection.

The Daily Mail discloses that one of Epstein's, er, protegees was a woman named Johanna Sjoberg. Since the story links her to Prince Andrew, it is tempting suppose that she is the aforementioned Jane Doe #3. However, British newspapers have named another young woman, Virginia Roberts.

Miss Sjoberg worked for Epstein for four years, often massaging him as he lay on a couch in his giant bathroom making phone calls to friends such as Bill Clinton and Cate Blanchett.

He kept a little black book, containing the numbers of all his masseuses by a phone in the bathroom, she said. She left after he started becoming 'more aggressive' in his demands that she 'do sexual things to him'.

She said she was aware that the girls recruited by Epstein and his acolytes were not paid just for massages but for 'sexual favours'.

Virginia Roberts revealed that as a 17-year-old 'erotic masseuse', she was flown by Epstein to London to meet Prince Andrew,

Miss Sjoberg said: 'I'm not surprised he was sending girls abroad. I just did not think they were so young.'

The Prince strongly denies any claim of impropriety, of course.

What about Epstein and Clinton? Obviously, there is nothing wrong in taking a man's phone call, even a call from someone like Epstein. However...

Bill Clinton was also named dozens of times in lawsuits against Epstein and was alleged to have flown on his private jet more than 10 times.

Flight logs in lawsuits detailed that between 2002 and 2005 the former US President traveled around the world courtesy of his friend and stopped at Epstein's Caribbean island Little St James where young girls were supposedly kept as sex slaves.

Clinton was deemed to be so close to Epstein that he was nearly deposed during the investigation into his paedophilia.

Before he was jailed Epstein's other acquaintances are said to have been former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak; former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.

Let's make the obvious point. If there is any evidence of wrongdoing against Bill Clinton, then Hillary's chances at the nomination are over . A candidacy can withstand many things, but a statutory rape scandal involving one's spouse? No.

More on the Clinton link here :

Over the years, the casually-dressed, globe-trotting financier, who was said to log more than 600 flying hours a year, has been linked with Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker and Manhattan-London society figure Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late media titan Robert Maxwell.

Epstein reportedly flew Tucker and Spacey to Africa on his private jet as part of a charitable endeavour. Clinton, meanwhile, flew on multiple occasions in the same plane to Epstein's private Caribbean island, Little St James, between 2002 and 2005 as he developed his philanthropic post-presidential career. It would later be alleged in court that Epstein organised orgies on that same private island in the US Virgin Islands.

Reports in the US media say many of the A-list names broke off any links with the former maths teacher after his arrest and conviction in 2008 of having sex with an underage girl whom he had solicited. His arrest followed an 11-month undercover investigation at a mansion in Florida's Palm Beach that Epstein owned.

In 2008, he pleaded guilty to a single charge of soliciting prostitution and was handed a 18-month jail sentence. He served 13 months in jail and was obliged to register as a sex offender. A 2011 report in the New York Post said that he celebrated his release from jail and his return to a property he maintains in New York – a 45,000-sq-foot eight-storey mansion on East 71st Street – with Prince Andrew.

The story goes on to give much useful information about Epstein's business dealings.

More here :

The financier, who was jailed for 18 months in 2008 after pleading guilty to solicitation for prostitution, kept a sickening stash of images on a computer seized at his Palm Beach mansion in 2006.

The six-year-old papers, seen by the Sunday People, state: "Some of the photographs in the defendant's possession were taken with hidden cameras set up in [Epstein's] home in Palm Beach.

"On the Day of his arrest, police found two hidden cameras and photographs of ­underage girls on a computer in the defendant's home.

"[He] may have taken lewd ­photographs of Jane Doe 102 with his hidden cameras and transported [them] to his other residences and elsewhere."

Court papers also allege that Maxwell presented nude pictures of her she had taken herself to Epstein as a birthday present.

They add that Roberts' claims that she was forced to tell Epstein all about her sexual encounters so he could use the information to "blackmail" the royal.

She further claims she was sex-trafficked to "many other powerful men, including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well known Prime Minister, and other world leaders".

And now let's play our game: Who was that Prime Minister?

To- neeeeee...! If that's you, you're gonna have to say so many rosaries that even the Virgin Mary will get sick of hearing your voice.

This scandal places our right-wing media in a bind. Obviously, the right-wingers will want to leap on anything that dirties the Clinton name. On the other hand, anything that reeks of Mossad involvement is untouchable.

[Jul 21, 2019] Is Epstein case a start of Trump counterattack on the Clinton wing of Dems

Trump attacked Hillary during 2016 elections campaign using change of Bill connection with Epstein. This was too dangerous move if he himself was implicated.
Notable quotes:
"... Why would intelligence services want to make an intelligence op out of someone so sleasy and easily compromised? ..."
"... The wealthy class has defeated the poor class. What we are seeing now is a civil war in the wealthy class. The Epstein business is just one of the skirmishes in that civil war. ..."
"... Trump is fighting for his life and money. Lose the next election and spend the rest of both fighting imprisonment. What makes me think its time to remind people that the office of POTUS has teeth? ..."
"... "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to leave it alone," ..."
"... does not say he "worked for intelligence". It might just mean that "intelligence" made the deal with him in return for information and that they then estimated the fall out and cleaned up (ie took people that could be blackmailed out of sensitive positions). ..."
"... But as to the "why now" of Epstein, surely it is 2020. As for Barr being a CIA kid, that does give some pause, except he is working for Trump, and so presumably he is playing his part in the 2020 event. ..."
"... From what I have read and heard, Trump is not tainted by the Epstein story. The attempts of those on the left or whatever (I can't even call it the left anymore) to associate Trump with the Epstein story are very belabored. "Grabbing pussy" of adult women who cluster around is not the same as recruiting young girls and teenagers and running sex camps for grown-up boys such as Randy Andy, RAndy Bill, and other Randy boys. ..."
"... AFAIK Trump did not ride the Lolita Express. The rumors about raping a 13-year-old in Epstein's apartment will have to become more than rumor to harm Trump, no matter how much the left pushes an Epstein = Trump narrative. ..."
"... As they pushed the Weinstein = Trump narrative. I.e., whenever you see Weinstein's name, think "Trump." But I don't think that really worked except with the very ones who were pushing that equation in the first place. In other words, auto-suggestion. ..."
"... "...every good gamblers knows to hedge their bets. ..."
"... Defense Department computers are among the top distributors of child pornography. An untold number of Department of Defense (DOD) employees and contractors have subscriptions to child pornography websites, and the problem is apparently so pervasive it requires new technical solutions to address it. ..."
"... "Hundreds of DoD-affiliated individuals" were recently identified as suspects in child pornography cases, according to an investigation by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. ..."
"... Last year, an investigation by the National Criminal Justice Training Program found DOD computers were among the top networks nationwide for peer-to-peer sharing of pornographic images of minors. DOD's network ranked 19th out of 2,891 computer networks studied. ..."
"... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNue92Gta3s 2014 Aerial drone video of Little St. James. The island is owned privately by Jeffrey Epstein and is located southeast of St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands. ..."
Jul 12, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Moon Reader , Jul 11 2019 4:45 utc | 125

Mr Reader

Interesting post in that it raises many of the key issues and how they may fit together.

Generally agrees with my initial (or maybe secondary) impression that this is result of Trump triggering backmail clause by failing to act as required by those running the show.

But, I have I think a better theory more fits the situation. Acosta (the human "sh*t-grenade) was hired because he knew stuff and knew people who knew stuff. Trump was being blackmailed with Epstein affair - dems/cia/etc... It almost work, he almost attacked Iran, was led to believe it could be done in a way that would not lead to war - likely by you-know-who.

He balked and called their "bluff". They were not bluffing. Problem for them is that Trump can maybe weather the sh*t-storm they can bring - comey/brennan/clapper/et al... For now, I am inclined to side with Trump.

I don't know why but in spite of his lack of polish, he's brought some crude and interesting results.

ralphieboy , Jul 11 2019 12:19 utc | 149
Why would intelligence services want to make an intelligence op out of someone so sleasy and easily compromised?
Ghost Ship , Jul 11 2019 12:27 utc | 150
Epstein was just a young "dirty old man". Trump is innocent - can anybody point to any incident where Trump committed a real felony, not some breach of landlord regulations, For all the accusations of him being the capo di tutti capi, nothing has really stuck, so he gives the impression of being a criminal but really isn't but it's good theatre. So my guess is that Trump told Barr to go to it and bring Epstein in and bang him up for life. Reasons:
  1. Trump was getting bored with Acosta
  2. Epstein may drag down others - the Clintons being prime candiadates
  3. This is a poke in the eye for Obama
  4. Trump looks good when Epstein does the time he deserves

Meanwhile the anti-#resistance investigations role on and implicate Hillary for making false statements and Obama for trying to fix the 2016 election.
Trump'll romp home in 2020. If Adelson, etc. tries to push another Republican candidate, Trump'll run as an independent and probably still win. Trump now has his main "problems" by the balls.

As for the Daily Beast they have an article claiming that there was co-ordination between Trump and Russia instead of collusion . I'd love some of the shit the author's been smoking, 'cos it's up there with S T Coleridges Kubla Khan as a work of fantasy.

nottheonly1 , Jul 11 2019 12:52 utc | 151
'Appalled' does not suffice any longer. All this shit is more than a mentally healthy Human Being can bear - and in that fact lies also a motive to bombard the population 24/7 with shit like that. Therefore it appears that this, too is part of an orchestrated effort to rile up people against each other and destroy whatever peace still exists.

You could call it 'distraction' from insurmountable problems created by this specific sub-species of Homo Sapiens. But I am not commenting about that.

I am as pissed as a decent person can get without losing its temper. But I am utterly disgusted that this childfucker Epstein has soiled the name of one of my favorite Human Beings in history:

Brian Epstein - the one person that gave Humanity The Beatles.

I can not emphasize enough how effed up this is. There must be a court order to rename him into Jeffrey Childfucker, in order to protect the name of one of the greatest music managers ever.

But I do concede to the fact, that this kind of damage might as well limited to people who know who The Beatles were.

JasonT , Jul 11 2019 12:53 utc | 152
The wealthy class has defeated the poor class. What we are seeing now is a civil war in the wealthy class. The Epstein business is just one of the skirmishes in that civil war.
Really? , Jul 11 2019 12:57 utc | 153
Today's CJR media feed focuses on Acosta and the 2007 plea deal without mentioning either Bush or Obama. Focus is still on Trump. Of course Acosta is now a member of the Trump administration. But Trump was not in charge with this particular POS went down.

??????

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/alexander_acosta_jeffrey_epstein.php

harry , Jul 11 2019 9:12 utc | 139

Trump is fighting for his life and money. Lose the next election and spend the rest of both fighting imprisonment. What makes me think its time to remind people that the office of POTUS has teeth?
somebody , Jul 11 2019 9:43 utc | 140
"I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to leave it alone,"

does not say he "worked for intelligence". It might just mean that "intelligence" made the deal with him in return for information and that they then estimated the fall out and cleaned up (ie took people that could be blackmailed out of sensitive positions).

They don't care about the fall out any longer, so this now is allowed to blow up.

The plea deal was in 2007 under president Bush.

Really? , Jul 11 2019 10:08 utc | 141
# 123 Travers

"The left is going wild thinking that this will "get Trump" but quite the opposite is happening. . .

Now this story will run into 2020 largely damaging democrats into the 2020 election. Trump's DOJ is running the operation."

That is my perception, although I am not a qualified observer.

But as to the "why now" of Epstein, surely it is 2020. As for Barr being a CIA kid, that does give some pause, except he is working for Trump, and so presumably he is playing his part in the 2020 event.

From what I have read and heard, Trump is not tainted by the Epstein story. The attempts of those on the left or whatever (I can't even call it the left anymore) to associate Trump with the Epstein story are very belabored. "Grabbing pussy" of adult women who cluster around is not the same as recruiting young girls and teenagers and running sex camps for grown-up boys such as Randy Andy, RAndy Bill, and other Randy boys.

To me the big question is why Dersh was part of the FOIA action to unseal the docs. If just appearing in a photo with Epstein is enough for "the left" to try to hang Trump, the Dersh is in a lot more image trouble, with him name on the plane manifest.

Is Trump's name on the plane log? I don't think so. So, imagewise Dersh is going to take a big hit. And, by defending Trump last summer as he did, he has now associated himself with both Trump and Epstein. Trump comes out clean. Dersh comes out Derty.

PS. Why is so much blacked out on the plane logs that have been published?

Really? , Jul 11 2019 10:20 utc | 142
125 Moon Reader

the Macow sounds "about right" to me, but only "about." I can very well imagine that Dersh is taking orders from the JSP, but if he rode the Lolita Expres, he is in trouble.

AFAIK Trump did not ride the Lolita Express. The rumors about raping a 13-year-old in Epstein's apartment will have to become more than rumor to harm Trump, no matter how much the left pushes an Epstein = Trump narrative.

As they pushed the Weinstein = Trump narrative. I.e., whenever you see Weinstein's name, think "Trump." But I don't think that really worked except with the very ones who were pushing that equation in the first place. In other words, auto-suggestion.

William Gruff , Jul 11 2019 11:00 utc | 144
O @110 sez: "...every good gamblers knows to hedge their bets.

You bet equally on both wrestlers in the ring? You don't make much profit that way. Much better to arrange who wins ahead of time with the competitors and the referee and then just bet on the one everyone agrees to make the winner.

Sure, Trump was in on the fix, so even if he won the power elites still win, but that is true for all of the other contestants in the primaries as well, with the possible exception of Sanders. The problem is that the power elites have very specific plans, and those plans depended upon their tool in the White House being Clinton, not Trump. It isn't that Trump would be their enemy or anything silly like that, but rather that a Trump victory would not resonate; would not synergize with the megatrends they were manufacturing within the population.

On the contrary, the Trump victory introduced a societal forcing function that is 180° out of sync with the larger narrative the power elites were trying to create. Trump was chosen to be the loser in the 2016 elections because his defeat would have had the opposite effect, damping trends in society that the power elites wanted quashed and reinforcing the ones that they wanted amplified. Hundreds of $billions in entertainment-base narrative generation that have been fed to the public since 2016, and had been in the production pipeline from years prior, were supposed to be reflected in the real world by the victory of the first woman president. Instead that media is being fed to the public while the top office in the world is occupied by an unrepentant pussy grabber. The messaging is diametrically opposed and interferes with itself rather than reinforcing itself.

Sure, Trump is still the tool of the power elites, but he is not the tool they were planning on.

pantaraxia , Jul 11 2019 11:20 utc | 145
@62 fastfreddy

"I am trying to link Wexner with the Bronfman's (Seagrams Liquor Family) via a source other than the Mega Group (which may not be credible, IDK)."

The existence of the Mega Group was revealed in the Wall Street Journal in 1998 under the headline 'Titans of Industry Join Forces To Work for Jewish Philanthropy'. According to the Journal , it was founded in 1991 by Wexler and Charles Bronfman.

Membership included Edgar Bronfman, the chairman of the World Jewish Congress, Charles Bronfman, Edgar's brother and a top executive of the family's flagship Seagrams Corp.; Leslie Wexler of Limited, Inc.; Charles Schusterman, chairman of Samson Investment Co. of Tulsa, Oklahoma; Harvey "Bud" Meyerhoff, Baltimore real estate magnate; Laurence Tisch, chairman of Loews Corp.; Max Fisher, the Detroit oil magnate and Republican Party powerhouse; bagel magnate Max Lender; Leonard Abramson, the founder of U.S. Healthcare; and hedge-fund manager Michael Steinhardt.

One of its so-called 'philanthropic' projects entitled "Wexner Analysis: Israeli Communication Priorities 2003," was leaked to Electronic Intifada.

Leaked document exposes pro-Israel lobby's manipulation of US public
https://electronicintifada.net/content/leaked-document-exposes-pro-israel-lobbys-manipulation-us-public/4540

Israel Shamir also writes about the Mega group in 2001 entitled Kugel Eaters, https://www.mediamonitors.net/kugel-eaters/

"...when they met in the Edgar Bronfman mansion in Manhattan. The head of the World Jewish Congress hosted a meeting of the fifty richest and most powerful Jews of the US and Canada. There was no press coverage, no limelight, just a few lines in the newspapers. The gathered multibillionaires discussed the ways to achieve Jewish unity, and strengthen the Jewish identity of American Jews, tersely reported Shlomo Shamir for Haaretz. They also agreed to launch a PR program under the Orwellian codename of 'Truth' with the purpose of influencing American public opinion regarding Israeli policies.

The megabucks call themselves 'Mega group'. This name appeared in the media a couple of years ago, as a name for the secret Israeli mole in the upper reaches of the US establishment. It came up in an overheard phone conversation, later denied by the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. The newshounds and spook watchers got it wrong. 'Mega' was not an agent, Mega was the boss."

curious man , Jul 11 2019 11:55 utc | 146
Defense Department Computer Network Among Top Sharers of Child Pornography

Defense Department computers are among the top distributors of child pornography. An untold number of Department of Defense (DOD) employees and contractors have subscriptions to child pornography websites, and the problem is apparently so pervasive it requires new technical solutions to address it.

"Hundreds of DoD-affiliated individuals" were recently identified as suspects in child pornography cases, according to an investigation by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

So far, authorities have only looked into about 20 percent of these cases. But already, they've found "several" individuals "using their government devices to download or share said pornographic material."

Last year, an investigation by the National Criminal Justice Training Program found DOD computers were among the top networks nationwide for peer-to-peer sharing of pornographic images of minors. DOD's network ranked 19th out of 2,891 computer networks studied.

To prevent such widespread abuse going forward, the "End National Defense Network Abuse Act" would "crack down on this activity by upgrading the training and technical capacity of military criminal investigative organizations to confront the misuse of DoD computers, facilities, and equipment," according to a press release. It would also arrange for DOD authorities to work more closely with civilian law enforcement on these cases.

"The notion that the Department of Defense's network and Pentagon-issued computers may be used to view, create, or circulate such horrifying images is a shameful disgrace, and one we must fight head on," said Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D -- Va.), who co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Mark Meadows (R -- N.C.).

A companion bill in the senate has been introduced by Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R -- Alaska) and Brian Schatz (D -- Hawaii).

LINK 1 LINK 2

curious man , Jul 11 2019 12:02 utc | 147
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNue92Gta3s 2014 Aerial drone video of Little St. James. The island is owned privately by Jeffrey Epstein and is located southeast of St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands.

[Jul 21, 2019] Jeffrey Epsteins Political and Sex Trafficking Networks Plus Help me find a Miami-based Cuban by Ken Silverstein

Notable quotes:
"... If you haven't heard of him, Epstein's the super-sleazy Palm Beach billionaire who was busted some time back and convicted for conspiring to bring underage foreign girls to his estates in the United States and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Or as his 2008 plea deal put it, to "knowingly and willfully conspiring with others known and unknown to persuade, induce, or entice minor females to engage in prostitution." ..."
"... I've previously written about Epstein's ties to Bill Clinton and to Donald Trump . Neither Clinton nor Trump look come out of it looking good, to put it mildly, but in this case Clinton looks a lot worse. ..."
"... "Flight logs show Bill Clinton traveled at least 10 times on Epstein's private jet, dubbed the 'Lolita Express,' by tabloids, and he is widely reported to have visited Little St. James, Epstein's private island in the US Virgin Islands," I've previously written. "That's where, according to attorneys for Epstein's victims, many of the worst crimes against minors were committed by Epstein and friends who traveled there with him." ..."
"... In a 2011 interview with her attorneys, Virginia Roberts, one of the teenagers preyed upon by Epstein, said he had told her he had "compromising" information on Bill Clinton and that the former president "owes me a favor." ..."
"... Oh yeah, and by the way Epstein donated to the Clinton Foundation and multiple Democratic Party causes before and after being convicted for pedophilia. ..."
"... Federal and state investigators amassed a mountain of evidence against Epstein, but in the end Black and his other attorneys were able to draft and negotiate a bizarre plea deal. The terms of the agreement, which was secret at the time, capped damages against Epstein - reportedly worth about $2 billion - to between $50,000 and $150,000, depending on what year he had abused the girl, an attorney with direct knowledge of the case told me. ..."
"... So why write about Epstein now? First, as just noted, this creep got off easy. Second, Page Six recently spotted Epstein on the Upper East Side with young Russian "playmates." ..."
"... He said that Karin had two departments, one that was legal and sent girls to New York and elsewhere, and an illegal side that recruited underage girls for Epstein and other global clients. "They lured young girls [to Orgy Island], mostly from small towns in Brazil and Eastern Europe – with the promise of a fat modeling contract," this person said. "They told them they'd go to the island and meet the head of the modeling agency. Instead, they were coerced into pleasuring Epstein, Brunel and their guests." ..."
"... This source said Epstein's entire sex procurement operation was laid out to him by a former Karin bookkeeper, a Cuban-American woman who worked for the modeling agency's Miami office during the relevant period. ..."
Jan 17, 2017 | washingtonbabylon.com

Before heading out for the weekend, let's discuss Jeffrey Epstein, America's best connected political pedophile, shall we?

If you haven't heard of him, Epstein's the super-sleazy Palm Beach billionaire who was busted some time back and convicted for conspiring to bring underage foreign girls to his estates in the United States and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Or as his 2008 plea deal put it, to "knowingly and willfully conspiring with others known and unknown to persuade, induce, or entice minor females to engage in prostitution."

I've previously written about Epstein's ties to Bill Clinton and to Donald Trump . Neither Clinton nor Trump look come out of it looking good, to put it mildly, but in this case Clinton looks a lot worse.

"Flight logs show Bill Clinton traveled at least 10 times on Epstein's private jet, dubbed the 'Lolita Express,' by tabloids, and he is widely reported to have visited Little St. James, Epstein's private island in the US Virgin Islands," I've previously written. "That's where, according to attorneys for Epstein's victims, many of the worst crimes against minors were committed by Epstein and friends who traveled there with him."

In a 2011 interview with her attorneys, Virginia Roberts, one of the teenagers preyed upon by Epstein, said he had told her he had "compromising" information on Bill Clinton and that the former president "owes me a favor."

Oh yeah, and by the way Epstein donated to the Clinton Foundation and multiple Democratic Party causes before and after being convicted for pedophilia.

Lately, however, the party has reportedly shunned Epstein. Indeed, he's so toxic, recently released emails show , that Team Obama rejected the idea of having Epstein's chief attorney, Roy Black, host a fundraiser. Black, by the way, is perhaps best known for winning an acquittal for William Kennedy Smith for allegedly raping a Palm Beach teenager. Following that trial Black married a juror in the case.

Federal and state investigators amassed a mountain of evidence against Epstein, but in the end Black and his other attorneys were able to draft and negotiate a bizarre plea deal. The terms of the agreement, which was secret at the time, capped damages against Epstein - reportedly worth about $2 billion - to between $50,000 and $150,000, depending on what year he had abused the girl, an attorney with direct knowledge of the case told me.

The agreement also barred victims from seeking any future financial redress. Roberts and a number of other "Jane Does" - Epstein's underage victims- are currently suing to overturn the settlement. A number of attorneys with ties to the Obama administration were involved in negotiating the deal, which was highly criticized and never publicly explained. (The astonishing story of the "sweetheart" plea deal is laid out in this article in the Palm Beach Daily News.)

So why write about Epstein now? First, as just noted, this creep got off easy. Second, Page Six recently spotted Epstein on the Upper East Side with young Russian "playmates."

Third, James Patterson, the best-selling writer, is authoring a book about Epstein that's coming out in October. It's a great time to pile on.

Fourth, I've been looking into the Epstein affair for over a year. I've interviewed dozens of sources in Florida, including several of the Miami-area lawyers for the Jane Does, and have a lot of material in my files.

Interviews with key sources, documents and previously published accounts show that Epstein's closest friends and collaborators included Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of disgraced British newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell, and Frenchman Jean-Luc Brunel. The latter ran a modeling agency called Karin, which is based in Paris but also has offices in New York, Miami, and Brazil.

Brunel, whose role in the Epstein case has been covered by Jezebel and others, has a long and sordid record of abusing and pimping out young women. Back in 1988, 60 Minutes aired a segment that featured a dozen models who said they had been sexually assaulted by Brunel.

Craig Pyes, an associate producer and chief investigator of the segment, said various witnesses told him that Brunel was "heavily into cocaine and sex with young girls," and that he set-up parties for "his rich playboy friends" and invited girls to weekend parties that "operated as meat markets for older men." Several models told 60 Minutes they had been drugged and raped by Brunel or his friends.

What's especially outrageous, attorneys tell me, is that neither Brunel nor Maxwell ever testified in Epstein's case. Both fled the United States on the eve of their respective depositions with the flimsiest of excuses. (Page Six recently reported that Maxwell was finally going to be forced to testify in the ongoing Jane Doe trial, but I haven't been able to confirm that.)

Brunel lined up underage girls for Epstein's Virgin Islands hideaway through his modeling agency, several of the victims' attorneys I interviewed said. A private investigator involved in the case backed those accounts.

He said that Karin had two departments, one that was legal and sent girls to New York and elsewhere, and an illegal side that recruited underage girls for Epstein and other global clients. "They lured young girls [to Orgy Island], mostly from small towns in Brazil and Eastern Europe – with the promise of a fat modeling contract," this person said. "They told them they'd go to the island and meet the head of the modeling agency. Instead, they were coerced into pleasuring Epstein, Brunel and their guests."

This source said Epstein's entire sex procurement operation was laid out to him by a former Karin bookkeeper, a Cuban-American woman who worked for the modeling agency's Miami office during the relevant period.

I've unsuccessfully tried to track this woman down. Anyone with information please email me at [email protected] .

I've reached out to Epstein, Brunel, Maxwell and Black on various occasions and never heard back from any of them.

[Jul 21, 2019] Steve Pieczenik additional video on Lolita express

Nov 03, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com

Muse minus Time chubbar Nov 3, 2016 10:18 AM ,

Steve Pieczenik additional video on "Lolita express" HRottenC enabled/participated in pedophilia as well, more intel leaks to come from US gov. insiders:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12zVlaZyX3Q

Julian Assange is a hero as well as the US moral citizens standing up against this evil criminal monster!!!

[Jul 21, 2019] Lolita Express book will be released Monday detailing the exploits of the infamous billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein

Notable quotes:
"... A blockbuster book detailing the exploits of the infamous billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein hits shelves on Monday. Sources close to the 63-year-old Brooklyn native have advised him to be "unreachable and out of the country" this weekend when the preliminary media blitz gets underway. ..."
"... Epstein is far deeper scum than a mere pedophile, while the Koch bros and Pence may have a truly fundamentalist moral streak. The period of time between now and the election could be very dangerous for Epstein. ..."
Oct 09, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Lolita Express Monday - just another tequila sunrise:

A blockbuster book detailing the exploits of the infamous billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein hits shelves on Monday. Sources close to the 63-year-old Brooklyn native have advised him to be "unreachable and out of the country" this weekend when the preliminary media blitz gets underway.

"Filthy Rich," a collaborative effort between best-selling author James Patterson and investigator John Connolly, is set to reopen old wounds for Epstein, who served 13 months in prison following a 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a teenage girl.

Epstein has reportedly settled numerous similar cases out of court. The blockbuster book is also expected to further embarrass celebs who once partied with Epstein.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/confidential/pedophile-billionaire-jeffrey-epstein-braces-book-release-article-1.2819009

An absolutely remarkable aspect of this "news" article is that while it mentions Trump as a celebrity who partied with Epstein, the name "Bill Clinton" is entirely missing. That's despite documentary proof that "Bill" took 21 flights on the Lolita Express.

Just another MSM advertorial for Hyena Rodent Clinton.

Steve H. October 9, 2016 at 11:17 am

Hey Jim, I've got a comment in moderation that touches on this. Specific to Epstein, I'll say the Koch brothers are as close to the White House as they will ever get, and that Epstein was adamant about getting evidence about the people he serviced.

Epstein is far deeper scum than a mere pedophile, while the Koch bros and Pence may have a truly fundamentalist moral streak. The period of time between now and the election could be very dangerous for Epstein.

Jim Haygood October 9, 2016 at 11:30 am

Now that the Politics of Personal Destruction are in full play, certain parties had better hope that Epstein's settlements, compelling his victims to silence in exchange for hush money, hold up.

After all, if one of them has already spent all her settlement money, she's effectively judgment proof in case she tells her story in violation of the settlement.

As ol' Saddam Hussein used to say, " Anything is possible now, my brothers. "

MyLessThanPrimeBeef October 9, 2016 at 11:53 am

Will the next debate be rated XXX?

Is this getting personal? Is that trap for Trump?

MyLessThanPrimeBeef October 9, 2016 at 11:37 am

Trump: "Go behind closed doors of the holier-than-thou politicians and pundits and see what they're saying. I look like a baby."

What's it like inside the restrooms at the White House or Capitol Hill? Must be very colorful.

Here, we are looking at public and private etiquette. Unless you're a saint or infallible, many of us work like that.

Hence, surveillance.

[Jul 21, 2019] Breaking: Clinton Just Got Devastating News

Highly recommended!
Epstein issue and his connection to Clinton mafia was raised by press in 2016 but went nowhere.
The fact that Trump campaign targeted Clinton for his connection with Epstein means that Trump is probably was not involved as a client of Epstein brothel with underage prostitutes for high ranking politicians .
Notable quotes:
"... Now Bill Clinton is back in the press and not for his controversial relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but rather his friendship with Epstein. In fact, flight records indicate that Bill would frequent the island paradise during the 2002 and 2005 era while Hillary, Bill's wife, was a Senator in New York. ..."
"... The woman went on to say how orgies were a regular occurrence and that she recalled two young girls from New York who were always seen around the five-house compound but their personal back-stories were never revealed. ..."
"... Moreover, Epstein was invited to Chelsea Clinton's wedding in 2010 amongst 400 other guests, demonstrating his close friendship with the Clinton family. ..."
"... To top it all off blue blood, "Prince Andrew was allegedly one of the house's visitors. On Friday, the Duke of York was named in a federal lawsuit filed against Epstein, whom the FBI once reportedly linked to 40 young women. Filed in 2008 in the Southern District of Florida, the $50 million lawsuit claimed Epstein had a "sexual preference and obsession for underage minor girls gained access to primarily economically disadvantaged minor girls in his home and sexually assaulted these girls,"reported the Washington Post. ..."
Aug 12, 2016 | beforeitsnews.com

... ... ...

Back in 2005 police conducted an 11 month-long undercover investigation into Epstein and his estate after the mother of a 14-year-old girl went to police after suspecting her daughter was paid $300 for at least one sexual act on the island in which she was ordered to strip, leaving on just her panties, while giving Epstein a massage.

Although police found tons of photos of young women on the island and even interviewed eyewitnesses, Epstein was hit with a mere slap on the wrist after "pleading to a single charge of prostitution". Epstein later served 13-months of his 18-month service in jail.

In 2008, Epstein was hit again, this time with a $50 million civil suit after another victim filed in federal court claiming that she was "recruited" by Epstein to give him a "massage" but was essentially forced into having sexual intercourse with him for $200 which was payable upon completion. The women were coming out of the woodwork.

Now Bill Clinton is back in the press and not for his controversial relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but rather his friendship with Epstein. In fact, flight records indicate that Bill would frequent the island paradise during the 2002 and 2005 era while Hillary, Bill's wife, was a Senator in New York.

'I remember asking Jeffrey what's Bill Clinton doing here kind of thing, and he laughed it off and said well he owes me a favor,' one unidentified woman said in the lawsuit, which was filed in Palm Beach Circuit Court.

The woman went on to say how orgies were a regular occurrence and that she recalled two young girls from New York who were always seen around the five-house compound but their personal back-stories were never revealed.

"At least one woman on the compound was there unwillingly," reported the Daily Mail in a recent article. The woman was allegedly forced to have sex with "politicians, businessmen, royalty, academicians" at the retreat. Just one of "more than 40 women" that have come forth with claims against Epstein, showing the vast scale of the man's dark operations, which aren't limited only to Little St. James.

Moreover, Epstein was invited to Chelsea Clinton's wedding in 2010 amongst 400 other guests, demonstrating his close friendship with the Clinton family.

To top it all off blue blood, "Prince Andrew was allegedly one of the house's visitors. On Friday, the Duke of York was named in a federal lawsuit filed against Epstein, whom the FBI once reportedly linked to 40 young women. Filed in 2008 in the Southern District of Florida, the $50 million lawsuit claimed Epstein had a "sexual preference and obsession for underage minor girls gained access to primarily economically disadvantaged minor girls in his home and sexually assaulted these girls,"reported the Washington Post.

[Jul 21, 2019] Clinton shared more than a dozen flights with a woman who federal prosecutors believe procured underage girls to sexually service Epstein and his friends and acted as a potential co-conspirator in his crimes

Notable quotes:
"... "I wanted to tell you that I have compiled a list of 34 confirmed minors," Villafana wrote to Lefkowitz. "There are six others, whose name [sic] we already have, who need to be interviewed by the FBI to confirm whether they were 17 or 18 at the time of their activity with Mr. Epstein." ..."
"... Epstein agreed to a 30-month sentence, including 18 months of jail time and 12 months of house arrest and the agreement to pay dozens of young girls under a federal statute providing for compensation to victims of child sexual abuse. .the U.S. Attorney's Office promised not to pursue any federal charges against Epstein or his Named and Un-Named co-conspirators. ..."
"... His legal team? Gerald Lefcourt, Roy Black, Ken Starr, and Alan Dershowitz. ..."
"... The federal non-prosecution agreement Epstein's legal team negotiated immunized all named and unnamed potential co-conspirators in Epstein's child trafficking network, which includes those who allegedly procured minors for Epstein and any powerbrokers who may have molested them." ..."
Feb 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

William Dorritt , 3 hours ago link

LOLITA EXPRESS...ORGY ISLAND...ELITE PEDOPHILE RING ?-2006
* George W Bush President: January 20, 2001 – Jan. 20, 2009
* Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General USA: Feb. 3, 2005–Sept. 17, 2007
* Michael Bernard Mukasey, AG. USA: Nov. 9, 2007 – Jan. 20, 2009
* Eric Holder, A G. USA: Feb. 3, 2009 – April 27, 2015
* Loretta Lynch, Attorney General USA: April 27, 2015 – Present
* Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafana
* Epstein's Attorneys: Gerald Lefcourt, Roy Black, Ken Starr, Alan Dershowitz.

+ "He (Epstein) is an enthusiastic member of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations."

+ Bill Clinton...26 trips aboard the "Lolita Express"

Jeffrey Epstein's Boeing 727 is equipped with the necessary hardware for him to wake up, roll out of bed, and start trading.

+ Clinton shared more than a dozen flights with a woman who federal prosecutors believe procured underage girls to sexually service Epstein and his friends and acted as a "potential co-conspirator" in his crimes.

+ Socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein's former assistant Sarah Kellen -- have been repeatedly accused in court filings of acting as pimps. Oxford-educated Maxwell, recently seen dining with Clinton at Nello's on Madison Avenue. Manhattan-London G. Maxwell, daughter of the mysteriously deceased media titan Robert Maxwell.

+ A new lawsuit has revealed how Clinton took multiple trips to Epstein's private island where he 'kept young women as sex slaves'

+ Clinton was also apparently friends with a woman who collected naked pictures of underage girls for Epstein to choose from

+ Clinton invited her (pimp) to Chelsea's wedding

+ According to former child sex slave Virginia Roberts and a class action lawsuit against convicted billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, former President Bill Clinton was present during sex parties involving up to twenty underage girls at Epstein's secluded island in the Caribbean.

+ 20 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 said were sexually abused by Epstein, Palm Beach Police and FBI

+ 35 female minors sexually abused, Epstein settled lawsuits from more than 30 "Jane Doe" victims since 2008; the youngest alleged victim was 12 years old at the time of her abuse.

..............................Source: FBI & Federal Prosecutors

+ flights on Epstein's planes 1997 to 2005, include Dershowitz (FOX NEWS, Harvard Law), former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president Larry Summers, Naomi Campbell, and scientist Stephen Pinker.

+ In the most recent court documents, filed on December 30, Roberts further claims she was sex-trafficked to "many other powerful men, including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders." Roberts said Epstein trafficked children to politicians, Wall Streeters and A- listers to curry favor, advance his business, and for political influence.

The FIX

2015 Doc Release by Judge:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafana wrote to Epstein lawyer Jay Lefkowitz in a Sept. 19, 2007, email. "I will include our standard language regarding resolving all criminal liability and I will mention 'co-conspirators,' but I would prefer not to highlight for the judge all of the other crimes and all of the other persons that we could charge ... maybe we can set a time to meet, if you want to meet 'off campus' somewhere, that is fine. I will make sure that I have all the necessary decision makers present or 'on call' as well."

"I wanted to tell you that I have compiled a list of 34 confirmed minors," Villafana wrote to Lefkowitz. "There are six others, whose name [sic] we already have, who need to be interviewed by the FBI to confirm whether they were 17 or 18 at the time of their activity with Mr. Epstein."

In a December 2007 letter, the prosecutor acknowledges some notifications of alleged victims but says they were sent after the U.S. Attorney's Office signed the plea deal and halted for most of the women at the request of Epstein's lawyers.

"Three victims were notified shortly after the signing of the Non-Prosecution Agreement of the general terms of that Agreement," Villafana wrote, again to Lefkowitz. "You raised objections to any victim notification, and no further notifications were done."

http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2015/07/judge-unseals-more-details-in-jeffrey-epstein-underage-sex-lawsuit-210065

Original Deal Hidden

On Sept. 24, 2007, in a deal shrouded in secrecy that left alleged victims shocked at its leniency,

Epstein agreed to a 30-month sentence, including 18 months of jail time and 12 months of house arrest and the agreement to pay dozens of young girls under a federal statute providing for compensation to victims of child sexual abuse. .the U.S. Attorney's Office promised not to pursue any federal charges against Epstein or his Named and Un-Named co-conspirators.

Sources:

Fox By Malia Zimmerman, May 13, 2016

Daily Mail Reporter 19 March 2014

Gawker Nick Bryant 01/22/15

Western Journalism Kris Zane March 27, 2014

Politico By Josh Gerstein 07/07/15

New York Magazine, By Landon Thomas Jr.

THE FIX IS IN

"In 2006 the FBI counted at least 40 underage girls who had been molested by Epstein. Authorities searched his Florida mansion and found two computers containing child *********** and homemade video and photographs from cameras hidden in bedroom walls which had been used to film sex acts. The case was airtight for many counts of sexual crimes but Palm Beach State Attorney Barry Krischer and the Justice Department stepped in and offered Epstein a plea deal. In 2008 Epstein pleaded guilty in a Florida court to one count of soliciting underage girls for sex. His punishment was 13 months of "8 hour nights only" at a halfway house. No other charges about raping underage girls nor running an underage sex trafficking ring were mentioned in the plea. His legal team? Gerald Lefcourt, Roy Black, Ken Starr, and Alan Dershowitz.

The federal non-prosecution agreement Epstein's legal team negotiated immunized all named and unnamed potential co-conspirators in Epstein's child trafficking network, which includes those who allegedly procured minors for Epstein and any powerbrokers who may have molested them."

http://dcxposed.com/2015/01/26/bilderberg-pervs-island-sin-scandal-threatens-ultra-elite-politicians-lawyers-royalty/

William Dorritt , 3 hours ago link

The Talented Mr. Epstein

Lately, Jeffrey Epstein's high-flying style has been drawing oohs and aahs: the bachelor financier lives in New York's largest private residence, claims to take only billionaires as clients, and flies celebrities including Bill Clinton and Kevin Spacey on his Boeing 727. But pierce his air of mystery and the picture changes. Vicky Ward explores Epstein's investment career, his ties to retail magnate Leslie Wexner, and his complicated past.

June 27, 2011 12:00 am

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2003/03/jeffrey-epstein-200303

Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery

So how do termite grouping patterns fare as an investment strategy? Again, facts are hard to come by. A working day for Epstein starts at 5 a.m., when he gets up and scours the world markets on his Bloomberg screen -- each of his houses, in New York, St. Thomas, Palm Beach, and New Mexico, as well as the 727, is equipped with the necessary hardware for him to wake up, roll

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/n_7912/index3.html

[Jul 21, 2019] That a person with the stature of being a former president would hang around with a low-life like Epstein is really telling. He flew perhaps twenty-seven times on Epsteins plane which makes him more than just a passing acquaintance. Birds of a feather flock together.

Notable quotes:
"... The children in some of these poor third-world 'orphanages' aren't really orphans as we understand the term but are just from poor families who can't take care of them. ..."
"... That a person with the stature of being a former president would hang around with a low-life like Epstein is really telling. He flew perhaps twenty-seven times on Epstein's plane which makes him more than just a passing acquaintance. Birds of a feather flock together. ..."
"... If a country next to us, so similar to ours in many ways but with a fraction of our population, has so many that can be exposed at one time then how many could the US have? ..."
"... The Burning Platform has featured a series of posts over the last few weeks that provide a volume of evidence that is impossible to discount. ..."
"... I have no doubt whatsoever that child sex abuse, trafficking and even sex-related murder may well be hung around the necks of very, very famous persons, and the horrors so bad that those persons (if still alive) will not even make it to trial before they're hung from a street lamp. ..."
"... What is clear is that the contention that there is "no evidence", a contention that is asserted or implied in seemingly every mainstream media discussion, is flatly false. There is a vast array of pertinent evidence, much of it circumstantial, but much of it also suggesting something of the mindset of some of the central figures. Anyone who denies this is utterly oblivious, or a liar, or a fool. ..."
"... As to what the evidence establishes, that is a different question. If skilled and intelligent investigators fail to take it up, then motivated and fervent - if not entirely competent - inquirers will surely rise up in their stead. ..."
"... Watch for the "fake news" sources' standard method for dealing with a large set of serious allegations like these from the internet's "real news" sources. They will take the most absurd/least likely allegations and dispose of them. They will then unobtrusively fail to address harder to dismiss allegations. Instead they will argue to the effect that, some of these allegations are false so obviously all must be. ..."
"... The "truther" site Snopes once had a perfect example, since taken down, I suspect because it made the technique so obvious ..."
Jan 24, 2017 | www.unz.com
anonymous December 6, 2016 at 3:47 pm GMT • 300 Words

The children in some of these poor third-world 'orphanages' aren't really orphans as we understand the term but are just from poor families who can't take care of them. These international adoptions are a business where everyone along the line gets paid with the child being the commodity being sold to the end purchaser, people in the west seeking to adopt a child to make themselves feel good. As in the mentioned case, the agencies move around from country to country where people are poor and desperate and legal safeguards are weak. Although the end receivers seem to be mostly naive and well-meaning people there's no telling how many aren't.

That a person with the stature of being a former president would hang around with a low-life like Epstein is really telling. He flew perhaps twenty-seven times on Epstein's plane which makes him more than just a passing acquaintance. Birds of a feather flock together.

The Canadians pulled in over three hundred people. If a country next to us, so similar to ours in many ways but with a fraction of our population, has so many that can be exposed at one time then how many could the US have? Yet we hardly ever hear much, just of a few lone wolves here and there. Look at how Sandusky got away with it for so many years. People didn't want to know, turned a blind eye to it, because he was too valuable.

This entire bunch who hobnob with each other have a very creepy vibe. There's all these 'coincidences' that seem to gather together in one place.

Alfred1860 , December 6, 2016 at 3:50 pm GMT \n

@MQ

This 'story' is complete horseshit / random confirmation bias. Scan the full social media accounts of any group of 100+ people and you could find just as much 'evidence' if you were determined to do so. This is scary -- the day that any social media post involving children that uses the word "chicken" anywhere in it counts as evidence of pedophilia is the day anyone could be smeared.

Ron Unz should be ashamed of himself for giving this kind of unhinged paranoid fear-mongering space.

Do some of your own research on this topic and you will come to a different conclusion if you can get beyond your massive bias. The Burning Platform has featured a series of posts over the last few weeks that provide a volume of evidence that is impossible to discount.

Most people cannot accept something like this would be real because they cannot fathom the depths of evil that exist in this world ..why, I don't know. You'd think the fact that many of the people implicated have also been the ones fully on board with unprovoked wars that have killed, maimed and displaced millions of people, including children, would be evidence enough.

Kudos to Ron Unz for exposing more people to this tragic, disgusting, horrendous story.

dc.sunsets , December 6, 2016 at 3:54 pm GMT \n

Socionomic Theory documents that the public's appetite for scandals is low when stocks and high and high when stocks are low.

Case in point: The "news" about Enron was favorable all the way down, until the stock had lost way over 90%. Only then did "news" about criminality and malfeasance gain traction.

This being the case, with stocks at All Time Highs after an astonishing 7 year vertical rally, pizzagate's very existence here tells us that when the next bear market (in social mood, as revealed by stock prices) is in full swing, the level of sociopathic, demonic behaviors emerging into public consciousness will be unimaginable.

I have no doubt whatsoever that child sex abuse, trafficking and even sex-related murder may well be hung around the necks of very, very famous persons, and the horrors so bad that those persons (if still alive) will not even make it to trial before they're hung from a street lamp.

Public disgust with those who ran (and run) the Federal Government will in all likelihood be so pervasive that it will undermine the very political cohesion of the United States.

Jus' Sayin'... , December 6, 2016 at 4:30 pm GMT \n
200 Words

@BucephalusXYZ

This is by far the best survey of this topic that I've read.

What is clear is that the contention that there is "no evidence", a contention that is asserted or implied in seemingly every mainstream media discussion, is flatly false. There is a vast array of pertinent evidence, much of it circumstantial, but much of it also suggesting something of the mindset of some of the central figures. Anyone who denies this is utterly oblivious, or a liar, or a fool.

As to what the evidence establishes, that is a different question. If skilled and intelligent investigators fail to take it up, then motivated and fervent - if not entirely competent - inquirers will surely rise up in their stead.

Watch for the "fake news" sources' standard method for dealing with a large set of serious allegations like these from the internet's "real news" sources. They will take the most absurd/least likely allegations and dispose of them. They will then unobtrusively fail to address harder to dismiss allegations. Instead they will argue to the effect that, some of these allegations are false so obviously all must be.

The "truther" site Snopes once had a perfect example, since taken down, I suspect because it made the technique so obvious. One popular right-wing internet site claimed to link 100 or so suspicious deaths to the Clintons. Snopes attacked the obviously absurd linkages and was left with about twenty cases of persons who (1) were involved or rumored to be involved with nefarious activities involving the Clintons; (2) were scheduled to testify against the Clintons or rumored to be brokering plea deals; and (3) died under suspicious circumstances soon after. Snopes dismissed these with a comment to the effect that all public figures had numbers of known associates die like this; let's just move on, folks; nothing to see here.

Jus' Sayin'... , December 6, 2016 at 4:55 pm GMT \n
200 Words @MQ This 'story' is complete horseshit / random confirmation bias. Scan the full social media accounts of any group of 100+ people and you could find just as much 'evidence' if you were determined to do so. This is scary -- the day that any social media post involving children that uses the word "chicken" anywhere in it counts as evidence of pedophilia is the day anyone could be smeared.

Ron Unz should be ashamed of himself for giving this kind of unhinged paranoid fear-mongering space.

In one of my many different careers I worked for a couple of years as an outside consultant to the FBI's ViCAP (now VICAP) program. About the time I was thus delving the depths of human depravity - and they are far deeper than the more fortunate readers of this are ever likely to learn - a scandal similar to this broke in Belgium, involving the highest levels of society, politics, and the EU bureaucracy in criminal conspiracies to kidnap children, sexually violate them, torture them, and even use them in the production of snuff films. A full investigation dead-ended after many suicides and suspicious deaths and disappearances. IMHO, based on some experience with criminal conspiracies of this type, the mass of material presented here is a pretty overwhelming indication that something very bad is happening. That the MSM ("fake new") sources are not paying more attentionto this is scandalous.

eah , December 6, 2016 at 5:03 pm GMT \n
200 Words

I'm not going to commit myself to the idea that this is going to be as huge as Rotherham was.

Sorry, but you are deluded if you believe Rotherham was "huge" in the media - even after the story broke, the English media did its best to downplay and underreport it - when they did report it, especially the BBC, it was always in a professional monotone, with no hint of outrage, or how disgusting and appalling all of it was, including/especially the behavior of the authorities - however let the BNP or EDL protest in front of the court where some of the Paki scum were being tried, and there you saw and felt media outrage - at this point, Rotherham has practically disappeared from the news - which is pretty sad because as everyone knows, it was just the tip of the iceberg.

And as currently being framed and investigatively fleshed out, if Rotherham was "huge", then Pizzagate will be a scandal of positively galactic dimension.

People will not let this go the way they did with the Jeffrey Epstein sleaze.

Beaderino , December 6, 2016 at 6:26 pm GMT \n
200 Words

Thank you for this article. It is well written and makes the point I have been trying to make. That the Wikileaks taken together with the Instagram photos warrant an investigation. A person with a predilection to pedophilia (based on the Instagram photos, choice of music, and music recordings at the Pizza Parlor premises) at the least, should not be running a "child-friendly" pizza parlor without some kind of societal due diligence to ensure the safety of our children.

On the one hand, what is lost if an investigation occurs and it turns out there is no wrong doing? We would have wasted some tax dollars and time of the law enforcement teams, but James Alefantis would in fact benefit from being exonerated. If however, there is ANY truth and any harm has and is occurring to children, then the greater good resulting from the investigation would be without price.

Alfred1860 , December 6, 2016 at 7:12 pm GMT \n
@Jus' Sayin'... In one of my many different careers I worked for a couple of years as an outside consultant to the FBI's ViCAP (now VICAP) program. About the time I was thus delving the depths of human depravity -- and they are far deeper than the more fortunate readers of this are ever likely to learn -- a scandal similar to this broke in Belgium, involving the highest levels of society, politics, and the EU bureaucracy in criminal conspiracies to kidnap children, sexually violate them, torture them, and even use them in the production of snuff films. A full investigation dead-ended after many suicides and suspicious deaths and disappearances. IMHO, based on some experience with criminal conspiracies of this type, the mass of material presented here is a pretty overwhelming indication that something very bad is happening. That the MSM ("fake new") sources are not paying more attentionto this is scandalous.

The Belgian case, among other high-profile quashed investigations, is summarized here:

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/11/29/could-the-pizzagate-allegations-be-true/

It was known as the Dutroux Affair.

FKA Max , December 6, 2016 at 7:28 pm GMT \n
400 Words @FKA Max
Furthermore, Tony Podesta's favorite artist is Biljana Djurdjevic, whose art heavily features images of children in BDSM -esque positions in large showers.
Psychopathy in the Pedophile (From Psychopathy: Antisocial, Criminal, and Violent Behavior, P 304-320, 1998, Theodore Millon, Erik Simonsen, et al, eds.--See NCJ-179236)
This paper argues that pedophilia may represent a special case or subcase of psychopathy and that the main aims of both the psychopath and the pedophile are to dominate, to use, and to subjugate another person in service of the grandiose self. [...] It notes that the major differences between psychopaths and pedophiles are that the object of the predation for the pedophile is a child and that the overt behavioral manifestation of the pathology is sexual.
- https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=179240

I just wanted to reemphasize Scott Adams' statement about the scandal:

Over on his blog, Scott Adams asks us to keep in mind cases where confirmation bias did lead to false allegations of institutional pedophilia, to caution against excessive confidence.

These types of investigations and scandals can easily lead to 'witch hunts' and 'panics' and need to be handled with the greatest care, prudence, and levelheadedness possible.

----

I wanted to add the following study/information, because as the study states ' These results provide further evidence of the importance of distinguishing between these groups of offenders. '

This might just be an irrelevant distinction for most people appalled by this potential/alleged abuse of power and authority of 'our' elites; but I believe we might mostly be looking at and dealing with psychopathy and not necessarily 'just' pedophilia in this Pizzagate scandal.

This has several different implications for how this scandal might be handled or be covered up, etc., because psychopaths are master liars, deflectors, charmers, etc., i.e. 'pillars of the community,' 'movers and shakers,' etc.

There is another curious connection here; Professor Robert Hare – the father of psychopathy research – said this:

Hare considers newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell to have been a strong candidate as a corporate psychopath.[10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_in_the_workplace#General

Robert Maxwell is the father of Ghislaine Maxwell, who is close friends with Jeffery Epstein:

In an American court case that was made public in January 2015, a woman identified as 'Jane Doe 3′ said she was approached by Maxwell in 1999, and claimed that Maxwell procured under-age girls to have sex with Epstein. Maxwell has always denied any involvement in Epstein's crimes.[10] She said: "She [Ghislaine] said she'd hit hard times. Jeffrey offered her a job and then, I guess, because of her ability to procure girls, she became a vital asset to him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghislaine_Maxwell


Psychopathy among pedophilic and nonpedophilic child molesters.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22571910

Abstract
OBJECTIVE :
Among men who commit sexual offenses against children, at least 2 distinct groups can be identified on the basis of the age of the primary targets of their sexual interest; pedophiles and nonpedophiles.
METHOD :
In the present report, across 2 independent samples of both types of child molesters as well as controls, a total of 104 men (53 pedophilic and 51 nonpedophilic) who had sexually offended against a child age 13 or younger were compared to each other (and to 49 non-sex offender controls) on psychopathy as assessed by the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI).
RESULTS :
In both samples of child molesters, the nonpedophiles scored as significantly more psychopathic than the pedophiles.
CONCLUSIONS :
These results provide further evidence of the importance of distinguishing between these groups of offenders.

Olorin , December 6, 2016 at 9:36 pm GMT \n
500 Words @MQ This 'story' is complete horseshit / random confirmation bias. Scan the full social media accounts of any group of 100+ people and you could find just as much 'evidence' if you were determined to do so. This is scary -- the day that any social media post involving children that uses the word "chicken" anywhere in it counts as evidence of pedophilia is the day anyone could be smeared.

Ron Unz should be ashamed of himself for giving this kind of unhinged paranoid fear-mongering space.

Your comment sounds familiar to me. Are you writing from the UK perchance?

Back in the mid-Aughts I was surprised by how often I saw commenters at MSM news sites talking about the grooming and abduction of white girls in cities in England. At the time I was regularly reading BBC, Guardian, Telegraph, and Times. The stories where these comments appeared were diverse in topic.

Sometimes other comments would share similar experiences. Some would say they talked to someone who claimed similar experience. Others would say they'd heard murmurs of such things.

These voices repeatedly called on the MSM outlet to investigate, or they wondered why no response was forthcoming from elected officials or policymakers.

This was after–I later learned–Ann Cryer (MP for Keighley) had bravely stepped forward on behalf of girls whose parents had approached her for help. IOW, the cat was emerging from the bag, but the MSM were trying to stuff it back in.

Dismissive responses to these comments frequently were framed as yours is here: nothing to see here, move along, it's confirmation bias, you people are nuts, mods, step in and censor them!

In the Rotherham/etc. case, racism, Islamophobia, etc., were trotted out to inflict silence.

What was most noteworthy to me, and creepy, was how these comments would be removed from the comment streams of these outlets.

Sometimes the comments would be deleted but the response calling them racists or Islamophobes allowed to stand.

By the late Aughts I was convinced some sort of coverup was underway of something terrible indeed.

We now know that the MSM were key players in that.

Similar murmurings were afoot in Pennsylvania for many years prior to the revelations of the sexual abuse of children by Penn State coach Sandusky. I knew men who steered their sons away from football in general, guiding them instead to hockey or lacrosse, because the word on the street was that football camp was not a safe place for boys anymore. (Nor, increasingly, Boy Scouts or church camps.)

The gig is up for the MSM acting as panderers and pimps in the Cathedragogue of their own degenerate Narrative-religion.

They won't go down without a fight. They have more power and money to lose than any of the kids victimized by pedocidal perverts.

But what those kids have to lose is a treasure of vastly more importance than power and money.

Thing is, truth and goodness of spirit will win. This is part of why these degenerates fight back as they do. They can put truth and goodness on the run for only so long. They fight back not because they are losing, but because, by nature, they can never join the winning side of truth and goodness. It's just not in them.

All the more reason they need to be found out and reined in hard.

One last thing, regarding some people's assertion that these symbols, in-jokes, etc., are all "just a game." Or, worse, "art." (Which implies getting money and power by representing degeneracy to decorate rich people's businesses, homes and bedrooms.)

If pedophilia, grooming, and child rape are now matters to take lightly as shibboleths of entrance to circles of power, then those circles of power need to be napalmed.

"In the beginning there were the swamp, the hoe, and Jussi."

Sunbeam , December 6, 2016 at 10:52 pm GMT \n
100 Words

I think the crux of the problem is that most people find two different things equally plausible.

1) That the people who are talking about this (pizzagate) are lunatics.

or

2) That Podesta and the rest actually are involved in things like this.

Personally I think a nation that has reached this point, that it is totally believable that our leaders and elites are a bunch of monsters well that's a real problem.

Another problem is that the UK article a poster above linked to is two years old. Has anyone heard anything about that since? Expect to?

Sandy Berger's Socks , December 6, 2016 at 11:13 pm GMT \n
100 Words

How many members of the media political class, that are dismissing this as fake news have enjoyed "pizza" at Besta or at a similar place?

What if criminal deviancy rather than disqualifying a person, is not instead some weird prerequisite for elite status? Don't have to worry about rock throwers if they're inside the same glass house.

Blackmail seems as good an explanation as any for things like John Roberts sudden change of heart on the constitutionality of the Obama care mandate.

Aaron B. , December 7, 2016 at 12:09 am GMT \n
100 Words

This is a very good summary; thank you for publishing it.

The speed with which the old media have declared the entire thing false, far sooner than they possibly could have explored all the latest information and come to that conclusion, is astonishing. In other cases of conspiracy theories they think are false, they are willing to stand back and ridicule the theorists. Obama Birthers, 9/11 Truthers, Boston Bombing hoax, Sandy Hook . all certainly called false and ridiculed, but that's all. I don't think I've ever seen them try to squelch an entire line of discussion from the start like this before, even threatening lawsuits and prosecution.

Kirt , December 7, 2016 at 12:16 am GMT \n
200 Words

There may be something to pizzagate but I'm very skeptical of accusations of widespread institutional pedophilia. I initially fell for the "Satanic panic" of the 1980s; I learned my lesson.
I see that this case relies a lot on cryptic symbols. Reminds me of the people who see swastikas and white supremacy runes wherever they look and try to make a case for a vast neo-Nazi underground. But the author states that 470,000 children "disappear" each year in the US alone. Really? The link goes to "reported missing" which is a whole different thing. I once reported one of my kids missing; he turned up shortly afterwards at a friend's house. He hadn't even run away, just overstayed and not informed us where he was. That sort of thing happens all the time, but genuine disappearances? I don't know of a single case and I know plenty of people with kids. In some third world country in a war, tens of thousands of missing kids might be believable, but even in most such countries (Syria for example) 470,000 disappearances per year would be a stretch.

TelfoedJohn , December 7, 2016 at 12:23 am GMT \n
100 Words

In the U.K., all the abuse took place by people in power. Catholic clergy over choirboys. Celebs over their fans. Pakistanis targeted girls from broken homes. The wealthy and 'noble' preyed on the lesser born.

The worst though are the politicians, who have maximum power. I'm not sure I believe the pizzagate thing – the evidence is not conclusive (show me a victim or witness). But I certainly believe it is possible.

Cortes , December 7, 2016 at 12:44 am GMT \n

The reliably excellent John Helmer provides an oblique reference to Pizzagate in the following linked piece about Propornot and its marvellous 200 Putin Stoogesites:

http://johnhelmer.net/?p=16851

Avery , December 7, 2016 at 12:49 am GMT \n
200 Words @utu "What 'relatively obscure charge'?" - Making payments in a manner hiding the detection of payments. Payments were not illegal but he was doing it in amounts below the amounts that automatically would require reporting. In my opinion he did nothing illegal. The crimes he allegedly committed were beyond the statute of limitation and paying hush money is not illegal either.

I kinda thought that's what you were referring to, but wanted to make sure.

His real crime was something else.

He was a high school coach years ago and was raping underage boys in his charge. The cash he was withdrawing was for payments to one of the boys to keep him quiet. If memory serves, another one of his victims had committed suicide (not sure though). But the one Hastert was paying off wanted to burn him.

In addition, Sibel Edwards, when she was working for the FBI and translating foreign language intercepts, picked up some conversations by Turkish officials, who were bribing Hastert, and claimed they "owned him". He reportedly got $500K, but not sure for what. FBI had courts put a gag order on Sibel, so she could not reveal any more details. The story was buried: probably because too many high ranking swine were involved.

Hastert pleaded guilty to a Mickey Mouse charge so that there would no public child-rape trial, where the public might learn all the lurid details of what the filthy swine did to those underage boys.

Hastert got away with destroying the lives of many boys.
Hopefully he will be savagely beaten and crippled in prison – but not killed – so he can suffer for years.

Johnny Smoggins , December 7, 2016 at 2:19 am GMT \n
200 Words

Like a lot of people I have gone from completely ignoring this story, thinking it was Alex Jones type fantasy to starting to wonder if there might not be some truth to it after all. So far I haven't seen any definitive evidence that kids are actually being molested, or worse. And because the accusations are so damning I would want to be very cautious about casually tossing them around.

That being said, a lot of the stuff that's surfaced; the artwork, the cryptic messages, Spirit cooking, the odd choices of entertainment for a family friendly pizza restaurant and the Instagram pictures are just flat out creepy .

Even with a presumption of innocence I wouldn't allow anyone under the age of 18 anywhere near the Podesta brothers, Alefantis and everyone else involved without adult supervision.

I'm glad Unz has decided to publish this. I'm interested to see if anything more will come of it. It certainly warrants further investigation.

James Kabala , December 7, 2016 at 3:04 am GMT \n
@DanC Rotate the old logo for Besta Pizza 180 degrees. It is the pedophile BLogo symbol.

That's why when it got publicised, Besta's management immediately deleted the old one and converted to a new, BLogo-free symbol on all their website and printed materials.

What is interesting to note in mainstream media "debunkings" of PizzaGate is that they focus on the doubtful evidence, things that could be "interpreted either way" and they leave out the glaringly obvious pedophilia links, like the Besta Pizza logo.

Just look at all the "debunking articles." Do any of them mention the old Besta logo? I haven't seen any.

It seems to me this is the way to wean the public off the mainstream media. Hammer on the fact that the MSM insists on leaving out the clear, obvious evidence and tries to imply that everything is doubtful and open to interpretation. Then people will start to associate them with coverup and BS. The MSM can't recover from that.

Actually the logo issue is a prominent part of this Washington Post article (and a tweet by the fairly well-known Dave Weigel highlighted that part in particular):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/were-going-to-put-a-bullet-in-your-head-pizzagate-threats-terrorize-dc-shop-owners/2016/12/05/39469a82-bb2e-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.af2e34c09164

pepperinmono , December 7, 2016 at 3:48 am GMT \n
100 Words @Johnny Smoggins Like a lot of people I have gone from completely ignoring this story, thinking it was Alex Jones type fantasy to starting to wonder if there might not be some truth to it after all. So far I haven't seen any definitive evidence that kids are actually being molested, or worse. And because the accusations are so damning I would want to be very cautious about casually tossing them around.

That being said, a lot of the stuff that's surfaced; the artwork, the cryptic messages, Spirit cooking, the odd choices of entertainment for a family friendly pizza restaurant and the Instagram pictures are just flat out creepy .

Even with a presumption of innocence I wouldn't allow anyone under the age of 18 anywhere near the Podesta brothers, Alefantis and everyone else involved without adult supervision.

I'm glad Unz has decided to publish this. I'm interested to see if anything more will come of it. It certainly warrants further investigation.

pepperinmono , December 7, 2016 at 3:48 am GMT \n
100 Words @Johnny Smogg

Podesta is a creepy fuck period.
How did such a dweeb get to be such a big person in our national conversation?
He is an obvious hack , but not a particular clever one. He just comes off so "are you fucking kidding me?". Where do they get these dudes? James Carville. Paul Begala. Bill Burton. Robby Mook. Even right has George Will, Buckley. Strange unnormal people.

utu , December 7, 2016 at 3:48 am GMT \n
@for-the-record See, for example,

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-24513267

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/madeleinemccann/10377714/Madeleine-McCann-E-fit-suspect-was-carrying-child-police-reveal.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Efit_images_of_Madeleine_McCann_suspect.jpg

http://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/top-news/podesta-brothers-revealed/

Tulip , December 7, 2016 at 4:23 am GMT \n
100 Words

I confess I don't get it. I can understand pizzagate as a brutal and nasty last minute campaign tactic, but the election is over, drop it. A mighty tissue of "coincidences" woven together in a manner that would make Glenn Beck envious. I guess I need to fashion a tin foil hat and then re-read the article. I think it just discredits the source more than the target.

If someone is actually raping children, then where are the children? The kids related to the socialite that she is bringing to a pool party? Come on, that is what plebes are for. How are the children procured? Where do they live? There is necessarily logistics to this kind of activity, and zero evidence of logistics, just some weird emails and weird art. Its like saying someone is a coke head because they had a runny nose. tweet at early hours in the morning, and behave very alpha.

Anon , December 7, 2016 at 4:45 am GMT \n

In the 70s, I hear that NY pizzerias were fronts for narcotics dealers.

Are they now used by pedo-dealers?

I love pizza, but this issue is making me feel a bit icky about it.

Anon , December 7, 2016 at 5:02 am GMT \n
500 Words @Anonymous "Every aspect of British society seems to have ties to pedophilia, from Parliament, to the elites, the City of London, the government, public schools, Oxbridge, the universities, all the way down to Paki immigrant communities and even British soccer."

Why do pedos gain such power? Same reason why homos do? Since many of them don't have families and since they resent the Normal World(from which they must hide their deviance or sickness), do they have extra time/energy for gaining power? Are they fueled by resentment toward Normal Society? It seems like homos had a kind of revenge streak, and it all came out with New Normal. Homos really want to rub our faces in their feces. They want to force us to accept the New Normal or be totally destroyed. They want to turn us into their bitches. They are into Bitch-Hunting.

Working in the shadows, homos and pedos seemed to gained considerable power. And since they are associated with Vice Industry, they have the dirt on everyone else and can blackmail them. Bill Clinton prolly never had sex with a minor, but surely homos and pedos have a lot of dirt on him about his many affairs and orgies. And since they have many connections, they serve as essential middlemen for those who seek power.

Also, there is a code of silence among the powerful. They watch out for one another. And homos and pedos are both pushy and gushy. They are very demanding but also accommodating and supportive of the powerful and ambitious. They go all out to serve the powerful and those on the up-and-up, but they also demand a cut of the pie.

The ambitious care most about power and privilege than about right and wrong. If their power depends on a coterie of people committed to them 24/7, they will look the other way even when they know something is up. Also, there is the human factor. People who work together closely develop an emotional bond. It's team politics, us vs them. And loyalty must be favored.
Since homos and pedos have more time on their hands and more energy(fueled by resentment), they might be more available to the powerful or those who seek power.

Hollywood made the media the hero in the movie SPOTLIGHT. But the media seem eager to bury this as fast as possible.

Why did it take so long for the Hastert and Sandusky cases to come to light?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Sandusky

How did they get away with that stuff forever?

Is it a good idea to allow homos into Boy Scouts?

Homos seem to be closely allied with pedos, and the trajectory of our culture is to normalize pedophilia by sexualizing young girls and boys. If young ones are sexualized, it means they can be objects of sexual desire. And then what?

And the scientific community is arguing pedophilia should be treated as a condition than a crime. This may be legit as long as pedos didn't act on their impulses. But if they did, how can it not be a crime?

Rape is 'natural' too given that sexual feelings are natural. But we can't treat rape itself as a condition and not a crime.

Wizard of Oz , December 7, 2016 at 5:48 am GMT \n
200 Words

Regrettably, though one may have grown old without ever feeling the wish to have sexual contact with a pre-adolescent or of anyone of the same sex it hasn't been possible for a long time to deny the prevalence of socially disapproved sex drives and behaviours. So one finds that the nice young presenter on the antique show has been arrested for downloading and keeping pedophile images. And so on But isn't the idea of a large network, and what is needed to keep it covered up, a bit much to swallow? Nasty minds? Conspiracy theories?

Well I suppose not. Sex as a drive and the perverse varieties of expression that we know to manifest themselves are enough to make one accept the pedophile reality. Then the network and the cover up? The cover up, however difficult to make it reliable, is just a consequence of the danger their behaviour exposes them to. And the network? Easy enough to explain once you are in it – like knowing that you could attend mass in a number of aristocratic Elizabethan households. But the detail of why and how it should grow from a very small group is obviously more complex. I guess that there are organisers and facilitators who seek various rewards, some financial, some in young flesh, some in the obtaining of blackmailing power.

NoseytheDuke , December 7, 2016 at 6:07 am GMT \n
100 Words @utu

It's the age difference and the power equation that matters. If a fifteen year old is sexting a thirteen year old it's quite different than a grown man like Anthony Wiener. I couldn't blame any father who administered a sound beating to an adult creep who was sexting a minor. What kind of a society doesn't protect children?

Anon , December 7, 2016 at 6:28 am GMT \n
100 Words

MSM is so eager to kill this story but tried so hard to keep alive the UVA hoax.

Even after it became clear that the whole thing had been made up, NY Times pretended that it wasn't sure.

But then, look at our political culture.

Say nothing of Israel's 200 nukes but never stop bitching about Iran's non-existing nukes.

And even though the West is the aggressor, blame Russia.

Yellow Cake and WMD. Colin Powell's lies and MSM's collusion.

Silence about black thuggery but pretend innocent blacks are murdered by evil white cops.

A real inversion of truth and lies.

Lugenpresse calling its detractors 'fake news'.

Shimshon , December 7, 2016 at 7:30 am GMT \n
100 Words @Tulip

,

First, the emails are not just weird. Second, regarding this:

"There is necessarily logistics to this kind of activity, and zero evidence of logistics "

Actually, there is.

Jeffrey Epstein, the Lolita Express, and his pedophile island. This was obviously covered up.

The Pizzagaters have shed a tiny bit of light on Laura Silsby. Look her up.

Anonymous Nephew , December 7, 2016 at 8:25 am GMT \n
100 Words @Tim Howells

"IMO this is yet another Jimmy Savile case: i.e. literally Satanic pedophilia on a vast scale, with the active collusion of our political and media elites"

Savile case wasn't that at all – more like famous DJ/charity fundraiser with great PR taking advantage of his status with teenage girls. How many of the post-death allegations are true, who knows, but we know some definitely aren't true – we know because long-time blogger Anna Raccoon was a resident of a small children's home where Savile was claimed to have abused girls. She has a whole series of seven posts called "Past Lives and Present Misgivings" on the allegations.

http://annaraccoon.com/2012/10/24/past-lives-and-present-misgivings-part-four/

More "active collusion" is likely in the cases of Cyril Smith and Greville Janner, two pretty high-profile and connected MPs, who seem to have managed to go to their graves scot free.

Blado , December 7, 2016 at 9:21 am GMT \n
@Miro23

The idea of on-camera child rape as a prerequisite of entry into organizations/guarantee of cooperation is a pretty old one. It's no doubt been done.

Skeptikal , December 7, 2016 at 1:58 pm GMT \n
100 Words @Anonymous

How the "fake news" trope works in the real world:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/07/trump-adviser-son-michael-flynn-sacked-pizzagate-comet-ping-pong-restaurant

Flynn's tweet regarding this story was perfectly reasonable.
The story has been stamped "bogus" without any kind of investigation.
No response to questions about the weird content of emails by Podesta and others.
Stonewalling.
Makes one think the shotgun blast at Comet might even have been a false flag!!

PI , December 7, 2016 at 2:00 pm GMT \n

For those wondering about the authenticity of the FBI document, here is the wikileaks page where it was revealed in 2007 and they say "Wikileaks has verified the document":

https://wikileaks.org/wiki/FBI_pedophile_symbols

And here is a MSM article about it:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3560069/The-symbols-pedophiles-use-signal-sordid-sexual-preferences-social-media.html

BB753 , December 7, 2016 at 4:17 pm GMT \n
200 Words @Anonymous

I remember watching an excellent Australian film years ago that covered this very topic. It portrayed in a very realistic way the whole homo/ pedo underground in the upper rungs of society, from posh public schools to university, where grooming of youngsters occurred, to Parliament and Finance, where the powerful pederasts/homosexuals ruled. In this world, the shortest way to power and riches for a young man was to seek out the protection and guidance of an older and powerful homo/pederast lover. It was shot in Australia and in Australian settings and institutions, but it's all so British you'd think the film makers really intended the story to reflect British society and were using Australia as a legal cover.
Sorry, I can't remember the title of the movie or the director. It was quite disturbing to watch but very interesting.
Perhaps Pat Hannagan or some other knowledgeable Australian reader can help.

Anon , December 7, 2016 at 8:01 pm GMT \n
100 Words

Let's say there was no pedo-ring. I'm rather skeptical of it myself.

But just look at that pizzeria. What kind of freako place is that?

And why are some of the 'most powerful' people in DC such downright perverts and degenerates?

The fish rots from the head. Degenerates run government, institutions, and culture.

Government and judges push homo agenda. College push porn and 50 genders. Hollywood pushes drugs and tattoos. Disney turns girls into whores.

And this isn't just a 'left' vs 'right' problem. A lot of Trump voters were ass-tattoo freaks. The working class grew up on Jerry Springer, WWE, mentally deranged metal music, or Goth freakery.

And middle class kids grew up on the nerdy black magic of Harry Potter whose teacher is a happy ass-man.

Whether it's elites and their Pervert Pizza or the underclass with their degeneracy, it's ugly all around.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4006300/Filth-chaos-weird-religious-symbols-Pictures-appalling-conditions-inside-Oakland-warehouse-36-died.html

We need Vito-Corleonism.

This is how a man should be:

https://youtu.be/IeDV0rxBq9E?t=1m35s

Anon , December 7, 2016 at 8:29 pm GMT \n
300 Words @map

I'm not sold on the pedo-ring. Too much risk, though I think those 'elites' are a bunch of pervs.

If anything, this pedo-issue takes our eyes off the ball.

The real issue should be that the governing elites of this nation in government, colleges, cultural institutions, media and even military(look at those tranny freaks) are a bunch of decadents, even degenerates. We are seeing the normalization of freakery and grossness.

The fact that it is considered NORMAL for Hillary to invite Lena Dunham to the DNC speaks for itself. The fact that Newsweek celebrated Obama with a gay 'halo' speaks for itself. The fact that churches hang 'homo flags' speaks for itself.
It is a sick nation.

A tolerant nation has room for decadence and even degeneracy. It belongs in the underground. They always existed.
But now, this underground stuff is the bobo cultural fixation of the elites who consider themselves 'hip' and 'edgy'.
And they even introduce their kids to this stuff from a young age.
Indeed, even without overt pedophilia, introducing sexuality to kids at a very young age is a kind of indirect pedophilia.
When homo-ness is promoted among kids, what is being done? Kids will ask 'what is homo stuff?' And an honest answer will have to be, "some guys wanna stick pee pee into poo poo". But then, the kids will have to be told THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT, and if anything, WE SHOULD BLESS THE HOMOS. But why? What is so great about pee pee in poo poo?

We really need Culturegate. The whole culture is a rotten scandal, and the fact that US globo-imperialism spreads this filth around the world speaks volumes about how sick America has become. We don't need real pedo-rings of 'pizzagate' to accuse the elites of filth and vileness. Their cultural life is garbage.

Just look at this: 'mainstream' culture has no problem with it. If anything, it is promoted as the New Norm.

http://rare.us/story/lena-dunham-posts-picture-of-herself-on-the-crapper-before-declaring-herself-a-feminist-hero/

Anon , December 7, 2016 at 9:01 pm GMT \n
@Pablo

As John Helmer points out, the new digital news business model doesn't provide any funds for investigative journalism.
So who is going to pay for a serious journalist to do the legwork and paperwork and FOIA requests, etc.?

Skeptikal , December 7, 2016 at 9:20 pm GMT \n
100 Words

Re "And why are some of the 'most powerful' people in DC such downright perverts and degenerates? "

I thought you were going to say:
What are the most powerful people in DC doing hanging out at this creepy pizza parlor and doing fundraising events there?
We all know where Hillary goes for "real" money: The Saudis, Goldman Sachs, billionaires' glitzy summer compounds in the Hamptons, places like that-you know, where the money is.
So WTF is she doing in one of these pizza joints? Why would there be any real money there?
With creepy, tawdry "artwork" on the walls?
Something here does not pass the smell test.

Tim Howells , December 7, 2016 at 9:43 pm GMT \n
100 Words @Anonymous Nephew

I'm intrigued by the Anna Racoon stuff, but I found it completely incoherent. Could you explain what these claims are, and why they should be taken seriously?

Re Sir Savile and Satanic child sex abuse, at least two victims gave entirely credible and consistent accounts. Here's a mainstream source:

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/370439/Jimmy-Savile-was-part-of-satanic-ring

NoseytheDuke , December 7, 2016 at 11:36 pm GMT \n
100 Words @Skeptikal

Agreed. Often one wonders why such outrageous decisions are made in politics that clearly contradict the public good and one wonders, why? This topic goes a long way to explaining the why. I'm not so sure if the investigating of it is the hard part or the broad exposure, but it needs to happen.

I am probably more tolerant of 'deviates' than most on here. Queers don't bother me much, though I would recommend that they be more discreet and stop the promotion of their peccadilloes as normal. When it comes to children, even teenagers, I am very strict about them not being able to give consent and should be treated with respect, if not revered, by all adults with no exceptions.

There is enough smoke here for a thorough investigation to be demanded and carried out. I hope nothing less ensues.

Stonehands , December 8, 2016 at 4:52 am GMT \n
100 Words @Anon

The fact that it is considered NORMAL for Hillary to invite Lena Dunham to the DNC speaks for itself. The fact that Newsweek celebrated Obama with a gay 'halo' speaks for itself. The fact that churches hang 'homo flags' speaks for itself.
It is a sick nation.

Yep. I don't have to look any further then this perv Alefantis. This is what you get when sodomy is legal. Of course this craven bastard makes all kinds of snarky degenerate comments about children on his instagram

Society has been desensitized to homosexuality- so they have moved on to the "prize".

You have hit it out of the park as usual, I enjoy and concur with your assesments.

glorietalabs , December 8, 2016 at 12:51 pm GMT \n
300 Words

I believe I saw the instagram account of Alefantis before it came down. The girl pictured in several images seems to be the child of a family friend. I thought the taped to the table image and the other pic with #chickenlover tag were at a minimum indicators of a dark humor or innuendo. Who finds this sort of thing funny?
There were more pics of infants and a doll with creepy tags like #hoetard and suggestive comments, again, indicating a level of casual comfort with making implied references to pedophilia. ..wink wink.

Gross, at a minimum. But evidence of a ring? I don't understand why Alefantis doesn't just acknowledge that there is an "appearance" of sick humor.

Regarding the use of supposedly known pedo symbols- I'm skeptical. These are shapes and motifs we see everywhere. It could be that the pedo symbol inventors purposely chose designs that would easily coincide with innocent use so as to hide in plain sight. Or hmm ?

Podesta is definitely using code in his emails but my read was that he's talking about drugs and partying. Didn't we all use "pizza" at one time or another as a reference to party favors back in the day?

The Podestas have bad taste in art. Not a crime, just a general indicator of regular degenerately "hip" tastes so as to impress the cool kids?

And yet no one clears the air. And this is disturbing. I have yet to read one Wapo or nyt article denouncing the "witch hunt" but acknowledging that, yes, it looks bad. Because it really does.

Incidentally, if they haven't been faked, one of Alefantis' instagram commenters is the maker of child sized coffin coffee tables. Nice.

par4 , December 8, 2016 at 4:54 pm GMT \n

Here is the Judge rebuking serial molester Hastert (R) before sentencing.

The Scalpel , Website December 8, 2016 at 7:42 pm GMT \n
100 Words @Sandy Berger's Socks

"What if criminal deviancy rather than disqualifying a person, is not instead some weird prerequisite for elite status? Don't have to worry about rock throwers if they're inside the same glass house.Blackmail seems as good an explanation as any for things like John Roberts sudden change of heart on the constitutionality of the Obama care mandate."

This fits Occam's Razor. I would go so far as to say that pedophilia blackmail appears to have been a method of political control since the days of the British Empire. Much like gang membership, participation is required for entrance into the inner circles of political power, then used as blackmail to enforce conformity and secrecy.

Interestingly, there is a recent episode of "The Black Mirror," a Netflix show, that addresses this very psychology.

FKA Max , December 9, 2016 at 5:11 pm GMT \n
300 Words @FKA Max

There is a rather informative article in the WaPo about Pizzagate and its potential (mass-)psychological origins. It actually indirectly and temporarily "blames" over-zealous feminists with being the originators of the this moral panic. Quite interesting, but of course the article/author reverts back to Trump-bashing, etc. in the end.

What the Pizzagate conspiracy theory borrows from a bogus satanic sex panic of the 1980s

Second, in both cases, social movements were involved in the weaponization of suspicion, although the political center of gravity has shifted from one episode to the next. In the late 1970s, social workers and feminist activists had focused on combating child sexual abuse; they sometimes developed extremely broad definitions of abuse or floated exaggerated estimates of its occurrence in this quest. Such efforts have left deep cultural residues, and these include the acceptance of exaggerated claims about the number of child trafficking victims, and the incidence and forms of organized child sexual abuse. Pizzagate relies on these inflated fears to seem plausible, and it similarly relies on a viewpoint marked by extreme suspicion (of the media, Washington "elites," politicians and the Clinton camp specifically) to decode ordinary events and statements into extraordinary claims.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/08/the-satanic-roots-of-pizzagate-how-a-30-year-old-sex-panic-explains-today/

A moral panic is a feeling of fear spread among a large number of people that some evil threatens the well-being of society.[1][2] A Dictionary of Sociology defines a moral panic as "the process of arousing social concern over an issue – usually the work of moral entrepreneurs and the mass media."[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic

I had never come across the term "moral entrepreneur" before, very useful term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_entrepreneur

Stonehands , December 9, 2016 at 8:50 pm GMT \n
100 Words @FKA Max

We know all about "Hysteria", but why did the artist use a decapitated male if not to possibly conflate this in the viewers mind with the atrocities of Dalmer?

What about the other degenerate art, such as the child bondage spankees posing in the easy- to -clean tiled torture chambers?

Some of us will never accept homosexuality as an "alternative" lifestyle.

The fact that Alefantis is a homo; who by dint of his perverse sexuality- has achieved some level of notoriety prior to pizzagate- is certainly part of the underlying rancor towards him.

NoseytheDuke , December 9, 2016 at 11:01 pm GMT \n
100 Words @FKA Max

Incredibly generous of you to quote WaPo as a credible source. I would have done the same at one time but that was ages ago.

BB753 asks why haven't the Posdestas sued? I would ask why haven't they at the very least stepped forward to offer a simple explanation for what most agree is code in the emails?

I would suggest a possibility that blowing the lid off on this exposes exactly how certain "lobby" groups maintain control of the wheelhouse of the US ship of state, and have consistently steered it into troubled waters against the national interest.

Wiz, a simple typo that my computer ran with (very observant of you).

anonymous , December 9, 2016 at 10:02 pm GMT \n
@FKA Max

This clip of Brietbart going off on John Podesta seemed to me more than just a political squabble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgBvPx4CvhI

Keep in mind, this was years before the Wikileaks 'Pizza' stuff. Also keep in mind that Breitbard dropped dead shortly after this was filmed.

Anonymous , December 10, 2016 at 3:17 am GMT \n
200 Words

Pizzagate is not "fake news" at all. It needs to be investigated.

The MSM says it does not disseminate "fake news". However, the MSM will often simply not cover events that ARE real news.

Thus, the MSM is disseminating the opposite of "fake news", namely NO NEWS. The MSM keeps people in the dark because there things that it does not want people to know about. For example, the MSM will often not cover stories about how the LGBTQ movement is brainwashing kids in even the lowest grade in public elementary schools. That's because the MSM does not want people to become upset at the penetration (no pun intended) of the LGBTQ agenda.

In reality, there is relatively little "fake news" out there. Most alternative websites that people visit, such as Unz, simply provide a different perspective on issues that the MSM won't cover at all, or cover in a cursory manner.

Skeptikal , December 10, 2016 at 2:35 pm GMT \n

Agreed.
And the "fake news" trope is an excellent example of misdirection/laying a false trail.

NoseytheDuke , December 10, 2016 at 9:49 pm GMT \n
100 Words @Jus' Sayin'...

Classic disinfo technique, to seed the truth with a few lies that are provably false so that then the whole thing can be claimed to be false and written off.

I don't know about the Podestas but as others here have rightly stated, there's enough smoke for a thorough, open investigation.

Coincidently, the anti-Russian rhetoric has escalated to an even more absurd degree alongside the Pizzagate news. I wonder if the result will be even less people believing the blatant lies of mass media or if people will just demonstrate that there are no limits to gullibility.

anonymous , December 11, 2016 at 5:31 am GMT \n
100 Words @NoseytheDuke

I saw a headline on CNN.com claiming Russia was attempting to smear people by 'planting' child pornography on their computers.

I didn't bother reading it, as CNN is a Gawker level news source these days, but it seems like they may attempt to blame this stuff on Russia – along with everything else.

Mark Green , Website December 11, 2016 at 7:41 am GMT \n

Here's another sex scandal (and a certifiably real one) involving a prominent Canadian who turned out to be a pedaphile. There's a lot in this story that's revealing and fascinating.

http://torontolife.com/city/ben-levin-child-pornography-sting/

Skeptikal , December 11, 2016 at 2:33 pm GMT \n
500 Words @Mark Green

Such a disturbing story. But instructive. In particular the information, or perhaps it is a speculation, that the pedophiliac sexual drive develops early on. This drive must be incredibly strong-stronger than what would be considered normal sexual desire? I don't know. But I have read that it is so strong that pedophiles make major life choices in terms of finding a way to get access to children to use sexually. Such as marrying: so they can father their own children and have them handy for abuse. Or entering a profession, such as the priesthood, or pediatrics, or education, etc. so that they have access to children. Or becoming sports coaches, where they spend a lot of time in locker rooms and also have blandishments to offer young boys such as sports career advances. Etc.

I think this point-the power of the drive-should be taken into account when people such as some commenters on this thread say: "These people [such as Podesta} are too intelligent to risk their careers blah blah." If the pedophilia drive is as strong as, say, a heroin addiction, then the addiction is in the driver's seat, not "intelligence." The more you feed an addiction, the stronger it gets, and the more stimulation it takes to get the charge.

As for the sprinkling of a few lies in with a story that is targeted for debunking: In a normal police investigation the police solicit leads from the public. (It is true that in this case there is not an obvious victim, so that must also be taken into account; but this was also the situation with the Ben Levin [Toronto] case; nevertheless what he did was criminal and dangerous.) They examine the leads and follow them up. This is detectives' job.

Often an obscure lead does lead to further useful information needed to build a hypothesis of the motive-means-opportunity for the crime and widen the scope of an investigation. Every American with a TV set has seen hundred of such police procedurals showing how crimes have been solved, often cold cases. Bona fide detectives who get leads from the public don't immediately start to smear the source of leads as looney-tunes. In this case the public, in the face of apparent inaction by law enforcement to follow up on this case, is responding by posting ideas and hypotheses and possible leads.

An honest law enforcement agency would be conducting an aggressive investigation and checking out any useful info and ideas that members of the public come up with, whether online or off. Honest news outlets should either be calling for a thorough investigation, or staying mum if they have been informed that an investigation is ongoing. The fact that the MSM, absent any sign of an investigation, are blaring out the "nothing here; move on; blogger are rabid fools" message is in itself suspicious and suggests that someone is being protected. The MSM have put out just enough info to warn the possible wrongdoers to get their act together, change their signage, and run for cover.

Miro23 , December 11, 2016 at 4:40 pm GMT \n
100 Words @Skeptikal

The fact that the MSM, absent any sign of an investigation, are blaring out the "nothing here; move on; blogger are rabid fools" message is in itself suspicious and suggests that someone is being protected. The MSM have put out just enough info to warn the possible wrongdoers to get their act together, change their signage, and run for cover.

My feeling exactly. Too much volume, no doubts, too orchestrated and nothing being investigated, in fact just like WMD, and 9/11.

Anon , December 11, 2016 at 5:23 pm GMT \n

Ping Pong Comet Pizza should rename itself as Suck-E-Cheese.

Btw, more pedo stuff.

https://www.rt.com/news/367652-norway-pedophiles-arrested-scandal/

Media seem less enthused about going after secular pedos, just like rabbi pedos got less public scrutiny than the Catholic pedo priests did.

Intelligent Dasein , Website December 11, 2016 at 6:07 pm GMT \n
800 Words

I believe that Pizzagate is a Trojan Horse being pushed into Alt-Right internet circles by Hillary/Soros' former CTR trolls in order to help the Democrats and the MSM continue to flog the "fake news" narrative. The idea behind it is to enable them to say, "Look, you see what kind of crazy conspiracies those Alt-Righters consume and repeat amongst themselves? This is the kind of fake news believing nutjobs we're up against." If you think back upon the history of the meme (I hate that word, but I have no other to use in its place), you'll find that its original and most vocal proponents were exhibiting clear trolling behavior. Given their flaky commenting histories, their pretended expertise on this then-obscure topic, their ostentatious expressions of optimism that this breaking news would ensure a Trump victory (itself a rather obsequious and scarcely believable attempt to paint themselves as one of our number), and their single-minded determination to talk about (and to get us talking about) nothing else, one can only suspect the presence of some sort of agenda behind their sudden exuberance over Pizzagate.

I believe we are up against a new and rather sophisticated sort of Concern Troll here-a veritable Stuxnet of concern trolling. A perfect example here at the Unz Review is the poster "anonguy". Look at his commenting history. Look at the sudden acceleration of his offerings as Election Day neared. And then look at his militant megaphoning of the Pizzagate narrative all over Sailer's blog in the days immediately preceding the election. Furthermore, pay attention to his unusual style, i.e. how he structures his comments as detached musings about the goings-on in the "infosphere" (his word), how he jejunely assures us the "the narrative is forming" (yes, he actually said that, and at a time when there was no narrative to speak of), and his links to literally fake news sites (the Denver Guardian? Give me a break). Now tell me that this is the behavior of someone who actually has the health of the body politic as his primary objective.

Now, after having sifted all that, do try to remember that the larger general public really doesn't know or care anything at all about Pizzagate, and that the leaked Podesta emails (all 37,000 of them, or whatever the final tally was) influenced the vote of precisely no one who did not have the time or inclination to read through them all, which is practically every one of us. Remember that the only people talking about this in the first place are the Alt-Right bloggers and their followers, the very venues of "fake news" whom the Left is attempting to discredit and sully. Remember that the Clintons and Soros specialize in public deception and that they employ all sorts of people for that very purpose. Now consider who is rendered vulnerable by all of this. It isn't going to be the Clintons or Podesta. If Hillary Clinton was not prosecuted for trafficking in state secrets from her private server-a crime for which she should have been executed- then Podesta is not going to be investigated for this. But you all, on the other hand, have been tainted with it. You have been successfully associated in the public mind with a "conspiracy theory," with the "fake news."

My conclusion: Pizzagate is a "thought worm" designed to infect, distract, and destroy the Alt-Right, and most of you have been infected with it. This is not to say that there is no pedophilia going on in Podesta's circle. There may be or there may not be, I really don't know. The point is that there isn't anything you can do about it. The accusations will be turned against the accusers instead-classic Clinton behavior. It would be better not to take the bait anymore. Recent history has demonstrated over and over again that the public is not going to rise up with one voice and clamor for the punishment even of credibly accused child molesters unless there is something more to be gained from doing so, and in this case there clearly isn't. What this says about the spiritual state of the modern West or the psychology of fallen mankind are subjects I will leave for another discussion. For now it is simply a fact of life with which we have to account. The only way to beat these people is the Chicago Way: hit them harder than they hit you. We dealt them a stunning blow by electing Donald Trump, but now we are in danger of losing our advantage by immersing ourselves in a mire of toothless recriminations, and this is exactly what they want. Let's not fall for this again; let us rather rekindle the spirit that got us this far, and take these vile people down once and for all.

robt , December 11, 2016 at 6:28 pm GMT \n
@Anon

The Washington Post found the funds to assign 27 investigative reporters for over a year to dig dirt on Trump, and bragged about it. Judging by what they came up with, it wasn't too fruitful.

map , December 11, 2016 at 8:50 pm GMT \n
100 Words @Intelligent Dasein

Your comment is ridiculous.

First you say the entire pizzagate meme is fake and it's fakery will undo the alt-right. Then you say that you can't do anything about pedophilia anyway, pizzagate or otherwise.

Which is it? Is the story fake and thereby discrediting to those who support it, or is it real but pointless to cover because you can't do anything about it?

Then you suggest we do this "the Chicago way" which is hitting harder than them whatever that means. If you are not going to open investigations against these people, then what does "hitting harder" entail?

There is no way that Soros or anyone else is going to construct an elaborate criminal conspiracy out of whole cloth and tag one of his own loyal operatives.

Skeptikal , December 11, 2016 at 9:55 pm GMT \n
100 Words @map

I agree.
Intelligent's comment looks to me like an elaborate misdirection.
All such blah blah gets no one any closer to an answer as to what is behind the coded language in the Wikileaks emails.

It is a classic example of throwing up a convolution of dust to obscure the smoking emails.
Stick to the evidence.
Ignore irrelevant baroque musings.

NoseytheDuke , December 11, 2016 at 11:45 pm GMT \n
300 Words @Intelligent Dasein

You make some good points but have missed the real issue entirely. Whilst I and many others here DO care about pedos and want them locked away from society, what makes this matter much more important is that it involves many top level power brokers in politics.

Pedophilia is more of a compulsion rather than addiction, why matters less than the fact that recidivism is the norm and society deserves protection both from the crime itself and from the crimes of blackmail that can result from knowledge of it..

Blackmail is a very powerful tool in the work of pure evil and is the reason why even Marines and Embassy guards have restrictions on who they may or may not consort with whilst on active foreign postings. I would estimate that there is no greater threat of exposure than one of sexually exploiting children. Even hardened criminals have contempt for such perverts who are usually granted special protection when incarcerated.

I would venture the suggestion that people with a compulsion towards sexual contact with children are identified early in their careers and consequently put forward for rapid progress within government institutions by those working behind the scene to exercise control over others with decision making capacity in the highest levels of government.

This is not a matter to be swept away if the swamp is to be drained, rather, this may well be where the "plughole" to the swamp itself is to be uncovered. It will require a special investigation team but not one like the Warren Commission or 9/11 "Investigation", a real investigation. Americans should settle for nothing less and it is incumbent of them to demand it.

Erebus , December 12, 2016 at 11:07 am GMT \n
100 Words @NoseytheDuke

This is not a matter to be swept away if the swamp is to be drained, rather, this may well be where the "plughole" to the swamp itself is to be uncovered.

I'm willing to believe something pretty sordid is required to keep the bung hole as tightly plugged as it is and I can't imagine anything else creating a more tightly woven, impenetrable web of mutual blackmail. Imagine what they have on each other, and imagine what foreign intelligence services could do with same if they got hold of it. Come to think of it, maybe they have

America must get to the bung, dislodge it and deal with the stench that will cover the country for a generation. Until then, America can't hope to be great again.

Skeptikal , December 12, 2016 at 12:51 pm GMT \n
100 Words @NoseytheDuke

This makes a lot of sense.
That string pullers are on the lookout for rising political stars who can be compromised along the way.
Hmmmmm . . .
Seems like a lot of political families have dynastic aspirations. That would mean that such offspring might be natural targets for monitoring for any "quirks."

Ace , December 16, 2016 at 7:25 am GMT \n
100 Words @jacques sheete

Craig Spence's call boy business in Washington clearly involved high civilian and military officials. And Spence was able to take friends on midnight tours of the White House.

Spence's house was provided by the Japanese ruling party. The house they provided him had at least one bedroom wired for audio and video. I'm sure the Japanese didn't know that.

The Washington Times covered it for two or three weeks and it was never mentioned again.

Kids from Boys Town in Nebraska were allegedly used.

Unpack that and hope your hair doesn't turn white.

Skeptikal , December 17, 2016 at 1:37 pm GMT \n
100 Words @NoseytheDuke

"Nobody is suggesting a rush to judgement here but clearly a prompt and thorough investigation is called for especially given the supporting evidence, as other commenters have pointed out."

Really.
If the putative "circumstantial evidence" that Russia-no! Putin himself!!-interfered in the American election suffices to launch the CIA on a nutty investigation whose purpose is, obviously, to "prove" that this is the case to the satisfaction of enough electors for them to become "faithless," then I think the Pizzagate emails plus "circumstantial" Pizzagate evidence are by comparison much more compelling and really scream for an investigation. In the Pizzagate case the investigating agency would presumably be the FBI. Which *might* be grounds to expect a genuine investigation.

No reasonable person would think that the emails really are about Podesta's playing dominos and having cheese for dinner. quite apart from the fact that cheese is usually mixed in with pasta!! Come on. I bet Podesta doesn't know how to play the game of dominos. What are these people really emailing about?

BB753 , December 18, 2016 at 1:35 pm GMT \n
@NoseytheDuke

The Podestas' silence about the leaks seems pretty damning in itself. Silence is an admission of guilt.

Eagle Eye , December 22, 2016 at 5:56 am GMT \n
100 Words @Sunbeam

For U.S. readers to gauge whether something like this COULD be happening in an advanced country, look to other countries where such incidents ARE known to have happened.

In Belgium, the Marc DUTROUX scandal led to political consequences and appears to be ongoing.

In the UK, the claims against Ted Heath and Cyril Smith (see picture of both in article linked below) are broadly seen as having at least some factual basis, and were reported in a number of newspapers including the Independent, the Guardian and the Daily Mail (see link below). Other names were rumored about.

There were also years of investigations and cover-ups involving various orphanages such as KINCORA (in Northern Ireland) and HAUTE GARENNE (on the Isle of Jersey). Both were conveniently located in somewhat remote locations outside the direct reach of English law.

There were also extensive rumors regarding several locations in London. Investigations were accompanied by the usual fortuitous deaths of potential witnesses, mysterious disappearance of documents, etc.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3189951/A-vanished-file-troubling-claims-Heath-young-musicians-s-no-smoking-gun-week-shocking-headlines-Mail-s-unearthed-fresh-allegations.html

FKA Max , December 24, 2016 at 10:11 pm GMT \n
200 Words @FKA Max

Mr. Cassiel concludes his 3-part series of Pizzagate articles:

Precedents for Pizzagate
Aedon Cassiel Published: December 23, 2016

http://www.counter-currents.com/2016/12/precedents-for-pizzagate/

To reiterate a point that should be clear to the more astute reader, my goal in this series (part 1, part 2) has not been to defend "Pizzagate" as such. My goal has been to defend the people who want to investigate it against specific accusations levied against them by people who think Pizzagate has revealed no intriguing information at all-for a specific reason, which I will be honing in and focusing on much more directly in this closing entry.

Whereas the mainstream critics of Pizzagate would have you believe that the world is divided between paranoid conspiracy theorist followers of "fake news" and level-headed people who follow trustworthy news sources and rely on cold, hard reason to determine the truth, my goal has been to show that-whatever is or is not happening with Pizzagate itself-this framing of the issue is arrogant, insulting, and the product of extremely narrow tunnel vision. [...]

And if the media is telling you only about the most bizarre, reaching accusations without telling you any of the more interesting points that have been uncovered (which it is), it is not doing its proper job."

foolisholdman , December 27, 2016 at 9:45 pm GMT \n
100 Words @Sandy Berger's Socks

If in fact making all the "elite" blackmailable is the object of the exercise and at the same time being blackmailable is the requisite entry ticket to the elite, then not all the people taking part in all this sinister deviancy need be actual pedophiles! Some of them could be "merely" psychopaths furthering their careers. (Not that that makes them any better.)

If this story is what it appears to be – the tip of a very nasty and very large iceberg, then it could be the mechanism by which the "Deep State" keeps its control of the US government. That would make getting an investigation by official investigators going, very difficlt indeed.

Ron Unz , December 27, 2016 at 10:07 pm GMT \n
200 Words @foolisholdman

If in fact making all the "elite" blackmailable is the object of the exercise and at the same time being blackmailable is the requisite entry ticket to the elite, then not all the people taking part in all this sinister deviancy need be actual pedophiles! Some of them could be "merely" psychopaths furthering their careers.

Well, I don't really have anything to contribute to the "Pizzagate" discussion myself, except to say that some of the supposed evidence plus the behavior of the media makes me very, *very* suspicious.

However, here's a somewhat related paragraph from one of the articles I published a year or two ago:

An obvious problem with installing puppet rulers is the risk that they will attempt to cut their strings, much like Putin soon outmaneuvered and exiled his oligarch patron Boris Berezovsky. One means of minimizing such risk is to select puppets who are so deeply compromised that they can never break free, knowing that the political self-destruct charges buried deep within their pasts could easily be triggered if they sought independence.

I have sometimes joked with my friends that perhaps the best career move for an ambitious young politician would be to secretly commit some monstrous crime and then make sure that the hard evidence of his guilt ended up in the hands of certain powerful people, thereby assuring his rapid political rise.

http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-when-tokyo-rose-ran-for-president/

Junior , January 20, 2017 at 2:17 am GMT \n
1,100 Words

This is ALL about the child trafficing that the Clinton-Bush Foundation was doing in Haiti. It is the weakpoint in a global child trafficing network and it is why the Clinton-Bush Foundation has taken down their website and are attempting to cover up any traces of it as we speak. Trump knows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMJoNl2RHIU

Anyone who believes that it is ludicrous to think that pizzerias could be used for such nefarious operations, I 'd like to point out to you the case of "The French Connection" which later became known as "The Pizza Connection" in which a huge global network of pizzerias were being used to distribute drugs in the 1980′s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Connection_Trial

Anyone who believes that the pedophile code is purely circumstantial needs to take a look at the Katy Perry video "This Is How We Do" which appears to be an homage to Comet Pizza. It is absolutely rife with the code words from the Podesta emails revealed by Pizzagate. They prance around with convicted sex offender, who plea bargained out of a child porn charge, Pee-Wee Herman( http://people.com/celebrity/pee-wee-actor-settles-kiddie-porn-case/ ) singing about "this is how they do" and "it's no big deal".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RMQksXpQSk

Here is a video "Kids" by the group MGMT. The quote at the beginning of the video is from the quintessential Satanist Nietzsche("Free spirits", by contrast to the philosophers of the past, are "investigators to the point of cruelty, with rash fingers for the ungraspable, with teeth and stomach for the most indigestible" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Good_and_Evil ). The video shows them bragging about how prevalent they are through our community. The "do as thou wilt" bastards are laughing at us about how they control positions of authority like policemen(3:36 of video) and how childrens TV programs are filled with their garbage of wolves in sheeps clothing(4:24 of video). And of course the Pizza and Hot Dog symbology throughout the end which culminates with them eating the child. This trash has 77 million views on Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe4EK4HSPkI

Here is the video "Criminal" by Fiona Apple. It is all about placing the blame on the victim, by saying that the victim enticed the pedo scum, instead of the perpetrator. This homage to Child Porn makes great pains to highlight Pizza(:21 and :38 of the video) and tiled kill rooms with easy clean-up(:45 of the video and blood stains on carpet at :48 and :54).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFOzayDpWoI

Junior , January 20, 2017 at 3:06 am GMT \n
100 Words @Junior

The lyrics from "In Bloom":
Sell the kids for food. Weather changes moods. Spring is here again. Reproductive Glands. We can have some more. Nature is a whore. Bruises on the fruit. Tender age in bloom . But he don't know what it means when I say "Yummmmmm"

It should be noted that there are two versions of this song. The original one has the Yummmmm heard at the end at 4:15 in this version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdlrEJk9RDY

FKA Max , January 20, 2017 at 5:55 am GMT \n
500 Words @FKA Max

Some potential victims of James Alefantis have been identified and one gave an anonymous testimony.

What James Alefantis allegedly did here is not illegal, but speaks volumes about his character, in my opinion, if the story indeed is true:
[...]
It turns out that Carole's son, who is +/-18 at this time, is also working at the restaurant. I think his name is Dylan/Dillon. He grew up without a father and turned to James Alefantis often for advice.
One night Carole walked into the comet pizza kitchen, and saw James Alefantis fucking her son in the kitchen. She was furious because she immediately knew how completely James had taken advantage of her son. She quit immediately and denounced James viciously in private, unwilling to do so publicly for professional reasons.

http://www.unz.com/article/precedents-for-pizzagate/#comment-1732211

The story checks out, so far: Carole Greenwood is a single mom and has a son named Dylan, who was 13 years old/young in 2003. [...] [–] daj 16 points (+16|-0) 11 hours ago (edited 10 hours ago)

It's legit: http://hollaforums.com/thread/8359034/politics/james-alefantis-fucks.html

Archive: https://archive.fo/iDbWN

http://www.unz.com/article/precedents-for-pizzagate/#comment-1732521

Disclaimer : I have absolutely no idea if this person is authentic, but since many Pizzagate critics argue that the scandal has not a leg to stand on, because no victims have come forward so far, I believe this testimony is important to share.
[...]
This is how he answered one of the questions on a voat comment thread. He seems to know/be aware of Dylan Greenwood
[...]
Here is one of the email exchanges between he and James Alefantis, that he did not delete: http://archive.is/8423t
[...]
After a little while when it was nearing the final exams, I was stressed out, exhausted and let my guard down and went out for some drinks with James a few times after work to get stuff off my chest. James would drug me up and then take advantage of me. When I threatened to go to the police he implied that he would harm me physically and said he would sue me. He had so many friends around DC that I believed him, I really was afraid, and just kept it all bottled up. I ended up getting PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, from what were effectively rapes, and later I began to realize that I likely had Stockholm Syndrome. I eventually quit the job, but James would send me lewd photos and texts for another 2 or three years at the rate of once about every 2 to 3 months, I think 6 months was the longest in that period. I had to kick him out of the place I worked when he came in every other month or so for about a year. Let this be a lesson: do not trust sociopaths and pathological liars.

http://www.unz.com/article/precedents-for-pizzagate/#comment-1733621

FKA Max , January 21, 2017 at 1:15 am GMT \n
200 Words @FKA Max

Former Comet Ping Pong Employee Alleges: "James Alefantis sexually assaulted me"
5 hours ago by abortionburger in pizzagate

https://steemit.com/pizzagate/@abortionburger/victim-comes-forward-i-was-sexually-assaulted-by-james-alefantis

Note: I have personally verified this person's identity and backstory. I obviously cannot verify his accusations. He wishes to remain anonymous.

By now, most people are at least vaguely familiar with the so-called "fake news" story known as Pizzagate. For those that aren't, the brief version is that self described "internet investigators" caught wind of some strange wording in the John Podesta emails released by Wikileaks, and went down the largest internet rabbit hole in recent history.

The story was quickly written off as mass hysteria, a conspiracy theory, and fake news by nearly all of mainstream media, and censored from the internet forum site Reddit. The theory, which has a plethora of circumstantial evidence, lacked one key factor: a victim. [...] The anonymous nature of internet forums leads to skeptics demanding proof of any seemingly outrageous claim. The publication of these emails adds credibility to his story.

[Jul 21, 2019] The Billionaire Pedophile Who Could Bring Down Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton by Brandy Zadrozny

This is from 2016 campaign
Notable quotes:
"... A judge threw out Guiffre's motion in 2015, but Guiffre stands by her claims and is suing Ghislaine Maxwell, whom she claims acted as Epstein's madam. ..."
"... Buckingham Palace has also denied the allegations against Prince Andrew, calling them "categorically untrue. ..."
"... Requests for comment to Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Clinton Foundation were not returned. The former president, who flew on the "The Lolita Express" at least 26 times from 2001 to 2003, has never addressed his ties with Epstein, a onetime major Democratic donor, according to Federal Election Commission records, who also gave millions to the Clinton Foundation even after his arrest for abusing underage girls. ..."
Jul 30, 2016 | www.thedailybeast.com

Trump's supporters have long wondered whether he'd use billionaire sicko Jeffrey Epstein as ammo against the Clintons-until a lurid new lawsuit accused The Donald of raping one of Epstein's girls himself. Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect the withdrawal of Virginia Roberts Guiffre's allegations against Alan Dershowitz and the striking of the allegations from the court record by a federal judge. For Jeffrey Epstein and his famous friends, the Aughts were a simpler time, when the businessmen, academics, and celebrities who counted themselves among the playboy philanthropist's inner circle could freely enjoy the fruits of his extreme wealth and connections. Epstein's little black book and flight logs read like a virtual Who's Who: Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Larry Summers, Kevin Spacey, Prince Andrew , and Naomi Campbell all hitched rides on Epstein's private planes. Socialites and distinguished scientists went to visit Epstein's island in St. Thomas, and cavorted at epic dinner parties at his palatial townhouse-then the largest privately owned residence in New York, as he liked to brag .

There, they picked at elaborate meals catered by celebrity chefs like Rocco DiSpirito, marvelled at Epstein's opulent decor, and noted the pack of very, very young model-types with whom Epstein always seemed to surround himself. But a darker story was going on underneath the glamour. In 2008, Epstein was convicted of soliciting sex from an underage girl and quietly paid settlements to scores of alleged victims who said he serially molested them. But the girls kept coming out of the woodwork-in 2014, another young woman filed a lawsuit claiming that Epstein used her as a sex slave for his powerful friends-and that she'd been at parties on his private island with former President Clinton. And just last week, yet another "Jane Doe" filed a suit in New York accusing Epstein and Donald Trump of raping her at a series of sex parties when she was only 13.

... ... ...

By the time Epstein was arrested in 2008, police in Palm Beach County, Florida, had already spent months monitoring his movements, rifling through his trash, and interviewing potential victims and witnesses. Police reported to prosecutors that they had gathered enough evidence to charge the money manager with several felonies: lewd and lascivious molestation and four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor. Epstein's freedom, his wealth, his little black book full of famous folk-including princes, presidents, and prime ministers-all were seemingly at stake.

So Epstein did what the mega-rich do in these situations: hired star attorneys Gerald Lefcourt and Alan Dershowitz, who defended their client vigorously, reportedly having witnesses followed and discrediting the alleged victims by offering their MySpace pages as evidence of supposed drug use and scandalous behavior.

Prosecutors said Epstein's dream team made successful prosecution unlikely. "Our judgment in this case, based on the evidence known at the time, was that it was better to have a billionaire serve time in jail, register as a sex offender, and pay his victims restitution than risk a trial with a reduced likelihood of success," U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta explained in a 2011 letter.

And so, despite a decade of alleged serial sexual abuse and rape of an unknowable number of girls, some as many as 100 times according to court filings, the notoriously secretive financier was offered a deal. For the alleged systematic victimization of young girls-most of whom were plucked by Epstein's assistants from Palm Beach's poorer neighborhoods and groomed to adore or acquiesce to him-he was slapped with a 2008 conviction on a single charge of soliciting a minor; and sentenced to an 18-month stay in a Palm Beach county jail-of which he served only 13 months and was allowed to leave six days out of every week for "work release." He also agreed to a few dozen confidential, out-of-court payoffs to his accusers, the most recent of which was finalized in 2011.

Epstein's "potential co-conspirators," as the U.S. Attorney called them-women who allegedly procured girls for Epstein-also received immunity from prosecution as a condition of the 2007 agreement that enraged the local police force for its leniency. As of 2015, according to The Guardian, two of these women had changed their names, and were operating businesses out of a building owned by Epstein's brother, where it was alleged in court documents that Epstein had housed young women.

Though Epstein must register as a sex offender for life, and arguably suffer the world's most revolting Google presence, he has seemingly retained his collection of elite academic and media friends as well as his fortune. Since his release in 2009, Epstein has gone about his business, running a mysterious money management firm (clients unknown, income unknown, investments and activities unknown) from his private 70-acre island in the U.S. Virgin Islands and spending time at his Uptown stone mansion. The palace was gifted to Epstein, some say, by its previous owner-Epstein's guardian angel and the founder of The Limited Inc., Leslie Wexner.

... ... ...

In December 2014, just as the Palm Beach lawsuits were winding down, another alleged victim emerged and her claims were salacious: Epstein, she said, had loaned her out as an underage sex slave to his famous friends -- including Britain's Prince Andrew and Epstein defense attorney Dershowitz (both men denied the charges). Coming forward in Britain's Daily Mail in 2011, Virginia Roberts Guiffre-called Jane Doe #3 in a related lawsuit ( PDF )-claimed that Epstein and his "girlfriend," alleged madame Ghislaine Maxwell, forced her to have sex with the pair's powerful pals and gather intel that Epstein could later use. In court documents, Guiffre testified, "Epstein and Maxwell also told me that they wanted me to produce things for them in addition to performing sex on the men. They told me to pay attention to the details about what the men wanted so I could report back to them."

Guiffre noted that Epstein appeared to be collecting information on Prince Andrew-particularly on his alleged foot fetish-and claimed, "Epstein also trafficked me for sexual purposes to other powerful men, including politicians and powerful business executives. Epstein required me to describe the sexual events I had with these men presumably so that he could potentially blackmail them. I am still very fearful of these men today." A judge threw out Guiffre's motion in 2015, but Guiffre stands by her claims and is suing Ghislaine Maxwell, whom she claims acted as Epstein's madam. Meanwhile, the men named by Guiffre seem eager for her to go away. "It's as if I've been waterboarded for 15 months," Dershowitz told the Boston Globe after the settlement of a defamation case related to Guiffre's claims. "This has taken a terrible toll on my family, on my friends " Buckingham Palace has also denied the allegations against Prince Andrew, calling them "categorically untrue."

UPDATE: This April, Giuffre's lawyers withdrew her allegations against Dershowitz and said that it was a "mistake" to have filed the accusations in the first place. A federal judge later struck her allegations against Dershowitz from the court record. At Dershowitz's request, Louis Freeh, the former head of the FBI, also conducted an independent investigation of her claims and published a statement noting, "Our investigation found no evidence to support the accusations of sexual misconduct against Professor Dershowitz."

In her lawsuit, Guiffre had claimed that during trips to Epstein's private island, she'd also encountered another very famous person: former President Bill Clinton. Guiffre alleges the former U.S. president visited Epstein's "Orgy Island" when there were underage girls present, but added that she never had sex with him and never saw him have sex with any of the young women. Still, it's these sorts of allegations that have journalists and Clinton-haters circling. Just last month, pundits on MSNBC's Morning Joe were speculating about Bill Clinton's oft-discussed friendship with Epstein and whether it would be the go-to play for a Trump campaign looking to combat Hillary Clinton's claims that Trump is bad for women .

Requests for comment to Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Clinton Foundation were not returned. The former president, who flew on the "The Lolita Express" at least 26 times from 2001 to 2003, has never addressed his ties with Epstein, a onetime major Democratic donor, according to Federal Election Commission records, who also gave millions to the Clinton Foundation even after his arrest for abusing underage girls.

"I invest in people-be it politics or science. It's what I do," Epstein has reportedly said to friends. "There's a 100 percent chance [Trump] is going there," said former McCain strategist Steve Schmidt on Morning Joe , referring to Clinton's friendship with the pervy moneyman.

[Jul 19, 2019] American Race Hustle Is A Sure-Loser For Dems; Kunstler Warns Of Walking Time-Bomb Epstein

Notable quotes:
"... At the center of it all is former President Bill Clinton, listed twenty-six times on the Lolita Express's flight manifest -- though the ex-Prez said last week in a statement that it was only four times. (Consider the source.) ..."
"... A raft of unsealed documents in the matter has been court-ordered to drop any day, and power-players all over the world -- especially in our nation's capital and on Wall Street -- are rumored to be chewing their fingernails down to the nubbins as they wait for it. ..."
Jul 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

... Every candidate in the first Democratic “debate” raised a hand in favor of providing free medical care to illegal border-jumpers. I wonder how that sits with the Americans who now pay $12,000 a year for health insurance with a $5,000 deductible.

Of course, this policy of unfettered illegal immigration does not economically favor the sizable demographic of poor Americans, many of whom are people-of-color. In theory, the border-jumpers are taking away an awful lot of jobs. But I think the argument there is that 300 years of slavery gives bonafide US citizens-of-color a pass on manual labor - so it is not against their interests to ally with the open border advocates - while both groups have an interest in getting any free stuff the government may offer.

... ... ...

Finally, there is the walking time-bomb known as Jeffrey Epstein, Democratic Party poohbah and impresario of an underage sex racket featuring the "Lolita Express" airplane service to his private "Orgy Island" in the Caribbean, with auxiliary party shacks in New York City and the New Mexico Desert. Rogue reports have been styling Epstein's doings as an international blackmailing operation associated with the CIA and other Intel outfits, including the UK's MI6 and Israel's Mossad, for the purpose of keeping international bigshots on a short leash. Who knows?

At the center of it all is former President Bill Clinton, listed twenty-six times on the Lolita Express's flight manifest -- though the ex-Prez said last week in a statement that it was only four times. (Consider the source.)

A raft of unsealed documents in the matter has been court-ordered to drop any day, and power-players all over the world -- especially in our nation's capital and on Wall Street -- are rumored to be chewing their fingernails down to the nubbins as they wait for it.

What a cargo of wickedness is borne by the garbage barge called the Democratic Party as it chugs out to sea toward a sickening, slightly radioactive orange sunset for what is looking like its final voyage.

[Jul 13, 2019] Did Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein Work for Mossad by Philip Giraldi

Jul 13, 2019 | www.unz.com

The extent of Israeli spying directed against the United States is a huge story that is only rarely addressed in the mainstream media. The Jewish state regularly tops the list for ostensibly friendly countries that aggressively conduct espionage against the U.S. and Jewish American Jonathan Pollard, who was imprisoned in 1987 for spying for Israel, is now regarded as the most damaging spy in the history of the United States.

Last week I wrote about how Israeli spies operating more-or-less freely in the U.S. are rarely interfered with, much less arrested and prosecuted, because there is an unwillingness on the part of upper echelons of government to do so. I cited the case of Arnon Milchan, a billionaire Hollywood movie producer who had a secret life that included stealing restricted technology in the United States to enable development of Israel's nuclear weapons program, something that was very much against U.S. interests. Milchan was involved in a number of other thefts as well as arms sales on behalf of the Jewish state, so much so that his work as a movie producer was actually reported to be less lucrative than his work as a spy and black-market arms merchant, for which he operated on a commission basis.

That Milchan has never been arrested by the United States government or even questioned about his illegal activity, which was well known to the authorities, is just one more manifestation of the effectiveness of Jewish power in Washington, but a far more compelling case involving possible espionage with major political manifestations has just re-surfaced. I am referring to Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire Wall Street "financier" who has been arrested and charged with operating a "vast" network of underage girls for sex, operating out of his mansions in New York City and Florida as well as his private island in the Caribbean, referred to by visitors as "Orgy Island." Among other high-value associates, it is claimed that Epstein was particularly close to Bill Clinton, who flew dozens of times on Epstein's private 727.

Alex Acosta (L) Jeffrey Epstein (R)

Epstein was arrested on July 8th after indictment by a federal grand jury in New York. It was more than a decade after Alexander Acosta, the top federal prosecutor in Miami, who is now President Trump's secretary of labor, accepted a plea bargain involving similar allegations regarding pedophilia that was not shared with the accusers prior to being finalized in court. There were reportedly hundreds of victims, some 35 of whom were identified, but Acosta deliberately denied the two actual plaintiffs their day in court to testify before sentencing.

Acosta's intervention meant that Epstein avoided both a public trial and a possible federal prison sentence, instead serving only 13 months of an 18-month sentence in the almost-no-security Palm Beach County Jail on charges of soliciting prostitution in Florida. While in custody, he was permitted to leave jail for sixteen hours six days a week to work in his office.

Epstein's crimes were carried out in his $56 million Manhattan mansion and in his oceanside villa in Palm Beach Florida. Both residences were equipped with hidden cameras and microphones in the bedrooms, which Epstein reportedly used to record sexual encounters between his high-profile guests and his underage girls, many of whom came from poor backgrounds, who were recruited by procurers to engage in what was euphemistically described as "massages" for money. Epstein apparently hardly made any effort to conceal what he was up to: his airplane was called the "Lolita Express."

The Democrats are calling for an investigation of the Epstein affair, as well as the resignation of Acosta, but they might well wind up regretting their demands. Trump, the real target of the Acosta fury, apparently did not know about the details of the plea bargain that ended the Epstein court case. Bill and Hillary Clinton were, however, very close associates of Epstein. Bill, who flew on the "Lolita Express" at least 26 times , could plausibly be implicated in the pedophilia given his track record and relative lack of conventional morals. On many of the trips, Bill refused Secret Service escorts, who would have been witnesses of any misbehavior. On one lengthy trip to Africa in 2002, Bill and Jeffrey were accompanied by accused pedophile actor Kevin Spacey and a number of young girls, scantily clad "employees" identified only as "massage." Epstein was also a major contributor to the Clinton Foundation and was present at the wedding of Chelsea Clinton in 2010.

With an election year coming up, the Democrats would hardly want the public to be reminded of Bill's exploits, but one has to wonder where and how deep the investigation might go. There is also a possible Donald Trump angle. Though Donald may not have been a frequent flyer on the "Lolita Express," he certainly moved in the same circles as the Clintons and Epstein in New York and Palm Beach, plus he is by his own words roughly as amoral as Bill Clinton. In June 2016, one Katie Johnson filed lawsuit in New York claiming she had been repeatedly raped by Trump at an Epstein gathering in 1993 when she was 13 years old. In a 2002 New York Magazine interview Trump said "I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy he's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life."

Selective inquiries into wrongdoing to include intense finger pointing are the name of the game in Washington, and the affaire Epstein also has all the hallmarks of a major espionage case, possibly tied to Israel. Unless Epstein is an extremely sick pedophile who enjoys watching films of other men screwing twelve-year-old girls the whole filming procedure smacks of a sophisticated intelligence service compiling material to blackmail prominent politicians and other public figures. Those blackmailed would undoubtedly in most cases cooperate with the foreign government involved to avoid a major scandal. It is called recruiting "agents of influence." That is how intelligence agencies work and it is what they do.

That Epstein was perceived as being intelligence-linked was made clear in Acosta's comments when being cleared by the Trump transition team. He was asked "Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?" "Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he'd had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He'd cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein's attorneys because he had 'been told' to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. 'I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone.'"

Questions about Epstein's wealth also suggest a connection with a secretive government agency with deep pockets. The New York Times reports that "Exactly what his money management operation did was cloaked in secrecy, as were most of the names of whomever he did it for. He claimed to work for a number of billionaires, but the only known major client was Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder of several retail chains, including The Limited."

But whose intelligence service? CIA and the Russian FSB services are obvious candidates, but they would have no particular motive to acquire an agent like Epstein. That leaves Israel, which would have been eager to have a stable of high-level agents of influence in Europe and the United States. Epstein's contact with the Israeli intelligence service may have plausibly come through his associations with Ghislaine Maxwell, who allegedly served as his key procurer of young girls. Ghislaine is the daughter of Robert Maxwell , who died or possibly was assassinated in mysterious circumstances in 1991. Maxwell was an Anglo-Jewish businessman, very cosmopolitan in profile, like Epstein, a multi-millionaire who was very controversial with what were regarded as ongoing ties to Mossad. After his death, he was given a state funeral by Israel in which six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence listened while Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized : "He has done more for Israel than can today be said"

Trump (left) with Robert Maxwell (right) at an event

Epstein kept a black book identifying many of his social contacts, which is now in the hands of investigators. It included fourteen personal phone numbers belonging to Donald Trump, including ex-wife Ivana, daughter Ivanka and current wife Melania. It also included Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, Tony Blair, Jon Huntsman, Senator Ted Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, David Koch, Ehud Barak, Alan Dershowitz, John Kerry, George Mitchell, David Rockefeller, Richard Branson, Michael Bloomfield, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Elizabeth, Saudi King Salman and Edward de Rothschild.

Mossad would have exploited Epstein's contacts, arranging their cooperation by having Epstein wining and dining them while flying them off to exotic locations, providing them with women and entertainment. If they refused to cooperate, it would be time for blackmail, photos and videos of the sex with underage women.

It will be very interesting to see just how far and how deep the investigation into Epstein and his activities goes. One can expect that efforts will be made to protect top politicians like Clinton and Trump and to avoid any examination of a possible Israeli role. That is the normal practice, witness the 9/11 Report and the Mueller investigation, both of which eschewed any inquiry into what Israel might have been up to. But this time, if it was indeed an Israeli operation, it might prove difficult to cover up the story since the pedophile aspect of it has unleashed considerable public anger from all across the political spectrum. Senator Chuck Schumer , self-described as Israel's "protector" in the Senate, is loudly calling for the resignation of Acosta. He just might change his tune if it turns out that Israel is a major part of the story.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]


9/11 Inside job , says: July 11, 2019 at 4:08 pm GMT

aanirfan.blogspot.com in an article entitled " Epstein , Trump, 9/11 ' has identified Epstein's links not only to Mossad but to his business relationships with CIA controlled airlines and perhaps to the false flag attacks on 9/11 .According to Aangirfan , Epstein is a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. The CIA and Mossad have strong ties resulting from the efforts , according to the Wall Street Journal no less, of former CIA chiefs William Casey and James Angleton . As Acosta has confirmed , Epstein has links to "intelligence " .

SunBakedSuburb , says: July 11, 2019 at 4:08 pm GMT

The presence of Ghislaine Maxwell is proof of Mossad's ownership of Epstein's kompromat operation. Ghislaine's father, Robert Maxwell, created the Neva network -- a consortium of technology companies, banks, and Russian and Bulgarian organized crime networks -- for his Mossad masters. Keeping up the family business, Ghislaine was running Epstein for the Israelis.

Sean McBride , says: July 11, 2019 at 4:26 pm GMT

Speculation or scenario: the highest levels of the CIA and Mossad have been closely allied since the late 1940s (see especially the role of James Angleton) and are pursuing common strategic objectives.

The New York Post remarked in March 2000:

"Epstein is an enigmatic figure. Rumors abound -- including wild ones about a career in the Mossad and, contrarily, the CIA."

Perhaps Epstein has been sponsored, funded, directed and protected by both agencies working in combination.

j2 , says: July 11, 2019 at 5:39 pm GMT

A question for Giraldi. You write:

"Those blackmailed would undoubtedly in most cases cooperate with the foreign government involved to avoid a major scandal. It is called recruiting "agents of influence." That is how intelligence agencies work and it is what they do."

But would not a single intelligence agency typically target and trap one isolated person, not a whole set of interconnected people? That is, this is more like the way the P2 lodge worked in Italy, that is, a society.

RobinG , says: July 11, 2019 at 6:25 pm GMT
@Patrikios Stetsonis

Thanks for posting Alison Weir's statement. The same Israel-First crowd that lobbied for Iraq war is now eager [for U.S.] to attack Iran.

"Only a General with balls, can save the USA and to an extension, the rest of the World." How about a Major? TULSI 2020.

Mark in BC , says: July 11, 2019 at 7:14 pm GMT

With all the mystery surrounding how Epstein obtained such great wealth, I can't help but think it may be a global money laundering operation connected to the global drug trade.

Books have been written about the CIA's involvement in cocaine and heroin distribution. Whether it's HW Bush and Iran Contra(cocaine) and Bill Clinton with Mena, AR airport complicity in same or the explosion in poppy (HW's nickname just a coincidence ) production in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion, drugs seem to connect all these dots and more.

And, let's not forget the Israeli "Art Student" operation that targeted DEA offices.

A way for Epstein to get out from under this with the CUFI crowd might be to point out Mary, mother of Jesus, was pregnant out of wedlock at 14 so what's the big deal?

Tired of Not Winning , says: July 11, 2019 at 7:16 pm GMT

NYT and Bloomberg have been writing about the mysterious source of Epstein's wealth. Epstein's hedge fund is established offshore and has a hush-hush list of "clients". He was once sued by a guy named Michael Stroll who said he lost all $450k of his money investing with Epstein, and he told an interviewer that everyone thought Epstein "was some kind of genius, but I never saw any genius, and I never saw him work. Anyone that wealthy would have to work 26 hours a day, Epstein played 26 hours a day." Bloomberg estimated that at best his net worth is $77m, which obviously is not enough to support his lavish lifestyle with 12 homes, a private island, private jet, 15 cars.

Epstein was "let go" by Bear Sterns because of his involvement in an insider trading case involving Edgar Bronfman, whose firm Seagram was in a hostile takeover bid of another firm. Bronfman, former president of World Jewish Congress, and his two daughters are investors in NXIVM which was recently charged with sex trafficking and other corruptions. Bronfman and Les Wexner, the single largest investor in Epstein's "hedge fund", were co-founders of the Zionist org. Mega. All these people are in one way or another connected with Israel.

I suspect Epstein and Bronfman were in fact running an international sex trafficking-racketeering ring on behalf of Mossad. That would explain his mysterious source of wealth. His little black book is rumored to include 1,500 names of who's who in politics, business and arts, and includes royalty, several foreign presidents and a famous prime minister.

Tired of Not Winning , says: July 11, 2019 at 7:52 pm GMT

Acosta needs to show some integrity and resign. But of course, if he had any, he would never have signed that plea bargain to begin with.

First Mueller, now Epstein, two chances for Barr to turn the Deep State inside out, upside down once and for all. Will he do it? I have my doubts. William Barr's father, Donald Barr, was the one who recruited Jeffrey Epstein, a two time college dropout, to be a calculus and physics teacher at the prestigious Dalton School in NYC when he was the headmaster there. Donald Barr, born Jewish but "converted" to Catholicism, was later ousted by a group of "progressive" parents at Dalton for being too conservative. But he was the one who gave Epstein the foot in the door. From there he got to teach the son of Bear Stern's CEO Ace Greenberg, and was recruited by the latter to work at Bear Sterns.

anon [398] Disclaimer , says: July 11, 2019 at 8:38 pm GMT

I wouldn't count out the CIA here. It is telling that one of Epstein's havens was overseas, several of them. These are locations where the CIA could legally operate. After collecting dirt, they could then funnel some of it selectively to the Israelis for distribution so the CIA could maintain plausible deniability while having a wall of separation between themselves and the Mossad-picked third party that leaked the info.

In fact, this is the most plausible scenario; it fits with everything we know: 1) "intelligence" reportedly told Acosta to back off 2) Epstein has been linked to the CIA 3) some of these locations were overseas, giving the CIA a legal justification for spying 4) these were largely American politicians and American allies 5) the CIA reportedly threatened Trump when he came into office by implying they would leak stuff on him: the Micheal Wolfe book, Fire and Fury I believe it was, related a story of Trump being pressured to set up a meeting with the CIA where he'd speak to them and, essentially, pledge loyalty to them because they would be his enemies otherwise (that's treason, btw); Trump dutifully complied 6) Epstein's mysterious wealth and property management would have attracted CIA attention long ago, meaning they should have been aware of this unless they helped set it up, including the guy's fake wealth (a front to get close to the powerful) anyone got a tax return for this guy?

This smells like CIA-Mossad joint op. If it were solely Mossad, the CIA should have stepped in and broken up this guy's little operation considering his targets. They should have followed up by either eliminating Epstein as a message to Mossad not to leak any of their dirt or threatened Epstein with punishment if he leaked or continued his activities. Tellingly, they covered for the guy.

follyofwar , says: July 11, 2019 at 9:57 pm GMT
@follyofwar

Also, does this sorry state of affairs make it more likely that Trump will "Wag the Dog" on Iran? Would the Epstein arrest have even happened if Trump had done Bibi's bidding and attacked Iran when the False Flag of the drone shoot down had been teed up for him like a driver smacking a golf ball. Conspiracy Theories is all we have left in the crumbling Empire of Lust and Greed. Perhaps I'm just paranoid.

Jacques Sheete , says: July 12, 2019 at 12:40 am GMT

Milchan was involved in a number of other thefts as well as arms sales on behalf of the Jewish state

One of many apparently.

The scum described here was rewarded with becoming the mayor of Jerusalem.

We've been involved in everything we've been asked to do [re Israel].

[Dad] went and he bought all of the equipment from the plant. It ended up being shipped to Israel. Because you know at that time, there was a complete embargo from the United States, and what little [the Israelis] got– well Most of what they got were smuggled in.Most of them were illegal, all the arms. That's what Teddy Kollek did. That was his job before he became a mayor [of Jerusalem]. He was a master smuggler. And he was good. Oh was he good! [laughter]

-Philip Weiss, Was it 'jihad' when Henry Crown smuggled plane parts to Israel?,July 29, 2013 27
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/07/was-it-jihad-when-henry-crown-smuggled-plane-parts-to-israel-and-when-jeffrey-goldberg-moved-there.html

The vid is good too. Shows the typical smug "Cheney" smirk of the speaker.

Hillbob , says: July 12, 2019 at 12:53 am GMT
@Art

Any wonder why Trump is so overtly and disgustingly pro Israel?

trelane , says: July 12, 2019 at 1:49 am GMT

The honey trap is one of the most powerful (and legitimate) ways to compromise public officials, including heads of state. Epstein is almost certainly Mossad.

Rabbitnexus , says: July 12, 2019 at 2:16 am GMT

This has been the talk and pretty obvious conclusion now for some time. Of COURSE Epstein was/is a MOSSAD asset if not agent. What's more his usefullness to them isn't over yet, especially if Trump is one of the names he has.

I think if Trump caves next false flag and has a go at Iran, it will imply that Trump is dirty and Epstein can prove it. I'm saying MOSSAD could be behind Epstein going down now as it makes his blakmail potential an imperitive. Hopefully Trump is clean and there are indications he is. If not then he just lost any ability to resist whatever the zippers now want of him.

Rabbitnexus , says: July 12, 2019 at 2:31 am GMT
@j2

The sort of influence Zionist "Israel" needs to wield and does requires exactly such an interconnected and multilayered stable of highly placed assets. Redundancy built in and how else do you think they manage to control so much AND avoid accountability? They cast a wide net. But you knew that I think.

renfro , says: July 12, 2019 at 2:54 am GMT
@Tired of Not Winning deal with one of Epstein's attorneys because he had "been told" to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to leave it alone," he told his interviewers'

#4 Offshore Tax Schemes / Money Laundering
Deutsche Bank seems to be the Gordian Knot of financial filth and corruption. Epstein was a client of Deutsche Bank's 'special services department' same as Trump and Kushner ..same Deutsche bank as already fined for money laundering.

Possible Epstein and whoever was behind him engaged in all of these. If congress is going to question Acosta .first question should be who told him Epstein belonged to intelligence.

the grand wazoo , says: July 12, 2019 at 3:10 am GMT
@j2

You mentioned the Masonic Lodge P2 in Italy. If you haven't done so yet I recommend Paul Williams book "OPERATION GLADIO".

Achilles , says: July 12, 2019 at 3:29 am GMT

That 2002 New York piece Phil mentioned has some great tid-bits:

For more than ten years, he's been linked to Manhattan-London society figure Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the mysteriously deceased media titan Robert Maxwell

He is an enthusiastic member of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Indicative of globalism, Zionism and Jewish group interest.

those close to him say the reason he quit his board seat at the Rockefeller Institute was that he hated wearing a suit.

Obviously a falsely contrived reason, wonder what the deal was here

"I invest in people – be it politics or science. It's what I do," he has said to friends. And his latest prize addition is the former president [Bill Clinton].

Certainly suggestive of an intelligence operative mindset.

Before Clinton, Epstein's rare appearances in the gossip columns tended to be speculation as to the true nature of his relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell. While they are still friends, the English tabloids have postulated that Maxwell has longed for a more permanent pairing and that for undetermined reasons Epstein has not reciprocated in kind. "It's a mysterious relationship that they have," says society journalist David Patrick Columbia. "In one way, they are soul mates, yet they are hardly companions anymore. It's a nice conventional relationship, where they serve each other's purposes."

Friends of the two say that Maxwell, whose social life has always been higher-octane than Epstein's, lent a little pizzazz to the lower-profile Epstein. Indeed, at a party at Maxwell's house, her friends say, one is just as apt to see Russian ladies of the night as one is to see Prince Andrew.

Another interpretation is that his combination with Ghislaine was bringing a bit too much public attention to Epstein and his activities and therefore it was decided to let things die down a bit.

in 1976, he dropped everything and reported to work at Bear Stearns, where he started off as a junior assistant to a floor trader at the American Stock Exchange. His ascent was rapid.

At the time, options trading was an arcane and dimly understood field, just beginning to take off. To trade options, one had to value them, and to value them, one needed to be able to master such abstruse mathematical confections as the Black-Scholes option-pricing model. For Epstein, breaking down such models was pure sport, and within just a few years he had his own stable of clients. "He was not your conventional broker saying 'Buy IBM' or 'Sell Xerox,' " says Bear Stearns CEO Jimmy Cayne. "Given his mathematical background, we put him in our special-products division, where he would advise our wealthier clients on the tax implications of their portfolios. He would recommend certain tax-advantageous transactions. He is a very smart guy and has become a very important client for the firm as well."

In 1980, Epstein made partner, but he had left the firm by 1981. Working in a bureaucracy was not for him

Obviously, important facts are being left out. He is a talented options analyst but they have him advising clients on investment structures to save taxes? Why wouldn't they put him on principal trades for Bear if he was such an options whiz?

And why did he leave? Trading firms are notoriously NOT bureaucracies, and anyone with a talent for making money, especially in the early 80s, would find few fetters. Whole story not given here.

In 1982, according to those who know Epstein, he set up his own shop, J. Epstein and Co., which remains his core business today. The premise behind it was simple: Epstein would manage the individual and family fortunes of clients with $1 billion or more. Which is where the mystery deepens. Because according to the lore, Epstein, in 1982, immediately began collecting clients. There were no road shows, no whiz-bang marketing demos – just this: Jeff Epstein was open for business for those with $1 billion–plus.

Getting clients in asset management is a cut-throat business. But Epstein did not even have to make a pretense of competing for business?

His firm would be different, too. He was not here just to offer investment advice; he saw himself as the financial architect of every aspect of his client's wealth – from investments to philanthropy to tax planning to security to assuaging the guilt and burdens that large sums of inherited wealth can bring on.

the conditions for investing with Epstein were steep: He would take total control of the billion dollars, charge a flat fee, and assume power of attorney to do whatever he thought was necessary to advance his client's financial cause. And he remained true to the $1 billion entry fee. According to people who know him, if you were worth $700 million and felt the need for the services of Epstein and Co., you would receive a not-so-polite no-thank-you from Epstein.

Minimum $1b invested, no track record by the asset manager, and he claims the clients give him carte blanche? This is not normal wealth management.

Turning down giant new stakes just because they fall short of $1b? Nonsense. The name of the game on the buy side on Wall Street is size, because that gives you negotiating power with the sell side.

Epstein runs a lean operation, and those close to him say that his actual staff – based here in Manhattan at the Villard House (home to Le Cirque); New Albany, Ohio; and St. Thomas, where he reincorporated his company seven years ago (now called Financial Trust Co.) – numbers around 150 and is purely administrative. When it comes to putting these billions to work in the markets, it is Epstein himself making all the investment calls – there are no analysts or portfolio managers, just twenty accountants to keep the wheels greased and a bevy of assistants – many of them conspicuously attractive young women – to organize his hectic life. So assuming, conservatively, a fee of .5 percent (he takes no commissions or percentages) on $15 billion, that makes for a management fee of $75 million a year straight into Jeff Epstein's pocket.

Epstein makes all the daily investment decisions on $15b, yet no one on the sell side knows him? In other words Epstein does not invest in new issues. But new issues are the gravy for making money on the buy side – think IPO discount. This is not normal asset management.

some have speculated that Wexner is the primary source of Epstein's lavish life – but friends leap to his defense. "Let me tell you: Jeffrey Epstein has other clients besides Wexner. I know because some of them are my clients," says noted m&a lawyer Dennis Block of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. "I sent him a $500 million client a few years ago and he wouldn't take him. Said the account was too small. Both the client and I were amazed. But that's Jeffrey."

You can always trust the word of an M&A lawyer. They would never mislead anyone for advantage.

he found himself spending there [in Santa Fe], talking elementary particle physics with his friend Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel Prize–winning physicist and co-chair of the science board at the Santa Fe Institute.

his covey of scientists that inspires Epstein's true rapture. Epstein spends $20 million a year on them

Gerald Edelman won the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine in 1972 and now presides over the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla. "Jeff is extraordinary in his ability to pick up on quantitative relations," says Edelman. "He came to see us recently. He is concerned with this basic question: Is it true that the brain is not a computer? He is very quick."

Stephen Kosslyn, a psychologist at Harvard. Epstein flew up to Kosslyn's laboratory in Cambridge this year to witness an experiment that Kosslyn was conducting and Epstein was funding. Namely: Is it true that certain Tibetan monks are capable of holding a distinct mental image in their minds for twenty minutes straight?

Epstein has a particularly close relationship with Martin Nowak, an Austrian biology and mathematics professor who heads the theoretical-biology program at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Nowak is examining how game theory can be used to answer some of the basic evolutionary questions – e.g., why, in our Darwinian society, does altruistic behavior exist?

Danny Hillis, an MIT-educated computer scientist whose company, Thinking Machines, was at the forefront of the supercomputing world in the eighties, and who used to run R&D at Walt Disney Imagineering

An intelligence operative would certainly have no interest in cultivating, buying or blackmailing scientists in the fields of nuclear physics, controlling human behavior or supercomputers!

And by the way, the need to explain "altruism" in terms of game theory is a tip-off that Epstein and Nowak have no spiritual life and cannot comprehend of it in other people. No surprise to find "do what thou wilt" as his guiding principle.

Strangely enough, given his scientific obsessions, he is a computer-phobe and does not use e-mail.

Before taking a big position, Epstein will usually fly to the country in question. He recently spent a week in Germany meeting with various government officials and financial types, and he has a trip to Brazil coming up in the next few weeks. On all of these trips, he flies alone in his commercial-jet-size 727.

Friends of Epstein say he is horrified at the recent swell of media attention around him

He has never granted a formal interview, and did not offer one to this magazine, nor has his picture appeared in any publication.

The final straws. If he's not an intelligence operative, he's doing everything he can to give that impression!

He "flies alone." LOL! Poor Jeffrey, he so ronery!

Tsigantes , says: July 12, 2019 at 3:47 am GMT
@SunBakedSuburb

When Bob Maxwell died at sea or disappeared it turned out that he had used or stolen every penny of ALL the pensions of his employees .which were never recovered. After her father was given a state funeral in Israel (not England where he and his family lived and worked) there followed a 2 year court case in which his 6 children were finally excused from any responsibility for these pensions, despite inheriting his money and two of them working in his companies.

And now Ghislaine turns up as a US socialite, multi-decade pedophile procurer and international human trafficker. Nice family .nice values! ...

tac , says: July 12, 2019 at 3:52 am GMT

Since the Little SAINT James pedo-island that was allegedly owned by Jeffery Epstein did not have an airport (the closest one being Curil E King airport in St. Thomas (about ten miles away)) that means the 'guests' would either have to take a boat trip or a helicopter trip. Since Little SAINT James does have a clearly marked helicopter landing site at the north central east part of the island (when viewed on google maps in satellite view) one would suspect that is how these so-called 'guests' arrived at this pedo-island.

... ... ...

Parisian Guy , says: July 12, 2019 at 4:11 am GMT
@9/11 Inside job

According to Aangirfan , Epstein is a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.

This trilateral+CFR membership is plainly written on the Epstein Foundation website.

anon [189] Disclaimer , says: July 12, 2019 at 4:14 am GMT

First Weinstein then Epstein and how about the Clinton's or should we call them clintstein.birds of feather

Tired of Not Winning , says: July 12, 2019 at 4:16 am GMT
@renfro

Those activities are not mutually exclusive. It could be #5: All of the above. We all know how Mossad operates. Nothing is beyond them. The end justifies the means.

Israhell has a right to exist.

Tsigantes , says: July 12, 2019 at 4:16 am GMT
@Tired of Not Winning

Acosta is a distraction .and possibly innocent since he did what he was told which was to go easy on an intelligence asset.
Forget the small fry and concentrate on the real criminals please.

Sean , says: July 12, 2019 at 4:17 am GMT

Senator Chuck Schumer, self-described as Israel's "protector" in the Senate, is loudly calling for the resignation of Acosta. He just might change his tune if it turns out that Israel is a major part of the story.

Schumer would already have been tipped of if is was an Israeli operation. It's an anti Trump thing.

Tsigantes , says: July 12, 2019 at 4:27 am GMT
@follyofwar

The fact that the case has been moved to the Southern District of New York validates your cynicism.

Has the Only Democracy in the Middle East decided to sacrifice Epstein (he can be sprung later, his jig was up anyway) so that an Epstein circus can replace Russiagate?

ChuckOrloski , says: July 12, 2019 at 4:30 am GMT
@renfro

From renfro, the following great point:
"If congress is going to question Acosta .first question should be who told him Epstein belonged to intelligence."

, renfro! Thanks & my respect.

Because I have special enthusiasm for renfro's advice to "Congress," such will not fly with "congress."

Daniel Rich , says: July 12, 2019 at 4:47 am GMT

@ Philip Giraldi,

Quote: "It will be very interesting to see just how far and how deep the investigation into Epstein and his activities goes."

Reply: We'll get a glistening kabuki show, with lots of wailing [walls], thunder and lightening, twists and turns, but, in the end [as this case will go on and on – Harvey Weinstein, anyone?] people will forget about it.

Huh?

Oh, look. The Cartra$$hians!!!

Intelligent Dasein , says: Website July 12, 2019 at 4:53 am GMT

I fear that this is all rapidly turning into a modified limited hangout. A whole lot of dirt will be inconclusively exposed and, even though everyone will have a pretty good idea of what happened, there won't be enough will to do anything about it.

The caveat will be when the financial system finally implodes. A horde of jobless and desperate people will rapidly lose their patience for being governed by a bunch of incompetent pedophile oligarchs, but until then everyone will just go with the flow.

j2 , says: July 12, 2019 at 6:06 am GMT
@Rabbitnexus ut it looks more like a millionaire club. Intelligence agencies prefer to use secretaries and other less visible people as spies. I would look for some association of friends of Israel, something that has lots of money, wants lots of power, spies on people, both enemies and friends, and has some special love for Israel.

I maybe wrong, but this does not seem to me to be a single intelligence agency of any country. It operates in an age old method of a secret society, like mafia or masons. It is neither mafia nor masons, but some that especially likes to help Israel and probably created it. I guess there are such friends of Israel organizations, several.

jack daniels , says: July 12, 2019 at 6:10 am GMT
@Achilles

In social science it is often assumed that people are selfish. The attempt to show that altruism contributes positively to the prospects for survival and reproduction is important in defeating the presumption of underlying selfishness. It's not a very deep idea. If ten people carry a gene that causes one of them to throw himself on a hand-grenade, thereby saving the other nine, that gives the gene a better chance of being passed along than if the grenade goes off and most or all of the carriers are killed. If interested, see the book Evolution of the Social Contract by Brian Skyrms.

Wizard of Oz , says: July 12, 2019 at 6:10 am GMT
@Tired of Not Winning ld that one of the names is supposed to be Queen Elizabeth.

First a question: who says the telephone numbers were the sort only an intimate or ultimate insider would have? Queen Elizabeth's would surely have had to be the Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Sandringham or Balmoral switchboard.

Then there is what a sleazy or dangerous guy like Epstein might be expected to do, namely toss in a whole lot of names (with or without true up to date direct line numbers) to confuse and provide diversion and cover. Cute though isn't that he was supposed still to be using an old fashioned address book in the 21st Century rather than an encrypted or at least password protected smartphone.

Anon [255] Disclaimer , says: July 12, 2019 at 6:11 am GMT

From Tennessee,

The Palm Beach mansion Epstein owned was rigged with hidden cameras in some of the guest bedrooms according to an article I read a couple of years back.

Im glad we have forums like this so the word can get out: honeypot operations are not a thing of just the KGB/Cold War past, but of the Soros/intel orgs/globalist/Establishment present.

Future politicians and wealthy businesspersons need to be aware of this. The Bible has a great old verse that goes something like, "Be sure your sins will find you out".

Tono Bungay , says: July 12, 2019 at 8:25 am GMT

"Pedophilia"? Has anyone accused Epstein of mistreating pre-pubescent girls? I don't think so. If Mr. Giraldi wants to deplore what Epstein is accused of, fine. But don't try to confuse us by suggesting that he attacked children rather than underage teens.

gsjackson , says: July 12, 2019 at 8:55 am GMT
@follyofwar even Israel understand this would not be regime change business as usual.

U.S. war gamers for years have been saying there's no way the U.S. could significantly "win" the war. It would surely drive gas prices way up, and wake up the American public, creating a probably insurmountable political problem for Trump. Israel is liable to get pelted from all sides -- Hezbollah has promised to attack in the event of war, and there are probably ways of striking from Syria and Iran. Then there are the wild cards of Russia and China. No one knows for sure what Putin would do if Iran were attacked, but he could certainly turn Israel into a parking lot very quickly if he wanted to.

Wizard of Oz , says: July 12, 2019 at 9:12 am GMT
@Achilles

Well founded scepticism. Still, now we know the extent of what Bernie Madoff got away with perhaps someone who was clever and charming and appealed to those who wouldn't have invested with Madoff just might have put together enough billion dollar portfolios to be able, as long as he managed his tax affairs well to become very rich during the 80s. It would be interesting to know how he handled the October 1988 melt down.

A1N2O3N , says: July 12, 2019 at 10:47 am GMT

Good article. I was waiting for someone to come out and state the obvious regarding the Mossad connection.

My guess is that everything will be swept under the carpet, as usual, just as it was with the famous "DC Madam" case and her black book of DC clients.

Kartoffelstampfer , says: July 12, 2019 at 11:00 am GMT

One aspect of this entire Epstein Talmudic child abuse saga that really p*sses me off is the active participation of the IRS. It was the same with Madoff and Maxwell. None of these talmudic ponzi's could have gotten off the ground if these gangsters had been correctly filing all the correct tax forms like all the other goy schmucks.

Since 2012, with the Statute of Limitations retroactively extended 3 years to a total of 6 years backwards to 2006, all undeclared foreign bank accounts of US persons or green card holders on IRS FBAR forms (Foreign Bank Account Report), and since 2012 form 8948 (Statement of Specified Foreign Financial Assets), which is even more intrusive, face IRS penalties of 50% of the highest annual balance, and many tax sinners have been forced to pay more in taxes than these bank accounts ever contained. This is the tip of the iceberg compared to jewish charity and foundation and estate fraud.

Epstein supposedly was "gifted" the NY mansion from his "mentor" at the defunct and fraudulent money changer Bear Stearns for what must have been more than 50 Million. Rick Wiles drilled down in detail into this gift on Thursday .

These kinds of shenanigans, like flying "friends" around the world to your various child abuse temples in your private jets, are taxable gifts. In fact double taxed, taxed first as income and second with the gift tax. The Lolita Express could never be declared as a business expense either.

The entire rotten affair stinks on every level and it gets more putrid at every layer of talmudic control is peeled bank. At each level more Jews and Zionists come wiggling out and scurrying off to disappear from social and dinosaur media. But also as each layer gets peeled bank we get closer to the core, which with ever more certainty is ritual child sacrifice used for talmudic control.

Vetran , says: July 12, 2019 at 11:32 am GMT
@Tsigantes

Forget the small fry and concentrate on the real criminals please.

It's going to be difficult

Maurene Comey, one of the lead prosecutors who is handling the Epstein case, happens to be James Comey's daughter, the ex FBI boss.
It remains to be seen if she will be giving Bill Clinton special treatment, just like her father gave to Hillary's "lock her up".
Moreover, Judge Berman who preside the case, happens to be also a Clinton appointee (in 1998).

Jacques Sheete , says: July 12, 2019 at 11:34 am GMT
@ChuckOrloski

Chuck, have you seen this recent PG article?

The Death of Privacy: Government Fearmongers to Read Your Mail
Philip Giraldi • July 11, 2019 • 1,200 Words • 7 Comments • Reply

I say we dumb goyim pay more attention to that, and less to Errp-stain.

hobo , says: July 12, 2019 at 11:43 am GMT

In 1982, according to those who know Epstein, he set up his own shop, J. Epstein and Co., which remains his core business today. The premise behind it was simple: Epstein would manage the individual and family fortunes of clients with $1 billion or more. Which is where the mystery deepens. Because according to the lore, Epstein, in 1982, immediately began collecting clients. There were no road shows, no whiz-bang marketing demos – just this: Jeff Epstein was open for business for those with $1 billion–plus.

The fly in the ointment of this carefully cultivated cover story:

"Statistics published in Forbes magazine's annual survey of America's billionaires expose this little known but shocking reality. In 1982 there were 13 billionaires; in 1983 15″

DanFromCT , says: July 12, 2019 at 11:51 am GMT
@Tired of Not Winning

There's no need for anything so crude as either the head of the CIA or FBI reporting directly to the Mossad when both agencies are riddled from top to bottom with de facto Israeli espionage agents.

MLK , says: July 12, 2019 at 11:51 am GMT

A few no doubt unappealing observations.

It's a Fool's Errand to think you can solve Epstein like a puzzle. Most, like Giraldi, are engaged in bias confirmation. That isn't to say his speculations are entirely wrong but that we're all part of the play in one way or another.

In my view timing is rarely if ever coincidental. That seems glaringly obvious here. The Epstein scandal was resurrected now for a reason. I suspect that like the Academic Admissions scandal the Permanent Government is throwing its weight around. Warning (once again) that it can inflict casualties if exposing its 2016 malefactions is taken too far.

Weinstein served the same function -- with poor Meryl Streep the Sgt. Schultz headliner.

Put yourself in the mind of the various filth (e.g. Brennan) implicated in attempting to throw the election to Hillary and, failing that, frame-up and destroy the duly elected POTUS. They think they're entitled to a pass given all they've turned a blind eye to over the years.

Epstein's arrest strikes me as a shot across the bow in the context of the upcoming IG Report/Durham Investigation. I'm not picking on Giraldi but all of his fans here should note he's been Mumble Mouth at best on those malefactions. Nor am I saying that isn't the wise move for him.

The scandal that needs to be buried is that they built a global surveillance (and storage) apparatus, including of the American people. There was widespread, systematic abuse of it during the Obama Administration ('000s of people). Whatever limitations there were, effectively Mutually Assured Destruction with the establishment factions keeping an eye on each other, collapsed as they all united to stop Trump.

Epstein, like Weinstein and the Academic Admissions scandal, is both distraction and a warning to the Governing and Business Classes -- keep you heads down and mouths shut about these powerful intelligence/national security entities.

EliteCommInc. , says: July 12, 2019 at 12:34 pm GMT

I generally think waiting to see how matters fall out is a very good idea. But when I read the information of Mr. Acosta's interview, I sank a bit. Because it strongly suggested vested interest by the government – not to get to the truth.

That even the circus that usually comes to surround even credible cases will so muddy the waters as to avoid a rendering of what actually took place.

And given how compromised the collusion matter is was or will continue to be – the stakes may be higher here such that muddying the waters will be some relief for those involved.

And why due process matters

anon [499] Disclaimer , says: July 12, 2019 at 12:35 pm GMT

Myth of brilliance has been created to explain origin of his wealth . But even that shit was not enough , more myths had to be created like capacity of having brilliant discussions with Nobel laureate ( Physics) or with great educators , and with world renowned economist .

I guess authorities can get away with saying what F lies they can say until it blows up on their faces . Jew thinks goym are stupid , so tell them whatever come to mind like having a great autonomous brain that doesn't depend on education or training or publicly visible job to figure out the finances , economy, hard computer , physical and cognitive sciences and earning millions ,
while busy with
1 taking nude picture and storing them in 3-4 different areas
2 ferrying big guns from 3 different continents to Orgy Islsnd
3 Getting their intimate information , charting them connecting them and storing them
4 having parties with semi nude girls but attended by celebrities
5 holding message parkour parties from girls procured from shanty , trailer park ,
6 having serial girl friends
– there are more .

Oh yeah!!! No wonder people under pressure , lack of information , from removal of connecting dots , undue respect for glory money power , fear for being seen as ' naysayer ' or pessimist or low IQ uninformed , and fear of public ridicule can believe or can feign to believe the wildest whoopers / lies/ plaint shit dished out by the upper echelon of the society .
( then we wonder why people believe in UFO , big foot ,
, personal angels , apparitions, or America is a force for good )

DESERT FOX , says: July 12, 2019 at 12:48 pm GMT

Epstein in my opinion is a mossad officer whose agenda is to compromise zio/US politicians for the benefit of Israel and in this he is just one of many in the zio/US and in fact the zio/US gov is infested with dual Israeli citizens whose first and only loyalty is to Israel.

Read the book Blood in the Water by Joan Mellen about the attack on the USS Liberty by Israel and the US government to see how intertwined the mossad and the CIA are and remember the joint Israeli and zio/US gov attack on the WTC on 911, the zionists rule America!

RoatanBill , says: July 12, 2019 at 1:13 pm GMT

"CIA and the Russian FSB services are obvious candidates, but they would have no particular motive to acquire an agent like Epstein."
This is an assertion with nothing to back it up. The CIA, in particular, has every reason to use an 'Epstein' for its nefarious purposes as it IS the deep state or at least a major part of it.
The CIA owns the drug trade in Afghanistan and Mena, Arkansas can easily be connected to CIA activities along with gun running in Mexico. The CIA is the official criminal organization within the US gov't and it went rogue decades ago. It can afford to have multiple 'Epstein' clones running around to make sure it can control the US political class to not investigate its activities too closely.
The CIA and Israel are indistinguishable from each other. Israel runs US foreign policy via the CIA and their own Mossad.

Jacques Sheete , says: July 12, 2019 at 2:03 pm GMT
@A1N2O3N

My guess is that everything will be swept under the carpet, as usual, just as it was with the famous "DC Madam" case and her black book of DC clients.

Most certainly.

BTW, what ever happened with Podesta and Pizzagate? Anyone know?

Ludwig Watzal , says: Website July 12, 2019 at 2:48 pm GMT

Come on, Phil Giraldi. Do you believe in an independent American justice system? What a joke. It's corrupt to the bone. Weinstein, Epstein, Maxwell, Adelson, Saban, Koch you name it, have America in their pocket like Sharon used to say. During a furious beef between Sharon and Shimon Peres, Sharon turned toward Peres, saying "every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something obvious, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it."

Mike from Jersey , says: July 12, 2019 at 2:49 pm GMT

I read the Miami Herald's articles on the "plea deal" by which Epstein got a slap on the wrist.

I recommend that everyone read them.

This is just one of them.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article214210674.html

Now ask yourself a question?

Could anyone but an intelligence agency get away with all of the following: 1) harassing witnesses (forcing their cars off the road public highways), 2) searching the trash of police officers in an attempt to find dirt on the officers and 3) obtaining a sweet heart plea bargain when the police had dozens of victims (who didn't even know each other) telling the exact same story and ready to testify – as well as photos of nude adolescents seized in a search.

Who could have done such things and got away with it.

Epstein must have been an operative. The only question is: for whom did he work?

Amerimutt Golems , says: July 12, 2019 at 3:37 pm GMT
@Curmudgeon

Gasp!!! Are you suggesting sweet, innocent Monica was blowing Slick Willie for reasons other than his taking advantage of her?

In his book Gideon's Spies the late Welsh author Gordon Thomas claimed Mossad had tapes of the same for blackmail reasons. However, this has never been confirmed.

TGD , says: July 12, 2019 at 3:45 pm GMT

Epstein will "cop a plea" and avoid a trial. That is certain.

A couple of things I'd like to ask the brilliant Epstein: Why did you engage in your nefarious sexual activity in New York State and Florida? The "age of consent" in both states is 18. In New Jersey, PA and other states, it's 16. Now US federal law prohibits sex between people 12 to 16 if one of the participants is 4 years or more older than the other. The law says "between" not inclusive of 16. So 16 might be OK. That's young enough.

Also Jeffrey, why didn't you take your "Lolita Express" to Tel Aviv? It's legal in Israel and no one checks up of the actual ages of the "working girls." And most are the tall blond/blue and slim types from Eastern Europe.

SafeNow , says: July 12, 2019 at 4:13 pm GMT

"Pedophile" is incorrect, as a commenter noted. The age cutoff is 13 for pedophilia. DSM-5. These escapades comprise different serious felonies. However, the Epstein colleagues can rest easy, if Rush's instinct about prosecuting Hillary is correct. Rush has said that prosecuting Hillary will not happen, because it would "roil" the nation. Same here. I expect to see a lot of MSM passive voice, and intransitive verbs, but no roiling. "The car drove off the side of the bridge."

jack daniels , says: July 12, 2019 at 4:13 pm GMT
@niteranger

Asimov's father once wrote a book called "The Sensuous Dirty Old Man." Hmm .

More seriously, did it ever occur to you that someone might want to know your source before accepting your claim that Mueller "supposedly classified Epstein as an informant"? Supposed by whom?? Eh????

Rurik , says: July 12, 2019 at 4:36 pm GMT
@Talha sh meat.

believes Epstein allegedly preyed on Araoz when she was 14 because she was vulnerable.

"She had just transferred to a new school and didn't know anybody," attorney Kimberly Lerner said in an interview. "She didn't have a father. Her mother was very poor. She was from a single-parent home. She was really struggling, and she wanted to be a model and an actress. He absolutely preyed upon the most vulnerable."

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/epstein-accuser-jennifer-araozs-lawyer-165000048.html

S , says: July 12, 2019 at 4:53 pm GMT
@Lou123 n Ring' which supposedly was providing child prostitutes to high level US politicians who in turn were then being blackmailed by the existence of surreptitious recordings having been made of these incidents by US intelligence agencies.

The below newspaper article explains what ultimately happened to the lead investigator of the case. Gary Caradori had been hired by the Nebraska state legislature to find out what had actually transpired regarding the alleged Nebraska based ring.

Needless to say his investigation was unexpectedly 'cut short'.

kiers , says: July 12, 2019 at 6:12 pm GMT
@Tired of Not Winning

What if .Acostoa is just a stooge, In fact he probably insisted on SOME jail time here. Otherwise the rest of the US "justice" system could care less. Even NYC is complicit. It's a snow job of theater, this democracy is. It's a joke. It only looks like a democracy on tv.

AnonFromTN , says: July 12, 2019 at 6:16 pm GMT

Mossad, CIA, FBI, MI5, who cares? All of these are criminal enterprises, just like the governments providing them cover and "legitimacy".

Really interesting aspect of any elite in-fighting is that it exposes an "uncomfortable truth" that there is only one elite running the show. That there is only Republicratic party, which regularly organizes (for the benefit of sheeple still believing in "democracy") puppet shows called elections, where ostensibly Democrats battle Republicans. In fact, both are just two hands of the same puppet master. That's why the same criminals are prominent at all "Republican" and "Democratic" functions.

The other thing that the story of that Epstein character clearly shows is that all those "respectable people" are nothing more than rich criminals, and the only reason they aren't in jail is that they have enough money to get away with any crime.

Bombercommand , says: July 12, 2019 at 6:23 pm GMT
@Talha refully scripted to identify girls who could be vulnerable to manipulation, have a chaotic family life, need money, need social connections for career advancement . The female procurer would report to Epstein and receive instructions to abandon or continue to recruit the "candidate". A female procurer is used as she will not arouse suspicion in a young girl. These are simple techniques that have been used for centuries worldwide. A father must cultivate a close relationship with his daughter, know when she is OK or not OK, and most importantly be an example of a quality man that his daughter will compare to every man she meets(being overprotective merely makes her more vulnerable).
Republic , says: July 12, 2019 at 6:35 pm GMT
@Mike from Jersey

If Epstein worked for Mossad, why wasn't he tipped off in Paris not to return to the US?

Israeli Intel is the best in the world. They knew about the secret grand jury and the indictment.

On a side note even if Epstein is convicted and jailed, there is a possibility that he could be secretly released.

In US penal history that has happened before.

JimDandy , says: July 12, 2019 at 6:41 pm GMT

Meh. Get ready for a tidal wave of MSM articles talking about how the deranged, alt-right internet conspiracy theorists are having a field day with the Epstein case, after which your average American moron will be programmed to just smirk and roll his eyes whenever the facts touched on in this article are brought up.

RobinG , says: July 12, 2019 at 6:56 pm GMT
@Patrikios Stetsonis

Well you 've got a point there

Yes, I do, but y'all seem to have missed it.

Talha , says: July 12, 2019 at 6:58 pm GMT
@Bombercommand

Ms. Aroaz's father was deceased before she met the female procurer

Well, then I take back what I said – obviously can't blame a dead man for not being there.

A father must cultivate a close relationship with his daughter, know when she is OK or not OK, and most importantly be an example of a quality man that his daughter will compare to every man she meets

Excellent points.

have a chaotic family life,

This seems key.

Peace.

niteranger , says: July 12, 2019 at 7:09 pm GMT
@jack daniels

Here's at least one link: https://goldfiremedia.net/2018/07/07/muellers-fbi-may-have-given-jeffrey-epstein-a-sweetheart-deal/

There are many more if you look them up! Mueller is a Bag Man in the intelligence agencies.

anonymous [375] Disclaimer , says: July 12, 2019 at 7:13 pm GMT
@Talha

Fathers are passé in America. Strong, intelligent wimmin are doing things for themselves.!

renfro , says: July 12, 2019 at 7:16 pm GMT
@Kartoffelstampfer

Agree.

If Epstein's tax returns aren't brought out /investigated in his trial then that means this trial will be another cover up.

niteranger , says: July 12, 2019 at 7:17 pm GMT
@Patrikios Stetsonis

I don't know if Giraldi is a plant or not. However, the first law of understanding "intelligence agents" or ex spooks is to always be suspicious of everyone. The group he belongs too seems legitimate enough but we have been set up before. I've be reading Giraldi a long time and he has a similar "theme" in every piece but he also leaves small things out that should be in his articles. The Devil is in the Details and man with his experience should be "Detailed Oriented."

He should know about Epstein and Muller and a few other things since this is the stock and trade of all intelligence agencies.

Alden , says: July 12, 2019 at 7:17 pm GMT
@Tired of Not Winning

Acosta did resign

Alden , says: July 12, 2019 at 7:21 pm GMT
@ChuckOrloski

Unless he had a recruiter pimp in Slovenia 40 years ago I doubt Melania was an Epstein girl.

Tired of Not Winning , says: July 12, 2019 at 7:38 pm GMT

The interesting thing about this case is, the left wants it exposed because they think it'll take down Trump, the right wants it exposed because they think it'll take down Bill Clinton. My guess is, more Dems will go down than Republicans. Trump was a Democrat and a big supporter of Clintons and Chuck Schumer before he decided to run as a GOP in 2016. He could've gone either way.

Sex scandals tend to plague the left, especially sexual perversions like porn, prostitution, child sex or gay sex. It's coz the left is dominated by Jews who are prone to sexual perversion, and also because liberals believe feelings and passion trump all, anything you do is not your fault as long as you are just following your feelings.

One reason Trump is so pro-Israel and hell bent on attacking Iran could be because the Jews have something on him, which is not too hard since he's been in business with them for a lifetime and is as unctuous and unscrupulous as any of them. They might be getting impatient with him on Iran and wants someone who can get the job done like Mike Pence to take over. Epstein could take down both Clinton and Trump, Clinton has outlived his usefulness to them since Hillary didn't win, he'll be the sacrificial lamb while they take out Trump for Pence.

ChuckOrloski , says: July 12, 2019 at 7:43 pm GMT
@Republic

Republic asked the following critical question which should not be cast away:
"If Epstein worked for Mossad, why wasn't he tipped off in Paris not to return to the US?"

! Mossad deception is sophisticated & patterns of telling a lie upon another improved lie ar characteristic.

Also, Mossad's implemented practices/techniques are adaptable to circumstances which seem supportive of what dumb goyim consider "justice served," but they actually benefit Israel.

A thought. I figure Epstein knew what fate awaited him prior to landing at Teterboro Airport tarmac.

Thanks & my respect, Republic.

Hillbob , says: July 12, 2019 at 7:48 pm GMT
@AnonFromTN

ah mr AnonfromTN you are always so , so perspicacious

Alden , says: July 12, 2019 at 7:49 pm GMT
@NoseytheDuke

Well, Giraldi did work there and would have heard people complaining about the presence and influence of Israeli spies. Colonel Kiatowoski's book about the presence of Israeli spies in the Pentagon made it clear Pentagon personnel resented the Israeli spies but could do nothing about it.

We all know about workplace gossip and gripes.

Rurik , says: July 12, 2019 at 8:02 pm GMT
@Talha ing to a recently divorced man whose x-wife hates him (nothing new), and who has two teenage daughters. The x has poisoned the daughters against him, (nothing new), and because he was trying to be strident with his elder daughter vis-a-vis drugs, (nothing new), he now is not allowed to have any contact with them via the skewed courts, (nothing new).

They're doing a Weimar regime redux. That was the apex of their heyday, when the children of Germany were their playthings, and Berlin was a giant brothel- girls and boys for sale, especially the ones whose fathers had died in their holocaust that was WWI.

Such a deal!

Alden , says: July 12, 2019 at 8:05 pm GMT
@j2 has maybe 10 Israeli immigrants or American Jews who work for him. Each has 10-15 American Jews who can be called upon. So it's a wide network.

You're right that clerks secretaries accountants have great access to information. But the Israeli system is widespread. Plus, the information needn't always come from Jews.

It really does exist. There's an Israeli who hosts sabbath dinners in Los Angeles. He invites American Jews to be briefed on what's going on in Israel. I'm positive he also recruits agents in place he spots at those dinners. Guests who have no access to anything useful at least get to feel they're participating in the cause.

renfro , says: July 12, 2019 at 8:07 pm GMT
@AnonFromTN he only reason they aren't in jail is that they have enough money to get away with any crime.

True. And this Epstein coverage is bringing out more nooks and crannies of how the really rich control systems for their own benefit.

Like why was Epsteins tax rate on his NY mansion only 0.6% .why is Bill de Blasio tax rate on his mansion only 0.2% ..when other NY'ers taxrate is 12%.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-edit-one-perverse-system-20190710-l7hryfwdd5gqndsyor3j5tsyiq-story.html

Kartoffelstampfer , says: July 12, 2019 at 8:08 pm GMT

@ChuckOrloski howed the original twelve members in indecent poses . At the entrance to the abbey, there was an inscription which read Fay ce que voudras – do what thou wilt – a term which Aleister Crowley borrowed nearly 200 years later. "

Ben Franklin likely would have been a prominent visitor to Little St. James, just as he was to West Wycombe in his day. Thomas Paine too.

PetrOldSack , says: July 12, 2019 at 8:25 pm GMT

There is regular sex and "deviation", pornography, pedophilia

There is drugs, illegal and legal, hard and soft

Then there is finance, always pimping, always on exploitation, abuse of minors, as young as not yet born, globally, and to be comitted legally. Pedophilia and drugs are soft core, barely leveling at the sock suspenders of our financiers.

A few hundred of the top tier Wall Street-ers belong in jail, as rats eating their own tail, they only can be administered there. Starting with Mnuchin. Epstein should be let alone, so he can decoy a little longer, and await his turn, pecking order obliges. Ah, the public sector, the ones with faces, real fungi are minding the dark.

Linked on this same site today, Michael Hudson, seems to attribute Empire and financial capitalism, debt, the demise of the dollar, to Trump. ?. Of all men, another scripted clown gets the blame. The shredding is spoiling the carpet.

If unz.com is so willingly pointing out the third liners, as Maya sacrifices to the deities in the shades, then there you have one more reason the rag is impervious to censorship.

Alden , says: July 12, 2019 at 8:27 pm GMT
@Wizard of Oz

Gardner's and retail store clerks have personal phone numbers of the rich and famous. For instance, clerks at high end retail clothing stores are supposed to cultivate shoppers on a personal level so they can call them up with the great news of items they'd like to buy.

Actors producers directors numbers and home addresses can be obtained from people who work at their agents accountants PR and attorney offices

Police departments have access to all phone numbers. Most of the Find a Number websites don't have the private number of celebrities. But there are plenty of people who can access all the cell phone records.

It's not difficult

renfro , says: July 12, 2019 at 8:40 pm GMT

How to get away with blackmailing without blackmailing.

First, you need to recruit people in. Have lots of massive parties at your spacious home for wealthy men. Have lots of women mostly teens and under aged.

Sooner or later there will be some mingling going on. Some billionaire will get handsy and end up in a room with a girl ..and hidden cameras.

Epstein informs him later the girl was really 15, but offers him a nice, neat way to buy silence: a large allocation to his hedge fund, which charges 5% ..with power of attorney for himself.

To ease the pain for the black mailee Epstein puts the money in something as safe as treasury notes or money market fund.

Then Epstein collects his 'fees' ..x millions on the interest from treasury notes or etc..

Soooo no traceable blackmail payoff checks or wire transfers from his fellow pedos.

Epstein may also try this on other important political figures, mayors, prosecutors, etc. He doesnt blackmail them to 'invest' in his fund but has them in his pocket.

The evidence would probably be in a deposit box in his offshore Caribbean bank.

Miro23 , says: July 12, 2019 at 8:44 pm GMT
@Tired of Not Winning v>

One reason Trump is so pro-Israel and hell bent on attacking Iran could be because the Jews have something on him, which is not too hard since he's been in business with them for a lifetime and is as unctuous and unscrupulous as any of them. They might be getting impatient with him on Iran and wants someone who can get the job done like Mike Pence to take over. Epstein could take down both Clinton and Trump, Clinton has outlived his usefulness to them since Hillary didn't win, he'll be the sacrificial lamb while they take out Trump for Pence.

Just what I was going to write, but you got there first.

Alden , says: July 12, 2019 at 8:45 pm GMT
@Tono Bungay

Thank you very much. pedophilia stops at the victims 13th birthday. Then it's various degrees of molestation of a minor . It's usually 13 and 14, then 15. Then 16 and 17. In some states the age of consent is 16. Epstein's activities weren't just molestation of minors. They were procuring for prostitution as well.

Sean McBride , says: July 12, 2019 at 8:51 pm GMT
@Lo ry, blackmail, careerism, etc.)

@Lo

I have been meaning to ask this for a while, Dr. Giraldi, let’s say stuff you write about Israel is all true, you are ex-CIA, then can we assume there are many like you or is that not the case? If that’s the case, then why none of them stand up and oppose? Or are they too afraid of standing up for their country?

There are at least nine factions in the CIA concerning Israeli politics:

1. anti-Israel for emotional reasons (instinctive hostile feelings towards Jews, Judeophobia)

2. anti-Israel for ideological reasons (reasoned opposition towards Judaism and Zionism as doctrines)

3. anti-Israel for strategic reasons (bad for long-term American interests)

4. pro-Israel for emotional reasons (warm feelings towards Jews)

5. pro-Israel for ideological reasons (for instance, Christian Zionists)

6. pro-Israel for occult reasons (the world’s most powerful secret society mandates support as part of a grand mystical scheme)

7. pro-Israel for reasons of personal self-interest (issues concerning bribery, blackmail, careerism, etc.)

8. pro-Israel for strategic reasons (good for long-term American strategic interests)

9. pro-Israel for strategic reasons AND hostile to Jews (Jewish nationalists provide a counterweight to Jewish leftists in the Diaspora, divide and conquer tactics)

Since the late 1940s, the pro-Israel factions in the CIA have easily dominated the anti-Israel (or Israel-skeptical) factions.

By the way, most CIA employees, including many high level employees, don't have a full understanding of what is going on in the CIA, including knowledge of the most influential players and operations and their connections.

Alden , says: July 12, 2019 at 8:53 pm GMT
@hobo

Thanks for looking it up. I wondered about
1 how many billionaires there were at the time.
2 how many had a billion to give to Epstein's control

Most of the billion would have been tied up in the companies and property, not cash to invest.

[Jul 12, 2019] Holding onto evidence was important

Jul 12, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Anunnaki , 4 hours ago

Yes Bill Clinton was a pedo President.

Moving and Grooving , 3 hours ago

So Monica was a MILF sort of thing?

SergeA.Storms , 3 hours ago

No, she was the only one old enough to understand holding onto evidence was important.

[Jul 12, 2019] Welcome to the Hellfire Club by MICHAEL WARREN DAVIS

This debauchery is a part of the crisis of neoliberalism. It does increases the level of de-legitimization of neoliberal elite.
As one commenter pointed out: we need the names of scum, wealthy perverts from the United States who travelled to Epstein island-sized rape dungeon off the coast of Saint Thomas.
Notable quotes:
"... This appears to be something of a pattern. "What is so amazing to me is how his entire social circle knew about this and just blithely overlooked it," Ward says of Epstein's pederasty. "While praising his charm, brilliance and generous donations to Harvard, those [I] spoke to all mentioned the girls as an aside." ..."
"... The Epstein case is first and foremost about the casual victimization of vulnerable girls. But it is also a political scandal, if not a partisan one. It reveals a deep corruption among mostly male elites across parties, and the way the very rich can often purchase impunity for even the most loathsome of crimes ..."
"... our elites still love Epstein, even if he does rape little girls ..."
"... This is how America is. This is how our ruling class works: Democrat, Republican, whatever. As the inimitable Matthew Walther points out , there's a reason people believe in Pizzagate. The Hellfire Club is real. And for decades, we've emboldened them considerably. ..."
"... Surely I'm not the only one who noticed that the Epstein sex abuse timeline is nearly identical to the Catholic Church sex abuse timeline. Both investigations were initiated in the early 2000s. Both revealed that the exploitation of children was an open secret in the highest echelons of power. Both investigations were closed a few years later, though not resolved. We assumed justice would take its course, and slowly began to forget. And then within two years of each other, both scandals emerged again, more sordid than ever. And on both occasions, we realized that nothing had changed. ..."
"... Of course, we know where that leads us. For two centuries, conservatives have tried to dampen the passions that led France to cannibalize herself circa 1789. ..."
"... Yes: those passions are legitimate. We should feel contempt for our leaders when we discover that two presidents cavorted with Epstein, almost certainly aware that he preyed on minors. We should feel disgust at the mere possibility that Pope Francis rehabilitated Theodore McCarrick. And we should be furious that these injustices haven't even come close to being properly redressed. ..."
"... This isn't about politics. This is about common decency and respect for the most vulnerable. Clinton? Trump? Who cares? If--and that's a big "if"--it comes to pass that either or both were involved in the Epstein festivities then either or both are scum and should be punished accordingly --along with the rest of their playmates at the Epstein playground. ..."
"... Does the author have some evidence to prove that President Trump is a pedophile, as he suggests in this article? Are all persons who may have been friends with Epstein perverts and criminals? ..."
"... If our decadent elite falls at all, it will be from imperial over-reach and losing a major foreign war, not from pedophilia, which is rapidly being normalized along with the rest of LGBTQWERTYUIOP. ..."
"... The so called elites seem above reproach. Our morality has been skewed through the soul. ..."
"... I applaud the courageous outliers like Ryan Dawson and Phil Giraldi that have considerably more guts than me. Blessings ..."
"... I don't think there is going to be a revolution, whether in UK or US, at most people would be outraged for couple of weeks and then forget. ..."
"... Excellent article. But off the mark on one key point. The corruption of the elites and Ruling Class -- and they are sickeningly corrupt -- is only a reflection of, or if you will a leading indicator, of a related corruption of the body politic. ..."
"... So Trump simply makes a comment, has no record of any flights, attendance or participation and this article would have you believe that it equates as despicable as a frequent flyer on the Lolita Express? This author is no different than the fake news. ..."
"... Trump did allegedly make one flight on the plane, from the NY area to Florida. No records show him flying to the "orgy island". ..."
"... Actually, the logs don't show that he was on the plane. Epstein's brother CLAIMS he was on the plane...the most anybody else has said to support that is that Trump looked at the plane on the ground. ..."
"... It's a Trump problem insofar as he continues to defend Acosta. This is the Sec of Labor who effectively let Epstein walk and who now oversees anti-human trafficking efforts (which he has repeatedly tried to gut the funding for). ..."
"... Did you see Acosta's press conference? The local State DA wanted to let Epstein walk - on a lesser state charge through a Grand Jury. Acosta's US Attorney office stepped in to get the charges increased as much as they could so that Epstein would do SOME jail time and - more importantly - have to register as a sex offender. ..."
"... I agree. As much as I detest Trump, I don't think that he was involved with Epstein's debauchery. However, I do believe the women that claim being assaulted, because he is on tape claiming to do what they describe. And there is so many of them. And he has had multiple documented affairs while married to every one of his wives. But no evidence yet of him with underage girls. ..."
"... Right, because those Kavanaugh accusers were so credible, right? No evidence, decades later? Nope. Unlike Kavanaugh, Trump was on a big stage for decades and was a pretty easy target with the tabloids looking for dirt...but none of them came forward. ..."
"... Trump owes America an apology, reading his comments it is obvious he was aware of, and disapproved of, Epstien proclivities, but didn't have the guts to stand up. (I do not believe the stories of Trump being involved, but if it turns out I am wrong on that, fry him ) ..."
Jul 11, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Our elites cavorted with a pedophile, almost certainly aware of what he was up to. This is how revolutions begin.

Bill Clinton (Wikipedia Commons); Jeffrey Epstein mugshot (public domain) and Donald Trump (Gabe Skidmore /Flickr)

For once, I'm with New York Times writer Michelle Goldberg: Jeffrey Epstein is the ultimate symbol of plutocratic rot.

In her latest column , Goldberg interviews Vicky Ward, who covered the 2003 revelations of Epstein's sex abuse for Vanity Fair . Ward's editor, Graydon Carter, allegedly ran interference for the high-flying pervert, nixing her discussion with two women who claimed to have been assaulted by Epstein. "He's sensitive about the young women," Carter explained to Ward.

This appears to be something of a pattern. "What is so amazing to me is how his entire social circle knew about this and just blithely overlooked it," Ward says of Epstein's pederasty. "While praising his charm, brilliance and generous donations to Harvard, those [I] spoke to all mentioned the girls as an aside."

Back to Goldberg:

The Epstein case is first and foremost about the casual victimization of vulnerable girls. But it is also a political scandal, if not a partisan one. It reveals a deep corruption among mostly male elites across parties, and the way the very rich can often purchase impunity for even the most loathsome of crimes. If it were fiction, it would be both too sordid and too on-the-nose to be believable, like a season of "True Detective" penned by a doctrinaire Marxist.

Of course, Goldberg -- being a Democrat -- doesn't want us to think of this as a partisan scandal. Yet Nancy Pelosi's daughter conspicuously tweeted that it's "quite likely that some of our faves are implicated." We all know by now that President Bill Clinton was a frequent flyer on the Lolita Express, Epstein's private jet, which ferried wealthy perverts from the United States to his island-sized rape dungeon off the coast of Saint Thomas.

Still, a few Republicans will almost certainly be implicated, too. Now, look: I voted for President Donald Trump in 2016. If I don't vote for him in 2020, it will be because I've lost faith in the whole democratic process and have moved to a hole in the ground to live as a hobbit. Having said that, Trump is definitely tainted by Epstein. In a 2002 interview with New York Magazine , the president called him a "terrific guy." "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do," Trump said, "and many of them are on the younger side."

Don't pretend that's an innocent remark. It's like when Uncle Steve passes out face-down on the kitchen floor at the family Christmas party and Uncle Bill says, "I guess that one likes to drink." We still love Uncle Steve, even if he does overdo it on the fire water. And our elites still love Epstein, even if he does rape little girls. None of us is perfect, after all.

This is how America is. This is how our ruling class works: Democrat, Republican, whatever. As the inimitable Matthew Walther points out , there's a reason people believe in Pizzagate. The Hellfire Club is real. And for decades, we've emboldened them considerably.

Remember how Democrats and centrist Republicans mocked conservatives for making such a stink about Monica Lewinsky's blue dress? The media elite competed to see who could appear the most unfazed by the fact that our sax-playing president was getting a bit on the side. "I mean, heh heh, I love my wife, but, heh, the 1950s called, man! They want their morality police back."

Well, look where that got us. Two confirmed adulterers have occupied the White House in living memory; both are now under fire for cavorting with a child sex slaver on Orgy Island. Go ahead and act surprised, Renault.

♦♦♦

Surely I'm not the only one who noticed that the Epstein sex abuse timeline is nearly identical to the Catholic Church sex abuse timeline. Both investigations were initiated in the early 2000s. Both revealed that the exploitation of children was an open secret in the highest echelons of power. Both investigations were closed a few years later, though not resolved. We assumed justice would take its course, and slowly began to forget. And then within two years of each other, both scandals emerged again, more sordid than ever. And on both occasions, we realized that nothing had changed.

Whew. Now I get why people become communists. Not the new-wave, gender-fluid, pink-haired Trots, of course. Nor the new far Left, which condemns child predators like Epstein out one side of its mouth while demanding sympathy for pedophiles out the other.

No: I mean the old-fashioned, blue-collar, square-jawed Stalinists. I mean the guy with eight fingers and 12 kids who saw photos of the annual Manhattan debutantes' ball, felt the rumble in his stomach, and figured he may as well eat the rich.

Of course, we know where that leads us. For two centuries, conservatives have tried to dampen the passions that led France to cannibalize herself circa 1789.

Nevertheless, those passions weren't illegitimate -- they were just misdirected. Only an Englishman like Edmund Burke could have referred to the reign of Louis XIV as "the age of chivalry." Joseph de Maistre spoke for real French conservatives when he said the decadent, feckless aristocracy deserved to be guillotined. The problem is, Maistre argued, there was no one more suitable to succeed them.

Yes: those passions are legitimate. We should feel contempt for our leaders when we discover that two presidents cavorted with Epstein, almost certainly aware that he preyed on minors. We should feel disgust at the mere possibility that Pope Francis rehabilitated Theodore McCarrick. And we should be furious that these injustices haven't even come close to being properly redressed.

... ... ...

Michael Warren Davis is associate editor of the Catholic Herald . Find him at www.michaelwarrendavis.com .


Gerald Arcuri a day ago

Words fail.

Connecticut Farmer fuow a day ago • edited

"Us Democrats"??? This isn't about politics. This is about common decency and respect for the most vulnerable. Clinton? Trump? Who cares? If--and that's a big "if"--it comes to pass that either or both were involved in the Epstein festivities then either or both are scum and should be punished accordingly --along with the rest of their playmates at the Epstein playground.

The only question is whether or not those who participated in this apparent debauch will ever be brought to justice--so, on that note--let the dissembling begin!

LeeInWV fuow a day ago

Look at the Nevada legislature and it's recent legislation if you want to know how to improve this problem in our society.

Rossbach a day ago

Does the author have some evidence to prove that President Trump is a pedophile, as he suggests in this article? Are all persons who may have been friends with Epstein perverts and criminals?

TheSmokingArgus Rossbach a day ago

You are as my grandfather told me repeatedly: "You are your associates & colleagues, their morality or lack thereof, will in time infect you as well, despite all protests to the contrary; choose wisely."

Katherine TheSmokingArgus an hour ago

Not true. I associate every day with people at work that I do not like, because I need to pay my mortgage.

kirthigdon a day ago

If our decadent elite falls at all, it will be from imperial over-reach and losing a major foreign war, not from pedophilia, which is rapidly being normalized along with the rest of LGBTQWERTYUIOP.

In France, the generation of aristocrats and especially the royal family who were guillotined were relatively conservative in their sexual habits compared to the bloodthirsty sexual revolutionaries who murdered them. And the libertine aristocrats of Great Britain (I believe that's where the actual hellfire club was from) led the war against Napoleon and the temporary victory of the old order which followed his defeat.

Kirt Higdon

C. Reef a day ago • edited

The so called elites seem above reproach. Our morality has been skewed through the soul. Tribalism is alive and well. Wars, diversity, erasing of our most cherished values, and a mainstream media that is in lockstep the rulers and those who see fit to erase Freedom of Speech and make arbitrarily decisions as to what we can and cannot say. It is like living a bad dream. I applaud the courageous outliers like Ryan Dawson and Phil Giraldi that have considerably more guts than me. Blessings

LeeInWV C. Reef a day ago

It's the mainstream media that forced this into the light. The elites and the justice system did all they could to cover it up, same as with the Catholic Church.

As for "our most cherished virtues", this has all been going on forever. Kings and courtiers, masters and slaves, the son of the manor and the serving girls. Give me a break.

The only thing that is changing it is a shift in power to women.

paradoctor LeeInWV a day ago

And the fact that we talk about it.

paradoctor a day ago

A regime's cruelty creates motive for revolution; its folly creates methods for revolution; and its weakness creates opportunity for revolution.

Didaskalos a day ago

"Paederasty" is better reserved for relationships between patrician men, and boys, in which there was an expectation that the boy would eventually approximate the social rank of his lover. Not to be applied to a man running a little-girl brothel.

Rick Steven D. Didaskalos a day ago

From the musical Hair, a major, representative work of the culture that brought us the Sexual Revolution:

Sodomy/fellatio/cunnilingus/paederasty
Mama/why do these words sound so nasty?

Kessler a day ago

In UK thousands of girls were raped and nobody lost their job over it. Well, correction, people who tried to bring attention to the horrific crimes happening lost their jobs or were prosecuted. After the scandal could no longer be contained and arrests were finally made, there was no reckoning. No people marching in the streets, demanding heads of the goverment. I don't think there is going to be a revolution, whether in UK or US, at most people would be outraged for couple of weeks and then forget.

EliteCommInc. Kessler 21 hours ago

Or might possibly be that upon examination, it became abundantly clear that the allegations were highly exaggerated as is typically the case in these matters.

It might be a good idea to keep a clear head and hope that evidence "actual evidence" will determine events as opposed to the salacious hysetria that usually surrounds these cases.

Bungalow Bill a day ago

Bingo!

Rick Steven D. a day ago • edited

"...the decadent, feckless aristocracy deserve to be guillotined. The problem is...there is no one suitable to replace them."

100%. And I work as a psychiatric RN in a busy Emergency Room. Believe me, depravity in this country is not in the least bit confined to 'elites'. They just make convenient scapegoats. I can tell you hundreds of stories. But conservatively, I would estimate that anywhere from 50% to 75% of the women I care for were abused as children. And I have cared for literally thousands of women over the years.

"This is how revolutions are born."

Not so fast. The French peasants were rioting over bread, not aristocratic decadence. In 21st Century America, no one is starving. The poor in this country are obese, for Chr-sakes! And half the country is implicated in so-called 'aristocratic decadence', through online porn.

And like John Lennon once wrote, "You say you want a revolution?" Be careful what you wish for...

Sid Finster Lee Jones a day ago

Prosecutors will tiptoe around anything that puts them in an awkward position vis-a-vis the rich and powerful.

These are people that prosecutors want to owe you favors, and these are also people that can ruin the lives and career prospects of law enforcement.

This explains why, to give instance, Comey engaged in comically tortured legal reasoning to justify not bringing charges against HRC for servergate, when she would be cooling her heels in a SuperMax if she were a normie. According to conventional wisdom, HRC was going to be the next president, already anointed practically, and that meant that she was someone that would be in a position to do Comey big favors, and at the same time, someone that you did not want to make an enemy of.

Jerry a day ago

Excellent article. But off the mark on one key point. The corruption of the elites and Ruling Class -- and they are sickeningly corrupt -- is only a reflection of, or if you will a leading indicator, of a related corruption of the body politic.

The Clintons, for example, have been getting away with sordid and even criminal behavior for a long time. It didn't stop a major political party from putting one of them at the top of its presidential ticket only a few years ago nor a majority of voters from pulling the lever for her.

In fact, going back to the Lewinsky saga, it was not only the elites who pooh-poohed the whole thing; it was also the citizenry. Check the record. Yeah, the Clintons are Exhibit A of the Real Problem. Anyway, there ain't gonna be a revolution, at least not the kind that Michael Warren Davis warns of.

Barry_D Jerry 19 hours ago

"In fact, going back to the Lewinsky saga, it was not only the elites who pooh-poohed the whole thing; it was also the citizenry. Check the record. "

The equivalent today would have been if Mueller's replacement spent a few more years 'investigating' Trump, only to set him up with a perjury trap over whether or not he committed adultery.

Coonie a day ago

This piece at the very least is not well researched hit piece on Trump but seems more to be a rabble rousing class warfare type click bait filler. James Patterson reports that Trump kicked Epstein out of Maro-a-Lago 15 years ago after there were complaints that he was abusive to women and more recently has said he is not a fan of Epstein. I've seen no evidence that Trump participated in the abuse of underage girls with Epstein. Trump is no saint but sensationalizing this story and implicating Trump to sell your copy is not journalism.

Michael D. Nichols a day ago • edited

So Trump simply makes a comment, has no record of any flights, attendance or participation and this article would have you believe that it equates as despicable as a frequent flyer on the Lolita Express? This author is no different than the fake news.

chrismalllory Michael D. Nichols a day ago

And it was a comment made three years before the first known report to police about Epstein's behavior. I read Trump's comment as Trump being Trump. Unless he is responding to a personal attack, Trump tends to layer on the compliments and tries to speak positive about people.

Trump did allegedly make one flight on the plane, from the NY area to Florida. No records show him flying to the "orgy island".

TrustbutVerify chrismalllory an hour ago

Actually, the logs don't show that he was on the plane. Epstein's brother CLAIMS he was on the plane...the most anybody else has said to support that is that Trump looked at the plane on the ground.

TruthsRonin a day ago

The author throws around "revolution" so casually... The guillotine definitely needs a resurgence; unfortunately, it's not just the aristocracy that needs it; moreover, there are still none better suited to take over after they chopping has stopped.

The Arioch TruthsRonin 20 hours ago

And throws without not even a thought but also without care to learn or now. It is funny that American journo is now invoking Stalin's ghost, but.... Stalinists were COUNTER-revolutionaries. And he says he is sure he knows who they felt?
.
Inflation, words means nothing today for journos, being merely a click-bait

WilliamRD a day ago

According to the Washington Post Trump Banned Epstein From Mar-a-Lago Years Ago because he propositioned an underage girl at the club.

This is not a Trump problem.

Dave WilliamRD a day ago

It's a Trump problem insofar as he continues to defend Acosta. This is the Sec of Labor who effectively let Epstein walk and who now oversees anti-human trafficking efforts (which he has repeatedly tried to gut the funding for).

Also, Trump supposedly told a campaign aide that he barred Epstein. Perhaps that's true. Hard to know with this inveterate liar.

TrustbutVerify Dave an hour ago

Did you see Acosta's press conference? The local State DA wanted to let Epstein walk - on a lesser state charge through a Grand Jury. Acosta's US Attorney office stepped in to get the charges increased as much as they could so that Epstein would do SOME jail time and - more importantly - have to register as a sex offender.

Now, should the Feds have interfered in a State case is a matter for another discussion. But Actosta's office did MORE than what they should and everything they could with the evidence at the time.

As to Trump banning Epstein - it isn't "Trump told some aide", it is in the court records of the trial. Trump was subpoenaed and talked voluntarily to the attorney for the girls. The attorney for the girls researched it and he says, and it is in the court record, that Trump banned Epstein.

This is not a "Trump problem" as the media is trying to make it...this is a Dem problem.

JeffK from PA WilliamRD 21 hours ago

I agree. As much as I detest Trump, I don't think that he was involved with Epstein's debauchery. However, I do believe the women that claim being assaulted, because he is on tape claiming to do what they describe. And there is so many of them. And he has had multiple documented affairs while married to every one of his wives. But no evidence yet of him with underage girls.

TrustbutVerify JeffK from PA an hour ago

Right, because those Kavanaugh accusers were so credible, right? No evidence, decades later? Nope. Unlike Kavanaugh, Trump was on a big stage for decades and was a pretty easy target with the tabloids looking for dirt...but none of them came forward.

THAT is your biggest clue that their claims are, as the judge recently said in dismissing one of these laughable cases, ""As currently stated, the Complaint presents a political lawsuit, not a tort and wages lawsuit,"

Then, of course, the Trump lawyers just released a video of what happened that shows he gave her a peck on the cheek during a conversation as he was leaving. She lied.

Xanadu a day ago

I think some conservative, maybe Rubio, needs to stand up and simply state they are going to lead on this, and then do so.

Simply go after anyone that is involved and make the casual nature of peoples knowledge of this kind of behavior into a something that has to be repented of.

Trump owes America an apology, reading his comments it is obvious he was aware of, and disapproved of, Epstien proclivities, but didn't have the guts to stand up. (I do not believe the stories of Trump being involved, but if it turns out I am wrong on that, fry him )

For a republican leader to stand up as I am suggesting, would force the left to make a decision. Either abandon their current attitudes towards sexual permissiveness, or defend them. Either way conservatives win.

TrustbutVerify Xanadu an hour ago

That comment was from three years before Epstein was charged. But YOUNG does not mean TOO young, always, and Trump was obviously speaking of what OTHERS say, not what he knew for a fact.

Dave a day ago

Davis--and many TAC readers--voted for Trump even though the then-candidate sexually assaulted women and got caught bragging about it.

While I welcome conservatives to the #metoo era, it must be acknowledged that their "outrage" didn't come to life until they could attach the dirty deeds to Bill Clinton and other "elites" (whatever that overused term means).

TrustbutVerify Dave an hour ago

No, it came with Weinstein...who proved what Trump ACTUALLY said on the bus to be true. Not that HE, Trump, HAD grabbed women, but that young women seeking fame would LET the rich and famous grab them. Shortly after we found out that this was true when we found out about Weinstein and what those young starlets allowed. What people knew, all good Hollywood liberals and Dems, and LET continue while accepting Weinstein's political contributions and working with him professionally.

Please.

[Jul 12, 2019] Lock Him Up - The American Conservative

Essentially Epstein run a brothel for influential politicians and other stars. Girls were paid so they were hired prostitutes. That fact that he did it with impunity for so long suggest state sponsorship.
Notable quotes:
"... In fact, the case against Epstein seems so overwhelming that it's already been reported , albeit not confirmed, that his lawyers are seeking a plea bargain. Yet even if Epstein doesn't "flip," it's a cinch that many luminaries -- in politics, business, and entertainment -- will at least be named, if not outright inculpated. ..."
"... Yet perhaps the most aching parallel to Epstein is the NXIUM sex slave case, which has already led to guilty pleas and entangled not only Hollywood stars but also heirs to one of North America's great fortunes, the Bronfmans. ..."
"... In 1944, film legend Charlie Chaplin, too, found himself busted on a Mann Act rap. Chaplin was accused of transporting a young "actress" across state lines; he was acquitted after a sensational trial, but not before it was learned that he had financed his lover's two abortions. Chaplin's career in Hollywood was effectively over. ..."
"... In fact, if one takes all these horrible cases in their totality -- Varsity Blues, NXIUM, Epstein -- one might fairly conclude that the problem is larger than just a few rich and twisted nogoodniks. ..."
"... Hardly. It merely puts it into historical perspective. Epstein is but one of a long line of serial sexual predators through the ages. ..."
"... Biological parentage is no guarantee of virtue towards children. Predatory behaviour towards children is most likely to come from within the family. ..."
"... Bill Clinton had at least 26 international trips on Epstein's private plane, including 18 to Epstein's private Caribbean island, which was reportedly staffed with dozens of underage women, mostly from Latin America. It was referred to as "Orgy Island" or "Pedo Island" by the locals. ..."
"... I disagree show me where the Progressives have any morals after all look at Clinton. Even the so called fake republicans are guilty. Our country is in the toilet . The schools are hotbeds of moral decay teaching kids LGBT sex education etc. ..."
"... Marx himself understood, capitalism is a fundamentally chaotic, disruptive, even revolutionary force that destroys everything that conservatives value the most (and want to "conserve.") The free-market fundamentalism that so many conservatives accept as gospel truth really is nothing more than a "false consciousness." ..."
"... If ever a situation called for rendition, this is it. I've been following this since 2007, and my intuition tells many more important people are involved than those we know. ..."
"... Be very skeptical. Why is DOJ suddenly resurrecting a case that was settled 10 years ago? I can't help to wonder if this isn't yet another part of the coup attempt. ..."
"... Trump also gave other evidence and information he had gleaned to prosecutors during the first Epstien trial. ..."
"... We should point this out as often as possible because liberal media is trying to smear Trump by including his name next to Epstien in every article. ..."
Jul 12, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Jeffrey Epstein's trial may do what no other could: Bring populists and progressives together against predatory elites. By JAMES P. PINKERTON July 10, 2019

Jeffrey Epstein mugshot (public domain)

The legal proceedings against financier Jeffrey Epstein are going to be spectacular. The sober-minded New York Times is already running headlines such as "Raid on Epstein's Mansion Uncovered Nude Photos of Girls," describing the victims as "minors, some as young as 14." So, yes, this story is going to be, well, lit .

Epstein is the pluperfect "Great White Defendant," to borrow the phrase from Tom Wolfe's 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. In Epstein's case, even the left, normally indulgent on crime, is going to be chanting: lock him up.

In fact, the case against Epstein seems so overwhelming that it's already been reported , albeit not confirmed, that his lawyers are seeking a plea bargain. Yet even if Epstein doesn't "flip," it's a cinch that many luminaries -- in politics, business, and entertainment -- will at least be named, if not outright inculpated.

Which is to say, the Epstein case is shaping up as yet another lurid look at the lifestyles of the rich, famous, and powerful, sure to boil the blood of populists on the right and class warriors on the left. In this same vein, one also thinks of the "Varsity Blues" college admissions scandal, as well as the post-Harvey Weinstein #MeToo movement.

Yet perhaps the most aching parallel to Epstein is the NXIUM sex slave case, which has already led to guilty pleas and entangled not only Hollywood stars but also heirs to one of North America's great fortunes, the Bronfmans.

In that NXIUM case, it's hard not to notice the similarity between "NXIUM" and "Nexum," which was the ancient Roman word for personal debt bondage -- that is, a form of slavery.

The Romans, of course, were big on conquest and enslavement, and such aggression always had a sexual dimension, as has been the case, of course, for all empires, everywhere. Thus we come to a consistent theme across human history, namely the importation of pretty young things from the provinces for the lecherous benefit of the rich and powerful.

It's believed that Saint Gregory the Great, the pope in the late sixth and early seventh centuries, gazed upon English boys at a Roman slave market and remarked, non Angli, sed angeli, si forent Christiani ; that is, "They are not Angles, but angels, if they were Christian." Gregory's point was that such lovely beings needed to be converted to Christianity, although, of course, others had, and would continue to have, other intentions.

If we fast-forward a thousand years or so, we see another kind of enslavement, resulting, at least in part, from profound economic inequality. William Hogarth's famous prints , "A Harlot's Progress," follow the brief life of the fictive yet fetching Moll Hackabout, who comes from the provinces to London seeking employment as a seamstress -- only to end up as a kept woman, then as a prostitute, before dying of syphilis.

Interestingly, a traditional song about descent into earthly hell, "House of the Rising Sun," made popular again in the '60s , also makes reference to past honest work in the garment trade -- "my mother was a tailor."

If we step back and survey civilization's sad saga of exploitation, we see that it occurs under all manner of political and economic systems, from feudalism to capitalism to, yes, communism. As for ravenous reds, there's the notorious case of Stalinist apparatchik Lavrenti Beria, whom one chronicler says enjoyed "a Draculean sex life that combined love, rape, and perversity in almost equal measure."

In the face of such a distressing litany, it's no wonder that there have been periodic reactions, some of them violent and extreme, such as the original "bonfire of the vanities" back in the 15th century, led by the zealously puritanical cleric, Savonarola.

Yet for most of us, it's more cheering to think that prudential reform can succeed. One landmark of American reform was the White-Slave Traffic Act , signed into law in 1910 ("white slavery," we might note, is known today as "sex trafficking"). That law, aimed at preventing not only prostitution but also "debauchery," is known as the Mann Act in honor of its principal author, Representative James R. Mann, Republican of Illinois, who served in Congress from 1897 to 1922.

Mann's career mostly coincided with the presidential tenures of two great reformers, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. And it's hard to overstate just how central to progressive thinking was the combatting of "vice." After all, if the goal was to create a just society, it also had to be a wholesome society; otherwise no justice could be sustainable. Thus when Roosevelt served as police commissioner of New York City in the mid-1890s, he focused on fighting vice, rackets, and corruption.

Of course, Mann, Roosevelt, and Wilson had much more on their minds than just cleaning up depravity. They saw themselves as reformers across the board; that is, they were eager to improve economic conditions as well as social ones.

So it was that Mann also co-authored the Mann-Elkins Act , further regulating the railroads; he also spearheaded the Pure Food and Drug Act , creating the FDA. It's interesting that when Mann died in 1922, The New York Times ran an entirely admiring obituary , recalling him as "a dominating figure in the House [a] leader in dozens of parliamentary battles." In other words, back then, the Times was fully onboard with full-spectrum cleanup, on the Right as well as the Left.

To be sure, the Mann Act hardly eradicated the problem of sex-trafficking, just as Mann's other legislative efforts did not put an end to abuses in transportation and in foods and drugs. However, we can say that Mann made things better .

Of course, the Mann Act has long been controversial. Back in 1913, the African-American boxer Jack Johnson was convicted according to its provisions. (Intriguingly, in 2018, Johnson was posthumously pardoned by President Trump.)

In 1944, film legend Charlie Chaplin, too, found himself busted on a Mann Act rap. Chaplin was accused of transporting a young "actress" across state lines; he was acquitted after a sensational trial, but not before it was learned that he had financed his lover's two abortions. Chaplin's career in Hollywood was effectively over.

Cases such as these made the Mann Act distinctly unpopular in "sophisticated" circles. Of course, criticism from the smart set is not the same as proof that the law is not still valuable. That's why, more than a century after its passage, the Mann Act is still on the books, albeit much amended. Lawmakers agree that it's still necessary, because, after all, there's always a need to protect women from wolves .

Now back to Epstein. If we learn that he was actually running something called the "Lolita Express," that would be a signal that prosecutors have a lot of work to do, rounding up the pedophile joyriders. So it was interesting on July 6 to see Christine Pelosi, daughter of the House speaker, posting a stern tweet : "This Epstein case is horrific and the young women deserve justice. It is quite likely that some of our faves are implicated but we must follow the facts and let the chips fall where they may -- whether on Republicans or Democrats."

So we can see: the younger Pelosi wants one standard -- a standard that applies to all.

In fact, if one takes all these horrible cases in their totality -- Varsity Blues, NXIUM, Epstein -- one might fairly conclude that the problem is larger than just a few rich and twisted nogoodniks.

That is, the underlying issues of regional and social inequality -- measured in power as well as wealth -- must be addressed.

To put the matter another way, we need a bourgeoisie that is sturdier economically and more sure of itself culturally. Only then will we have Legions of Decency and other Schlafly-esque activist groups to function as counterweights to a corrosive and exploitative culture.

Of course, as TR and company knew, if we seek a better and more protective American equilibrium, a lot will have to change -- and not just in the culture.

Most likely, a true solution will have "conservative" elements, as in social and cultural norming, and "liberal" elements, as in higher taxes on city slickers coupled with conscious economic development for the proletarians and for the heartland. Only with these economic and governmental changes can we be sure that it's possible to have a nice life in Anytown, safely far away from beguiling pleasuredomes.

To be sure, we can't expect ever to solve all the troubles of human nature -- including the rage for fame that drives some youths from the boondocks. But we can at least bolster the bourgeois alternative to predatory Hefnerism.

In the meantime, unless we can achieve such structural changes, rich and powerful potentates will continue to pull innocent angels into their gilded dens of iniquity.

James P. Pinkerton is an author and contributing editor at . He served as a White House policy aide to both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.


SOL 2 days ago

"Most likely, a true solution will have "conservative" elements, as in social and cultural norming, and "liberal" elements, as in higher taxes on city slickers coupled with conscious economic development for the proletarians and for the heartland."

Neither of which will happen with the blue megacities having political control.

TruckFumpf SOL 2 days ago

Oh Lord.

Even after a thoughtful piece like this, here come the endlessly partisan hacks...

Xanthippe2 2 days ago

"(T)here's always a need to protect women from wolves." It should be noted that boys who are sex-trafficked also fall under the Mann Act. This may not be clear from Wikipedia.

LeeInWV 2 days ago

Wow! What a wonderful article! The compassion for the young victims just jumps off the screen along with the disgust at the corruption that has allowed this predator to damage so many lives over at least three decades.

No, the fact is that your dispassionate, detached, political assessment objectifies and dehumanizes the girls that were abused by Epstein and by the stupidly named "justice system" and reflects the obnoxious rot at the root of our society when it comes to the abuse of women and children.

When it comes right down to it, this doesn't really matter to you, it is just another political amusement.

disqus_t9AqZQH8T0 LeeInWV a day ago

Hardly. It merely puts it into historical perspective. Epstein is but one of a long line of serial sexual predators through the ages.

LeeInWV disqus_t9AqZQH8T0 a day ago

"Most likely, a true solution will have "conservative" elements, as in social and cultural norming, and "liberal" elements, as in higher taxes on city slickers coupled with conscious economic development for the proletarians and for the heartland. Only with these economic and governmental changes can we be sure that it's possible to have a nice life in Anytown, safely far away from beguiling pleasuredomes."

Liberal "social and cultural norming" (as in feminism, consent, discussion of sexual matters (gasp!) in the public sphere, #MeToo, etc.) is what is making a difference more because such things are encouraging victims and giving them support. The (cough) "justice" system needs reform so that rape kits get processed, victims are listened to instead of shamed, cases are actually investigated, rapists aren't let off because "he comes from a good family" etc. The Nevada Legislature with it's recent legislation is leading the way, because it has a female majority. THAT is what will change things FINALLY.

His "historical perspective" is just more of the same sh*t we have heard for millennia as are his prescriptions for solutions.

Eric 2 days ago

A key conclusion of the article is that Epstein and other recent scandals about the abuse of power mean "issues of regional and social inequality -- measured in power as well as wealth -- must be addressed."

So if all regions and all social classes were equal, this would go away? First, gifts have always been and will always be distributed unequally, so this egalitarian utopia will never be obtained -- leading to the indefinite justification "we have more work to do" to force people and society into an unattainable intellectual ideal, and justifying endless injustices in the process. Second, the article itself points out that the Soviets who ostensibly pursued an egalitarian state had a famous abuser among the ranks of their political bosses (and likely had others we don't known about).

Ultimately, kids are best cared for and defended in family with their biological parents -- the very unit of society that's been under unceasing attack for decades. Support the family and support small business which is responsible for something like 80% of new jobs created in the US. Then vigorously enforce the laws that are already on the books. A key problem with Epstein was the law was for years or decades not enforced against him, I strongly suspect because he had very highly placed political connections, probably several of which were sexually abusing young girls (and/or boys?) Epstein "introduced" them to. What amount of social engineering or experimentation is going to eliminate that kind of political corruption? I highly doubt any will. Once it's discovered, everyone involved should be prosecuted and exposed -- and any other cases of sex slavery rings discovered in the process likewise have all their members prosecuted & exposed.

kalendjay Eric 2 days ago

Lavrenti Beria as the prescient symbol of Soviet Babbitry v. worldwide immorality! So was Ernst Rohm! Thank god for the KGB and SS as harbingers of true moral concern over sex abuse!

Stephen Ede Eric a day ago

"Ultimately, kids are best cared for and defended in family with their biological parents "

LMAO. Historically the family and biologoical parents were part and parcel in many of the deals involved with these trades.

Biological parentage is no guarantee of virtue towards children. Predatory behaviour towards children is most likely to come from within the family. I can't remember the family name but there was a family that made a big thing of their "Proper Christian Family" even while one son was abusing his younger sister/s and the Parents protected and shielded him.

I'll pass on that "protection" thank you.

JeffK from PA 2 days ago

"In Epstein's case, even the left, normally indulgent on crime, is going to be chanting: lock him up." - You almost lost me on that one. The Left is not normally 'indulgent on crime'. However, The Left is resistant to making 'immorality' (pot smoking, sodomy, gambling, gay marriage, etc) criminal, given how driving 'vice' underground and making it illegal has unintended consequences (such as creating the mafia and Latin American drug cartels) that are worse than 'the crime', but I decided to read on.

"That is, the underlying issues of regional and social inequality -- measured in power as well as wealth -- must be addressed." - All in for that one. Glad to see your 'wokeness'. Please send a check to Bernie.

"In the meantime, unless we can achieve such structural changes, rich and powerful potentates will continue to pull innocent angels into their gilded dens of iniquity" - Like Donald Trump, Roger Ailes, Roy Moore, David Vitter, Dennis Hastert, Chris Collins, Duncan Hunter, Michael Grimm, and on and on.

The Democrats have shown they are more than willing to ostracize members of their own team (Al Franken) for alleged and actual wrongdoing. The Republicans, not so much, since they usually overlook all kinds of deviance if a politically expedient. Such as Tim Murphy from PA and Scott DesJarlais from TN, both married 'anti-abortion' zealots caught urging their mistresses to have abortions.

Sid Finster JeffK from PA 2 days ago • edited

"The Democrats have shown they are more than willing to ostracize members of their own team (Al Franken) for alleged and actual wrongdoing."

Like Bill Clinton. The same Team D Wokemon champions who insisted that any form of sexual or romantic contact between a male supervisor and a female subordinate was by definition sexual harassment suddenly changed their tune when Bill Clinton was the supervisor.

Not only that, but they came up with the most hilarious tortured redefinitions of "perjury" in order to justify their hero.

For the record: I am not a Team R fan either, but I am not so naive as to think the problem is limited to one team.

JeffK from PA Sid Finster 2 days ago

It is not. Bill Clinton was a cad. No doubt. But I find it very interesting that Juanita Broaddick recanted her allegations against Clinton when Ken Starr put her under oath.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

kalendjay JeffK from PA 2 days ago

The only outrage Democrats will actually express over Epstein is to again tar and feather Trump in the usual fashion: Nibble at the toes of hapless political operatives and bureaucrats like Acosta, and then accuse the President of colluding in his own purported ignorance and self-enrichment.

SirMagpieDeCrow1 2 days ago • edited

There is an elephant in the room I think many conservatives are ignoring right now. A real big one...

"President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, the 66-year-old hedge fund manager charged this week with sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, were the only other attendees to a party that consisted of roughly two dozen women at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, according to a New York Times report."

"In 1992, the women were reportedly flown in for a "calendar girl" competition that was requested by Trump, The Times said.

"At the very first party, I said, 'Who's coming tonight? I have 28 girls coming,'" former Trump associate George Houraney reportedly said. "It was him and Epstein."

"I said, 'Donald, this is supposed to be a party with VIPs. You're telling me it's you and Epstein," he recalled saying."

"Houraney claimed to have warned Trump about Epstein's behavior and said the real estate tycoon did not heed his notice. Houraney, a businessman, reportedly said Trump "didn't care" about how he had to ban Epstein from his events."

https://www.businessinsider...

EliteCommInc. SirMagpieDeCrow1 2 days ago

This is an old elephant. It raised its head during the campaign and did not make much in the way of waves. Will it come back to bite the president today -- one hopes that its all rumor hearsay and gossip.

I am willing to grant that the president may have been a "masher" in his day. Whether that means relations with children is another matter.

Hunt Miller SirMagpieDeCrow1 2 days ago

Bill Clinton had at least 26 international trips on Epstein's private plane, including 18 to Epstein's private Caribbean island, which was reportedly staffed with dozens of underage women, mostly from Latin America. It was referred to as "Orgy Island" or "Pedo Island" by the locals.

Guy Person Hunt Miller 2 days ago

One is a retired politician. The other is the current POTUS. If Bill is guilty, lock him up. If Trump is guilty - we need to know ASAP and he can no longer be the president.

SirMagpieDeCrow1 2 days ago

If Jeffery Epstein is such a monster then what is one to make of a man who has been quoted as saying "You can do what ever you want, grab them by the *****." and then during a presidential debate shamelessly state "I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do."?

Sid Finster SirMagpieDeCrow1 2 days ago

Distasteful at best, and I am being charitable, but neither statement is a crime.

FWIW, I am not a trump fan.

IntelliWriter Sid Finster 2 days ago

How about the rape and assault allegations?

EliteCommInc. SirMagpieDeCrow1 2 days ago

Laughing good grief --- First I have to get passed the suggestion that guys bragging nonsensically about their female conquests is the same hiring teens to for relations.

Good grief . . . these types of issues are ripe for hysterics.

excuse my politically incorrect suggestion of making the categorical distinctions

dukielouie 2 days ago

I disagree show me where the Progressives have any morals after all look at Clinton. Even the so called fake republicans are guilty. Our country is in the toilet . The schools are hotbeds of moral decay teaching kids LGBT sex education etc. Cultural Marxism is at play and next they will soften up and normalize pedophile. As far as the women's movement they are bitter progressives who on there Facebook moaning about how they make less money then men. Who is taking of the kids? There are no real men any more they have become boys!! Sex is every where and no one cares they all going along with the new world order!

FVCKDEPLORABLES dukielouie 2 days ago

You forgot to mention our current thrice divorced President who cheats on his wife with porn stars and pays them to stay quiet. Strong moral leadership....

Hank Linderman 2 days ago

Let the chips fall where they may, without limit, without special deals: expose them all.

Bill In Montgomey Hank Linderman 18 hours ago

If this happened, my faith in the "rule of law" and in prosecutors and law enforcement treating everyone equally might be restored. But, alas, we all know this is not going to happen.

Connecticut Farmer 2 days ago

"...the younger Pelosi wants one standard -- a standard that applies to all."

Don't we all. But if history teaches us anything it teaches that the higher up the socioeconomic food chain we go, the more "flexible" that standard becomes.

So we'll see about Epstein--and all the other big shots who were in on this debauch.

Snikkerz Connecticut Farmer a day ago

"...the younger Pelosi wants one standard -- a standard that applies to all."

Does she want that single standard to apply to people that flaunt our laws by having, say, a clandestine and illegal email server that was used for classified correspondence?

SatirevFlesti 2 days ago

Mr. Pinkerton apparently (like many) needs to learn what the definition of pedophile is (hint: It's doesn't mean any and all sex under he legal age of consent). However illegal (to say nothing of distasteful and immoral) Epstein's actions may have been, based on the claims I've seen, he is not a pedophile.

I also find it hard to believe that Clinton and others didn't know. Rumours of Epstein's proclivities, and his plane being called "Lolita Express," have been around for along-time, but Epstein has been protected by his connections and wealth. Clinton flew nearly 30 times on Epstein's private jet. Is he the only person in the world who never heard the stories about him? What did he know and when did he know it?

JonF311 SatirevFlesti 2 days ago • edited

If you're asking that question about Clinton- a 90s has-been politician whose own party has moved on past him, then I hope you're also asking it about the current president who was also a bosom buddy to Epstein.

Hunt Miller JonF311 2 days ago • edited

According to flight manifests, Trump flew one time, from New York to Palm Beach, on Epstein's plane. Clinton took at least 26 international trips on the Lolita Express, including 18 trips to Epstein's private Caribbean island, where he supposedly had dozens of underage women from Latin America kept. The locals referred to it at 'Orgy Island" and "Pedo Island". We're not exactly comparing apples to apples here, are we?

polistra24 2 days ago

Nope, won't bring anyone together.

Compare the Mueller soap opera. The characters in that story were sleazy international fixers and blackmailers who worked for everyone. Same type as Epstein. They worked for KGB, CIA, Clinton, Trump, Mossad, Saudi. Despite the universality of the crimes, Mueller meticulously "saw" only the crimes that involved Trump and Russia. FBI always works that way. Any accusation or evidence that doesn't fit the predefined story disappears.

Same thing will happen here.

u.r.tripping polistra24 2 days ago

Like the film Shooter- "Maybe I should wait for your report before I remember".

JonF311 polistra24 a day ago

Muller had a specific investigatory mission. He was not empowered to look into every government scandal since Alexander Hamilton was blackmailed by Maria Reynolds.

FL_Cottonmouth 2 days ago • edited

Part of what doomed the post-WWII "Right" was the "fusionism" between conservatism and capitalism. While the latter got real policy results, the former was merely pandered to during elections but otherwise ignored. As a result, leftists and centrists mistakenly came to believe that being "right-wing" means being a corporate shill lobbying to cut taxes for the rich and pay for it by cutting programs for the poor.

At the same time, as Marx himself understood, capitalism is a fundamentally chaotic, disruptive, even revolutionary force that destroys everything that conservatives value the most (and want to "conserve.") The free-market fundamentalism that so many conservatives accept as gospel truth really is nothing more than a "false consciousness."

A recent essay in Law & Liberty summarizes the contradictions at the heart of fusionism:

Many traditionalists (such as Russell Kirk) resisted fusionism for placing too much emphasis on markets and not enough on the conservative commitment "to religious belief, to national loyalty, to established rights in society, and to the wisdom of our ancestors." And many libertarians (such as F.A. Hayek) explicitly rejected conservatism for being too nationalistic and hostile toward open systems.

If conservatives want any political future in this country, then they're going to have to "de-fuse," so to speak, with capitalism, which has been exploiting their support in order to advance policies against their own interests and values. If "Woke Capitalism" isn't the final straw, then what will it take? Conservatives could learn a lot from the Progressive Movement of the 1890s-1920s, which despite its name was far more conservative than the David-Frenchist National Review is nowadays. Indeed, the Progressives' reformist playbook (which recognized that the rapid changes brought by industrialization, immigration, and urbanization had caused corruption, poverty, and vice) could and should be dusted off for today.

As far as Epstein goes, I'm rather pessimistic that he'll ever be punished and that the public will ever learn the full extent of his crimes. While Nancy Pelosi's daughter may be principled (and good for her), the fact that so many wealthy and powerful people may be incriminated is precisely why he'll be let off easy and the evidence will be covered up, just like last time. I have zero confidence in our justice system, particularly in the hyper-politicized SDNY.

u.r.tripping 2 days ago • edited

If ever a situation called for rendition, this is it. I've been following this since 2007, and my intuition tells many more important people are involved than those we know. Anyone involved would be terrified; they'll have to break someone to get the facts. As someone who was almost abducted at age 9, I say get on it.

Steve Coats 2 days ago

The problem is men behaving badly.

Sid Finster Steve Coats a day ago

Ghislaine Maxwell is a dude, too?

Jake Jones 2 days ago

Be very skeptical. Why is DOJ suddenly resurrecting a case that was settled 10 years ago? I can't help to wonder if this isn't yet another part of the coup attempt.

Millie Vanilli Jake Jones 2 days ago

There was a lawsuit by Mike Cernovich to unseal the court records which was granted by the judge. That' why he was arrested

JonF311 Jake Jones a day ago

Knart may be moribund, but someone found a blue light special on tinfoil hats.

Maddock631 2 days ago

Twisted sisters will do what they do with or without social disparities. All you can do is bury them when you catch them. If the rich and famous get caught up, no ones fault but their own.

jimbino 2 days ago

The Mann Act mainly served to enforce Roman Catholic ideas about marriage's being somehow special. The Bible offers no such thing as an example of a religious marriage, whether Muslim, Catholic or Protestant, unless it be that of Job.

JonF311 jimbino a day ago

So Protestants and atheists are A-OK with shanghaing young girls into prostitution?

Sid Finster 2 days ago

(Unfortunately) there is no such thing as law. There is only context.

https://nypost.com/2018/12/...

kalendjay 2 days ago

You expect a free pass for this term paper theory that downright American types are going to unite to stop sexual predation, and their brains will swirl with reminiscences of St. Gregory and Sen. Mann?

I am unaware that Chaplin's career was "effectively over" after his sex trial. Chaplin made "Monsieur Verdoux" in 1947 in good time after the modern Bluebeard of France, Marcel Petiot made headlines (this predator swindled Jews of safe passage money out of France, poisoned them, and burned their bodies in his home. No time of reckoning for France or Francophiles here). Five years later he released "Limelight", which could be called a loving tribute to vaudeville and silent film at the same time (Buster Keaton appeared, and it is said that many omitted segments were his finest hour in the sound era. Note that financially and at box office, Keaton was as ruined and burned out as countless others, but was in the end a hard working trouper who even made it to Samuel Beckett!). Chaplin flagged thereafter, but made films at exactly the pace he wished, as characterized by the slow linger from "Modern Times" to "The Great Dictator".

Errol Flynn on the other hand was boosted by his sex scandal as alleged with a 15 year old. His release "They Died With Their Boots On" made reference to the allegation that Flynn was naked except for a pair of boots. And remember the original Hollywood Confidential scandal that rounded up dozens of celebrities including Lizbeth Scott in a prostitution ring? All forgotten.

So if your going to make big analogies between Hollywood, celebrity, and yet another paroxysm of soon to evaporate Puritan righteousness, at least know what you're talking about.

For the record, I believe that if Epstein punched 8 years above his weight in his choice of femmes, he might never have been caught.

Edgar Lane 2 days ago

The article is way to long and I read the first paragraph and after the words "The sober-minded New York Times" I jumped to the comments. The headline was enough for me...I agree, Lock Him Up.

CapitalistRadical a day ago

Trump was a hero here. When Epstien was making inappropriate advances to young girls Mar a Lago, Trump kicked him out and banned him for life.

Trump also gave other evidence and information he had gleaned to prosecutors during the first Epstien trial.

We should point this out as often as possible because liberal media is trying to smear Trump by including his name next to Epstien in every article.

[Jul 12, 2019] no title

Notable quotes:
"... Bear Stearns -- the bank that had given Mr. Epstein his start -- was still among his investments when the crisis hit. According to a lawsuit he later filed against the bank, Mr. Epstein controlled about 176,000 shares of Bear Stearns, worth nearly $18 million, in August 2007. ..."
"... Mr. Epstein sold 56,000 shares at $101 each that month. He sold the remaining 120,000 shares in March 2008 as the firm was collapsing -- 20,000 at $35 and the rest at $3.04, losing big. He also lost about $50 million in one of Bear's hedge funds. ..."
"... By the time Bear Stearns came apart, Mr. Epstein was at the center of his first abuse case. He pleaded guilty to prostitution charges in 2008, receiving a jail sentence that allowed him to work at home during the day but also required him to register as a sex offender ..."
"... The court document alleges: "Epstein also sexually trafficked the then-minor Jane Doe (a name used in US legal proceedings for people with anonymity), making her available for sex to politically connected and financially powerful people. ..."
"... "Epstein's purposes in 'lending' Jane Doe (along with other young girls) to such powerful people were to ingratiate himself with them for business, personal, political, and financial gain, as well as to obtain potential blackmail information. ..."
"... Journalist George Webb, watch his Youtube channel, has been following Epstein 'activities' for decades, connecting him all the way back to the Bush Sr. and Jr. Boys Town White House peadophile ring. Epstein was the 'go to guy' for rat line trafficking missions, into Kosovo, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, every war zone across the world one can think of, to move dark ops in and out of, closely linked to DynCorp, which core business is 'aviation security services' and infamous for enabling and promoting underage transgressions of all of its personnel in Yugoslavia where Bill Clinton has murdered many thousands unbeknownst to the gullible and rather retarded Americuh public ..."
Jul 11, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Jeffrey Epstein's wealth has long been a topic of discussion since becoming known as a 'billionaire pedophile' and other similar monickers. Described by prosecuitors this week as a "man of nearly infinite means," a 2011 SEC filing has provided a window into the registered sex offender's elite Wall Street links, according to the Financial Times .

Epstein, who caught a lucky break tutoring the son of Bear Stearns chairman Alan Greenberg before joining the firm, left the investment bank in 1981 to set up his own financial firm. While he reportedly managed money for billionaires for decades, most of Epstein's dealings have been done in the shadows.

A 2011 SEC filing reveals that Epstein's privately held firm, the Financial Trust Company , took a 6.1% stake in Pennsylvania-based catalytic converter maker Environmental Solutions Worldwide (ESW) backed by Leon Black, the billionaire founder of Apollo Global Management .

ESW itself has a checkered past. In 2002, its then-chairman Bengt Odner was accused by the SEC of participating with others in a $15 million "pump and dump" scheme with ESW stock. The case was settled a year later according to FT , with Odner ordered to pay a $25,000 civil penalty. Of note, ESW accepted Epstein's investment several years after he had registered as a sex offender in a controversial 2008 plea deal in Florida.

Epstein's connection to Black doesn't stop there - as the financier served as a director on the Leon Black Family Foundation for over a decade until 2012 according to IRS filings. A spokeswoman for the foundation claims that Epstein had resigned in July 2007, and that his name continued to appear on the IRS filings "due to a recording error" for five years. A 2015 document signed by Epstein provided to the Financial Times appears to confirm this.

Epstein also built his wealth with Steven J. Hoffenberg and Leslie H. Wexner, the former of whom was convicted of running a giant Ponzi scheme, and the latter a clothing magnate.

Mr. Epstein's wealth may have depended less on his math acumen than his connections to two men -- Steven J. Hoffenberg, a onetime owner of The New York Post and a notorious fraudster later convicted of running a $460 million Ponzi scheme , and Leslie H. Wexner, the billionaire founder of retail chains including The Limited and the chief executive of the company that owns Victoria's Secret.

Mr. Hoffenberg was Mr. Epstein's partner in two ill-fated takeover bids in the 1980 s, including one of Pan American World Airways, and would later claim that Mr. Epstein had been part of the scheme that landed him in jail -- although Mr. Epstein was never charged. With Mr. Wexner, Mr. Epstein formed a financial and personal bond that baffled longtime associates of the wealthy retail magnate, who was his only publicly disclosed investor. - New York Times

"I think we both possess the skill of seeing patterns," Wexner told Vanity Fair in 2003. "But Jeffrey sees patterns in politics and financial markets, and I see patterns in lifestyle and fashion trends."

Those around Wexner were mystified over Wexner's affinity for Epstein.

" Everyone was mystified as to what his appeal was ," said Robert Morosky, a former vice chairman of The Limited. "I checked around and found out he was a private high school math teacher, and that was all I could find out. There was just nothing there."

As the New York Times noted on Wednesday, Epstein's "infinite means" may be a mirage, as while he is undoubtedly extremely rich, there is "little evidence that Mr. Epstein is a billionaire."

While Epstein told potential clients he only accepted investments of $1 billion or more, his investment firm reported having $88 million in capital from his shareholders, and 20 employees according to a 2002 court filing - far fewer than figures being reported at the time.

And while most of Epstein's dealings are unknown, his Financial Trust Company also had a $121 million investment in DB Zwirn & Co, which shuttered its doors in 2008, and had a stake in Bear Stearns's failed High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund - the collapse of which helped spark the global financial crisis.

Epstein was hit hard by the financial crisis a decade ago, while allegations of sexual abuse of teenage girls caused many associates - such as Wexner - to sever ties with him.

Bear Stearns -- the bank that had given Mr. Epstein his start -- was still among his investments when the crisis hit. According to a lawsuit he later filed against the bank, Mr. Epstein controlled about 176,000 shares of Bear Stearns, worth nearly $18 million, in August 2007.

Mr. Epstein sold 56,000 shares at $101 each that month. He sold the remaining 120,000 shares in March 2008 as the firm was collapsing -- 20,000 at $35 and the rest at $3.04, losing big. He also lost about $50 million in one of Bear's hedge funds.

By the time Bear Stearns came apart, Mr. Epstein was at the center of his first abuse case. He pleaded guilty to prostitution charges in 2008, receiving a jail sentence that allowed him to work at home during the day but also required him to register as a sex offender. - New York Times

In trying to determine what Epstein is actually worth, Bloomberg notes that " So little is known about Epstein's current business or clients that the only things that can be valued with any certainty are his properties. The Manhattan mansion is estimated to be worth at least $ 77 million , according to a federal document submitted in advance of his bail hearing."

He also has properties in New Mexico, Paris and the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he has a private island, and a Palm Beach estate with an assessed value of more than $12 million . He shuttles between them by private jet and has at least 15 cars, including seven Chevrolet Suburbans, according to federal authorities. - Bloomberg

Deutsche Bank, meanwhile, severed ties with Epstein earlier this year - right as federal prosecutors were preparing to charge him with operating a sex-trafficking ring of underage girls out of his sprawling homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, according to Bloomberg , citing a person familiar with the situation. It is unknown how much money was involved or how long Epstein had been a client.
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FKTHEGVNMNT , 1 hour ago

That black book is still missing, it is actually a meticulous journal. His butler who died at 60 due to mesothelioma kept it as insurance, those snippets was just him saying " I got the goods.

Dr.Strangelove , 1 hour ago

The Feds should do what they did with Al Capone, and put him in the slammer on tax evasion charges. I'm sure Epstein has reported all of his ill gotten billions to the IRS tax man.....NOT.

CheapBastard , 43 minutes ago

I wonder how many human assets, aka, slave girls, he owns? I guess they could value the slave child based on how much revenue they brought in.

FKTHEGVNMNT , 2 hours ago

The court document alleges: "Epstein also sexually trafficked the then-minor Jane Doe (a name used in US legal proceedings for people with anonymity), making her available for sex to politically connected and financially powerful people.

"Epstein's purposes in 'lending' Jane Doe (along with other young girls) to such powerful people were to ingratiate himself with them for business, personal, political, and financial gain, as well as to obtain potential blackmail information.

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Prince+Andrew+underage+sex+claim+denied+by+Palace%3B+Palace+denies+...-a0395804374

truthordare , 3 hours ago

I wonder if Prince Andrew has deleted him from Facebook

marcel tjoeng , 3 hours ago

Journalist George Webb, watch his Youtube channel, has been following Epstein 'activities' for decades, connecting him all the way back to the Bush Sr. and Jr. Boys Town White House peadophile ring. Epstein was the 'go to guy' for rat line trafficking missions, into Kosovo, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, every war zone across the world one can think of, to move dark ops in and out of, closely linked to DynCorp, which core business is 'aviation security services' and infamous for enabling and promoting underage transgressions of all of its personnel in Yugoslavia where Bill Clinton has murdered many thousands unbeknownst to the gullible and rather retarded Americuh public.

Trafficking underage girls from Ukraine back and forth to the USA to pimp out to every diplomat from every country that bought and sold state secrets, flying underage girls to the Middle East to peddle to oil sheiks, involved with obtaining and exchanging state secrets of for instance American DARPA, the top secret military research giant, to any 'diplomat' connected to the secretive network of an 'Illuminati' type deep state collusion, the power brokers of war and sex.

The Irgun of Menachem Begin, the Mossad of Moshe Dayan were infamous for their poolside parties where all the jewish female 'pretty' Israeli agents were used and trained to be honey pot sex objects, with mandatory sex orgies that lasted for days, the worst of a James Bond type environment but without the glitter.

on the contrary, the secret world of parasites that practice and trade in massive scale rape, war, torture, sex aberrations, ***********, blackmail, extortion, paedophilia, child trafficking, international orphan trafficking, drugs, trafficking underage sex slaves to be used as dolls and much much worse,

that is who is Jeffrey Epstein is.

The front cover of rape, murder and mayhem international Inc., the go-to-boy of sick Wall Street, Washington DC, the CIA, NSA, Dyncorp, the power brokers within the DNC and the GOP,

all the usual sick subjects whose code mantra is 'we have unlimited funding', which means the FED, Wall Street, the BIS, the whole of the Central Bank System that originated in Europe in Venice, and then spread to Amsterdam, the Dutch House of Orange, London, New York, the British paedophile Empire,

all of these a lot worse than just scum.

ReflectoMatic , 2 hours ago

Epstein's Zoro Ranch in New Mexico, where the military brass, MIC, and West Coast celebrities party

Epstein lives in what is reputed to be the largest private dwelling in New Mexico, on an $18 million, 7,500-acre ranch which he named Zorro.

Jeffrey Epstein's palatial New Mexico home is relatively near to a top military base. The Epstein home is in Stanley in New Mexico.

Albuquerque now has a variety of Jewish synagogues and a Chabad house.

Mossad sex party, according to former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky

There were about 25 people in and around the pool and none of them had a stitch of clothing on.

The second-in-command of the Mossad -- today, he is the head -- was there.

Hessner. Various secretaries. It was incredible. Some of the men were not a pretty sight, but most of the girls were quite impressive. I must say they looked much better than they did in uniform! Most of them were female soldiers assigned to the office, and were only 18 or 20 years old.

Some of the partiers were in the water playing, some were dancing, others were on blankets to the left and the right having a fine old time vigorously screwing each other right there...

It was the top brass all right, and they were swapping partners. It really shook me. That's sure not what you expect. You look at these people as heroes, you look up to them, and then you see them having a sex party by the pool.

-- Ostrovsky, Victor, By Way of Deception, (1990), pg. 96

ReflectoMatic , 2 hours ago

Because what George Webb is saying is so important in expanding the scope of understanding what is going on: George Webb on youtube

JSBach1 , 3 hours ago

Researcher Wayne Madsen: Trump's Connection to Epstein Needs to Be Exposed

https://youtu.be/w7bIi04y0aY

Give Me Some Truth , 3 hours ago

I think that's the main point. No real investigation can take place. Too dangerous if too many people learned what's been happening.

They've got enough to lock Epstein away and keep him somewhere where he can't talk.

It's kind of like Assange is no danger as long as he is locked up (even in a prison on in a room in an Embassy).

FKTHEGVNMNT , 3 hours ago

Epstein's chief pilot Larry Visoski, 54, has admitted he knew minors were being flown on his boss' plane but said he never suspected him of having sex with them "with a bed in the plane????". www.thefreelibrary.com/Pilot+who+flew+young+girls+and+VIPs+for+Andrew%27s+paedo+pal%3B+AS+PRINCE...-a0397002208

guy has a kid too

Golden Showers , 7 minutes ago

I like Miles' work a lot, but I don't always agree with the results of his studies. There are a great many fabricated events. Events like those are cover for other very real events. The clowns will fake (or real) blow up townships just to prevent a case from going to trial or getting news feed, OKC comes to mind. And there's always more than one reason for it behind the BS cover story. It's tactical. Ep is just another arm of the octopus: Ep is definitely a middle man, a bag man, a front man, an intel asset (for several agancies no doubt) and he got his cover job as a "financier" along with a client that got rich selling women's underwear and kids clothes as whitewash. A guy who wrote a paper on how America perceives Israel and how to influence that perception. That is the definition of magic and it's intel.

Ep definitely uses his own product... He had to be sure he could bounce those children off his clients, for one. Years of grooming, investing in an asset, categorizing each one. It's an industry, for sure. I don't think the numbers are fabricated. I don't think his black book was fabricated. Bloomberg was in there, btw, along with Bronfman, and Murdoch. The remoteness of 7500 acres in New Mexico, an Island, the planes, all neon signs that say "SECRET". But, you have to recruit from large population areas to find suitable victims, er, individuals. I think it's more likely that this is real world and not a manufactured event.

Look: there are theories. I collect theories. Miles is a great researcher and he makes distinctions and observations that are all very good. Reading him, I throw a lot of theories and music and vomit in the trash after. But when you peel back all the fake events... the "Kansas"... One day Kansas is gone. Once and for all. What's left is this: there's some very real **** on the down-low going on that has, until now, been permitted and some people who liked it that way are gonna be on the news for it. Pelosi's kid tweeted it. What about, say, what might a sheriff of a certain New Mexico county know? Santa Fe is totally compromised because it's an "Art" hub, for one. The unincorporated location is called "Stanley" which ought to ring bells. Right by a military base, Kirtland and Los Alamos Demo Army base, god knows what else. It's the perfect M.O. of the fake events Miles writes about. Miles sees patterns.

There is everything that is not real, and then there is everything that is real. For me it comes down to the Cartesian Brain in a Vat theory, that, indeed, is "the Matrix" pop culture go-to of today, err, 20 years ago. Red pilled means you can't go back. Get blue pilled you Get woke and go broke. It doesn't mean that everything is fake, but for all I know 2012 was real and we live on this timeline now and maybe I am a brain in a vat. So cogito ergo sum. And that is kind of a statement of faith or belief. It's the deep irony of philosophy. It's the glitch.

Ep is not the psyop. He's the guy you do the psyop to cover up. It's a better question to ask what generation MK Ultra are we on? What subset? What might Cathy O'Brien have to say about it? Don't flame the victims, or make Miles look stupid because you think it's all fake. Andrew Breitbart didn't think this **** was fake and he's dead. God bless him.

Theosebes Goodfellow , 3 hours ago

~Those around Wexner were mystified over Wexner's affinity for Epstein.~

Apparently those around Wexner were not familiar with the term "fourteen year-old spinner".

Lumberjack , 3 hours ago

...

Dershowitz was one of several heavy-hitters on Epstein's first legal defense team. Epstein's lead attorney in the Florida case was Jack Goldberger, who now represents New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. His legal team also included Roy Black, Jay Lefkowitz, Gerald Lefcourt, former U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis and Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor who investigated Bill Clinton's sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Asked why he took Epstein as a client, given the unsavory nature of his alleged crimes, Dershowitz stated bluntly, "That's what I do."

"I take controversial cases and I will continue to do so," he told Sinclair Broadcast Group in a Tuesday interview. "I defended Jeff Epstein for the same reason John Adams defended the people accused of the Boston Massacre

https://www.google.com/amp/s/wjla.com/amp/news/nation-world/connections-to-jeffrey-epstein-threaten-prominent-politicians

Lumberjack , 3 hours ago

On that note, Schumer said he'll give the money he received to help children and women.

I'd bet twice that amount it goes to Israeli causes. Not to real victims and the kahkzucker gets another nice write off.

Epstein's intel connections must be brought forth. My guess is when Kraft got busted that there were really big names that are still being hidden. A long time and VERY TRUSTED ZH member that I know a bit and collaborated a bit with on the Linda Green fiasco caught on and commented about it including providing solid evidence.

Maybe they should stop blaming Iran and Russia and look at Linda herself.

Lj

[Jul 12, 2019] The Heart of Darkness: The Sexual Predators Within America's Power Elite: book on the pedophile "epidemic in America and the purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States

Notable quotes:
"... Of course the types who perpetrated this horror should go down but if you are naive enough to believe the lie that zionists pull all the greedies (jew/gentile/saudi) strings instead of the blindingly obvious, that all the greedies pull the strings of everyone they can, including those of the stupid & ignorant israeli settlers, then the odds of you anon, finding any 'truth' in the machinations of empire are slim. ..."
Jul 12, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

anon , Jul 11 2019 6:36 utc | 134 whatever, coward. I won't be staying long I see little point is spending time at a place taken over by nonce's who can only read stuff that adheres to their tiny world view. Otherwise they lose their sh1t.

Even worse few do more than hunt out anything, including stuff from the very same msm they profess to eschew, which buttresses that view in an odd and pointless game of "see what I just read, one upmanship". Actually getting out and involved helping even one of the humans whose life is sh1t thanks to the empire is never even considered.

Of course the types who perpetrated this horror should go down but if you are naive enough to believe the lie that zionists pull all the greedies (jew/gentile/saudi) strings instead of the blindingly obvious, that all the greedies pull the strings of everyone they can, including those of the stupid & ignorant israeli settlers, then the odds of you anon, finding any 'truth' in the machinations of empire are slim.

If there weren't any twisted Clintons or Trumps prepared do do any damn thing just to sodomise a preadolescent girl, no one would abduct the girls in the first place.

Every f++ker who went to edelsteins island should be locked up for the rest of their lives unless they can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they only cut the grass/washed the dishes.

ps if 'the jews' control everything why are so many of em on the bones of their arses? Surely any jew who was stuck with driving a cab/pushing a pen/ or even robbing a bank would just manipulate the nearest billionaire 'goy' into handing over his/her dosh?

C I eh? , Jul 11 2019 8:01 utc | 137
@ anon

(((Debisdead))) comes back from the dead to tell everyone the rampant child abuse is the fault of anyone except the jewish names actually involved...

You said it.

What brought me here at 3:30 am was an Amber Alert on my phone, with an incredibly obnoxious alarm, for a child apparently abducted 500kms away. I've received three such alerts in the past hour so I know everyone in Ontario will be talking about it tomorrow.

Psych ops are ramping up ladies and gents...

john , Jul 11 2019 10:25 utc | 143
.

Krollchem , Jul 11 2019 5:19 utc | 129

For more on the pedophile "epidemic in America and the purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.

The Heart of Darkness: The Sexual Predators Within America's Power Elite
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_heart_of_darkness_the_sexual_predators_within_americas_power_elite
By John W. Whitehead

Krollchem , Jul 11 2019 5:31 utc | 131
See also the global incident map for a small portion of sex trafficing in the US and around the world. http://human.globalincidentmap.com/

This site covers lots of other criminal incidents and other issues.


anon , Jul 11 2019 6:36 utc | 134
(((Debisdead))) comes back from the dead to tell everyone the rampant child abuse is the fault of anyone except the jewish names actually involved
  • Billionaire pedophile (((Jeffrey Epstein))) .
  • billionaire (((Robert Maxwell))) and his daughter (((Ghislaine Maxwell)))
  • (((Alan Dershowitz))), Epstein's lawyer, also accused of raping children
  • billionaire clothing magnate (((Les Wexner))) who may have financed Epstein
  • (((Harvey Weinstein)))
  • billionaire (((Clare Bronfman))) charged with sex trafficking

etc etc etc... ad nauseum

Debsisdead , Jul 11 2019 7:45 utc | 136
re #

[Jul 11, 2019] Obama, Clinton and Epstein

Jul 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Jul 10 2019 21:09 utc | 45

Alexander P @39--

He didn't "win a case" he got the records unsealed:

"The 2nd Cir. has ordered the summary judgment record in Epstein's District Court case to be unsealed.

"Great work from @Cernovich - who intervened to get these particular records unsealed."

As Cernovich notes :

  • "Cy Vance - Democrat, gave Epstein a pass on sex offender status.

  • Acosta - Republican, approved plea deal.

  • Muller - Republican, signed off on FBI closing file on Epstein.

  • Schumer - Took money from Epstein.

  • Bill Clinton - Travel.

This isn't partisan. Corruption at all levels."

What's good is that most people commenting on the threads I've read, including Cernovich's, understand just how deep the rot goes, and that it's not confined to North America.

Really? , Jul 10 2019 21:11 utc | 48

@ 3 Karlof1

Totally agree.

It would be a most salutary outcomoe if Obama were dethroned and exposed for the lying lounge lizard he is. Scales reallyl need to fall from eyes. I am surprised that Trump doesn't embark on this enterprise with gusto.

Puncture the Obama-Clinton BS balloon once and for all.


[Jul 10, 2019] Podesta vs Epstein

Jul 10, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

johnwburns , 1 hour ago

Have another look at Tony Podesta's art collection.

http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/2016/11/26/sick-lets-revisit-the-podesta-penchant-for-pedophilic-cannibalistic-and-satanic-art/#sthash.6jj0GpQo.dpbs

cat2005 , 21 minutes ago

I never understood why people claimed Podesta had child abuse links until I read that article. It is enough to make even a hardened Podesta supporter cringe.

I need some mind bleach after reading that.

[Jul 09, 2019] Will Epstein be finally brought to justice. Zerohedge commeters are not convinced...

If anything those comments are a troubling sign of the level of delegitimization of the neoliberal elite.
Jul 09, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Sinophile , 20 hours ago

Gabbard is NOT a member of the CFR. She has by her own admission, attended some meetings as an invited guest. According to her, it was to engage members and find out what their inside game is. I don't know if Gabbard is for real. I voted for Trump because I perceived him to be the anti-war and anti-intervention candidate. Period. So, as I said, I don't know what to think about the lady. I do now understand however, why some individuals in olden times became hermits.

beemasters , 22 hours ago

Epstein's arrest tells me he's now out for blood.

Dotard has no control over what Epstein will say. Mossad does and it is the one out for blood.

Justapleb , 22 hours ago

Mike Cernovich got records unsealed that prove Epstein got away with serial raping and pimping for elites that were then blackmailed.

It is not because Trump is out for blood. It is because nothing could stop the criminal conduct of prosecutors being exposed.

The #Metoo crowd knew Clinton was a violent rapist, and sent uniformed, armed officers out to retrieve interns for sex whie governor. Smoking a cigar while having his cigar smoked by Monica Lewinsky, while talking to a Chinese official on the phone.

So no, this won't do anything but continue proving how the #Metoo movement are just leftist hypocrites.

ZD1 , 22 hours ago

"The news is speculative about whether Epstein was being protected by Robert Mueller's special counsel's office, and why the Department of Justice acted now, given that he's been problematic for years. There's also his role as a bigfoot Democrat donor, same as Ed Buck and other perverts who've financed the Democrats. But one thing's pretty clear, based on a tweet by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's daughter Christine: Democrats knew.

All kinds of Democrats are going to be found in Epstein's little black book of clients, not just Bill Clinton.

President Trump, by contrast, banned the pervert from his Mar-a-Lago club years ago. So much for pinning the scandal on Trump as Democrats had hoped."

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/so_the_epstein_bust_means_democratic_faves_may_roll_out_of_the_woodwork_nancy.html

scottyji , 22 hours ago

> Maybe this is the moment of Peak Swamp?

WONDERFUL!!!

JGResearch , 22 hours ago

Image Credits: Genevieve de Manio via Getty Images .

The photo provides further proof of Epstein and his associates' close ties to the Clinton dynasty.

Epstein's pimp Maxwell, whose social circle includes members of the UK royal family, has been named in several lawsuits as the woman who helped procure and transport underage girls which provided the billionaire massages and ultimately sexual favors.

The Miami Herald has more on Maxwell's connections to Epstein:

Lawyers for Epstein's victims, in court filings, have often likened Epstein's sex operation to an organized crime family, with Epstein and Maxwell at the top, and below them, others who worked as schedulers, recruiters, pilots and bookkeepers.

For her part, Maxwell, whose social circle included such friends as Bill and Hillary Clinton and members of the British Royal family, has been described as using recruiters positioned throughout the world to lure women by promising them modeling assignments, educational opportunities and fashion careers. The pitch was really a ruse to groom them into sex trafficking, it is alleged in court records.

At least one woman, Sarah Ransome, claimed in a lawsuit that Maxwell and Epstein threatened to physically harm her or destroy any chance she would have of a fashion career if she didn't have sex with them and others.

Maxwell has thus far managed to escape charges, but a lawyer for one of the women suing Epstein predicts she'll eventually be swept up in the sex trafficking litigation.

"The one person most likely in jeopardy is Maxwell because the records that are going to be unsealed have so much evidence against her," said David Boies, the attorney for Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre. "She is in a particularly vulnerable position and will have an interest in cooperating, even though she may have missed that opportunity."

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article232385422.html

Im4truth4all , 21 hours ago

Those 26 trips by Billy Boy on the Lolita Express are only the ones in the log book. How many were there that were not logged? Isn't it amazing that the mainline press never picked up on this. It just shows how corrupt and fraudulent they are. I hope there is a deal and Epstein furnishes the names of his associated scum with proof. I wonder how many congressmen, senators, Judges, etc. There are.

LEEPERMAX , 21 hours ago

Just in . . .

Setting-Up Trump

https://youtu.be/yjuegava1AU

ardent , 21 hours ago

Most IMPORTANT name in Epstein's little Black Book: TRUMP.

LEEPERMAX , 21 hours ago

Flight logs show Bill Clinton flew on sex offender's jet much more than previously known

https://www.foxnews.com/us/flight-logs-show-bill-clinton-flew-on-sex-offenders-jet-much-more-than-previously-known

Dabooda , 21 hours ago

And Hillary went to the sex slave island at least six times .

my new username , 21 hours ago

Wikileaks had a Hillary email about Chelsea bringing a young Haitian girl into the USA, past immigration, on one of those CGI/State Department/Haiti Earthquake flights from Port au Prince.

8iron , 21 hours ago

so Trump is now deciding who to prosecute AND tell the SDNY to do it? This author is as retarded as the Left.

Epstein's case is being unsealed. SDNY knew this was coming so as to not look like idiots, they found some "new" victims. This guy makes most the ***-pedo-sex perverts (but I repeat myself) look like Rabbi's and he needs his d*ck connected to 'ol sparky but WTF?

Something else is going on...clearly nothing being reported or guessed (like above)

Spectorman , 22 hours ago

There are so many ways for these mutually guilty power rapists to cut deals with each other and avoid the real rap. Some patsys might get snipped, but thinking this will be the stake in the heart seems wishful thinking. These guys are busy raping America with an information/internet/media chokehold and a money printing press. That's probably bigger than child rape, and it will take more than a federal prosecutor to stop it.

beemasters , 22 hours ago

The author's theory doesn't make sense at all. They are all Lolita Island visitors. They are friends. Dotard would have implicated himself if he was the one taking Epstein route to get to Killary. Killary is much more vicious and vindictive and will drag him down along with Epstein. Dotard wouldn't dare!

There is already enough evidence to throw the Clintons in jail by the private-server case alone.... if Dotard wanted them them in jail. He really doesn't.

Buck Johnson , 23 hours ago

So true, it's hard to justify ******* and having sex with 14 year old girls. That is why no one is defending this piece of **** and when he starts to sing it's going to take down alot of people (ALAN DERSHOWITZ, hate the ******).

I totally agree that this guy has blackmail material on everyone, everyone. A man like this that was able to do what he was doing for years and still get the president, Alan and alot of others to go to his private island knowing what he did.

Nope, this man is a dirt bag that thought he had the fix in and he went ham in having sex with these girls. Not realizing that someone else in power could go after him and force him to rat out any and everyone.

With this so public there is no way that the fed is going to give him anything light, he's going away for decades unless he could out people to help his case.

from_the_ashes , 23 hours ago

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jul/8/william-barr-ag-says-hes-recused-jeffrey-epstein-c/

Mr. Barr said he is recused because he once worked for one of the law firms that represented Epstein "long ago," the report said. He did not name the law firm.

bobcatz , 23 hours ago

Tom Luongo is filtering this event through a deep-seated hope that Trump the Potus is not too far from Trump the candidate he voted for.

Hate to tell you, Tom, you just got played. Nothing of your estimation will occur. If anyone goes down, it'll be some insignificant nobodies.

Meatballs , 23 hours ago

https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2019/07/08/the-jeffrey-epstein-rabbit-hole-goes-a-lot-deeper-than-you-think/

Heroic Couplet , 23 hours ago

CNN reported this morning that Epstein's arrest ropes in Trump's Labor Secretary, Alexander Acosta, who evidently was Epstein's Florida attorney who let Epstein walk.

swmnguy , 23 hours ago

No, Acosta was the US Attorney in Florida during the GW Bush Administration, who let Epstein walk over the full-throated objections of every attorney on his staff. Acosta went around behind their back, behind the court's back, to give Epstein a sweetheart deal that raised eyebrows throughout the legal community at the time, in early 2008.

Epstein's actual attorney was somebody else, who wrote Acosta a very grateful letter thanking Acosta for going beyond even what Epstein's own attorney was hoping for in terms of clemency.

There's a reason Acosta did that; beyond the insipid excuses Acosta has gotten away with until now. Just as there's a reason Attorney General William Barr just recused himself on all matters Epstein; above and beyond the stupid and unconvincing reasons Barr just gave.

SummerSausage , 23 hours ago

Acosta worked for the DOJ and the way Epstein's case was handled is almost identical to the way they handled Hillary a few years later.

Only difference is Mueller was head of FBI for the Epstein investigation.

Acosta didn't have the authority to give the deal on his own. It had to come from higher up

j0nx , 22 hours ago

Agreed. US attorneys don't do **** unless the AG tells them to. It's preposterous to think the SDNY is some rogue agency running around prosecuting who they want. If Bill Barr says no then they say yes sir. Of course all of this comes from up high. It's either that or Bill Barr like Jeff Sessions has lost all control of his department.

June 12 1776 , 23 hours ago

A pathetic useless attempt to appease status quo uniCRIME, uniPARTY chimp army.

"But something had to be done to keep our faith in our political and social institutions intact. Because otherwise that way leads to only chaos and collapse."

Wrong, through out all human history, all criminal, unconstitutional outlaw, political and social institutions natural law and faith of nature is COLLAPSE AND DESTRUCTION, one way or another.

bobcatz , 23 hours ago

Tom Luongo is filtering this event through a deep-seated hope that Trump the Potus is not too far from Trump the candidate he voted for.

Hate to tell you, Tom, you just got suckered. Nothing of your estimation will occur. If anyone goes down, it'll be some insignificant nobodies.

SirBarksAlot , 23 hours ago

Maybe.

But I think this is the big payback for their failed attempt to impeach him via a fabricated "dossier." This is the first chance he has been out from under the shadow of that witch hunt that was supposed to prevent this investigation into the Satanists from going forward.

He's just playing Bolton and his buddies by keeping them by his side. Letting them think they're running the show, like they did under Bush, then deciding not to invade Iran at the last minute. Where is Bolton now? Mongolia? He gives a little with the space program, then takes away from the expensive, endless wars to nowhere.

That's why the British tanker is stuck at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz instead of running right though it. Britain royally fucked up.

Solio , 1 day ago

George Washington: "If the laws are to be trampled upon with impunity and a minority is to dictate to the majority, there is an end put at one stroke to republican government." September 9, 1774 at the beginning of the Whiskey Rebellion in Western Pennsylvania, from Ron Chernow's book "Alexander Hamilton," 2004, p. 473

Nunyadambizness , 1 day ago

I most certainly hope that the author is correct, and this vile corrupt sewer in DC gets weeded out--forcefully if necessary.

We the People have allowed unelected bureaucrats to ru(i)n our lives for far too long, protected by those who lust for power and who will do anything for it--yes Cankles, I'm speaking of you AND your former boss Barry Obozo, among dozens (if not hundreds) of others in the sewer. Protected by a wink-and-a-nod to those in power, they've done whatever they wanted knowing that they were untouchable. Here's hoping that this is just the first of dozens of arrests and ultimately convictions of these scumbags and their kin.

Drain the SEWER. FLUSH DC STARTING AT THE TOP.

SummerSausage , 1 day ago

Just a reminder - Mueller was head of the FBI during the Epstein investigation. If Trump had been involved in any way Mueller would have found a way to put it in the Mueller report.

turbojarhead , 23 hours ago

I think Kunstler is exactly right-this is the Trump faction counterstrike.

Conservative Treehouse actually caught something I did not in the indictment:

While these items were only seized this weekend and are still being reviewed, some of the nude or partially-nude photographs appear to be of underage girls, including at least one girl who, according to her counsel, was underage at the time the relevant photographs were taken. Additionally, some of the photographs referenced herein were discovered in a locked safe, in which law enforcement officers also found compact discs with hand-written labels including the following:

"Young [Name] + [Name]," "Misc nudes 1," and "Girl pics nude."

The defendant, a registered sex offender, is not reformed, he is not chastened, he is not repentant;6 rather, he is a continuing danger to the community and an individual who faces devastating evidence supporting deeply serious charges." ( cloud – pdf link )

Notice the young Name + NAME------gee, you think that NAME might be the creeps Epstein was blackmailing? Hahahahhh

SummerSausage , 23 hours ago

That info didn't come from the indictment I don't think. It came from the letter to the judge about bail.

The indictment was drawn up to arrest Epstein. The search of his home took place at the same time as the arrest or just after.

Reportedly, Epstein had quite a few surveillance cameras in his homes. It will be interesting to know what's on the CD's. Hard to believe he didn't have some "insurance" tucked away for a rainy day.

SummerSausage , 23 hours ago

Acosta wasn't Epstein's lawyer. He was US Attorney for S Fl.

The Epstein treatment reads like a dress rehearsal for the Hillary FBI/DOJ whitewash - except instead of just the associates getting of scot-free Hillary did, too. (read the Miami Herald series from Nov https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html

Since Trump hasn't fired him but this story has been circulating for more than 6 months, Acosta was probably ordered to follow the deal cut at the highest levels of Mueller's FBI and the DOJ bureaucracy.

Acosta may well know where the bodies are buried.

NumberNone , 1 day ago

The people in the 'deviant' circles got comfortable after the Obama election. They put the people they wanted in power and the Evil Queen Hillary was guaranteed to be President to reside over 8 years of destroying their enemies. Life was going to be good. There was no reason to hide or be afraid.

Look at Epstein, the guy got off with a handslap and was so fearless rather than destroy his kiddie-****...he still kept in the open.

Now they are in a panic and throwing everything they can at Trump. If you are facing the death sentence, nothing is off-limits to save yourself.

If you are right or left in your political beliefs and think that this sort of absolute evil needs to be weeded out then please shut the hell up about Trump or Clinton and simply demand that no stone be unturned in the pursuit of justice. A golden opportunity has been placed in front of all of us to purge this scum.

Occams_Razor_Trader_Part_Deux , 1 day ago

Pelosi's daughter:

Christine Pelosi warns it's 'quite likely that some of our faves are implicated' in 'horrific' Epstein case.

What does it say when some of your "faves" are pedophiles?

jutah , 1 day ago

BullFuckinShit. He's had 3 years as President and many years prior to that where he was aware of exactly what was going on and did and said nothing . Oh, correction, he did say something when he praised Epstein; ""I've known Jeff (Epstein) for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with . It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."

It's too late for that ****. That ship has sailed. These traitors should have been executed on day 1. All the evidence of criminal activities was well documented before you even became president. You are a sorry sack of **** coward to let this continue for so long and in my book an accomplice to it- you and ever other neo-zio-con who went along with it. Now, youre all worried about your re-election campaign, image and being indicted yourself. **** off you Orange Clown. Go ahead and bomb Iran as a distraction as your masters order you to do

Kafir Goyim , 1 day ago

There's video of Trump saying Clinton would have trouble because of his frequent and suspicious (no Secret Service) associations with Epstein. There is a record of Trump helping prosecutors going after Epstein. There is record of Trump barring Epstein from Mar a Lago.

I think you are a little confused ... or engaged in purposeful disinformation, which is more likely.

3rdWorldTrillionaire , 1 day ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=0vh0AklSXkU

SummerSausage , 23 hours ago

Next time, don't quote Fusion GPS. The article that quote came from was a puff piece about Epstein from 2002. It extolled his brilliance and philanthropy with quotes from the Dem Sen Leader, Harvard scientists and just about everyone they could find.

At the time, Epstein served on the board of the Trilateral Commission with Kissinger, Summers and a dozen CEO's of Fortune 50 companies, the Rockefeller Foundation and Harvard.

SirBarksAlot , 23 hours ago

No kidding!

He really does have a blackmail racket going on there!!!!!!!

WhackoWarner , 22 hours ago

Let's not disregard Prince Andy. (old article from Guardian but still...)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/10/jeffrey-epstein-decade-scandal-prince-andrew

Not one person should be spared in this garbage.

AL Tru , 1 day ago

Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were running a Mossad blackmail operation.

Rahm Emmanuel was kicked out of the Clinton WH by the FBI. They had a file on him "Security Risk"...then he got back in with Obama ?

Trump is too smart for the blackmail ****. Roy Cohn taught him that.

BUT Jared Kushner is Trumps Achilles heel. Kushner's father spent two years in prison for blackmail/extorsion.

ZD1 , 1 day ago

Epstein hung with Democrats and donated to them.

No doubt Epstein found what the commie muzzie *** from Kenya craved?

Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker, Katie Couric, George Stephanopoulos, and Woody Allen are some of the celebrities who reportedly traveled and partied with Epstein in the past.

Even Stephen Hawking made a visit to Epstein's island.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking/11340494/Stephen-Hawking-pictured-on-Jeffrey-Epsteins-Island-of-Sin.html

leodogma1 , 1 day ago

Props to Michael Cernovich, and then there's the make-up Queen Shep Smith who show's Epstein and Trump together, Trump banned this Fukk Epstein from his club and the Clinton's had enough frequent flyer on Epstein's plane to Lolita Island for 2 round trip tickets to Paris. Shepp & the golden sperm seed piss punks of Murdoch must share something in common wonder what it is?

JBLight , 1 day ago

As this continues to pour out, I look forward to seeing the faces of the people I know who voted for Hillary. They voted for child trafficking.

John Law Lives , 1 day ago

This article sounds like speculation, but I am ready to see privileged scumbags get their due. This has been a long time coming (imo).

BandGap , 1 day ago

This is the opening of the portal to hell for a lot of kids' agonies, even deaths.

Watch the names of the rich and famous tumble out. If you read previous articles you know that they also seized tapes Epstein was holding of young girls with older men. This is what fuels the blackmail, and hence the corruption.

The Weiner laptop is also in play with the NXVIUM convictions.

Duc888 , 1 day ago

https://neonnettle.com/features/1409-major-hillary-clinton-donor-to-be-indicted-in-child-sex-trafficking-case

Duc888 , 1 day ago

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-25/clinton-silsby-trafficking-scandal-and-how-media-attempted-ignorecover-it

runningman18 , 1 day ago

The Clintons remain free and Trump keeps elitists like Ross, Pompeo and Bolton in the White House. Comey's daughter is one of the prosecutors for Epstein and Epstein is already claiming immunity. He might go to jail again, he might not. But nothing is going to happen with the Epstein thing as far as the fall of the banksters. Nothing.

pmc , 1 day ago

I don't think Trump is behind his arrest. I think it's the head NY prosecutor trying to make a name for himself in order to run for president at a late time! We'll see where this all goes but my money is on the procecutor!

onewayticket2 , 1 day ago

Trump should be "out for blood" but it's the SDNY...and we KNOW they are "out for blood"....trump's. So my read is the opposite. The SDNY is never going to do something that will harm the clintons. The ONLY goal is keeping Trump out of office for these guys. all roads lead to trump at the SDNY...it's job 1.

evoila , 1 day ago

It's ahead of muellers testimony for a reason.

yaright , 1 day ago

Agree, timing is everything

Snípéir_Ag_Obair , 1 day ago

Pedosadist Elites Panic: Congress Bill Wants To End Child **** In Pentagon Networks; Epstein Arrested, Files To Be Unsealed On Powerful Clients

America is receiving a hell of a Christmas in July present – a bill in Congress is being pushed to end child **** sharing in Pentagon networks, and Jeffrey Epstein was arrested for child trafficking. Additionally, an appeal court ordered that all files pertaining to Epstein's case of wealthy powerful clients will be released to the press and public.

Congress is aiming to halt child **** distribution within Pentagon networks according to a bipartisan bill (The End Network Abuse Act) that was introduced by Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) and Mark Meadows (R-N.C.)

The National Criminal Justice Training Center, one of the groups that has thrown its weight behind the bill, reported in 2018 that DOD's network was ranked 19th out of almost 3,000 nationwide networks on the amount of peer-to-peer child *********** sharing.

Spanberger described the issues of child sexual exploitation and abuse as "horrific crimes."

"The notion that the Department of Defense's network and Pentagon-issued computers may be used to view, create, or circulate such horrifying images is a shameful disgrace, and one we must fight head on," Spanberger said in statement. (Source: The Hill )

https://www.activistpost.com/2019/07/pedosadist-elites-panic-congress-bill-wants-to-end-child-****-in-pentagon-networks-epstein-arrested-files-to-be-unsealed-on-powerful-clients.html

alibi , 1 day ago

So... if I send child **** to anyone the entire law enforcement apparatus on planet Earth descends upon my location with the full weight of every alphabet agency. Yet, when child **** is trafficked within a government agency we need to pass a bill thru Congress in order to stop it. WTF.

Nekoti , 22 hours ago

Rules for thee, not for me.

chunga , 1 day ago

That's some pretty wild speculation there, but I hear angels singing just the same.

caconhma , 1 day ago

<Epstein's Arrest Tells Me Trump Is Now Out For Blood> Wrong.

Trump and Bill Clinton were willing participants in these crimes.

Don't be surprised when Trump's name will appear in all legal documents. Remember, the lead prosecutor is from Demo New York and Epstein will behave no different from Trump's loyal lawyer Cohen. After all, this case was not resurrected from dead to promote justice in Americ

Friedrich not Salma , 1 day ago

Do a Youtube search for * Trump BBC 1998 * and jump 5 minutes into the vid. You will realize Trump will be out for blood. He waits until the right time.

Here's the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4CqF4hjCGI

BBC: "You talk in your book about getting even. The importance of getting even. Is revenge sweet?"

Trump: "I believe strongly in getting even. If someone has hurt you. If someone's gone out of their way to hurt you. I think that if you have the opportunity, you should certainly go out of your way to do a number on them."

Here's another version when he was on Charlie Rose in 1992 (although it's in a CNN clip so they try to slam Trump at the end."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuoRRDtdHbY

I didn't believe in the "the indictments are coming from Jeff Sessions" lines, but I do believe Trump will nail these people when the time presents itself and that time is coming up fast.

dunlin , 1 day ago

He didn't even write the book.

BaBaBouy , 1 day ago

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-labor-sec-alexander-acosta-helped-epstein-plea-deal-2019-7

JRobby , 1 day ago

How did Epstein get so rich?

Blackmail !!!!!!

Traders say they were not aware of his presence in the markets.

Just confirms how many sick perverts are in these high positions

[Jun 30, 2019] Two cheers for chickenhawks

Notable quotes:
"... And how many congresspeople served in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan? How many presidential candidates had boots on the ground in combat theaters? The answer is one. Here is the moral decay of America's ruling elites boiled down to a single word. ..."
Jun 30, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

And how many congresspeople served in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan? How many presidential candidates had boots on the ground in combat theaters? The answer is one. Here is the moral decay of America's ruling elites boiled down to a single word.

Giant Meteor , 5 hours ago link

Moral leaders, lead. There is your moral decay.

44_shooter , 5 hours ago link

It didn't matter when they did. McStain fought, and absolutely LOVED war. Plenty of the Hawks served and fought, it's like frat boys who were hazed, carrying on the hazing.

[Jun 30, 2019] Barak and CIA

Jun 30, 2019 | dissidentvoice.org

You have probably seen the bumper sticker that says: "Shit Happens." Some people are just lucky, I suppose, and odd coincidences mark their lives.

When he was just out of Columbia College and working for a reputed CIA front company, Business International Corporation, Barack Obama had a chance encounter with a young woman, Genevieve Cook, with whom he had a 1-2 year relationship.

Like Obama and at about the same time, Cook just happened to have lived in Indonesia with her father, Michael Cook, who just happened to become Australia's top spook, the director-general of the Office of National Assessments, and also the Ambassador to Washington.

Of course, Obama's mother, as is well-known, just happened to be living in Indonesia with Barack and Obama's step-father, Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian military officer, who had been called back to Indonesia by the CIA supported General Suharto three months before the CIA coup against President Sukarno. Suharto subsequently slaughtered over a million Indonesian Communists and Indonesian-Chinese.

As is also well-known, it just so happened that Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, trained in the Russian language, after teaching English in the US Embassy in Jakarta that housed one of the largest CIA stations in Asia, did her "anthropological" work in Indonesia and Southeast Asia financed by the well-known CIA conduits, USAID and the Ford Foundation.

Then there is Cook's stepfather, Philip C. Jessup, who just happened to be in Indonesia at the same time, doing nickel-mining deals with the genocidal Suharto government.

Anyway, "shit happens." You never know whom you might meet along the way of life.

[Jun 05, 2019] Do Spies Run the World by Israel Shamir

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Within America, the alphabet agencies from NSA to CIA to FBI had betrayed their country as obviously as Figuera did, though they didn't run away, yet. Our colleagues Mike Whitney and Philip Giraldi described the conspiracy organised by John Brennan of CIA with active participation of FBI's James Comey, to regime-change the US. ..."
"... The CIA spies in England and passes the results to the British Intelligence. MI6 spies in the US and passes the results to CIA. They became integrated to unbelievable extent in the worldwide network of spies. ..."
"... It is not the Deep State anymore; it is world spooks who had united against their legitimate masters. Instead of staying loyal to their country, the spooks betrayed their countries. They are not only strictly-for-cash – they think they know better what is good for you. In a way, they are a new incarnation of the Cecil Rhodes Society . Democratically-elected politicians and statesmen have to obey them or meet their displeasure, as Corbyn and Trump did. ..."
"... Everywhere, in the US, the UK, and Russia, the spooks became too powerful to handle. The CIA stood behind assassination of JFK and tried to take down Trump. The British Intelligence undermined Jeremy Corbyn, after assisting the CIA in pushing for the Iraq war. They created the Steele Dossier, invented the Skripal hoax and had brought Russia and the West to the brink of nuclear war. ..."
"... In the Ukraine, the heads of their state security, SBU had plotted against the last legitimate president Mr Victor Yanukovych. They helped to organise and run the Maidan 2014 manifestations and misled their President, until he was forced to escape abroad. The Maidan manifestations could be compared with the Yellow Vests movement; however, Macron, an appointee of the Network, had support of his spies, and stayed in power, while Yanukovych had been betrayed and overthrown. ..."
"... You'd ask me, were they so stupid that they believed their own propaganda of inevitable Clinton's victory? Yes, they were and are stupid. They are no sages, evil or benevolent. My main objection to the conspiracy theorists is that they usually view the plotters as omniscient and all-powerful. They are too greedy to be all-powerful, and they are too silly to be omniscient. ..."
"... Now, however, the secret services' cohesion and integration increased to the next level, making it difficult to deal with them. ..."
"... People are fickle and not always know what is good for them; there are many demagogues to mislead the crowd. And still, elected legitimate officials should have precedence in governing, while non-elected ones should obey – and it means the Network spooks and media men should know their place. ..."
"... How did John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Christopher Steele and other Spygate principals manage to rise to the top of the intelligence bureaucracy? ..."
"... These characters have indulged in an orgy of highly conspicuous partisan political meddling and ranting that has created the strong public impression that they engaged in an attempted coup to overthrow a sitting American president on the basis of a frame-up that was largely fueled by Russian disinformation. ..."
"... Brennan in particular: can you imagine any previous CIA director comporting himself in this manner? Throwing all caution to the winds? Inconceivable. Brennan, Comey and Clapper have inflicted serious damage on the reputation of the CIA, FBI and ODNI. ..."
"... It's not just illegal surveillance and blackmail that gives the spies power, it's impunity for even the gravest crimes. If you don't get the message of blackmail you can be tortured or shot, with a bullet like JFK and RFK and Reagan, or with illegal biological weapons like Daschel and Leahy. Institutionalized impunity stares us in the face from US state papers. ..."
"... It's not that CIA and other neo-Gestapos escaped control. They were designed from inception for totalitarian control. The one poor bastard in Congress who pointed that out, Tydings, had McCarthy sicced on him for his cheek. CIA is not out of control; it's firmly IN control. ..."
"... It was funny during the Cold war (the original one) – whenever each side unveiled that a spy from the other side has defected to them – they would say it was because of ideology – i.e. the spy defected to them because he "believed" in "democracy" or socialism – depending on the case. ..."
"... And in order to discredit their own spies when they defected to the other side – they would say that they did it for money, because they were greedy and that they betrayed "democracy" or socialism ..."
"... The other crucial role that spies usually play is that they allow the adversaries to keep technological balance via industrial espionage. By transferring top military secrets, they don't allow any side to gain crucial strategic advantage that might encourage them to do something foolish – like start a nuclear war. Prime example of this were probably the Rosenbergs – who helped USSR close the nuclear weapons gap with US and kept the world in a shaky nuclear arms balance. ..."
"... Profound analysis by Mr. Shamir. It confirms that one of the important reasons for the decline of freemasonry is the monopolization of political conspiracy by the intelligence services. Who needs the lodge when you have the CIA. ..."
"... Spooks are everywhere, from secretaries "losing" important communications to CNN news anchors roleplaying with crisis actors, but they are at their most powerful when they are appointed to powerful positions. President Trump's National Security Advisor is a spook and he does what he wants. ..."
"... John le Carre described it perfectly in "A Perfect Spy". The spooks form their own country. They are only loyal to themselves. ..."
"... A global supra-powerful, organized and united, privately directed, publicly backed society of high technology robin hood_mercenary_spooks who conduct sub-legal "scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-your-back [in the nation of the other] routines"; who ignore duty to country, its constitutions, its laws and human rights. The are evil, global acting, high technology nomads with a monopoly on extortion and terror. ..."
"... Your statement "spooks and ex-spooks feel more proximity to their enemies and colleagues in other countries than to their fellow citizens" fails makes clear the importance of containment-of-citizen access to information. Nation states are armed, rule making structures that invent propaganda and control access to information. Information containment and filtering is the essence of the political and economic power of a national leader and it is more import to the evil your article addresses. ..."
"... Control of the media is 50 times more important than control of the government? Nearly all actions of consequence are intended to drain the governed masses and such efforts can only be successful if the lobbying, false-misleading mind controlling privately owned (92% own by just 6 entities) centrally directed media can effectively control the all information environments. ..."
"... While understanding the mechanics is helpful don't neglect the purpose. Why is more important than how. The why is control. They don't care what you believe, but only what you do. You can be on the left, right, mainstream, or fringe and they won't care as long as you eat what they serve. Take a minute to think about what they want you to do and strongly consider not doing it. ..."
May 22, 2019 | www.unz.com

... ... ...

Conspiratorially-minded writers envisaged the Shadow World Government as a board of evil sages surrounded by the financiers and cinema moguls. That would be bad enough; in infinitely worse reality, our world is run by the Junior Ganymede that went berserk. It is not a government, but a network, like freemasonry of old, and it consists chiefly of treacherous spies and pens-for-hire, two kinds of service personnel, that collected a lot of data and tools of influence, and instead of serving their masters loyally, had decided to lead the world in the direction they prefer.

German Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the last head of the Abwehr, Hitler's Military Intelligence, had been such a spy with political ambitions. He supported Hitler as the mighty enemy of Communism; on a certain stage he came to conclusion that the US will do the job better and switched to the Anglo-American side. He was uncovered and executed for treason. His colleague General Reinhard Gehlen also betrayed his Führer and had switched to the American side. After the war, he continued his war against Soviet Russia, this time for CIA instead of Abwehr.

The spies are treacherous by their nature. They contact people who betrayed their countries; they work under cover, pretending to be somebody else; for them the switch of loyalty is as usual and normal as the gender change operation for a Moroccan doctor who is doing that 8 to 5 every day. They mix with foreign spies, they kill people with impunity; they break every law, human or divine. They are extremely dangerous if they do it for their own country. They are infinitely more dangerous if they work for themselves and still keep their institutional capabilities and international network.

Recently we had a painful reminding of their treacherous nature. Venezuela's top spy, the former director of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin), Manuel Cristopher Figuera , had switched sides during the last coup attempt and escaped abroad as the coup failed. He discovered that his membership on the Junior Ganymede of the spooks is more important for him than his duty to his country and its constitution.

Within America, the alphabet agencies from NSA to CIA to FBI had betrayed their country as obviously as Figuera did, though they didn't run away, yet. Our colleagues Mike Whitney and Philip Giraldi described the conspiracy organised by John Brennan of CIA with active participation of FBI's James Comey, to regime-change the US. In the conspiracy, foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, played an important role. As by law, these spies aren't allowed to operate on their home ground, they go into you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-your-back routine. The CIA spies in England and passes the results to the British Intelligence. MI6 spies in the US and passes the results to CIA. They became integrated to unbelievable extent in the worldwide network of spies.

It is not the Deep State anymore; it is world spooks who had united against their legitimate masters. Instead of staying loyal to their country, the spooks betrayed their countries. They are not only strictly-for-cash – they think they know better what is good for you. In a way, they are a new incarnation of the Cecil Rhodes Society . Democratically-elected politicians and statesmen have to obey them or meet their displeasure, as Corbyn and Trump did.

Everywhere, in the US, the UK, and Russia, the spooks became too powerful to handle. The CIA stood behind assassination of JFK and tried to take down Trump. The British Intelligence undermined Jeremy Corbyn, after assisting the CIA in pushing for the Iraq war. They created the Steele Dossier, invented the Skripal hoax and had brought Russia and the West to the brink of nuclear war.

Russian spooks are in a special relations mode with the global network – for many years. In Russia, persistent rumours claim the perilous Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev had been designed and initiated by the KGB chief (1967 – 1982) Yuri Andropov . He and his appointees dismantled the socialist state and prepared the takeover of 1991 in the interests of the One World project.

Andropov (who had stepped into Brezhnev's shoes in 1982 and died in 1984) had advanced Gorbachev and his architect of glasnost, Alexander Yakovlev . Andropov also promoted the arch-traitor KGB General Oleg Kalugin to head its counter-intelligence. Later, Kalugin betrayed his country, escaped to the US and delivered all Russian spies he knew of to the FBI hands.

In late 1980s-early 1990s, the KGB, originally the guarding dog of the Russian working class, had betrayed its Communist masters and switched to work for the Network. But for their betrayal, Gorbachev would not be able to destroy his country so fast: the KGB neutralised or misinformed the Communist leadership.

They allowed Chernobyl to explode; they permitted a German pilot to land on the Red Square – this was used by Gorbachev as an excuse to sack the whole lot of patriotic generals. The KGB people were active in subverting other socialist states, too. They executed the Romanian leader Ceausescu and his wife; they brought down the GDR, the socialist Germany; they plotted with Yeltsin against Gorbachev and with Gorbachev against Romanov. As the result of their plotting, the USSR fell apart.

The KGB plotters of 1991 had thought that post-Communist Russia would be treated by the West like the prodigal son, with a fattened calf being slaughtered for the welcome feast. To their disappointment, the stupid bastards discovered that their country was to play the part of the fattened calf at the feast, and they were turned from unseen rulers into billionaires' bodyguards. Years later, Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia with the blessing of the world spooks and bankers, but being too independent a man to submit, he took his country into its present nationalist course, trying to regain some lost ground. The dissatisfied spooks supported him.

Only recently Putin began to trim the wild growth of his own intelligence service, the FSB. It is possible the cautious president had been alerted by the surprising insistence of the Western media that the alleged attempt on Skripal and other visible cases had been attributed to the GRU, the relatively small Russian Military Intelligence, while the much bigger FSB had been forgotten. The head of FSB cybercrime department had been arrested and sentenced for lengthy term of imprisonment, and two FSB colonels had been arrested as the search of their premises revealed immense amounts of cash , both Russian and foreign currency. Such piles of roubles and dollars could be assembled only for an attempt to change the regime, as it was demanded by the Network.

In the Ukraine, the heads of their state security, SBU had plotted against the last legitimate president Mr Victor Yanukovych. They helped to organise and run the Maidan 2014 manifestations and misled their President, until he was forced to escape abroad. The Maidan manifestations could be compared with the Yellow Vests movement; however, Macron, an appointee of the Network, had support of his spies, and stayed in power, while Yanukovych had been betrayed and overthrown.

In the US, the spooks allowed Donald Trump to become the leading Republican candidate, for they thought he would certainly lose to Mme Clinton. Surprisingly, he had won, and since then, this man who was advanced as an easy prey, as a buffoon, had been hunted by the spooks-and-scribes freemasonry.

You'd ask me, were they so stupid that they believed their own propaganda of inevitable Clinton's victory? Yes, they were and are stupid. They are no sages, evil or benevolent. My main objection to the conspiracy theorists is that they usually view the plotters as omniscient and all-powerful. They are too greedy to be all-powerful, and they are too silly to be omniscient.

Their knowledge of official leaders' faults gives them their feeling of power, but this knowledge can be translated into actual control only for weak-minded men. Strong leaders do not submit easily. Putin has had his quota of imprudent or outright criminal acts in his past, but he never allowed the blackmailers to dictate him their agenda. Netanyahu, another strong man of modern politics, also had managed to survive blackmail. Meanwhile, Trump defeated all attempts to unseat him, though his enemies had used his alleged lack of delicacy in relation to women, blacks and Jews to its utmost. He waded through the deep pond of Russiagate like Gulliver. But he has to purge the alphabet agencies to reach safety.

In Russia, the problem is acute. Many Russian spooks and ex-spooks feel more proximity to their enemies and colleagues in other countries than to their fellow citizens. There is a freemasonic quality in their camaraderie. Such a quality could be commendable in soldiers after the war is over, but here the war is going on. Russian spooks are particularly besotted with their declared enemies; apparently it is the Christian quality of the Russian soul, but a very annoying one.

When Snowden reached Moscow after his daring escape from Hong Kong, the Russian TV screened a discussion that I participated in, among journalists, members of parliament and ex-spies. The Russian spooks said that Snowden is a traitor; a person who betrayed his agency can't be trusted and should be sent to the US in shackles. They felt they belong to the Spy World, with its inner bond, while their loyalty to Russia was a distant second.

During recent visit of Mike Pompeo to Sochi, the head of SVR, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Mr Sergey Naryshkin proposed the State Secretary Mike Pompeo, the ex-CIA director, to expand contacts between Russian and US special services at a higher level. He clarified that he actively interacted with Pompeo during the period when he was the head of the CIA. Why would he need contacts with his adversary? It would be much better to avoid contacts altogether.

Even president Putin, who is first of all a Russian nationalist (or a patriot, as they say), who has granted Snowden asylum in Moscow at a high price of seriously worsening relations with Obama's administration, even Putin has told Stone that Snowden shouldn't have leaked the documents the way he did. "If he didn't like anything at his work he should have simply resigned, but he went further", a response proving he didn't completely freed himself from the spooks' freemasonry.

While the spooks plot, the scribes justify their plots. Media is also a weapon, and a mighty one. In Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin , the protagonist is defeated by the smear campaign in the media. Despite his miraculous arrival, despite his glorious victory, the evil witch succeeds to poison minds of the hero's wife and of the court. The pen can counter the sword. When the two are integrated, as in the union of spooks and scribes, it is too dangerous tool to leave intact.

In many countries of Europe, editorial international policies had been outsourced to the spooky Atlantic Council, the Washington-based think tank. The Atlantic Council is strongly connected with NATO alliance and with Brussels bureaucracy, the tools of control over Europe. Another tool is The Integrity Initiative , where the difference between spies and journalists is blurred . And so is the difference between the left and the right. The left and the right-wing media use different arguments, surprisingly leading to the same bottom line, because both are tools of warfare for the same Network.

In 1930s, they were divided. The German and the British agents pulled and pushed in the opposite directions. The Russian military became so friendly with the Germans, that at a certain time, Hitler believed the Russian generals would side with him against their own leader. The Russian spooks were befriended by the Brits, and had tried to push Russia to confront Hitler. The cautious Marshal Stalin had purged the Red Army's pro-German Generals, and the NKVD's pro-British spooks, and delayed the outbreak of hostilities as much as he could. Now, however, the secret services' cohesion and integration increased to the next level, making it difficult to deal with them.

If they are so powerful, integrated and united, shouldn't we throw a towel in the ring and surrender? Hell, no! Their success is their undoing. They plot, but Allah is the best plotter, – our Muslim friends say. Indeed, when they succeed to suborn a party, the people vote with their feet. The Brexit is the case to consider. The Network wanted to undermine the Brexit; so they neutralised Corbyn by the antisemitism pursuit while May had made all she could to sabotage the Brexit while calling for it in public. Awfully clever of them – but the British voter responded with dropping both established parties. So their clever plot misfired.

People are fickle and not always know what is good for them; there are many demagogues to mislead the crowd. And still, elected legitimate officials should have precedence in governing, while non-elected ones should obey – and it means the Network spooks and media men should know their place.


Sean McBride , says: May 21, 2019 at 3:18 pm GMT

Side note:

How did John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Christopher Steele and other Spygate principals manage to rise to the top of the intelligence bureaucracy?

Spymasters are usually renowned for their inscrutability and for playing their cards close to their vests.

These characters have indulged in an orgy of highly conspicuous partisan political meddling and ranting that has created the strong public impression that they engaged in an attempted coup to overthrow a sitting American president on the basis of a frame-up that was largely fueled by Russian disinformation.

Brennan in particular: can you imagine any previous CIA director comporting himself in this manner? Throwing all caution to the winds? Inconceivable. Brennan, Comey and Clapper have inflicted serious damage on the reputation of the CIA, FBI and ODNI.

Forthcoming books will no doubt get into all the remarkable and bizarre details.

Donald Trump has demonstrated the ability to troll and goad many of his opponents into a state of imbecility. It's a negotiating tactic -- knock them off balance, provoke them to lose control. No matter how smart they are, some people take the bait.

Ding ding ding , says: May 21, 2019 at 4:04 pm GMT
I am sitting here pointing to my nose. Spies run the world – contemporary history in a nutshell. A few provisos:

It's not just illegal surveillance and blackmail that gives the spies power, it's impunity for even the gravest crimes. If you don't get the message of blackmail you can be tortured or shot, with a bullet like JFK and RFK and Reagan, or with illegal biological weapons like Daschel and Leahy. Institutionalized impunity stares us in the face from US state papers.

It's not that CIA and other neo-Gestapos escaped control. They were designed from inception for totalitarian control. The one poor bastard in Congress who pointed that out, Tydings, had McCarthy sicced on him for his cheek. CIA is not out of control; it's firmly IN control.

– There is a crucial difference between US and Russian spies. Russians can go over the head of their government to the world. That's the only effective check on state criminal enterprise like CIA. Article 17 of the Russian Constitution says "in the Russian Federation rights and freedoms of person and citizen are recognized and guaranteed pursuant to the generally recognized principles and norms of international law and in accordance with this Constitution." Article 18 states that rights and freedoms of the person and citizen are directly applicable, which prevents the kind of bad-faith tricks the USA pulls, like declaring "non-self executing" treaties, or making legally void reservations, declarations, understandings, and provisos to screw you out of your rights. Article 46(3) guarantees citizens a constitutional right to appeal to inter-State bodies for the protection of human rights and freedoms if internal legal redress has been exhausted. Ratified international treaties including the ICCPR supersede any domestic legislation stipulating otherwise.

Endgame Napoleon , says: May 21, 2019 at 6:14 pm GMT
Isn't it just collusion that holds certain elite groups together, including in some businesses where a lot of chicanery goes on. The most important thing is to be in on it as one of them, not as a person who can be trusted not to say anything, but as one of the gang. It's exactly how absenteeism-friendly offices full of crony parents with crony-parent managers work.

The only problem for the guy at the tippy top is what would happen if such a tight group turned on him / her? Maybe, some leaders see the value in protecting a few brave individuals, like Snowden, letting any coup-stirring spooks know that some people are watching the Establishment's rights violators, too. Those with technical knowledge have more capacity than most to do it or, at least, to understand how it works.

In a country founded on individual liberties, including Fourth Amendment privacy rights that were protected by less greedy generations, the US should have elected leaders that put the US Constitution first, but that is too much to ask in an era when the top dogs in business & government are all colluding for money.

Digital Samizdat , says: May 21, 2019 at 6:40 pm GMT

In Russia, persistent rumours claim the perilous Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev had been designed and initiated by the KGB chief (1967 – 1982) Yuri Andropov.

FWIW, I have heard the exact same thing from Russian commenters myself. Some have insisted that, if Andropov had lived long enough, he would have carried glasnost and perestroika himself.

Cyrano , says: May 21, 2019 at 7:09 pm GMT
Spies are loathsome bunch, with questionable loyalties and personal integrity. But I believe that overall they play a positive role. They play a positive role because they help adversaries gain insight into their adversary's activities.

If it wasn't for the spies, paranoia about what the other side is doing can get out of hand and cause wrong actions to take place. The problem with the spies is also that no one knows how much they can be trusted and on whose side they are really on.

It was funny during the Cold war (the original one) – whenever each side unveiled that a spy from the other side has defected to them – they would say it was because of ideology – i.e. the spy defected to them because he "believed" in "democracy" or socialism – depending on the case.

And in order to discredit their own spies when they defected to the other side – they would say that they did it for money, because they were greedy and that they betrayed "democracy" or socialism.

The other crucial role that spies usually play is that they allow the adversaries to keep technological balance via industrial espionage. By transferring top military secrets, they don't allow any side to gain crucial strategic advantage that might encourage them to do something foolish – like start a nuclear war. Prime example of this were probably the Rosenbergs – who helped USSR close the nuclear weapons gap with US and kept the world in a shaky nuclear arms balance.

Kirt , says: May 21, 2019 at 10:01 pm GMT
Profound analysis by Mr. Shamir. It confirms that one of the important reasons for the decline of freemasonry is the monopolization of political conspiracy by the intelligence services. Who needs the lodge when you have the CIA.

An aspect of the rule of spies that Mr. Shamir does not touch on is the legitimization of this rule through popular culture. This started with the James Bond novels and movies and by now has become ubiquitous. Spies and assassins are the heroes of the masses. While secrecy is still needed for tactical reasons in the case of specific operations, overall secrecy is not needed nor even desirable. So you have thugs like Pompeo actually boasting of their villainy before audiences of college students at Texas A&M and you have the Mossad supporting the publication of the book Rise and Kill First which is an extensive account of their world-wide assassination policy. They have the power; now they want the perks that go with it, including being treated like rock stars.

israel shamir , says: May 22, 2019 at 4:06 am GMT
@Kirt

Who needs the lodge when you have the CIA

Good explanation of freemasonry's decline, Kirt! As for popular culture – almost all latest cinema characters are spies – like Avengers))

anno nimus , says: May 22, 2019 at 4:44 am GMT
dear mr Shamir, the criminals are not only stupid but also utterly wicked. they will be stricken down in the twinkling of the eye and will cry out why God? all the righteous will shout for joy and give thanks to the Almighty for judging Babylon. woe unto them! they will have no place to hide or run to.

Ezekiel 9 (NKJV)
The Wicked Are Slain
9 Then He called out in my hearing with a loud voice, saying, "Let those who have charge over the city draw near, each with a deadly weapon in his hand." 2 And suddenly six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with his battle-ax in his hand. One man among them was clothed with linen and had a writer's inkhorn at his side. They went in and stood beside the bronze altar.

3 Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub, where it had been, to the threshold of the temple. And He called to the man clothed with linen, who had the writer's inkhorn at his side; 4 and the Lord said to him, "Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done within it."

5 To the others He said in my hearing, "Go after him through the city and kill; do not let your eye spare, nor have any pity. 6 Utterly slay old and young men, maidens and little children and women; but do not come near anyone on whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary." So they began with the elders who were before the temple. 7 Then He said to them, "Defile the temple, and fill the courts with the slain. Go out!" And they went out and killed in the city.

8 So it was, that while they were killing them, I was left alone; and I fell on my face and cried out, and said, "Ah, Lord God! Will You destroy all the remnant of Israel in pouring out Your fury on Jerusalem?"

9 Then He said to me, "The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great, and the land is full of bloodshed, and the city full of perversity; for they say, 'The Lord has forsaken the land, and the Lord does not see!' 10 And as for Me also, My eye will neither spare, nor will I have pity, but I will recompense their deeds on their own head."

11 Just then, the man clothed with linen, who had the inkhorn at his side, reported back and said, "I have done as You commanded me."

Antares , says: May 22, 2019 at 5:01 am GMT
Espionage depends on contra-espionage. We will never get that hold on Jewish spies as they can have on our spies.
Paul Bennett , says: May 22, 2019 at 5:38 am GMT
Great article.

E Michael Jones was just warning President Trump about the possibility of this in the Straits of Hormuz. https://youtu.be/iIm3WuJAVEE?t=272

Spooks are everywhere, from secretaries "losing" important communications to CNN news anchors roleplaying with crisis actors, but they are at their most powerful when they are appointed to powerful positions. President Trump's National Security Advisor is a spook and he does what he wants.

John le Carre described it perfectly in "A Perfect Spy". The spooks form their own country. They are only loyal to themselves.

Yarkob , says: May 22, 2019 at 7:52 am GMT
@Antares that's because the Mossad isn't like "our" spy agencies. it's closer to the old paradigm of the hashishim or true assassins. Mossad "agents" don't gad around wearing dark glasses and tapping phones; they run proper deep cover operations. "sleepers" is a term used in the USA. they have jobs. they look "normal". They integrate
MarkU , says: May 22, 2019 at 8:45 am GMT
Do spies run the world? No not really, bankers run the world.

Bankers constitute most of the deep state in the US/UK in particular and most of Europe. It is the bankers/deep state which control the intelligence agencies. The ethnicity of a hefty proportion of said bankers is plain to see for anyone with functioning critical faculties. How else can a tiny country in the middle east have such influence in the US? How else do we explain why 2/3 of the UK parliament are "friends of Israel" How come financial institutions can commit felonies and no one does jail time? why is Israel allowed to commit war crimes and break international law with total impunity? who got bailed out of their gambling debts at the expense of inflicting "austerity" on most of the western world?

I am open to any sensible alternative hypothesis.

Realist , says: May 22, 2019 at 8:48 am GMT
@Sean McBride

How did John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Christopher Steele and other Spygate principals manage to rise to the top of the intelligence bureaucracy?

Shit floats.

Sally , says: May 22, 2019 at 9:06 am GMT
A global supra-powerful, organized and united, privately directed, publicly backed society of high technology robin hood_mercenary_spooks who conduct sub-legal "scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-your-back [in the nation of the other] routines"; who ignore duty to country, its constitutions, its laws and human rights. The are evil, global acting, high technology nomads with a monopoly on extortion and terror.

Since winning, Trump has been hunted by the spooks-and-scribes freemasonry. <fallacy is that Trump could have gained the assistence of every American, had Trump just used his powers to declassify all secret information and make it available to the public, instead he chases Assange, and continues to conduct the affairs of his office in secret.

Propaganda preys on belief.. it is more powerful than an atomic weapon.. when the facts are hidden or when the facts are changed, distorted or destroyed.

Your statement "spooks and ex-spooks feel more proximity to their enemies and colleagues in other countries than to their fellow citizens" fails makes clear the importance of containment-of-citizen access to information. Nation states are armed, rule making structures that invent propaganda and control access to information. Information containment and filtering is the essence of the political and economic power of a national leader and it is more import to the evil your article addresses.

https://theintercept.com/2019/05/08/josh-gottheimer-democrats-yemen/ <i wrote IRT to the article, that contents appearing in private media supported monopoly powered corporations and distributed to the public, direct the use of military and the willingness of soldiers of 22 different countries.

Control of the media is 50 times more important than control of the government? Nearly all actions of consequence are intended to drain the governed masses and such efforts can only be successful if the lobbying, false-misleading mind controlling privately owned (92% own by just 6 entities) centrally directed media can effectively control the all information environments.

I am bothered by you article because it looks to be Trumped weighted and failes to make clear it is these secret apolitical, human rights abusers, that direct the contents of the media distributed articles that appear in the privately owmed, media distributed to the public. Also not explained is how the cost of advertising is shared by the monopoly powered corporations, and it is that advertising that is the source of support that keeps the fake news in business, the nation state propaganda in line, and the support of robin -hood terror.

Monopoly powered global corporation advertising funds the fake and misleading private media, that is why the open internet has been shut in tight. In order for the evil, global acting, high technology nomads to continue their extortion and terror activities they need the media, its their only real weapon. I have never meet a member of any of the twenty two agencies that was not a trained, certified mental case terrorist.

Anon [295] Disclaimer , says: May 22, 2019 at 9:08 am GMT
I think the interplay between the spooks and scribes warrants a deeper explanation. Covert action refers to anything in which the author can disclaim his responsibility, ie it looks like someone else or something else. The handler in a political operation cannot abuse his agent because the agent is the actor. The handler in an intelligence gathering operation can abuse his agent because the agent merely enables action.

The political operations in this case are propaganda. The Congress of Cultural Freedom is the most clearly described one to date. Propaganda is necessary in any mass society to ensure that voters care about the right issues, the right way, at the right time. Propaganda can be true, false, or a mix of the two. Black propaganda deals in falsehoods, ie the Steele Dossier. Black propaganda works best when it enables a pre-planned operation, but it pollutes the intelligence gathering process with disinformation.

Intelligence gathering is colloquially called investigative reporting. If anyone knows about Gary Webb, Alan Frankovich, or Michael Hastings they know you can't really do that job well for very long. So how do the old timers last so long? It's a back and forth. The reporter brings all of his information on a subject to his intelligence source (handler). The source then says, "print this, print that, sit on that, and since you've been a good boy here's a little something you didn't know." The true role of the investigative reporter is to conduct counterintelligence and package it as a limited hangout.

While understanding the mechanics is helpful don't neglect the purpose. Why is more important than how. The why is control. They don't care what you believe, but only what you do. You can be on the left, right, mainstream, or fringe and they won't care as long as you eat what they serve. Take a minute to think about what they want you to do and strongly consider not doing it.

https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/26/archives/worldwide-propaganda-network-built-by-the-cia-a-worldwide-network.html

http://danwismar.com/uploads/Bernstein%20-%20CIA%20and%20Media.htm

joeshittheragman , says: May 22, 2019 at 9:29 am GMT
Do Spies Run the World?
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
If they're Jewish spies – then yes.
Vojkan , says: May 22, 2019 at 9:45 am GMT
Not usually a big fan of Israel Shamir's pieces but this one on spooks is truly excellent. The article is spot on.
9/11 Inside job , says: May 22, 2019 at 10:37 am GMT
Spies do not run the world , they are merely agents of the "families" who use them to retain and increase their control ,power and wealth .
cowherd , says: May 22, 2019 at 10:46 am GMT
@Sean McBride And now Trump should have then all rounded up and hung from the trees in the front of the Whitehouse. Anything less should be seen as encouragement.
atlantis_dweller , says: May 22, 2019 at 11:26 am GMT
Don't agree.

[Should don't agree, agree, troll, and lol "buttons" for columns be added? I think it would be a nice extra].

mike k , says: May 22, 2019 at 11:49 am GMT
The worst among us rule over the rest of us. As Plato said, this needs to change. How to do that? We don't know, but we desperately need to find out ..
Anon [421] Disclaimer , says: May 22, 2019 at 12:41 pm GMT
@Sean McBride

Obama was a very effective promoter of what might be called the "globalist" agenda. He of course didn't invent it but did appoint those three.

Wayne Madsen gave a convincing account in his speculation that both Obama's parent's were CIA operatives. So it's "all the family" and in the details one might conclude with the author that indeed "spies run the world."

[May 12, 2019] Is rabid warmonger, neocon chickenhawk Bolton a swinger? That is a mental picture that s deeply disturbing yet funny at the same time

Highly recommended!
In this case he looks like Bill Clinton impersonalization ;-) That's probably how Adelson controls Bolton ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... Larry Flint had offered a Million dollars to anyone who had proof of republican sexual exploits. He was quickly fingered by someone who attended those clubs. He was forced to accept a temporary position and quietly resigned after a few months so as to avoid facing questions. ..."
May 12, 2019 | www.unz.com

FB , says: Website May 11, 2019 at 4:46 pm GMT

@J. Gutierrez Thanks for putting together this commentary J

Bolton a swinger ? LOL that's a mental picture that's deeply disturbing yet funny at the same time

J. Gutierrez , says: May 11, 2019 at 10:42 pm GMT

@FB Yeah brother, that POS was called out during his confirmation hearings during baby Bush's presidency. Larry Flint had offered a Million dollars to anyone who had proof of republican sexual exploits. He was quickly fingered by someone who attended those clubs. He was forced to accept a temporary position and quietly resigned after a few months so as to avoid facing questions.

Someone said they saw him proposition a teenage girl outside one of the swinger clubs he frequented.

Glad you enjoyed the piece take care brother.

[May 10, 2019] The role of Obama administration in spygate (aka Russiagate)

May 03, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

Originally from: Spygate The True Story of Collusion [Infographic] by Jeff Carlson ( October 12, 2018 Updated: May 3, 2019 )

Obama Administration

The Obama administration provided a simultaneous layer of protection and facilitation for the entire effort. One example is provided by Section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333 , also known as Obama's data-sharing order . With the passage of the order, agencies and individuals were able to ask the NSA for access to specific surveillance simply by claiming the intercepts contained relevant information that was useful to a particular mission.

Section 2.3 had been expected to be finalized by early to mid-2016. Instead, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper didn't sign off on Section 2.3 until Dec. 15, 2016. The order was finalized when Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed it on Jan. 3, 2017.

The reason for the delay could relate to the fact that while the executive order made it easier to share intelligence between agencies, it also limited certain types of information from going to the White House.

An example of this was provided by Evelyn Farkas during a March 2, 2017, MSNBC interview , where she detailed how the Obama administration gathered and disseminated intelligence on the Trump team:

"I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill 'Get as much information as you can. Get as much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration.'

"The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff's dealing with Russians, [they] would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. That's why you have the leaking."

Many of the Obama administration's efforts appear to have been structural in nature, such as establishing new procedures or creating impediments to oversight that enabled much of the surveillance abuse to occur.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz was appointed by Obama in 2011. From the very start, he found his duties throttled by the attorney general's office. According to congressional testimony by Horowitz:

"We got access to information up to 2010 in all of these categories. No law changed in 2010. No policy changed. It was simply a decision by the General Counsel's Office in 2010 that they viewed, now, the law differently. And as a result, they weren't going to give us that information."

These new restrictions were put in place by Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

On Aug. 5, 2014, Horowitz and other inspectors general sent a letter to Congress asking for unimpeded access to all records. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates responded on July 20, 2015, with a 58-page memorandum . The memo specifically denied the inspector general access to any information collected under Title III -- including intercepted communications and national security letters.

The New York Times recently disclosed that national security letters were used in the surveillance of the Trump campaign.

At other times, the Obama administration's efforts were more direct. The Intelligence Community assessment was released internally on Jan. 5, 2017. On this same day, Obama held an undisclosed White House meeting to discuss the dossier with national security adviser Susan Rice, FBI Director James Comey, and Yates. Rice would later send herself an email documenting the meeting.

The following day, Brennan, Clapper, and Comey attached a written summary of the Steele dossier to the classified briefing they gave Obama. Comey then met with President-elect Trump to inform him of the dossier. This meeting took place just hours after Comey, Brennan, and Clapper formally briefed Obama on both the Intelligence Community assessment and the Steele dossier.

Comey would only inform Trump of the "salacious" details contained within the dossier. He later explained on CNN in an April 2018 interview why:

"Because that was the part that the leaders of the Intelligence Community agreed he needed to be told about."

Shortly after Comey's meeting with Trump, both the Trump–Comey meeting and the existence of the dossier were leaked to CNN. The significance of the meeting was material, as Comey noted in a Jan. 7 memo he wrote:

"Media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material."

The media had widely dismissed the dossier as unsubstantiated and, therefore, unreportable. It was only after learning that Comey briefed Trump that CNN reported on the dossier. It was later revealed that DNI James Clapper personally leaked Comey's meeting with Trump to CNN.

The Obama administration also directly participated in a series of intelligence unmaskings , the process whereby a U.S. citizen's identity is revealed from collected surveillance. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power reportedly engaged in hundreds of unmasking requests. Rice has admitted to doing the same.

The Obama administration engaged in the ultimately successful effort to oust Trump's newly appointed national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn. Yates, along with Mary McCord, head of the DOJ's National Security Division, led that effort .

Executive Order 13762

President Barack Obama issued a last-minute executive order on Jan. 13, 2017, that altered the line of succession within the DOJ. The action was not done in consultation with the incoming Trump administration.

Acting Attorney General Sally Yates was fired on Jan. 30, 2017, by a newly inaugurated President Trump for refusing to uphold the president's executive order limiting travel from certain terror-prone countries. Yates was initially supposed to serve in her position until Jeff Sessions was confirmed as attorney general.

Obama's executive order placed the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia next in line behind the department's senior leadership. The attorney at the time was Channing Phillips.

Phillips was first hired by former Attorney General Eric Holder in 1994 for a position in the D.C. U.S. attorney's office. Phillips, after serving as a senior adviser to Holder, stayed on after he was replaced by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

It appears the Obama administration was hoping the Russia investigation would default to Channing in the event Sessions was forced to recuse himself from the investigation. Sessions, whose confirmation hearings began three days before the order, was already coming under intense scrutiny.

The implementation of the order may also tie into Yates's efforts to remove Gen. Michael Flynn over his call with the Russian ambassador.

Trump ignored the succession order, as he is legally allowed to do, and instead appointed Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, as acting attorney general on Jan. 30, 2017, the same day Yates was fired.

Trump issued a new executive order on Feb. 9, 2017, the same day Sessions was sworn in, reversing Obama's prior order.

On March 10, 2017, Trump fired 46 Obama-era U.S. attorneys, including Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. These firings appear to have been unexpected.

Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed on Twitter @themarketswork.

[May 03, 2019] Lindsey Graham: When The Mueller Report Is Put To Bed, We re Going To Investigate How All Of This Started

May 03, 2019 | www.realclearpolitics.com

"Once the Mueller report is put to bed, and it will be soon, this committee is going to look long and hard at how all of this started," Graham said. "We're going to look at the FISA warrant process. Did Russia provide Christopher Steele the information about Trump, that turned out to be garbage, that was used to get a warrant on an American citizen and if so, how did the system fail? Was there a real effort between Papadopoulos and anybody in Russia to use the Clinton e-mails stolen by the Russians, or is that thought planted in his mind? I don't know, but we're going to look."

[May 03, 2019] The Obama administration for more than four years before the 2016 election allowed four contractors working for the FBI to illegally surveil American citizens

Notable quotes:
"... That report is going to be a bombshell. It is going to open up the investigation on a very high note, and there are going to be criminal referrals in it. ..."
"... The FISA court abuse is the center of this entire abuse of governmental power, and the chief judge in that court has already ruled that the FBI broke the law and that the people at the head of the justice department, Sally Yates, John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security all knew about it and lied to the FISA court about it... ..."
"... He [Rogers] discovered the illegal spying. He went personally to the FISA court and briefed the Chief Judge and worked with her for months to uncover the people who did it. The FISA court has already told the Justice Department who lied to that court and that has been given to [Attorney General] Bill Barr already. ..."
May 01, 2019 | www.realclearpolitics.com

It is about the rule of law and privacy. The Obama administration for more than four years before the 2016 election allowed four contractors working for the FBI to illegally surveil American citizens -- illegally. The FISA court has already found that. There is the Horowitz report coming out in May or possibly early June. There's another report that everyone has forgotten about involving James Comey alone. That will be out in two weeks. That report is going to be a bombshell. It is going to open up the investigation on a very high note, and there are going to be criminal referrals in it.

The FISA court abuse is the center of this entire abuse of governmental power, and the chief judge in that court has already ruled that the FBI broke the law and that the people at the head of the justice department, Sally Yates, John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security all knew about it and lied to the FISA court about it...

There's a hero in this story and it is not a lawyer. There is a hero. His name is Admiral Mike Rogers. He was the head of the National Security Agency.

He [Rogers] discovered the illegal spying. He went personally to the FISA court and briefed the Chief Judge and worked with her for months to uncover the people who did it. The FISA court has already told the Justice Department who lied to that court and that has been given to [Attorney General] Bill Barr already.

[Apr 16, 2019] The Six Degrees of Paul Manafort caucus99percent

Apr 16, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

The Six Degrees of Paul Manafort

span y Bob In Portland on Mon, 04/15/2019 - 3:59pm Under the general rubric of conspiracy theory is the subset called "coincidence theory", which dismisses connections between people as mere happenstance in order to dismiss any thought of networks that exist beyond public scrutiny. But these networks do exist. Sometimes history takes decades to find them, but they exist. Let's take a peek at networks in Paul Manafort's life.

Manafort was an advisor for four Republican presidential candidates: Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, and Bob Dole. Three of these men were connected to the CIA. Gerald Ford was on the Warren Commission and helped its conclusions of a single assassin by moving the bullet hole several inches up from JFK's back to the back of JFK's neck. It was an obvious fraud, and he should have been prosecuted as an accessory after the fact. There are other indications that he was involved with the CIA's mind control program prior to his political career. Ronald Reagan while governor of California blocked extradition requests from New Orleans DA Jim Garrison in the investigation into President Kennedy's murder. Reagan was governor at the time of JFK's brother's assassination in Los Angeles. I'll refer readers to Lisa Pease's A LIE TOO BIG TO FAIL about Reagan during that time. Reagan was also the spokesman for the Crusade For Freedom, a CIA psyop started in the 1950s which in conjunction with Radio Free Europe promoted former Nazis and fascists allied with Hitler during WWII and which imported many of these Nazis into the US. George HW Bush was the CIA Director under Ford, and investigations put him as a CIA agent or asset since his college days at Yale. I haven't looked at Bob Dole's history. But three out of four of Manafort's presidential employers had roots in the CIA.

If you look at Paul Manafort's history, he seems to work for sleazy dictators who were either put into power by the CIA, supported while in power by the CIA or taken out of power by the CIA. And sometimes killed by the CIA. I would suggest that Manafort's ultimate employer was the CIA. After the sitting president of the Ukraine Viktor Yanukovich was ousted in a US-backed coup in Ukraine back in 2014 (under Secretary of State John Kerry) Manafort stuck around there and helped the people who ousted Yanukovich. Even though Yanukovich was the duly elected president of Ukraine, he has been dismissed as a Russian agent because he saw that the terms of Russian treaties with Ukraine would be better for the economy than treaties with the European Union. Therefore, the US branded Yanukovich as a Russian agent.

Just to refresh everyone's memory William Barr worked for the CIA in the seventies until he got his law degree. He was named Attorney General by President GHW Bush (the first Bush president) during congressional and court investigations of Iran-contra, which was a CIA operation to illegally support the contras' attempt to overthrow the Nicaraguan government while also illegally arming both Iraq and Iran, allegedly in exchange for releasing hostages in Beruit. The interagency team investigating the kidnappings in Beruit was on Pan Am 103 and perished returning to the US.

Robert Mueller was the prosecutor in the Pan Am 103 case. He shifted the case to a couple of Libyan jamokes and away from a group of Palestinian terrorists operating in Frankfurt, Germany who allegedly were supplied the bomb used to bring down the airliner by Syrian arms and heroin smuggler Monzer al-Kassar. Al-Kassar was a major arms supplier for the Iran-contra operation. Robert Swan Mueller III has never himself been specifically identified as being a CIA employee. However, his uncle, Richard Bissell, was an officer high in the CIA ranks. Mueller's wife, Ann Cabell Standish, whom he married three years after the John F Kennedy assassination, was the granddaughter of Charles Cabell, Deputy Director of the CIA at the time of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, who was fired by JFK along with the above-mentioned Bissell and Allen Dulles. Ann Mueller's granduncle, Earle Cabell, the mayor of Dallas at the time of President Kennedy's assassination there, was revealed to have been a CIA asset in a recent declassification of JFK papers.

Curiously, Mueller's career has been marked with prosecuting cases that touch on CIA covert activities. He prosecuted John Gotti, who was on trial for distribution of cocaine which has been identified as having arrived in the US via Mena, Arkansas as part of the Iran-contra drug importation operation. Bill Clinton was the governor of Arkansas at the time.

Mueller prosecuted Noriega, who was the CIA's point man in Panama, where the CIA laundered money and moved cocaine and weapons for the contras during Iran-contra. The federal prosecutor in the Mena corner of Arkansas at the time of the Mena operations who steered clear of it was Asa Hutchinson, who went on to become George W Bush's first "drug czar". (More curiously, the person leading the failed attempt to uncover Iran-contra in the US Senate was John Kerry, who just happened to be a teammate of Mueller on their prep school lacrosse team many years earlier.)

Mueller prosecuted BCCI (the international bank which laundered mob and intelligence money) without seeing CIA fingerprints. Mueller became the Director of the FBI a week before 9/11. Look it up.

Some more: Go read Gregory Craig's Wiki page. Robert Mueller just indicted Craig along the lines of Manafort, a la aiding Russians (actually representing Ukrainians). Craig himself has an interesting past. He was the lawyer defending John Hinckley for the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, which, if succcessful, would have put GHW Bush into the White House; Craig defended CIA Director Richard Helms for his part in the coup of Salvador Allende; he was the State Department's director of policy planning under Madeleine Albright; Craig worked with Bill Clinton on his impeachment proceedings; he represented the Cuban father in the Elian Gonzalez case. Craig was on the other side of the Noriega case.

Mueller prosecuted Noriega and Craig defended him. Craig helped Obama flipflop his position over the FISA court and the big communications corporations who cooperated with them. Craig represented John Edwards. And, of course, he did work in UKRAINE.

I realize that some people in the left-right political universe will rejoice that a "Democrat" is being indicted, but Craig's history suggests that like Manafort, Mueller, Barr and others he represents a party across the river in Langley, Virginia. Very interesting, he and Mueller going toe to toe as Noriega was put behind bars without a hint of Noriega's Iran-contra work for Bush and the CIA. If you've got both the prosecutor and the defense attorney you're going to win the trial.

It's a small world after all, but you won't hear Rachel Maddow repeat long-winded linkages among these characters in her stories.

such a web we weave in order to deceive.

CIA psyops where ever you look. Curious or should I say Q reous? Cause Q sure seems CIA to me....or so says Seth Rich...no he said DNC=CIA. up 8 users have voted. —

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

span y Bob In Portland on Mon, 04/15/2019 - 8:33pm

DLC = DNC

@Lookout At some point the Democratic Party was rolled. Bill Clinton got the big speech at the 1988 convention. He certainly wasn't the speaker he became. That speech went on and on. Then next time around he won the presidency in a three-way race with a funny Texas billionaire and George Bush.

When Bill went to Oxford his classmates presumed he was CIA.

Our election of 1992 may have been to promote Clinton while taking the heat away from GHW Bush.

[Apr 14, 2019] It has since been revealed that Epstein had 21 different phone numbers for contacting his friend Bill Clinton, who, court records allege, "frequently flew" on Epstein's private jet between 2002 and 2005.

Apr 14, 2019 | www.unz.com

Si1ver1ock says: April 13, 2019 at 12:01 pm GMT

It's interesting the Media has brought back the Sweden rape charge, but they are avoiding this rape story like the pest.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/1jDPzW9COsU?feature=oembed

Read More

annamaria , says: April 13, 2019 at 12:19 pm GMT

"Assange was reduced from one of the few towering figures of our time – a man who will have a central place in history books, if we as a species live long enough to write those books "

-- The presstituting crowd of stenographers (MSM) and the zionized X-tian war profiteers have made everything in their power (inadvertently) to ensure that Assange is and will be a towering figure of our time.

Even in distress, Assange has been fighting for truth and dignity; the ongoing show of lawlessness exposes the rot. The moral and creative midgets constituting the core of MSM and the satanic deciders are upset. Good!

The idiotic Senior District "Judge" Emma Arbuthnot (a wife and beneficiary of a mega-war profiteer Lord Arbuthnot -- Arbuthnot served as Chairman of the Defence Select Committee from 2005 to 2014) and the no less idiotic District "Judge" Michael Snow have entered the history books as well. As scoundrels: http://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/msg/1555064882.html

Snow does his best to bring the Judiciary into disrepute by playing to the gallery. He comments on the extradition in the same vein in a totally unprofessional manner. He is of course in a long line of disreputable members of the judiciary Snow's place in history is now secured – he chose to abuse the defendant rather than perform his role which was really quite straightforward. He is the narcissist and guilty of self interest not Julian Assange.

annamaria , says: April 13, 2019 at 12:33 pm GMT
@Si1ver1ock For every pronouncement against Assange by the US/UK government and judiciary, there should be an immediate question about the leniency shown towards the pedophiles and rapists in the UK (see Savile and the sudden "disappearance" of files re the high-placed pedophiles) and the story of Lolita Island and Lolita Express in the US.

Theresa May as the protector of pedophiles and rapists in the UK: https://www.corbettreport.com/pedophiles-in-politics-an-open-source-investigation/

One of the hurdles in investigating the claims is the Official Secrets Act, which prevents the disclosure of state secrets and "sensitive" information. "It is clear there are a lot of people who could provide a lot of information to support ongoing criminal investigations But they are not doing so because of the Official Secrets Act. They are fearful of not only breaking the law but the potential effect on their pension. This is absolutely crucial if we are to get some of these ex-officers coming forward and to get prosecutions of some of the former MPs." He has asked Home Secretary Theresa May to lift the restrictions, allowing former officials to speak up about what they know about the case, but so far there is no indication that this has been done.

The protection of the high-placed pedophiles and rapists in the US:

In the Epstein case, as well, there are numerous questions surrounding the possibility of high-level cover up. In recent weeks it has emerged that Epstein struck a remarkable secret deal with the US Attorney's Office that barred more than 500 pages of documents detailing negotiations of the deal and a staggering 13,000 documents from the investigation into Epstein's activities that were shelved as a result of the bargain.

Let the scoundrels talk about Assange to see how the concocted fraud is backfired.

Mrs. Clinton in particular should have been more circumspect:

It has since been revealed that Epstein had 21 different phone numbers for contacting his friend Bill Clinton, who, court records allege, "frequently flew" on Epstein's private jet between 2002 and 2005.

annamaria , says: April 13, 2019 at 1:28 pm GMT
@Ronald Thomas West And why are you spreading the MSM disinformation on the Unz forum? -- Just to satisfy your desire to litter the forum?

Read and learn: https://www.corbettreport.com/pedophiles-in-politics-an-open-source-investigation/

Also, perhaps you need to ponder why you are not treated the same way as the courageous, talented, principled, and dignified Assange is treated. Perhaps, something is missing in your character.

annamaria , says: April 13, 2019 at 1:44 pm GMT
@Art Theresa May has been the main protector of the high-placed British pedophiles

"Theresa May and the 'missing' child sex abuse files" https://www.reknr.com/uk/theresa-may-and-the-missing-child-sex-abuse-files/

"British PM Blocks Elite Pedophile Enquiry On Grounds Of 'National Security'" https://newspunch.com/british-pm-blocks-pedophile-enquiry/

The documents are thought to shed light on the years of ongoing pedophilia and child abuse within Westminster and contained names of "several" high-level politicians in the UK and US who are connected to an elite pedophile ring.

The followup: "Theresa May accused of cover-up over child abuse inquiry concerns," https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-child-abuse-inquiry-cover-up-concerns-dame-lowell-goddard-stories-a7369976.html

"England: Land of Royals, Tea and Horrific Pedophilia Coverups" http://time.com/2974381/england-land-of-royals-tea-and-horrific-pedophilia-coverups/

In the case of the Westminster "pedophile ring," the mounting sentiment that Britain's establishment serves its own interests and conceals its wrongdoing may be well founded. Until recently only seven police officers were working on Operation Fernbridge; Scotland Yard announced today the figure is now 22.

By fraudulently accusing Assange, Theresa May reminds the world about her role in the protection of the wealthy and influential Westminster pedophiles (the real rapists).

[Apr 02, 2019] Were Bill Clinton and Obama CIA assets at some point of their careers?

Notable quotes:
"... Slick Willy, recruited by the CIA to report on anti-war activism from Oxford back in 1968. ..."
"... we get America's first Black President, which serves to paralyze the left with identity politics in exactly the same way that the first woman President would. ..."
"... Unfortunately for the CIA and neoliberal establishment, Trump's unexpected win ( "Damn you ornery American voters!" ) has mortally wounded identity politics as an ideology, so the corporate mass media has tons of work ahead of them for getting plans back on track, if it is possible at all. ..."
Apr 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

William Gruff , Apr 1, 2019 2:38:16 PM | link

So this Buttgig guy is gay?

Here is the way the CIA planned it from way back in Ronald Raygun's presidency:

  • PotUS 41: Bush Sr, CIA Don.
  • PotUS 42: Slick Willy, recruited by the CIA to report on anti-war activism from Oxford back in 1968.
  • PotUS 43: Bush the Lesser, raised by the CIA.
  • PotUS 44: Slick Willy's ambitious cling-on who forced her way into the CIA scheme back in the 1970s. Intended to be the first woman President. This symbolic faux-progressive "victory" was intended to paralyze what remains of America's left while she worked for the interests of the capitalist elites. Plan failed, but not too badly. CIA candidate who was doing the trial run for PotUS 45 and getting some election cred won instead. "No big deal!" sez the CIA, "44, 45 and 46 are all interchangeable anyway." Instead we get America's first Black President, which serves to paralyze the left with identity politics in exactly the same way that the first woman President would. ( Aside: Obama's mamma was a CIA mule channeling financing to death squads in Indonesia via the CIA cutout the Ford Foundation. The CIA crime family keeps tabs on all of their used assets in case they get chatty and need to be quieted down. This brought boy Obama to their attention and allowed them to groom him from infancy to be their tool )
  • PotUS 45: Originally intended to be the "First Black President!" but switched out for Clinton when plans SNAFUed in 2008. Hey, "First woman President!" works just as good to choke criticism from the left, right? Right?
  • PotUS 46 (2024): What can you follow "First Black President!" and "First woman President!" with to leverage identity politics and render the left impotent? Why, the "First gay President!" , of course! With a name like Buttgig they are shoving it right in our faces.

But the American electorate threw a monkey wrench (or an orange buffoon?) into the works and screwed everything up. Trump was just floated as a "heel" (pro wrestling term) or "foil" to be beaten, and in the process of being beaten reinforce the identity politics of the victor and discredit populism.

Not having any better ideas, and not having any idea why their plans failed, the CIA is just charging ahead with their idea of installing a gay President in 2024 and giving the electorate some exposure to their tool now.

Unfortunately for the CIA and neoliberal establishment, Trump's unexpected win ( "Damn you ornery American voters!" ) has mortally wounded identity politics as an ideology, so the corporate mass media has tons of work ahead of them for getting plans back on track, if it is possible at all.

[Mar 28, 2019] Both Clinton and Trump were close to Epstein. To me this smells like there was a bi-partisan consensus to bury Lolita Express scandal

Notable quotes:
"... "I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy," Trump said of Epstein during a 2002 interview with New York magazine. "He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." ..."
"... "How would he know that?" he said of Trump's acknowledgement of Epstein's penchant for young women. The interview came nearly six years before Epstein's secret sex life exploded into public view when the money manager pleaded guilty to Florida charges of procuring and soliciting a minor for prostitution. "Why would he make a joke like that?" the West Palm Beach attorney asked. ..."
"... Bill has frequent flier points on Lolita Express. He had a 14yr.old toy on the island and the flight logs can prove his attendance. ..."
"... "The Government aligned themselves with Epstein, working against his victims, for 11 years..." ..."
"... THE SAME can be said for this: "The Government aligned themselves with APARTHEID Israhell, working against their Palestinians victims, for over 70 years... " ..."
"... Epstein has dirt on EVERYONE ... If he ever gets in a legitimate court room? - many, many, shitty people will be in trouble ... GOP and Democrat. And Trump? Acosta is in his admin, right? Or, he didn't fire the scum yet? And when is Hillary going to jail? ..."
"... I assume MOSSAD & friends will have to pull some very fancy rabbits out of their hat to get this buried again. The $wamp can't afford to have him cooperating, so I'm guessing Epstein will have to 'retire' to Tel-Aviv - or have an accident/become 'depressed, etc.' ..."
"... Hastert mentioned in WikiLeaks: https://wearechange.org/disgraced-house-speaker-pedophile-dennis-hastert/ As you dig into these stories, one singular theory emerges again and again: Sexual deviants and psychos have been groomed for office because they are easier to blackmail and control. ..."
Feb 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Judge Rules Plea Deal For Orgy Island Billionaire Broke Federal Law

youshallnotkill , 1 hour ago link

Both Clinton and Trump were close to Epstein. To me this smells like there was a bi-partisan consensus to bury this, and only now that the Clintons are no longer dominating the Democrat party, do we get some results.

While Trump has recently distanced himself from Epstein, a 64-year-old financier, it wasn't always that way.

"I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy," Trump said of Epstein during a 2002 interview with New York magazine. "He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."

Attorney Spencer Kuvin, one of dozens of lawyers who successfully sued Epstein on behalf of roughly 30 women who claimed he lured them to his Palm Beach mansion for sexually-charged massages when they were as young as 14, said he always found the comment curious.

"How would he know that?" he said of Trump's acknowledgement of Epstein's penchant for young women. The interview came nearly six years before Epstein's secret sex life exploded into public view when the money manager pleaded guilty to Florida charges of procuring and soliciting a minor for prostitution. "Why would he make a joke like that?" the West Palm Beach attorney asked.

SOURCE: https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/20170512/will-president-trump-be-used-as-witness-in-sex-offender-epstein-case

Justin Case , 1 hour ago link

Bill has frequent flier points on Lolita Express. He had a 14yr.old toy on the island and the flight logs can prove his attendance.

zeezrom2point0, 2 hours ago link

Be nice if someone found the guest list because Bill Clinton wouldn't be able to kill that many people to cover it up. It'd be sweet if they found evidence that Trump went, because he definitely did. He's probably the one to name it "Lolita Express."...no, that was probably Bill.

TeraByte , 2 hours ago link

Manford´s life time vs a slap on the wrist. I does not matter, what you do, but whom you know.

loop , 2 hours ago link

"The Government aligned themselves with Epstein, working against his victims, for 11 years..."

THE SAME can be said for this: "The Government aligned themselves with APARTHEID Israhell, working against their Palestinians victims, for over 70 years... "

WARNING: Graphic Images

DFGTC , 2 hours ago link

Epstein has dirt on EVERYONE ... If he ever gets in a legitimate court room? - many, many, shitty people will be in trouble ... GOP and Democrat. And Trump? Acosta is in his admin, right? Or, he didn't fire the scum yet? And when is Hillary going to jail?


William Dorritt , 2 hours ago link


Billionaire Palm Beach serial sex offender allowed to serve time in luxurious milieu | Fred Grimm

... ... ...

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/fl-op-col-fred-grimm-jeffrey-epste ...
2 of 2 2/7/2019, 10:41 AM

4 wheel drift , 3 hours ago link

The ruling comes after Senators on the Judiciary Committee asked that the DOJ open an investigation into the deal, which was offered at a time when Robert Mueller was running the FBI .

LOLOLOL.... THAT explains a lot...

******* criminals the entire lot of them

Baron Samedi , 3 hours ago link

I assume MOSSAD & friends will have to pull some very fancy rabbits out of their hat to get this buried again. The $wamp can't afford to have him cooperating, so I'm guessing Epstein will have to 'retire' to Tel-Aviv - or have an accident/become 'depressed, etc.'

I will further bet that JE has had adequate notice of all this to be getting out of the USA to Balfourstan - a non-extradition country - ASAP.

Reaper , 3 hours ago link

The DOJ can prosecute now for the conspiracy of prosecutors and Epstein.

https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-923-18-usc-371-conspiracy-defraud-us

dirty fingernails , 3 hours ago link

Don't hold your breath.

William Dorritt , 3 hours ago link
Hastert mentioned in WikiLeaks: https://wearechange.org/disgraced-house-speaker-pedophile-dennis-hastert/ As you dig into these stories, one singular theory emerges again and again: Sexual deviants and psychos have been groomed for office because they are easier to blackmail and control.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/01/1389654/-Dennis-Hastert-as-the-Tip-of-the-Iceberg

[Mar 24, 2019] Taibbi It s Official - Russiagate Is This Generation s WMD

This is the most grandiose False flag propaganda operation known to the mankind. McCarthyism while more vicious was just a blip of the screen in comparison this this tide of disinformation and insinuations. Iraq WDM resulted in more casualties but was much more short term. Damage for the USA from this false flag operation might even exceed the damage for Iraq WDM fiasco.
British government and intelligence serves were active participants and in this sense "Skripals poisoning" looks like a perverted form of "witness protection:" program. A false flag operation on the top of a false flag operation ("Russiagate").
What is amazing is how unapt were the major players.
Notable quotes:
"... Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media. ..."
"... A few weeks after that hearing, Steele gave testimony in a British lawsuit filed by one of the Russian companies mentioned in his reports. In a written submission , Steele said his information was "raw" and "needed to be analyzed and further investigated/verified." He also wrote that (at least as pertained to the memo in that case) he had not written his report "with the intention that it be republished to the world at large." ..."
"... That itself was a curious statement, given that Steele reportedly spoke with multiple reporters in the fall of 2016, but this was his legal position. This story about Steele's British court statements did not make it into the news much in the United States, apart from a few bits in conservative outlets like The Washington Times. ..."
"... The Steele report was the Magna Carta of #Russiagate. It provided the implied context for thousands of news stories to come, yet no journalist was ever able to confirm its most salacious allegations: the five year cultivation plan, the blackmail, the bribe from Sechin, the Prague trip, the pee romp, etc. In metaphorical terms, we were unable to independently produce Steele's results in the lab. Failure to reckon with this corrupted the narrative from the start. ..."
"... "Just called," Page said to McCabe. "Apparently the DAG [Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates] now wants to be there, and WH wants DOJ to host. So we are setting that up now. ... We will very much need to get Cohen's view before we meet with her. Better, have him weigh in with her before the meeting. We need to speak with one voice, if that is in fact the case." ..."
"... Someday I hope that Hillary has to be rolled up to testify about the Benghazi business. Grab the guns and the gold (and the oil). Ukraine gold: check. Libyan gold and weapons: check. ..."
Mar 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Matt Taibbi, excerpted from his serial book Hate Inc.,

The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it...

Note to readers: in light of news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation is complete, I'm releasing this chapter of Hate Inc. early, with a few new details added up top. Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.

As has long been rumored , the former FBI chief's independent probe will result in multiple indictments and convictions, but no " presidency-wrecking " conspiracy charges, or anything that would meet the layman's definition of "collusion" with Russia.

With the caveat that even this news might somehow turn out to be botched, the key detail in the many stories about the end of the Mueller investigation was best expressed by the New York Times :

A senior Justice Department official said that Mr. Mueller would not recommend new indictments.

The Times tried to soften the emotional blow for the millions of Americans trained in these years to place hopes for the overturn of the Trump presidency in Mueller. Nobody even pretended it was supposed to be a fact-finding mission, instead of an act of faith.

The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years, with votive candles sold in his image and Saturday Night Live cast members singing " All I Want for Christmas is You " to him featuring the rhymey line: "Mueller please come through, because the only option is a coup."

The Times story today tried to preserve Santa Mueller's reputation, noting Trump's Attorney General William Barr's reaction was an "endorsement" of the fineness of Mueller's work:

In an apparent endorsement of an investigation that Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked as a "witch hunt," Mr. Barr said Justice Department officials never had to intervene to keep Mr. Mueller from taking an inappropriate or unwarranted step.

Mueller, in other words, never stepped out of the bounds of his job description. But could the same be said for the news media?

For those anxious to keep the dream alive, the Times published its usual graphic of Trump-Russia "contacts," inviting readers to keep making connections. But in a separate piece by Peter Baker , the paper noted the Mueller news had dire consequences for the press:

It will be a reckoning for President Trump, to be sure, but also for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for Congress, for Democrats, for Republicans, for the news media and, yes, for the system as a whole

This is a damning page one admission by the Times. Despite the connect-the-dots graphic in its other story, and despite the astonishing, emotion-laden editorial the paper also ran suggesting " We don't need to read the Mueller report " because we know Trump is guilty, Baker at least began the work of preparing Times readers for a hard question: "Have journalists connected too many dots that do not really add up?"

The paper was signaling it understood there would now be questions about whether or not news outlets like themselves made a galactic error by betting heavily on a new, politicized approach , trying to be true to "history's judgment" on top of the hard-enough job of just being true. Worse, in a brutal irony everyone should have seen coming , the press has now handed Trump the mother of campaign issues heading into 2020.

Nothing Trump is accused of from now on by the press will be believed by huge chunks of the population, a group that (perhaps thanks to this story) is now larger than his original base. As Baker notes, a full 50.3% of respondents in a poll conducted this month said they agree with Trump the Mueller probe is a "witch hunt."

Stories have been coming out for some time now hinting Mueller's final report might leave audiences " disappointed ," as if a President not being a foreign spy could somehow be bad news.

Openly using such language has, all along, been an indictment. Imagine how tone-deaf you'd have to be to not realize it makes you look bad, when news does not match audience expectations you raised. To be unaware of this is mind-boggling, the journalistic equivalent of walking outside without pants.

There will be people protesting: the Mueller report doesn't prove anything! What about the 37 indictments? The convictions? The Trump tower revelations? The lies! The meeting with Don, Jr.? The financial matters ! There's an ongoing grand jury investigation, and possible sealed indictments, and the House will still investigate, and

Stop. Just stop. Any journalist who goes there is making it worse.

For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-in. Now, even Nancy Pelosi has said impeachment is out, unless something "so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan" against Trump is uncovered it would be worth their political trouble to prosecute.

The biggest thing this affair has uncovered so far is Donald Trump paying off a porn star. That's a hell of a long way from what this business was supposedly about at the beginning, and shame on any reporter who tries to pretend this isn't so.

The story hyped from the start was espionage: a secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who'd helped him win the election.

The betrayal narrative was not reported at first as metaphor. It was not "Trump likes the Russians so much, he might as well be a spy for them." It was literal spying, treason, and election-fixing – crimes so severe, former NSA employee John Schindler told reporters, Trump " will die in jail ."

In the early months of this scandal, the New York Times said Trump's campaign had "repeated contacts" with Russian intelligence; the Wall Street Journal told us our spy agencies were withholding intelligence from the new President out of fear he was compromised; news leaked out our spy chiefs had even told other countries like Israel not to share their intel with us, because the Russians might have "leverages of pressure" on Trump.

CNN told us Trump officials had been in "constant contact" with "Russians known to U.S. intelligence," and the former director of the CIA, who'd helped kick-start the investigation that led to Mueller's probe, said the President was guilty of "high crimes and misdemeanors," committing acts " nothing short of treasonous ."

Hillary Clinton insisted Russians "could not have known how to weaponize" political ads unless they'd been "guided" by Americans. Asked if she meant Trump, she said, " It's pretty hard not to ." Harry Reid similarly said he had "no doubt" that the Trump campaign was " in on the deal " to help Russians with the leak.

None of this has been walked back. To be clear, if Trump were being blackmailed by Russian agencies like the FSB or the GRU, if he had any kind of relationship with Russian intelligence, that would soar over the "overwhelming and bipartisan" standard, and Nancy Pelosi would be damning torpedoes for impeachment right now.

There was never real gray area here. Either Trump is a compromised foreign agent, or he isn't. If he isn't, news outlets once again swallowed a massive disinformation campaign, only this error is many orders of magnitude more stupid than any in the recent past, WMD included. Honest reporters like ABC's Terry Moran understand: Mueller coming back empty-handed on collusion means a " reckoning for the media ."

Of course, there won't be such a reckoning. (There never is). But there should be. We broke every written and unwritten rule in pursuit of this story, starting with the prohibition on reporting things we can't confirm.

#Russiagate debuted as a media phenomenon in mid-summer, 2016. The roots of the actual story, i.e. when the multi-national investigation began, go back much further, to the previous year at least. Oddly, that origin tale has not been nailed down yet, and blue-state audiences don't seem terribly interested in it, either.

By June and July of 2016, bits of the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, which had been funded by the Democratic National Committee through the law firm Perkins Coie (which in turn hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS), were already in the ether.

The Steele report occupies the same role in #Russiagate the tales spun by Ahmed Chalabi occupied in the WMD screwup. Once again, a narrative became turbo-charged when Officials With Motives pulled the press corps by its nose to a swamp of unconfirmable private assertions.

Some early stories, like a July 4, 2016 piece by Franklin Foer in Slate called " Putin's Puppet ," outlined future Steele themes in "circumstantial" form. But the actual dossier, while it influenced a number of pre-election Trump-Russia news stories (notably one by Michael Isiskoff of Yahoo! that would be used in a FISA warrant application ), didn't make it into print for a while.

Though it was shopped to at least nine news organizations during the summer and fall of 2016, no one bit, for the good reason that news organizations couldn't verify its "revelations."

The Steele claims were explosive if true. The ex-spy reported Trump aide Carter Page had been offered fees on a big new slice of the oil giant Rosneft if he could help get sanctions against Russia lifted. He also said Trump lawyer Michael Cohen went to Prague for "secret discussions with Kremlin representatives and associated operators/hackers."

Most famously, he wrote the Kremlin had kompromat of Trump "deriling" [sic] a bed once used by Barack and Michelle Obama by "employing a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' (urination) show."

This was too good of a story not to do. By hook or crook, it had to come out. The first salvo was by David Corn of Mother Jones on October 31, 2016: " A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump ."

The piece didn't have pee, Prague, or Page in it, but it did say Russian intelligence had material that could "blackmail" Trump. It was technically kosher to print because Corn wasn't publishing the allegations themselves, merely that the FBI had taken possession of them.

A bigger pretext was needed to get the other details out. This took place just after the election, when four intelligence officials presented copies of the dossier to both President-Elect Trump and outgoing President Obama.

From his own memos , we know FBI Director James Comey, ostensibly evincing concern for Trump's welfare, told the new President he was just warning him about what was out there, as possible blackmail material:

I wasn't saying [the Steele report] was true, only that I wanted him to know both that it had been reported and that the reports were in many hands. I said media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material or [redacted] and that we were keeping it very close-hold [sic].

Comey's generous warning to Trump about not providing a "news hook," along with a promise to keep it all "close-held," took place on January 6, 2017. Within four days, basically the entire Washington news media somehow knew all about this top-secret meeting and had the very hook they needed to go public. Nobody in the mainstream press thought this was weird or warranted comment.

Even Donald Trump was probably smart enough to catch the hint when, of all outlets, it was CNN that first broke the story of "Classified documents presented last week to Trump" on January 10 .

At the same time, Buzzfeed made the historic decision to publish the entire Steele dossier, bringing years of pee into our lives. This move birthed the Russiagate phenomenon as a never-ending, minute-to-minute factor in American news coverage.

Comey was right. We couldn't have reported this story without a "hook." Therefore the reports surrounding Steele technically weren't about the allegations themselves, but rather the journey of those allegations, from one set of official hands to another. Handing the report to Trump created a perfect pretext.

This trick has been used before, both in Washington and on Wall Street, to publicize unconfirmed private research. A short seller might hire a consulting firm to prepare a report on a company he or she has bet against. When the report is completed, the investor then tries to get the SEC or the FBI to take possession. If they do, news leaks the company is "under investigation," the stock dives, and everyone wins.

This same trick is found in politics. A similar trajectory drove negative headlines in the scandal surrounding New Jersey's Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who was said to be under investigation by the FBI for underage sex crimes (although some were skeptical ). The initial story didn't hold up, but led to other investigations.

Same with the so-called " Arkansas project ," in which millions of Republican-friendly private research dollars produced enough noise about the Whitewater scandal to create years of headlines about the Clintons. Swiftboating was another example. Private oppo isn't inherently bad. In fact it has led to some incredible scoops, including Enron. But reporters usually know to be skeptical of private info, and figure the motives of its patrons into the story.

The sequence of events in that second week of January, 2017 will now need to be heavily re-examined. We now know, from his own testimony , that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had some kind of role in helping CNN do its report, presumably by confirming part of the story, perhaps through an intermediary or two (there is some controversy over whom exactly was contacted, and when).

Why would real security officials help litigate this grave matter through the media? Why were the world's most powerful investigative agencies acting like they were trying to move a stock, pushing an private, unverified report that even Buzzfeed could see had factual issues? It made no sense at the time , and makes less now.

In January of 2017, Steele's pile of allegations became public, read by millions. "It is not just unconfirmed," Buzzfeed admitted . "It includes some clear errors."

Buzzfeed's decision exploded traditional journalistic standards against knowingly publishing material whose veracity you doubt. Although a few media ethicists wondered at it , this seemed not to bother the rank-and-file in the business. Buzzfeed chief Ben Smith is still proud of his decision today. I think this was because many reporters believed the report was true.

When I read the report, I was in shock. I thought it read like fourth-rate suspense fiction (I should know: I write fourth-rate suspense fiction). Moreover it seemed edited both for public consumption and to please Steele's DNC patrons.

Steele wrote of Russians having a file of "compromising information" on Hillary Clinton, only this file supposedly lacked "details/evidence of unorthodox or embarrassing behavior" or "embarrassing conduct."

We were meant to believe the Russians, across decades of dirt-digging, had an empty kompromat file on Hillary Clinton, to say nothing of human tabloid headline Bill Clinton? This point was made more than once in the reports, as if being emphasized for the reading public.

There were other curious lines, including the bit about Russians having "moles" in the DNC, plus some linguistic details that made me wonder at the nationality of the report author.

Still, who knew? It could be true. But even the most cursory review showed the report had issues and would need a lot of confirming. This made it more amazing that the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, held hearings on March 20, 2017 that blithely read out Steele report details as if they were fact. From Schiff's opening statement:

According to Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who is reportedly held in high regard by U.S. Intelligence, Russian sources tell him that Page has also had a secret meeting with Igor Sechin (SEH-CHIN), CEO of Russian gas giant Rosneft Page is offered brokerage fees by Sechin on a deal involving a 19 percent share of the company.

I was stunned watching this. It's generally understood that members of congress, like reporters, make an effort to vet at least their prepared remarks before making them public.

But here was Schiff, telling the world Trump aide Carter Page had been offered huge fees on a 19% stake in Rosneft – a company with a $63 billion market capitalization – in a secret meeting with a Russian oligarch who was also said to be "a KGB agent and close friend of Putin's."

(Schiff meant "FSB agent." The inability of #Russiagaters to remember Russia is not the Soviet Union became increasingly maddening over time. Donna Brazile still hasn't deleted her tweet about how " The Communists are now dictating the terms of the debate ." )

Schiff's speech raised questions. Do we no longer have to worry about getting accusations right if the subject is tied to Russiagate? What if Page hadn't done any of these things? To date, he hasn't been charged with anything. Shouldn't a member of Congress worry about this?

A few weeks after that hearing, Steele gave testimony in a British lawsuit filed by one of the Russian companies mentioned in his reports. In a written submission , Steele said his information was "raw" and "needed to be analyzed and further investigated/verified." He also wrote that (at least as pertained to the memo in that case) he had not written his report "with the intention that it be republished to the world at large."

That itself was a curious statement, given that Steele reportedly spoke with multiple reporters in the fall of 2016, but this was his legal position. This story about Steele's British court statements did not make it into the news much in the United States, apart from a few bits in conservative outlets like The Washington Times.

I contacted Schiff's office to ask if the congressman if he knew about Steele's admission that his report needed verifying, and if that changed his view of it at all. The response (emphasis mine):

The dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and which was leaked publicly several months ago contains information that may be pertinent to our investigation. This is true regardless of whether it was ever intended for public dissemination. Accordingly, the Committee hopes to speak with Mr. Steele in order to help substantiate or refute each of the allegations contained in the dossier.

Schiff had not spoken to Steele before the hearing, and read out the allegations knowing they were unsubstantiated.

The Steele report was the Magna Carta of #Russiagate. It provided the implied context for thousands of news stories to come, yet no journalist was ever able to confirm its most salacious allegations: the five year cultivation plan, the blackmail, the bribe from Sechin, the Prague trip, the pee romp, etc. In metaphorical terms, we were unable to independently produce Steele's results in the lab. Failure to reckon with this corrupted the narrative from the start.

For years, every hint the dossier might be true became a banner headline, while every time doubt was cast on Steele's revelations, the press was quiet. Washington Post reporter Greg Miller went to Prague and led a team looking for evidence Cohen had been there. Post reporters, Miller said, "literally spent weeks and months trying to run down" the Cohen story.

"We sent reporters through every hotel in Prague, through all over the place, just to try to figure out if he was ever there," he said, "and came away empty."

This was heads-I-win, tails-you-lose reporting. One assumes if Miller found Cohen's name in a hotel ledger, it would have been on page 1 of the Post. The converse didn't get a mention in Miller's own paper. He only told the story during a discussion aired by C-SPAN about a new book he'd published. Only The Daily Caller and a few conservative blogs picked it up.

It was the same when Bob Woodward said, "I did not find [espionage or collusion] Of course I looked for it, looked for it hard."

The celebrated Watergate muckraker – who once said he'd succumbed to "groupthink" in the WMD episode and added, "I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder" – didn't push very hard here, either. News that he'd tried and failed to find collusion didn't get into his own paper. It only came out when Woodward was promoting his book Fear in a discussion with conservative host Hugh Hewitt.

When Michael Cohen testified before congress and denied under oath ever being in Prague, it was the same. Few commercial news outlets bothered to take note of the implications this had for their previous reports. Would a man clinging to a plea deal lie to congress on national television about this issue?

There was a CNN story , but the rest of the coverage was all in conservative outlets – the National Review , Fox , The Daily Caller . The Washington Post's response was to run an editorial sneering at " How conservative media downplayed Michael Cohen's testimony ."

Perhaps worst of all was the episode involving Yahoo! reporter Michael Isikoff. He had already been part of one strange tale: the FBI double-dipping when it sought a FISA warrant to conduct secret surveillance of Carter Page, the would-be mastermind who was supposed to have brokered a deal with oligarch Sechin.

In its FISA application, the FBI included both the unconfirmed Steele report and Isikoff's September 23, 2016 Yahoo! story, " U.S. Intel Officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin ." The Isikoff story, which claimed Page had met with "high ranking sanctioned officials" in Russia, had relied upon Steele as an unnamed source.

This was similar to a laundering technique used in the WMD episode called "stove-piping," i.e. officials using the press to "confirm" information the officials themselves fed the reporter.

But there was virtually no non-conservative press about this problem apart from a Washington Post story pooh-poohing the issue. (Every news story that casts any doubt on the collusion issue seems to meet with an instantaneous "fact check" in the Post .) The Post insisted the FISA issue wasn't serious among other things because Steele was not the "foundation" of Isikoff's piece.

Isikoff was perhaps the reporter most familiar with Steele. He and Corn of Mother Jones , who also dealt with the ex-spy, wrote a bestselling book that relied upon theories from Steele, Russian Roulette , including a rumination on the "pee" episode. Yet Isikoff in late 2018 suddenly said he believed the Steele report would turn out to be " mostly false ."

Once again, this only came out via a podcast, John Ziegler's "Free Speech Broadcasting" show. Here's a transcript of the relevant section:

Isikoff: When you actually get into the details of the Steele dossier, the specific allegations, you know, we have not seen the evidence to support them. And in fact there is good grounds to think some of the more sensational allegations will never be proven, and are likely false.

Ziegler: That's...

Isikoff: I think it's a mixed record at best at this point, things could change, Mueller may yet produce evidence that changes this calculation. But based on the public record at this point I have to say that most of the specific allegations have not been borne out.

Ziegler: That's interesting to hear you say that, Michael because as I'm sure you know, your book was kind of used to validate the pee tape, for lack of a better term.

Isikoff: Yeah. I think we had some evidence in there of an event that may have inspired the pee tape and that was the visit that Trump made with a number of characters who later showed up in Moscow, specifically Emin Agalarov and Rob Goldstone to this raunchy Las Vegas nightclub where one of the regular acts was a skit called "Hot For Teacher" in which dancers posing as college Co-Ed's urinated – or simulated urinating on their professor. Which struck me as an odd coincidence at best. I think, you know, it is not implausible that event may have inspired...

Ziegler: An urban legend?

Isikoff: ...allegations that appeared in the Steele dossier.

Isikoff delivered this story with a laughing tone. He seamlessly transitioned to what he then called the "real" point, i.e. "the irony is Steele may be right, but it wasn't the Kremlin that had sexual kompromat on Donald Trump, it was the National Enquirer. "

Recapping: the reporter who introduced Steele to the world (his September 23, 2016 story was the first to reference him as a source), who wrote a book that even he concedes was seen as "validating" the pee tape story, suddenly backtracks and says the whole thing may have been based on a Las Vegas strip act, but it doesn't matter because Stormy Daniels, etc.

Another story of this type involved a court case in which Webzilla and parent company XBT sued Steele and Buzzfeed over the mention their firm in one of the memos. It came out in court testimony that Steele had culled information about XBT/Webzilla from a 2009 post on CNN's "iReports" page .

Asked if he understood these posts came from random users and not CNN journalists who'd been fact-checked, Steele replied, " I do not ."

This comical detail was similar to news that the second British Mi6 dossier released just before the Iraq invasion had been plagiarized in part from a thirteen year-old student thesis from California State University, not even by intelligence people, but by mid-level functionaries in Tony Blair's press office.

There were so many profiles of Steele as an " astoundingly diligent " spymaster straight out of LeCarre : he was routinely described like a LeCarre-ian grinder like the legendary George Smiley, a man in the shadows whose bookish intensity was belied by his "average," "neutral," "quiet," demeanor, being "more low-key than Smiley." One would think it might have rated a mention that our "Smiley" was cutting and pasting text like a community college freshman. But the story barely made news.

This has been a consistent pattern throughout #Russiagate. Step one: salacious headline. Step two, days or weeks later: news emerges the story is shakier than first believed. Step three (in the best case) involves the story being walked back or retracted by the same publication.

That's been rare. More often, when explosive #Russiagate headlines go sideways, the original outlets simply ignore the new development, leaving the "retraction" process to conservative outlets that don't reach the original audiences.

This is a major structural flaw of the new fully-divided media landscape in which Republican media covers Democratic corruption and Democratic media covers Republican corruption. If neither "side" feels the need to disclose its own errors and inconsistencies, mistakes accumulate quickly.

This has been the main difference between Russiagate and the WMD affair. Despite David Remnick's post-invasion protestations that "nobody got [WMD] completely right," the Iraq war was launched against the objections of the 6 million or more people who did get it right, and protested on the streets . There was open skepticism of Bush claims dotting the press landscape from the start, with people like Jack Shafer tearing apart every Judith Miller story in print. Most reporters are Democrats and the people hawking the WMD story were mostly Republicans, so there was political space for protest.

Russiagate happened in an opposite context. If the story fell apart it would benefit Donald Trump politically, a fact that made a number of reporters queasy about coming forward. #Russiagate became synonymous with #Resistance, which made public skepticism a complicated proposition.

Early in the scandal, I appeared on To The Point, a California-based public radio show hosted by Warren Olney, with Corn of Mother Jones. I knew David a little and had been friendly with him. He once hosted a book event for me in Washington. In the program, however, the subject of getting facts right came up and Corn said this was not a time for reporters to be picking nits:

So Democrats getting overeager, overenthusiastic, stating things that may not be [unintelligible] true ? Well, tell me a political issue where that doesn't happen. I think that's looking at the wrong end of the telescope.

I wrote him later and suggested that since we're in the press, and not really about anything except avoiding "things that may not be true," maybe we had different responsibilities than "Democrats"? He wrote back:

Feel free to police the Trump opposition. But on the list of shit that needs to be covered these days, that's just not high on my personal list.

Other reporters spoke of an internal struggle. When the Mueller indictment of the Internet Research Agency was met with exultation in the media, New Yorker writer Adrian Chen, who broke the original IRA story, was hesitant to come forward with some mild qualms about the way the story was being reported:

"Either I could stay silent and allow the conversation to be dominated by those pumping up the Russian threat," he said, "or I could risk giving fodder to Trump and his allies."

After writing, " Confessions of a Russiagate Skeptic ," poor Blake Hounsell of Politico took such a beating on social media, he ended up denouncing himself a year later.

"What I meant to write is, I wasn't skeptical," he said.

Years ago, in the midst of the WMD affair, Times public editor Daniel Okrent noted the paper's standard had moved from "Don't get it first, get it right" to "Get it first and get it right." From there, Okrent wrote , "the next devolution was an obvious one."

We're at that next devolution: first and wrong. The Russiagate era has so degraded journalism that even once "reputable" outlets are now only about as right as politicians, which is to say barely ever, and then only by accident.

Early on, I was so amazed by the sheer quantity of Russia "bombshells" being walked back, I started to keep a list. It's well above 50 stories now. As has been noted by Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept and others, if the mistakes were random, you'd expect them in both directions , but Russiagate errors uniformly go the same way.

In some cases the stories are only partly wrong, as in the case of the famed " 17 intelligence agencies said Russia was behind the hacking " story (it was actually four: the Director of National Intelligence "hand-picking" a team from the FBI, CIA, and NSA).

In other cases the stories were blunt false starts, resulting in ugly sets of matching headlines:

" Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility "

Washington Post, December 31, 2016.

" Russian government hackers do not appear to have targeted Vermont utility "

Washington Post, Jan. 2, 2017.

" Trump Campaign Aides had repeated contacts with Russian Intelligence ," published by the Times on Valentine's Day, 2017, was an important, narrative-driving "bombshell" that looked dicey from the start. The piece didn't say whether the contact was witting or unwitting, whether the discussions were about business or politics, or what the contacts supposedly were at all.

Normally a reporter would want to know what the deal is before he or she runs a story accusing people of having dealings with foreign spies. "Witting" or "Unwitting" ought to be a huge distinction, for instance. It soon after came out that people like former CIA chief John Brennan don't think this is the case. "Frequently, people who are on a treasonous path do not know they're on a treasonous path," he said, speaking of Trump's circle.

This seemed a dangerous argument, the kind of thing that led to trouble in the McCarthy years. But let's say the contacts were serious. From a reporting point of view, you'd still need to know exactly what the nature of such contacts were before you run that story, because the headline implication is grave. Moreover you'd need to know it well enough to report it, i.e. it's not enough to be told a convincing story off-the-record, you need to be able to share with readers enough so that they can characterize the news themselves.

Not to the Times, which ran the article without the specifics. Months later, Comey blew up this "contacts" story in public, saying, " in the main, it was not true ."

As was the case with the "17 agencies" error, which only got fixed when Clapper testified in congress and was forced to make the correction under oath, the "repeated contacts" story was only disputed when Comey testified in congress, this time before the Senate Intelligence Committee . How many other errors of this type are waiting to be disclosed?

Even the mistakes caught were astounding. On December 1, 2017, ABC reporter Brian Ross claimed Trump "as a candidate" instructed Michael Flynn to contact Russia. The news caused the Dow to plummet 350 points. The story was retracted almost immediately and Ross was suspended .

Bloomberg reported Mueller subpoenaed Trump's Deutsche Bank accounts; the subpoenas turned out to be of other individuals' records. Fortune said C-SPAN was hacked after Russia Today programming briefly interrupted coverage of a Maxine Waters floor address. The New York Times also ran the story, and it's still up, despite C-SPAN insisting its own "internal routing error" likely caused the feed to appear in place of its own broadcast.

CNN has its own separate sub-list of wrecks. Three of the network's journalists resigned after a story purporting to tie Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci to a Russian investment fund was retracted. Four more CNN reporters (Gloria Borger, Eric Lichtblau, Jake Tapper and Brian Rokus) were bylined in a story that claimed Comey was expected to refute Trump's claims he was told he wasn't the target of an investigation. Comey blew that one up, too.

In another CNN scoop gone awry, " Email pointed Trump campaign to WikiLeaks documents ," the network's reporters were off by ten days in a "bombshell" that supposedly proved the Trump campaign had foreknowledge of Wikileaks dumps. "It's, uh, perhaps not as significant as what we know now," offered CNN's Manu Raju in a painful on-air retraction .

The worst stories were the ones never corrected. A particularly bad example is " After Florida School Shooting, Russian 'Bot' Army Pounced ," from the New York Times on Feb 18, 2018. The piece claimed Russians were trying to divide Americans on social media after a mass shooting using Twitter hashtags like #guncontrolnow, #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting.

The Times ran this quote high up:

"This is pretty typical for them, to hop on breaking news like this," said Jonathon Morgan, chief executive of New Knowledge, a company that tracks online disinformation campaigns. "The bots focus on anything that is divisive for Americans. Almost systematically."

About a year after this story came out, Times reporters Scott Shane and Ann Blinder reported that the same outfit, New Knowledge , and in particular that same Jonathon Morgan, had participated in a cockamamie scheme to fake Russian troll activity in an Alabama Senate race. The idea was to try to convince voters Russia preferred the Republican.

The Times quoted a New Knowledge internal report about the idiotic Alabama scheme:

We orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet

The Parkland story was iffy enough when it came out, as Twitter disputed it, and another of the main sources for the initial report, former intelligence official Clint Watts, subsequently said he was "not convinced" on the whole "bot thing."

But when one of your top sources turns out to have faked exactly the kind of activity described in your article, you should at least take the quote out, or put an update online. No luck: the story remains up on the Times site, without disclaimers.

Russiagate institutionalized one of the worst ethical loopholes in journalism, which used to be limited mainly to local crime reporting. It's always been a problem that we publish mugshots and names of people merely arrested but not yet found guilty. Those stories live forever online and even the acquitted end up permanently unable to get jobs, smeared as thieves, wife-beaters, drunk drivers, etc.

With Russiagate the national press abandoned any pretense that there's a difference between indictment and conviction. The most disturbing story involved Maria Butina. Here authorities and the press shared responsibility. Thanks to an indictment that initially said the Russian traded sex for favors, the Times and other outlets flooded the news cycle with breathless stories about a redheaded slut-temptress come to undermine democracy, a "real-life Red Sparrow," as ABC put it.

But a judge threw out the sex charge after "five minutes" when it turned out to be based on a single joke text to a friend who had taken Butina's car for inspection.

It's pretty hard to undo public perception you're a prostitute once it's been in a headline, and, worse, the headlines are still out there. You can still find stories like " Maria Butina, Suspected Secret Agent, Used Sex in Covert Plan " online in the New York Times.

Here a reporter might protest: how would I know? Prosecutors said she traded sex for money. Why shouldn't I believe them?

How about because, authorities have been lying their faces off to reporters since before electricity! It doesn't take much investigation to realize the main institutional sources in the Russiagate mess – the security services, mainly – have extensive records of deceiving the media.

As noted before, from World War I-era tales of striking union workers being German agents to the "missile gap" that wasn't (the "gap" was leaked to the press before the Soviets had even one operational ICBM) to the Gulf of Tonkin mess to all the smears of people like Martin Luther King, it's a wonder newspapers listen to whispers from government sources at all.

In the Reagan years National Security Adviser John Poindexter spread false stories about Libyan terrorist plots to The Wall Street Journal and other papers. In the Bush years, Dick Cheney et al were selling manure by the truckload about various connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda, infamously including a story that bomber Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague.

The New York Times ran a story that Atta was in Prague in late October of 2001, even giving a date of the meeting with Iraqis, April 8, or "just five months before the terrorist attacks." The Prague story was another example of a tale that seemed shaky because American officials were putting the sourcing first on foreign intelligence, then on reporters themselves. Cheney cited the Prague report in subsequent TV appearances, one of many instances of feeding reporters tidbits and then selling reports as independent confirmation.

It wasn't until three years later, in 2004, that Times reporter James Risen definitively killed the Atta-in-Prague canard (why is it always Prague?) in a story entitled " No evidence of meeting with Iraqi ." By then, of course, it was too late. The Times also held a major dissenting piece by Risen about the WMD case, "C.I.A. Aides Feel Pressure in Preparing Iraqi Reports," until days after war started. This is what happens when you start thumbing the scale.

This failure to demand specifics has been epidemic in Russiagate, even when good reporters have been involved. One of the biggest "revelations" of this era involved a story that was broken first by a terrible reporter (the Guardian's Luke Harding) and followed up by a good one (Jane Mayer of the New Yorker ). The key detail involved the elusive origin story of Russiagate.

Mayer's piece, the March 12, 2018 " Christopher Steele, the Man Behind The Trump Dossier " in the New Yorker , impacted the public mainly by seeming to bolster the credentials of the dossier author. But it contained an explosive nugget far down. Mayer reported Robert Hannigan, then-head of the GCHQ (the British analog to the NSA) intercepted a "stream of illicit communications" between "Trump's team and Moscow" at some point prior to August 2016. Hannigan flew to the U.S. and briefed CIA director John Brennan about these communications. Brennan later testified this inspired the original FBI investigation.

When I read that, a million questions came to mind, but first: what did "illicit" mean?

If something "illicit" had been captured by GCHQ, and this led to the FBI investigation (one of several conflicting public explanations for the start of the FBI probe, incidentally), this would go a long way toward clearing up the nature of the collusion charge. If they had something, why couldn't they tell us what it was? Why didn't we deserve to know?

I asked the Guardian: "Was any attempt made to find out what those communications were? How was the existence of these communications confirmed? Did anyone from the Guardian see or hear these intercepts, or transcripts?"

Their one-sentence reply:

The Guardian has strict and rigorous procedures when dealing with source material.

That's the kind of answer you'd expect from a transnational bank, or the army, not a newspaper.

I asked Mayer the same questions. She was more forthright, noting that, of course, the story had originally been broken by Harding , whose own report said "the precise nature of these exchanges has not been made public."

She added that "afterwards I independently confirmed aspects of [Harding's piece] with several well-informed sources," and "spent months on the Steele story [and] traveled to the UK twice for it." But, she wrote, "the Russiagate story, like all reporting on sensitive national security issues, is difficult."

I can only infer she couldn't find out what "illicit" meant despite proper effort. The detail was published anyway. It may not have seemed like a big deal, but I think it was.

To be clear, I don't necessarily disbelieve the idea that there were "illicit" contacts between Trump and Russians in early 2015 or before. But if there were such contacts, I can't think of any legitimate reason why their nature should be withheld from the public.

If authorities can share reasons for concern with foreign countries like Israel, why should American voters not be so entitled? Moreover the idea that we need to keep things secret to protect sources and methods and "tradecraft" (half the press corps became expert in goofy spy language over the last few years, using terms like "SIGINT" like they've known them their whole lives), why are we leaking news of our ability to hear Russian officials cheerin g Trump's win?

Failure to ask follow-up questions happened constantly with this story. One of the first reports that went sideways involved a similar dynamic: the contention that some leaked DNC emails were forgeries.

MSNBC's "Intelligence commentator" Malcolm Nance, perhaps the most enthusiastic source of questionable #Russiagate news this side of Twitter conspiracist Louise Mensch, tweeted on October 11, 2016: " #PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done."

As noted in The Intercept and elsewhere, this was re-reported by the likes of David Frum (a key member of the club that has now contributed to both the WMD and Russiagate panics) and MSNBC host Joy Reid . The reports didn't stop until roughly October of 2016, among other things because the Clinton campaign kept suggesting to reporters the emails were fake. This could have been stopped sooner if examples of a forgery had been demanded from the Clinton campaign earlier.

Another painful practice that became common was failing to confront your own sources when news dispositive to what they've told you pops up. The omnipresent Clapper told Chuck Todd on March 5, 2017, without equivocation, that there had been no FISA application involving Trump or his campaign. " I can deny it ," he said.

It soon after came out this wasn't true. The FBI had a FISA warrant on Carter Page. This was not a small misstatement by Clapper, because his appearance came a day after Trump claimed in a tweet he'd had his " wires tapped ." Trump was widely ridiculed for this claim, perhaps appropriately so, but in addition to the Page news, it later came out there had been a FISA warrant of Paul Manafort as well, during which time Trump may have been the subject of " incidental " surveillance.

Whether or not this was meaningful, or whether these warrants were justified, are separate questions. The important thing is, Clapper either lied to Todd, or else he somehow didn't know the FBI had obtained these warrants. The latter seems absurd and unlikely. Either way, Todd ought to been peeved and demanded an explanation. Instead, he had Clapper back on again within months and gave him the usual softball routine, never confronting him about the issue.

Reporters repeatedly got burned and didn't squawk about it. Where are the outraged stories about all the scads of anonymous "people familiar with the matter" who put reporters in awkward spots in the last years? Why isn't McClatchy demanding the heads of whatever "four people with knowledge" convinced them to double down on the Cohen-in-Prague story ?

Why isn't every reporter who used "New Knowledge" as a source about salacious Russian troll stories out for their heads (or the heads of the congressional sources who passed this stuff on), after reports they faked Russian trolling? How is it possible NBC and other outlets continued to use New Knowledge as a source in stories identifying antiwar Democrat Tulsi Gabbard as a Russian-backed candidate?

How do the Guardian's editors not already have Harding's head in a vice for hanging them out to dry on the most dubious un-retracted story in modern history – the tale that the most watched human on earth, Julian Assange, had somehow been visited in the Ecuadorian embassy by Paul Manafort without leaving any record? I'd be dragging Harding's "well placed source" into the office and beating him with a hose until he handed them something that would pass for corroborating evidence.

The lack of blowback over episodes in which reporters were put in public compromised situations speaks to the overly cozy relationships outlets had with official sources. Too often, it felt like a team effort, where reporters seemed to think it was their duty to take the weight if sources pushed them to overreach. They had absolutely no sense of institutional self-esteem about this.

Being on any team is a bad look for the press, but the press being on team FBI/CIA is an atrocity, Trump or no Trump. Why bother having a press corps at all if you're going to go that route?

This posture all been couched as anti-Trump solidarity, but really, did former CIA chief John Brennan – the same Brennan who should himself have faced charges for lying to congress about hacking the computers of Senate staff – need the press to whine on his behalf when Trump yanked his security clearance? Did we need the press to hum Aretha Franklin tunes, as ABC did, and chide Trump for lacking R-E-S-P-E-C-T for the CIA? We don't have better things to do than that "work"?

This catalogue of factual errors and slavish stenography will stand out when future analysts look back at why the "MSM" became a joke during this period, but they were only a symptom of a larger problem. The bigger issue was a radical change in approach.

A lot of #Russiagate coverage became straight-up conspiracy theory, what Baker politely called "connecting the dots ." This was allowed because the press committed to a collusion narrative from the start, giving everyone cover to indulge in behaviors that would never be permitted in normal times.

Such was the case with Jonathan Chait's #Russiagate opus , "PRUMP TUTIN: Will Trump be Meeting With his Counterpart – or his Handler?" The story was also pitched as "What if Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987," which recalls the joke from The Wire: " Yo, Herc, what if your mother and father never met ?" What if isn't a good place to be in this business.

This cover story (!) in New York magazine was released in advance of a planned "face-to-face" summit between Trump and Putin, and posited Trump had been under Russian control for decades. Chait noted Trump visited the Soviet Union in 1987 and came back "fired up with political ambition." He offered the possibility that this was a coincidence, but added:

Indeed, it seems slightly insane to contemplate the possibility that a secret relationship between Trump and Russia dates back this far. But it can't be dismissed completely.

I searched the Chait article up and down for reporting that would justify the suggestion Trump had been a Russian agent dating back to the late eighties, when, not that it matters, Russia was a different country called the Soviet Union.

Only two facts in the piece could conceivably have been used to support the thesis: Trump met with a visiting Soviet official in 1986, and visited the Soviet Union in 1987. That's it. That's your cover story.

Worse, Chait's theory was first espoused in Lyndon Larouche's " Elephants and Donkeys " newsletter in 1987, under a headline, "Do Russians have a Trump card?" This is barrel-scraping writ large.

It's a mania. Putin is literally in our underpants. Maybe, if we're lucky, New York might someday admit its report claiming Russians set up an anti-masturbation hotline to trap and blackmail random Americans is suspicious, not just because it seems absurd on its face, but because its source is the same "New Knowledge" group that admitted to faking Russian influence operations in Alabama.

But what retraction is possible for the Washington Post headline, " How will Democrats cope if Putin starts playing dirty tricks for Bernie Sanders (again )?" How to reverse Rachel Maddow's spiel about Russia perhaps shutting down heat across America during a cold wave? There's no correction for McCarthyism and fearmongering.

This ultimately will be the endgame of the Russia charade. They will almost certainly never find anything like the wild charges and Manchurian Candidate theories elucidated in the Steele report. But the years of panic over the events of 2016 will lead to radical changes in everything from press regulation to foreign policy, just as the WMD canard led to torture, warrantless surveillance, rendition, drone assassination, secret budgets and open-ended, undeclared wars from Somalia to Niger to Syria. The screw-ups will be forgotten, but accelerated vigilance will remain.

It's hard to know what policy changes are appropriate because the reporting on everything involving the Russian threat in the last two to three years has been so unreliable.

I didn't really address the case that Russia hacked the DNC, content to stipulate it for now. I was told early on that this piece of the story seemed "solid," but even that assertion has remained un-bolstered since then, still based on an " assessment " by the intelligence services that always had issues, including the use of things like RT's "anti-American" coverage of fracking as part of its case. The government didn't even examine the DNC's server, the kind of detail that used to make reporters nervous.

We won't know how much of any of this to take seriously until the press gets out of bed with the security services and looks at this whole series of events all over again with fresh eyes, as journalists, not political actors. That means being open to asking what went wrong with this story, in addition to focusing so much energy on Trump and Russia.

The WMD mess had massive real-world negative impact, leading to over a hundred thousand deaths and trillions in lost taxpayer dollars. Unless Russiagate leads to a nuclear conflict, we're unlikely to ever see that level of consequence.

Still, Russiagate has led to unprecedented cooperation between the government and Internet platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, all of which are censoring pages on the left, right, and in between in the name of preventing the "sowing of discord." The story also had a profound impact on the situation in places like Syria, where Russian and American troops have sat across the Euphrates River from one another, two amped-up nuclear powers at a crossroads.

As a purely journalistic failure, however, WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate. The sheer scale of the errors and exaggerations this time around dwarfs the last mess. Worse, it's led to most journalists accepting a radical change in mission. We've become sides-choosers, obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction.

We had the sense to eventually look inward a little in the WMD affair, which is the only reason we escaped that episode with any audience left. Is the press even capable of that kind of self-awareness now? WMD damaged our reputation. If we don't turn things around, this story will destroy it


motherjones , 31 minutes ago link

Taibbi is spot on, and in depth with this writing. The main stream media sold Americans on the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Almost 2 decades later, we have spent 6 trillion dollars, 8 millions lives have been lost, and millions of refugees have flooded out of those countries, causing instability in Europe and beyond. For the past 2 years, 24/7, we have not been able to escape the claims of Russiagate. He does not mention how the very same media gave Trump 24/7 coverage long before he was elected, and in fact this free publicity, is probably why Trump is in the White House today. Without the constant press coverage of his campaign, coverage that was not provided to other candidates, he would most likely not have found his way to the White House. Taibbi does not go on to tell us what the motivation of the press is, or what he thinks can be done. News shows in the US have become little more than entertainment. Many of us no longer rely on main stream press for any real news. The mass media has become irrelevant at it's best, and dangerous, at it's worst. The driving force behind the so called news today, is the advertising dollars, and the politics of the owners of the networks. How can we have a "free press" when just a few individuals own all the major news outlets? We are not going to get the real news on tv of from the big newspapers, as long as the power is in the hands of a few rich and powerful individuals, who decide what is news.

southpaw47 , 50 minutes ago link

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread" - Alexander Pope

The rash or inexperienced will attempt things that wiser people are more cautious of.

Finally the libs will agree that guns do have their place in society. These crazy zealots may just blow their own brains out or just find the nearest cliff. Ace Hardware is loading up on rope.

hooligan2009 , 1 hour ago link

hmmm....just imagine if - sleyers money contribution fo impeach trump was turned into a movie where a "sponsor" drew up a hit list of batshit crazy MSM "personalities" to include late night "comfuckedupedians"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-25/billionaire-tom-steyer-s-quest-to-impeach-trump

PerilouseTimes , 1 hour ago link

Even if you were stupid enough to believe Trump was getting dirt on Hillary from the Russians, what is wrong with that? Is there a law against that? Why is it OK for Obama and the FBI to get away with wiretapping Trump during the election? Why is it OK for NSA to wiretap All Americans and store all their conversations and internet traffic on hard drives?

foxenburg , 1 hour ago link

Steele, Orbis, Pablo Miller, Salisbury, Porton Down, golden-shower dossier supposedly written by a native Russian speaker with an intelligence background....it all makes me wonder what happened to Skripal.

hooligan2009 , 1 hour ago link

"Skripalgate" is suppressed by UK law. All russians are evil in the UK. The fact that (as with tony Bliar and yellowcake Iraq) any sitting government can prosecute another country without a trial, witnesses or evidence - as in the Skripals and within the FUKUS cabal that bombed syria because of - "chlorine barrel bomb attacks on civilians" who later showed up unscathed in Den Haag.

UK governments cannot be held to account for their actions domestically or overseas.

motherjones , 1 hour ago link

Both parties have been playing up the threat from Russia for decades. The Military Industrial Complex was built on creating fear about the possibility of war with Russian. The military industrial complex owns Congress, so of course Congress is going to play up this threat. " The reason why media is working so hard to create the impression that Russia is actively conspiring against is because conflict with the former Soviet Union is good for business." We can expect this to continue in one form or another. If Americans were not afraid of Russia, we would not support a defense budget that is equal to all other countries in the world combined.

https://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/08/30/defense-contractors-tell-investors-world-war-iii-great-for-business/?fbclid=IwAR0rSFD3EPOgCd_dohnRg_4W1VUMcu-u33PBi9LW8Pdcv4F4pL4_MTXU31c

devnickle , 1 hour ago link

Put a sock in it. You should be embarrassed to even comment.

motherjones , 1 hour ago link

Right. The depth of your analysis is impressive. You seem to have an unlimited knowledge of world and national affairs too. Other than some stalking tendencies, why do you post on ZH? You don't really seem to have any interest in the content, or the discussion.

Bricker , 2 hours ago link

The head of the pin starts with OBAMA

I dont want to type up everything that led me to believe this. But the racism, his empathy towards certain muslims groups and how he treated the war, the prisoner release, the sailors broadcasted on tv about drifting into territorial waters, I mean it was so obvious how he felt about America.

Pile on his efforts to interfere in the election and eavesdrop, unmasking with Hillary getting and receiving emails from her home brew server not to mention her foundation pulling in 145 million from Russia.

The CIA is sickening to what has developed over the last 20 years

blind_understanding , 2 hours ago link

Taibbi: 'Russiagate' Is This Generation's WMD

Blind: If so, it just means it will not be reported on in the MainStream Media(MSM) and soon forgotten.

The same people who own the private central bank and currency, also own the MSM, and they control the narrative on ALL TOPICS. And control of narrative mean control of what people think.

Control of money and mind means TOTAL control of a country.

Nothing will change until control of minds is returned to the people, then issuance of currency can be returned to the government.

Alex Jones' of Infowars got it right when he said "There's a war on for your mind!" ... even though he became a turncoat himself, soon after.

SnottyBubbles , 2 hours ago link

Hillary lost a freaking election. After almost 3 freaking years of coup d'état the left deserves mocking humiliation. Mock them ruthlessly. Never, ever let them forget the horrible thing that they did.

Never stop making fun of them and reminding them how stupid and crazy they acted during this humiliating period of US history. Never let them forget what they did to the nation or what they cost us all. Never let Democrats forget how much time and energy they wasted, how very, very wrong they were.

Every politician, every media figure, every Twitter pundit and everyone who swallowed this moronic load of Russia! Russia! Russia! has utterly discredited themselves for life. They executed and failed to accomplish a coup d'état. These are the very last people anyone should ever listen to ever again when determining the future direction of our world or an ice cream truck.

Refuse them, laugh at them, ignore them. They earned it and deserve nothing but the greatest disdain.

devnickle , 1 hour ago link

Revenge is best served cold. I am dishing out in buckets to the retards.

artistant , 2 hours ago link

Russia is an IMPEDIMENT to APARTHEID Israhell's design for the region .

Without Russia, ASSAD would be long gone and IRAN would have been bombed to oblivion, and Greater Israhell would have been fulfilled and ruling over the MidEast.

In other words, Russiagate is simply PAYBACK .

youshallnotkill , 2 hours ago link

There was never real gray area here. Either Trump is a compromised foreign agent, or he isn't.

Of course there isn't. But this doesn't mean that a prosecutor like Mueller can prove this beyond any reasonable doubt. In fact it is quite likely that he cannot. The only charge that should be fairly easy to establish is obstruction of justice.

Without knowing what is in the report, Taibbi really jumps the gun here. Especially given the comparison to WMDs.

I knew there were no WMDs in Iraq before the invasion because I followed, and chose to believe, a credible diplomat like Hans Blix over the dog and pony show that Colin Powell put on. But WMDs are very tangible you either find the hardware or you do not. Yet, what Putin and Trump discuss without a single other American in the room nobody knows but the Kremlin and Trump.

Amy G. Dala , 2 hours ago link

Um, they talked about grandchildren and golf. MSM bought that about Bill and Loretta.

youshallnotkill , 2 hours ago link

At least Loretta probably did not aspire to bring the US to its knees.

Amy G. Dala , 2 hours ago link

Then I guess you didn't catch her "blood in the streets" speech.

youshallnotkill , 2 hours ago link

Original quote:

"It has been people, individuals who have banded together, ordinary people who simply saw what needed to be done and came together and supported those ideals who have made the difference.

They've marched, they've bled and yes, some of them died. This is hard. Every good thing is. We have done this before. We can do this again ."

Hardly the call for violent civil war at which it has been portrayed.

hanekhw , 2 hours ago link

The most coiffed, manicured, made up sacks of **** ever to glorify the airwaves tell US what THEY think and get paid handsome salaries for their effort to overthrow the American system. Freedom of Speech? That'll be gone in a heartbeat if THEY get power. We have an obligation to not just protect it but a greater one to preserve it.

Tunga , 2 hours ago link

"I didn't really address the case that Russia hacked the DNC, content to stipulate it for now." - exce

The State Department paused its investigation of the Secretary's emails so as not to interfere with the Mueller investigation. Here we see Taibbi writes an exhaustive condemnation of the Western press while leaving out the very crux of the story, the very source of the stolen DNC emails was Clapper and Brennan pretending to be Guccifer 2.0.

Pitiful attempt at redemption there Matt. Seriously, go **** your self.

"After reading several articles, it seemed clear that key difficulties for Russians communicating in English include: definite and indefinite articles, the use of presuppositions and correct usage of say/tell and said/told. Throughout 2017, I constructed a corpus of Guccifer 2.0's communications and analyzed the frequency of different types of mistakes. The results of this work corroborate Professor Connolly's assessment.

Overall, it appears Guccifer 2.0 could communicate in English quite well but chose to use inconsistently broken English at times in order to give the impression that it wasn't his primary language. The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian.

To date, Connolly's language study has not drawn any significant objections or criticism."

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-25/guccifer-20-game-over-year-end-review-0

Amy G. Dala , 2 hours ago link

Here's the goddam thing IMO. There is this thing called freedom of the press, it's constitutionally protected, no different than the right to bear arms.

But just because I have the right to carry an M+A 9mm around, that doesn't mean I can point it at the guy who cut me off in traffic. In that case, I go to jail.

For almost three years now, I've been hearing "bombshell" after unsourced "bombshell" from CNN/MSNBC/WaPo/NPR/NYT et. al. Here's how it usually goes:

  • "NPR has been unable to independently confirm, but other major news organizations are reporting that . . ."
  • "CNN is working to confirm a bombshell report from the Washington Post . . ."
  • "The New York Times, echoing other major news outlets, is reporting that . . ."

And now let's turn to our panel of experts to "unpack" this latest revelation . . .

These people have criminally abused their rights, and those rights need to be taken away.

Otschelnik,

If Rachel Maddow, Chris Mathews, Judy Woodruff, Chuck Todd, Anderson Cooper, Brian Stelter, Chris Hayes, Mika Brzezinski, Don Lemon, Alysin Camerota, Lawrence O'Donnell had the slightest inkling of professional integrity, and human conscience - they'd commit seppuku on national live TeeVee to restore their honor.

A rope leash, 3 hours ago

In his effort to cleanse himself of the slimy residue of his profession, Tiabbi has written a fine piece here, a nice little documentation of press collusion with government spooks and political operatives.

If a little honest reporting will offer some redemption to damned journalists, his name was Seth Rich.

hooligan2009, 3 hours ago

don't forget that Obama was PERSONALLY and DIRECTLY involved in all aspects of Russiagate.

read between these lines

On Oct. 14, 2016, Page again wrote to McCabe, this time concerning a meeting with the White House.

"Just called," Page said to McCabe. "Apparently the DAG [Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates] now wants to be there, and WH wants DOJ to host. So we are setting that up now. ... We will very much need to get Cohen's view before we meet with her. Better, have him weigh in with her before the meeting. We need to speak with one voice, if that is in fact the case."

newworldorder, 3 hours ago

The simple truth here is that most Americans no longer have any critical thinking skills, - all media realized this a long time ago, and catered to their audience.

The Benjamin Franklin famous quote in answer to the question of "what kind of government have you given us?" rings very hollow after 240+ years. The "Republic" exists in name only, because its people have not protected it, after the passing of the WW2 generation.

Unrestricted, open borders invasion disguised as alleged migration, and the legalization of an eventual 100+ million new "migrant" voters will be the final nail on the coffin of the US Republic by 2030.

Mob rule will finally destroy the greatest Republic ever conceived by the mind of men.

Mike Rotsch, 3 hours ago (Edited)

If "open borders" is your measuring stick on Americans' critical-thinking skills, then where does that place Europeans? They actually have them officially.

Paracelsus, 3 hours ago

Someday I hope that Hillary has to be rolled up to testify about the Benghazi business. Grab the guns and the gold (and the oil). Ukraine gold: check. Libyan gold and weapons: check.

Ghaddafi actually warned the west that after him would come a deluge of illegals (okay refugees: young males, black, often Islamic, with little respect for women or experience with western society).

While I have reservations about Trump and his policies, the MSM owe him a huge mea culpa.

[Mar 24, 2019] "Russia Gate" investigation was a color revolution agaist Trump. But a strnge side effect was that Clintons have managed to raise a vicious, loud mouthed thug to the status of some kind of martyr.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Back in November of 2016, the American people were so fed up with the neoliberal oligarchy that everyone knows really runs the country that they actually elected Donald Trump president ..."
"... The oligarchy that runs the country responded to the American people's decision by inventing a completely cock-and-bull story about Donald Trump being a Russian agent who the American people were tricked into voting for by nefarious Russian mind-control operatives, getting every organ of the liberal corporate media to disseminate and relentlessly promote this story on a daily basis for nearly three years, and appointing a special prosecutor to conduct an official investigation in order to lend it the appearance of legitimacy. Every component of the ruling establishment (i.e., the government, the media, the intelligence agencies, the liberal intelligentsia, et al.) collaborated in an unprecedented effort to remove an American president from office based on a bunch of made-up horseshit which kind of amounts to an attempted soft coup. ..."
"... It now appears that the world will see that the so-called "Russia Gate" investigation was nothing more than the pro-Clintonista BS that Trump always claimed it was. ..."
"... As for the Clintons, both Bill and Hillary, they should be treated like the creeps they are: corrupt, opportunistic and power hungry. Like Typhoid Mary, they infect everything they touch ..."
"... I'm also convinced that Trump and Clinton colluded, but that they did so in order to get her elected. I don't think he really wanted the job. But still, Hillary can do nationalist, and the designs of the Empire would have proceeded either way. ..."
"... Trump is a crook who takes money wherever he can get it, from subcontractors foolish enough to work for him to bankers dumb enough to believe his financial statements. No doubt he has helped Russian crooks sanitize their booty, but that is apparently too difficult for Mueller to prove. ..."
"... It is not good news that this troglodyte was not indicted, but it is good news that Russia was not found guilty of electing him. Russiagate is an existential issue for the "national security" establishment and just another propaganda offensive designed to justify the largely useless & destructive activities of the Pentagon. ..."
"... It is time to build cooperation not continue the stupidity of US unilateralism and pursuit of global hegemony. Trump and his team have to be removed from office. Democrats don't need Russiagate to do it. The truth will work better. ..."
Mar 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Ken , Mar 23, 2019 2:09:31 PM | link

Back in November of 2016, the American people were so fed up with the neoliberal oligarchy that everyone knows really runs the country that they actually elected Donald Trump president. They did this fully aware that Trump was a repulsive, narcissistic ass clown who bragged about "grabbing women by the pussy" and jabbered about building "a big, beautiful wall" and making the Mexican government pay for it. They did this fully aware of the fact that Donald Trump had zero experience in any political office whatsoever, was a loudmouth bigot, and was possibly out of his gourd on amphetamines half the time. The American people did not care. They were so disgusted with being conned by arrogant, two-faced, establishment stooges like the Clintons, the Bushes, and Barack Obama that they chose to put Donald Trump in office, because, fuck it, what did they have to lose?

The oligarchy that runs the country responded to the American people's decision by inventing a completely cock-and-bull story about Donald Trump being a Russian agent who the American people were tricked into voting for by nefarious Russian mind-control operatives, getting every organ of the liberal corporate media to disseminate and relentlessly promote this story on a daily basis for nearly three years, and appointing a special prosecutor to conduct an official investigation in order to lend it the appearance of legitimacy. Every component of the ruling establishment (i.e., the government, the media, the intelligence agencies, the liberal intelligentsia, et al.) collaborated in an unprecedented effort to remove an American president from office based on a bunch of made-up horseshit which kind of amounts to an attempted soft coup.

This is the story Donald Trump is going to tell the American people.
https://consentfactory.org/2019/03/21/mueller-dammerung/

GeorgeV , Mar 23, 2019 2:13:42 PM | link

It now appears that the world will see that the so-called "Russia Gate" investigation was nothing more than the pro-Clintonista BS that Trump always claimed it was. The Clintons once again, both Bill and Hillary, have managed to raise a vicious, loud mouthed thug in the White House to the status of some kind of martyr. What a country America it is. One thing should be clear however. Any politician or media pundit that towed the pro-Clintonista line should be barred from public office or the media forever.

As for the Clintons, both Bill and Hillary, they should be treated like the creeps they are: corrupt, opportunistic and power hungry. Like Typhoid Mary, they infect everything they touch. There is one difference between Typhoid Mary, and Bill and Hillary: Typhoid Mary didn't realize what she was doing, the Clintons did!

the pair , Mar 23, 2019 2:14:43 PM | link
sorry to double post, but it just occurred to me that they pulled a classic DC move: if you have something humiliating or horrible to admit, do it on a friday night.

i have to wonder if the entire western media is cynically praying for a (coincidentally distracting) school shooting or terrorist attack within the next two days.

ger , Mar 23, 2019 2:16:08 PM | link
I have close friends that have been on the MSNBC/Maddow Kool-Ade for years. Constantly declaring Mueller was on the verge of closing in on Trump and associates for treason with the Russians. On Friday night after dinner at our home, the TV was tuned to MSNBC so they could watch their spiritual leader Rachel Maddow....what a pitiful sight (both Maddow and friends). No one was going to jail or be impeached for conspiring with Putin.....how on how could that be true. Putin personally stole the election from Clinton and THEY are just going to let him walk was the declaration a few feet from my chair. Normally, I would recommend grieve counseling, but they are still my friends ... now they can go back to blaming Bernie for Clinton's loss. Maybe I will recommend grieve counseling!
DontBelieveEitherPropaganda , Mar 23, 2019 2:27:18 PM | link
@dltravers: Apart from the "goyim" you may be right.. But if you want to claim with that Trumps opponents where under the pressure of the Zionists, you got it all wrong man.. ;) No presidents been more under the Zionist thumb than DJT.
That ofc doesnt make Hillarys Saudi and Muslim brotherhood connections better.. ;)

Anyway, cheers to the end of this BS! And lets hope that Trump has now payed off his debts with Adelson now that he secured Bibis reelection. But dont hold your breath.. ;)

Nathan Mulcahy , Mar 23, 2019 2:31:06 PM | link
"very politician, every media figure, every Twitter pundit and everyone who swallowed this moronic load of bull spunk has officially discredited themselves for life".

I wish so, but that's not how the exceptional nation of US of A works, as demonstrated by the Iraq WMD fiasco case. In fact, very politician, every media figure, every Twitter pundit (about Saddam's WMD" BS) is alive and well, spreading more BS. What is even more depressing is that the huge chunk of this exceptional nation cannot have enough of the BS and is chanting "give me more, give me more...".

Disgusting! sorry for the pessimistic rant.

renfro , Mar 23, 2019 2:56:18 PM | link
The Dems were stupid to gin up the Russian collusion.

However some good things have come out of the investigation. It cost taxpayers 2 million but recouped over 25 million from those convicted of fraud and tax evasion.
And its not over, Mueller has sent 5 to 7 referrals or evidence/witnesses to SDNY, EDNY, DC, EDVA, plus the National Security and Criminal Divisions. These from information turned up crimes unrelated to his Russia probe and allegedly concerning Trump or his family business, a cadre of his advisers and associates. They are being conducted by officials from Los Angeles to Brooklyn.

The bad news is it exposed how wide spread and corrupt the US has become...in private and political circles.

The other bad news is most of the Trump lovers and Trump haters are too stupid to drop their partisan and personal blinders and recognize that ....ITS THE CORRUPTION STUPID.

BraveNewWorld , Mar 23, 2019 3:00:34 PM | link
b you have repeatedly made the case that this whole thing was kicked off by the Steele dossier. That is factually incorrect. The first investigation was already running before the dossier ever materialized. That investigation spawned the special prosecutors investigation when Trump fired Comey and then went on TV and said it was because of the Russia investigation. The Russia investigation was originally kicked off by Papadopoulos drinking with the the Australian ambassador and bragging about what the campaign was doing with Russia. Remember the original evidence was presented to the leadership of both the House and the Senate when they were both controlled by the Republican party and every one that was briefed came out on camera and said the Justice dept was doing the right thing in pursuing this.

I think the Democrats should lose Hillary down a deep hole and not let her near any of the coming campaign events. But this came about because of the actions of the people around Trump. Not because Hillary controls the US government from some secret bunker some where.

Lozion , Mar 23, 2019 3:09:29 PM | link
One could argue Russiagate was on the contrary quite a success. The Elites behind the scheme never believed it would end up with Trump's impeachment. What they did accomplish though is a deflection via "Fake News" from the Dem's election failures & shenanigans and refocus the attention towards the DNC's emerging pedophilia scandals (Weiner, the Podesta's, Alefantis, etc) & suspicious deaths (Seth Rich, etc) towards a dead-end with the added corollary of preventing US/Ru rapprochement for more then half an administration..
Blooming Barricade , Mar 23, 2019 3:10:02 PM | link
The deeply tragic thing about this for the media, the neocons, and the liberals is that they brought it upon themselves by moving the goalposts continuously. If, after Hillary lost, they had stuck to the "Russia hacked WikiLeaks" lie, then they probably have sufficient proof from their perspective and the perspective of most of the public that Russia helped Trump win. In this case it would be remembered by the Democrats like the stolen election of 2000 (albeit the fact that it was a lie this time). They had multiple opportunities to jump off this train. Even the ridiculous DNI report could have been their final play: "Russia helped Trump." Instead of going with 2000 they went with 2001, aka 9-11, with the same neocon fearmongers playing the pipe organ of lies. As soon as they accepted the Steele Dossier, moving the focus to "collusion" they discredited themselves forever. Many of the lead proponents were discredited Iraq war hawks. Except this time it was actually worse because the whole media bought into it. This leaves an interesting conundrum: there were at least some pro-Afghanistan anti-Iraq warmongers who rejected the Bush premise in the media, so they took over the airwaves for about two years before the real swamp creatures returned. This time, it will be harder to issue a mea culpa. They made this appear like 9-11, well, this time the truthers have won, and they are doomed.
dh-mtl , Mar 23, 2019 3:11:13 PM | link
Societies collapse when their systems (institutions) become compromised. When they are no longer capable of meeting the needs of the population, or of adapting to a changing world.

Societal systems become compromised when their decision making structures, which are designed to ensure that decisions are taken in the best interest of the society as a whole, are captured by people who have no legitimacy to make the decisions, and who make decisions for the benefit of themselves, at the expense of society as a whole.

Russia-gate is a flagrant example of how the law enforcement and intelligence institutions have been captured. Their top officials, no longer loyal to their country or their institution, but rather to an international elite (including the likes of Soros, the Clintons, and far beyond) have used these institutions in an attempt to delegitimize a constitutionally elected president and to over turn an election. This is no less than treason of the highest order.

Indeed, the actions much of the Washington establishment, as well as a number international actors, since Trump was elected seems suspiciously like one of the 'Color Revolutions' that are visited upon any country who's citizens did not 'vote right' the first time. Over-throw the vote, one way or another, until the result that is wanted is achieved. None of these 'Color Revolutions' has resulted in anything good for the country involved. Rather they have resulted in the destruction of each country's institutions, and eventually societal collapse.

In the U.S. the capturing of systems' decision making structures is not limited to Russia-Gate and the overturning of the electoral system. Their are other prime examples:

- The capture of the Air Transport Safety System by Boeing that has resulted in the recent 737 Max crashes, and likely the destruction of the reputation of the U.S. aviation industry, in an industry where reputation is everything.

- The capture of the Financial Regulatory System, by Wall Street, who in 1998 rewrote the rules in their own favor, against the best interests of the population as a whole. The result was the 2008 financial crisis and the inability of the U.S. economy to effectively recover from that crisis.

- This capture is also seen in international diplomatic systems, where the U.S. is systematically by-passing or subverting international law and international institutions, (the U.N. I.C.J., I.N.F. treaty) etc., and in doing so is destroying these institutions and the ability to maintain peace.

The result of system (institution) capture is difficult to see at first. But, in time, the damage adds up, the ability of the systems to meet the needs of the population disappears, and societal decline sets in.

It looks today like the the societal decline is acellerating. Russia-gate is just one of many indicators.

English Outsider , Mar 23, 2019 3:27:38 PM | link
The pair @ 3.

Your comment on the BBC is on the mild side. I listen to it when I drive in in the morning and also get annoyed sometimes. When it is reporting on the Westminster bubble it is factually accurate as far as I can judge. Apart from that, and particularly in the case of the BBC news, we're in information control territory.

But accept that and the BBC turns into quite a valuable resource. It's well staffed, has good contacts, and picks up what the politicians want us to think with great accuracy.

In that respect it's better than the newspapers and better also than the American media. Those news outlets have several masters of which the political elite is only one. The BBC has just the one master, the political elite, and is as sensitive as a stethoscope to the shifting currents within that political elite.

So I wouldn't despise the BBC entirely. It tells us how the politicians want us to think. In telling us that it sometimes gives us a bearing on what the politicians et al are doing and what they intend to do.

worldblee , Mar 23, 2019 3:28:20 PM | link
The never-Trumpers will never let their dreams die. Of course, they never oppose Trump on substantive issues like attempting a coup in Venezuela, withdrawing from the INF treaty, supporting the nazis in Ukraine, supporting Al Qaeda forces in Syria, etc. But somehow they're totally against him and ready to haul out the latest stupid thing he said as their daily fodder for conversation...
ben , Mar 23, 2019 3:32:48 PM | link
renfro @ 10 said;"The Dems were stupid to gin up the Russian collusion."

Uh no, just doing their job of distracting the public, while ignoring the real issues the
American workers care about. You know, the things DJT promised the workers, but has never delivered.(better health care for all, ending the useless wars overseas, an infrastructure
plan to increase good paying jobs), to name just a few.

The corporate Dems( which is the lions share of them), are bought and paid for to distract, and they've done it well.

The Bushes, the Clintons, the Obamas, and most who have come before, are of the same ilk.

Bend over workers and lube up, for more of the same in 2020...

Jackrabbit , Mar 23, 2019 3:48:10 PM | link
I profoundly disagree with the notion that Russiagate had anything to do with Hillary's collusion with the DNC. Gosh, that is naive at best.
1) Hillary didn't need to collude against Sanders - the additional money that she got from doing so was small change compared the to overall amount she raised for her campaign.

2) Sanders was a long-time friend of the Clintons. He boasted that he's known Hillary for over 25 years.

3) Sanders was a sheepdog meant to keep progressives in the Democratic Party. He was never a real candidate. He refused to attack Hillary on character issues and remained loyal even after Hillary-DNC collusion was revealed.

When Sanders had a chance to total disgrace Hillary, he refused to do so. Hillary repeatedly said that she had NEVER changed for vote for money but Warren had proven that she had: Hillary changed her vote on the Bankruptcy Bill for money from the credit card industry.

4) Hillary didn't try to bury her collusion with the DNC (as might be expected), instead she used it to alienate progressive voters by bring Debra Wasserman-Shultz into her campaign.

5) Hillary also alienated or ignored other important constituencies: she wouldn't support an increase in the minimum wage but accepted $750,000 from Goldman Sachs for a speech; she took the black vote for granted and all-but berated a Black Lives Matters activist; and she called whites "deplorables".

Hillary threw the race to her OTHER long-time friend in the race: Trump. The Deep-State wanted a nationalist and that's just what they got.

6) Hillary and the DNC has shown NO REMORSE whatsoever about colluding with Sanders and Sanders has shown no desire whatsoever to hold them accountable.

IMO Russiagate (Russian influence on Trump) and accusations of "Russian meddling" in the election are part of the same McCarthyist psyop to direct hate at Russia and stamp out any dissent. Trump probably knowingly, played into the Deep State's psyop by:

> hiring Manafort;

> calling on Russia to release Hillary's emails;

> talking about Putin in a admiring way.

And it accomplished much more than hating on Russia:

> served as excuse for Trump to do Deep State bidding;

> distracted from the real meddling in the 2016 election;

> served as a device for settling scores:

- Assange isolated
(Wikileaks was termed an "agent of a foreign power");

- Michael Flynn forced to resign
(because he spoke to the Russian ambassador).

hopehely , Mar 23, 2019 3:49:15 PM | link The US owes Russia an official apology. And also Russia should get its stolen buildings and the consulate back. And maybe to get paid some compensation for the injustice and for damages suffered. Without that, the Russiagate is not really over.
Jen , Mar 23, 2019 4:01:43 PM | link
BraveNewWorld @ 11:

If memory serves me correctly, the initial accusations of collusion between DJT's presidential campaign and the Kremlin came from Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company hired by the Democratic National Committee to oversee the security of its computers and databases. This was done to deflect attention away from Hillary Clinton's illegal use of a personal server at home to conduct government business during her time as US State Secretary (2009 - 2013), business which among other things included plotting with the US embassy in Libya (and the then US ambassador Chris Stevens) to overthrow Muammar Gaddhafi's government in 2011, and conspiring also to overthrow the elected government in Honduras in 2010.

The business of Christopher Steele's dossier (part or even most of which could have been written by Sergei Skripal, depending on who you read) and George Papadopoulos' conversation with the half-wit Australian "diplomat" Alexander Downer in London were brought in to bolster the Russiagate claims and make them look genuine.

As B says, Crowdstrike does indeed have a Ukrainian nationalist agenda: its founder and head Dmitri Alperovich is a Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council (the folks who fund Bellingcat's crapaganda) and which itself receives donations from Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk. Crowdstrike has some association with one of the Chalupa sisters (Alexandra or Andrea - I can't be bothered dredging through DuckDuckGo to check which - but one of them was employed by the DNC) who donated money to the Maidan campaign that overthrew Viktor Yanukovych's government in Kiev in February 2014.

james , Mar 23, 2019 4:16:03 PM | link
thanks b... i would like russiagate to be finished, but i tend to see it much like kadath @2.. the link @2 is worth the read as a reminder of how far the usa has sunk in being a nation of passive neocons... emptywheel can't say no to this as witnessed by her article from today.. ) as a consequence, i agree with @14 dh-mtl's conclusion - "It looks today like the the societal decline is acellerating. Russia-gate is just one of many indicators."

the irony for those of us who don't live in the usa, is we are going to have watch this sad state of affairs continue to unravel, as the usa and the west continue to unravel in tandem.. the msm as corporate mouthpiece is not going to be tell us anything of relevance.. instead it will be continued madcow, or maddow bullshit 24-7... amd as kadath notes @2 - if any of them are to step up as a truth teller - they will be marginalized or silenced... so long as the mainstream swallow what they are fed in the msm, the direction of the titanic is still on track...

@19 hopehely... you can forget about anything like that happening..

WDDiM , Mar 23, 2019 4:36:17 PM | link
What Difference Does it Make?
They don't really need Russia-gate anymore. It bought them time. As we speak nuclear bombers make runs near Russian borders every day and Russian consulates get attacked with heavy weaponry in the EU and no Russian outlet is even making a reference,while Israel is ready to move heavy artillery in to Golan targeting Russia bases in Syria and China raking all their deals for civilian projects in the Med.
Russia got stuffed in the corner getting all the punches.
Zanon , Mar 23, 2019 4:37:43 PM | link
What a horrible witch hunt, but the msm will keep on denying and keep creating new hoaxes about Trump, Russia.
Heck the media even deny there was no collussion, they keep spinning it in different ways!

But remember folks, we here was always right...
The Mueller Report Is In. They Were Wrong. We Were Right.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-mueller-report-is-in-they-were-wrong-we-were-right-a915d23a6d82

iv> also, there is a big risk that the media, deep state will create new accusations coming days.

Posted by: Zanon , Mar 23, 2019 4:39:30 PM | link

also, there is a big risk that the media, deep state will create new accusations coming days.

Posted by: Zanon | Mar 23, 2019 4:39:30 PM | link

Russ , Mar 23, 2019 4:41:30 PM | link
People are forgetting to call Dembot agent Wheeler "FBI rat Wheeler", or just Rat Wheeler. Or EmptySqueal.
karlof1 , Mar 23, 2019 4:47:23 PM | link
Thanks for citing Caitlin Johnstone's wonderful epitaph, b--Russiavape indeed!

During the fiasco, the Outlaw US Empire provided excellent proof to the world that it does everything it accused Russia of doing and more, while Russia's cred has greatly risen. Meanwhile, there're numerous other crimes Trump, his associates, Clinton, her associates--like Pelosi--ought to be impeached, removed from office, arrested, then tried in court, which is diametrically opposed to the current--false--narrative.

Scotch Bingeington , Mar 23, 2019 4:47:39 PM | link
The people who steered us into two years of Russiavape insanity are the very last people anyone should ever listen to ever again when determining the future direction of our world.

Yes, absolutely. And not just regarding the world's future, but even if you happen to be in the same building with one of them and he/she bursts into your already smoke-filled room yelling that the house is on fire.

Btw, whatever authority has ever ruled that "ex-MI6 dude" Steele (who doesn't remind me of steel at all, but rather of a certain nondescript entity named Anthony Blair) is in fact merely 'EX'? He himself? The organisation? The Queen perhaps?

Zanon , Mar 23, 2019 4:52:41 PM | link
Scotch Bingeington

Expose them at every opportunity, they should not get away with this like nothing happend:

If you think a single Russiagate conspiracist is going to be held accountable for media malpractice, you clearly haven't been awake the past 2 decades. No one will pay for being wrong. This profession is as corrupt & rotten as the kleptocracy it serves

defeatism isn't the answer -- should remind & mock these hacks every opportunity. Just need to be aware of the beast we're up against.


https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/1109235461430657026
Jackrabbit , Mar 23, 2019 5:00:23 PM | link
Who will say that the King has no clothes?

The establishment plays on peoples fears and so we all sink together as we all cling to our "lesser evils", tribal allegiances, and try to avoid the embarrassment of being wrong.

Although everyone is aware of the corruption and insider dealing, no one seems to want to acknowledge the extent, or to think critically so as to reveal any more than we already know.

It's almost as though corruption (the King's nudity) is a national treasure and revealing it would be a national security breach in the exceptional nation.

And so to the Deep State cabal continues to rule unimpeded.

WDDiM , Mar 23, 2019 5:08:16 PM | link
The oligarchy that runs the country responded to the American people's decision by inventing a completely cock-and-bull story about Donald Trump being a Russian agent who the American people were tricked into voting for by nefarious Russian mind-control operatives, getting every organ of the liberal corporate media to disseminate and relentlessly promote this story on a daily basis for nearly three years

Posted by: Ken | Mar 23, 2019 2:09:31 PM | 4

You people don't get it do you?
'The Plan' was to get rid of Turkey-Russia-Israel (and a few others) with one fell swoop....

steve , Mar 23, 2019 5:11:08 PM | link
Deep state makes the warren commish seem authoritative
john , Mar 23, 2019 5:13:37 PM | link
the rot in DC is palpable. this whole russiagate fiasco's been like some kind of really bad audition for deeper state kabuki...what's next?

keeping brand Trump alive.

Blooming Barricade , Mar 23, 2019 5:22:08 PM | link
Matt Taibbi:

It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD
The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-million

Pft , Mar 23, 2019 5:38:41 PM | link
Russia gate was both a diversion from the real collusions (Russian Mafia , China and Israel) and a clever ruse to allow Trump to back off from his campaign promise to improve relations with Russia. US policy toward Russia is no different under Trump than it was during Obamas administration. Exactly what the Russia Gaters wanted and Trump delivered.

That Mueller could find nothing more than some tax/money laundering/perjury charges in which the culprits in the end get pardoned is hardly surprising given his history. Want something covered up? Put Mueller on it.

To show how afraid Trump was of Mueller he appointed his long term friend Barr as AJ and pretended he didn't know how close they were when it came out. There is no lie people wont believe. Lol

Meanwhile Trumps Russian Mafia connections stay under the radar in MSM, Trump continues as Bibi's sock puppet, the fake trade war with China continues as Ivanka is rolling in China trademarks .

The Rothschild puppet that bailed out Trumps casinos as Commerce Secretary overseeing negotiations that will open the doors for more US and EU (they willy piggy back on the deal like hyenas) jobs to go to China (this time in financial/services) and stronger IPR protections that will facilitate this transfer, and will provide companies more profits in which to buyback stocks but wont bring manufacturing jobs back.

tuyzentfloot , Mar 23, 2019 5:46:31 PM | link
The collusion story has been hit badly and it will likely lose its momentum, but I wonder how far reaching this loss of momentum is. There are many variants. The 'unwitting accomplice' is an oxymoron which isn't finished yet. The Russians hacking the election: not over. The Russians sowing discord and division. Not over. Credibility of the Russiagate champions overall? Not clear. Some could take a serious hit. Brennan and other insiders who made it onto cable tv?
It is possible that the whole groupthink about Russiagate changes drastically
and that 'the other claims' also lose their credibility but it's far from certain. After years of building up tension Russia's policies are also changing. I think they have shown restraint but their paranoia and aggressiveness is also increasing and some claims will become true after all.
JOHN CHUCKMAN , Mar 23, 2019 5:48:55 PM | link

"Russiagate" has always been a meaningless political fraud.

When folks like Hillary Clinton sign on to something and give it a great deal of weight, you really do know you are talking about an empty bag of tricks. She is a psychopathic liar, one with a great deal of blood on her hands.

My problem with this official result is that it may tend to give Trump a boost, new credibility.

The trouble with Trump has never been Russia - something only blind ideologues and people with the minds of children believe - it is that he is genuinely ignorant and genuinely arrogant and loud-mouthed - an extremely dangerous combination.

And in trying to defend himself, this genuine coward has completely surrendered American foreign policy to its most dangerous enemies, the Neocons.


https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/04/20/john-chuckman-comment-americas-democrats-launch-lawsuit-against-trump-and-russia-and-wiki-leaks-over-election-hilarious-this-is-a-country-fit-to-dominate-the-earth-they-cant-manage-their-own/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2017/03/03/john-chuckman-comment-yet-more-ignorant-gossip-and-innuendo-about-trump-and-russia-this-all-reminds-me-of-insane-past-american-campaigns-against-procter-gamble-or-harry-potter-charging-devil/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/12/08/john-chuckman-comment-what-americas-neocons-represent-for-arms-control-agreements-such-as-the-inf-with-russia-and-heres-the-deadly-weakness-in-trumps-psychology-that-has-allowed-neocons-to-ta/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/john-chuckman-comment-a-comment-rightly-asks-with-trump-doing-everything-the-establishment-wants-why-do-they-still-want-to-get-rid-of-him-i-think-these-are-the-essential-reasons/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/john-chuckman-comment-some-very-dark-thoughts-of-where-america-is-going-in-its-relations-with-russia-and-iran-i-do-think-we-live-in-dangerous-times-and-they-are-deliberately-manufactured/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2017/04/08/john-chuckman-comment-complete-degradation-of-a-self-styled-great-nation-which-allows-paid-thugs-to-use-poison-gas-to-give-it-an-excuse-for-still-more-killing-the-dark-place-we-are-brought-to-by-tr/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/12/06/john-chuckman-comment-more-on-the-strange-phenomenon-of-trump-and-americas-neocons-a-man-who-imagines-himself-a-great-leader-leading-nothing-and-he-still-has-pathetic-followers-who-think-hes-fi/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2017/12/14/john-chuckman-comment-new-phony-book-on-trump-and-russia-whats-really-going-on-with-all-the-mumbo-jumbo-insanity-in-america-the-real-target-aint-trump-neocons-and-russia/


Jackrabbit , Mar 23, 2019 5:59:03 PM | link
Blaming Russiagate on Hillary is very easy for those who hate her or hope that Trump will deliver on his faux populist fake-agenda.

No one wants to contemplate the possibility that Hillary and Trump, and the duopoly they lead, fixed the election and planned Russiagate in advance.

It seems a bridge too far, even for the smart skeptics at MoA.

So funny.

Trump has proven himself to be a neocon. He broke his campaign promise to investigate Hillary within DAYS of being elected. He has brought allies of his supposed enemies into his Administration.

Yet every one turns from the possibility that the election was fixed. LOL.

The horrible possibility that our "democracy" is managed is too horrible to contemplate. Lets just blame it all on Hillary.

Welcome to the rabbithole.

Copeland , Mar 23, 2019 6:23:41 PM | link
Those who have been holding their breath for two years can finally exhale. I guess the fever of hysteria will have to be attended a while longer. A malady of this kind does not easily die out overnight. Those who have been taken in, and duped for so long, can not so easily recover. The weight of so much cognitive dissonance presses down on them like a boulder. The dust of the stampeded herd behind Russiagate is enough paralyze the will of those who have succumbed.

As Joseph Conrad once wrote, "The ways of human progress are inscrutable."

Jonathan , Mar 23, 2019 7:02:54 PM | link
@37 Jackrabbit,

Of course it was fixed. That's what the Electoral College is for .

Arioch , Mar 23, 2019 7:06:26 PM | link
Russiagate is a pendulum, it reached the dead point, it would hange in the air for a moment, then it would start swinging right backwards at full speed crashign everything in the way!

It would be revealed, it was Russia who paid Muller to start that hysteria and stole money from American tax-payers and make America an international laughing stock. "Putin benefited from it", highly likely!

Muller's investigation is paid for with Manafort's seized cash and property and Manafort has made Yanukovich king of Ukraine, so Manafort is Putin's agent, so Muller is working of Putin's money, so it was Putin's collusion everything that Muller is doing! Highly likely.

fast freddy , Mar 23, 2019 7:12:20 PM | link
There is no "Liberal Media". Those whom claim to be Liberal and yet support the Warmonger Democratic Party (Republican lite) are frauds. Liberalism does not condone war and it most certainly does not support wars of aggression - especially those wars waged against defenseless nations. Neither can liberalism support trade sanctions or the subjugation of Palestinians in the Apartheid State of ISreal.
Peter , Mar 23, 2019 7:16:00 PM | link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHo6cW0HVkQ DISGRACEFUL WILL WE EVER SAY NO?
vk , Mar 23, 2019 7:24:32 PM | link
@ Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 23, 2019 3:48:10 PM | 18

We must be very careful with the words we choose, in order to paint the correct conjuncture and not to throw the bathtub with the baby inside.

It's one thing to say Bernie Sanders is not a revolutionary; it's another completely different thing to say he was in cahoots with the Clintons.

If Bernie Sanders really was a "friend" of the Clintons, then he wouldn't even have disputed the primaries against Hillary. Not only he chose to do so, but he only didn't win because the DNC threw all its weight against him.

Now, I agree he's not a revolutionary socialist. He's an imperialist who believes the spoils of the empire should be also used to build a Scandinavian-style Welfare State for the American people only. A cynic would tell you this would make him a Nazi without the race theme, but you have to keep in mind societies move in a dialectical patern, not a linear one: if you preach for "democratic socialism", you're bringing the whole package, not only the bits you want.

I believe the rise of Bernie Sanders had an overall positive impact in the world as it exists. Americans are more aware of their own contradictions (more enlightened) now than before he disputed those faithful primaries of 2016. And the most important ingredient for that, in my opinion, was the fact he was crushed by both parties; that the "establishment" acted in unison not to let him get near the WH. That was a didactic moment for the American people (or a signficant part of it).

But I agree Russiagate went well beyond just covering the Clintons' dirt in the DNC.

It may have be born like that, but, if that was the case, the elites quickly realized it had other, ampler practical uses. The main one, in my opinion, was to drive a wedge between Trump's Clash of Civilizations's doctrine -- which perceives China as the main long term enemy, and Russia as a natural ally of the West -- and the public opinon. The thing is most of the American elite is far too dependent on China's productive chain; Russia is not, and can be balkanized.

Sandwichman , Mar 23, 2019 7:30:58 PM | link
counterpoint: If the Mueller report does not EXPLICITLY exonerate Trump, it does NOT exonerate Trump.
wagelaborer , Mar 23, 2019 7:43:06 PM | link
There is a funny video compilation of the TV talking heads predicting the end of Trump, new bombshells, impeachment, etc., over the last two years.
Unfortunately, the same sort of compilation could be made of sane people predicting "this new information means the end of Russiagate" over the same time period.
The truth is that the truth doesn't matter, only the propaganda, and it has not stopped, only spun onto new hysteria.
Rob , Mar 23, 2019 7:58:15 PM | link
As others have said, hard core Russiagaters will likely not be convinced that they have been wrong all along. They have too much emotional investment in the grand conspiracy theory to simply let it go. Rather, they will forever point to what they believe are genuine bits of evidence and curse Mueller for not following the leads. And the Dems in the House of Representatives will waste more time and resources on pointless investigations in an effort to keep the public sufficiently distracted from more important matters, such as the endless wars and coups that they support. A pox on all their houses, both Democrats and Republicans.
Sandwichman , Mar 23, 2019 8:08:59 PM | link
"...hard core Russiagaters will likely not be convinced that they have been wrong all along."

Wrong about what? There seems to be "narrative" operative here that there are only two positions on this matter: the "right" one and the "wrong" one and nothing else.

Sunny Runny Burger , Mar 23, 2019 8:10:36 PM | link
Ben nails it in "Mar 23, 2019 3:32:48 PM | 17".

Ben's and other comments might make this a little bit superfluous but it's short.

A case of divide and conquer against the population

This time it was a fabricated scandal.

Continued control over "facts" and narratives, the opportunity for efficient misdirection and distraction, stealing and wasting other people's time and effort, spurious disagreements, wearing down relations.

The illusion of choice, (false) opposition, blinded "oversight", and mythical claims concerning a civilian government (in the case of the US: "of, for, and by" or something like that).

Who knew or knows is irrelevant as long as the show goes on. There's nothing to prove anything significant about who if anyone may or may not be behind the curtain and thus on towards the next big or small scandal we go because people will be dissatisfied and hungry and ready to bite as hard as possible on some other bait for or against something.

Maybe "Russiagate" was impeccably engineered or maybe it organically outcompeted other distractions on offer that would ultimately also waste enormous amounts of time and effort.

Management by crisis

The scandals, crises, "Science says" games and rubbish, outrage narratives, and any other manipulations attempt and perhaps succeed at controlling the US and the world through spam.

Jackrabbit , Mar 23, 2019 8:11:22 PM | link
Jonathan @39: Of course it was fixed. That's what the Electoral College is for.

Well, you can say the same think about money-as-speech , gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc. Despite all these, Americans believe that their democracy works.

I contend that what we witnessed in 2016 was a SHOW. Like American wrestling. It was (mostly) fake. The proper term for this is kayfabe .

<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

And we have seen other 'shows' also, like:

> White Helmets;

>> Skripal;

>> the Kavanaugh hearings;

>> pulling troops out of Syria.

aspnaz , Mar 23, 2019 8:19:24 PM | link
My advice to the yanks mourning Russiagate: move to the UK. The sick Brits will keep the Russia hating cult alive even after they spend a decade puking over Brexit.
mourning dove , Mar 23, 2019 8:50:48 PM | link
Jackrabbit @18
So, you don't think HRC qualifies as a nationalist? She can't fake populist, but she can do nationalist.
I also think she is much too ambitious to have intentionally thrown the election. It was her turn dammit! Take a look at her behavior as First Lady if you think she's the kind of personality that is content to wield power from behind the scenes.
Cortes , Mar 23, 2019 8:51:27 PM | link
As usual, a fine essay. Thank you.

A couple of suggestions?

The headline would be better worded "Russiagate really is finished."

And the reaction at Colonel Lang's site makes interesting reading.

Les , Mar 23, 2019 8:55:52 PM | link
They didn't fall for the Steele dossier. I recall that emptywheel had discredited the dossier during the election as it was known to have been rejected by major media outlets leading up to the election. I think they merely fell behind the others as the outgoing administration, the Democrats, the CIA, and the media chose to use the dossier to 'blackmail' Trump.
paul , Mar 23, 2019 8:56:02 PM | link
The most important fruit of russiagate, from the view of the establishment of the hegemon, is that America has now taken a giant step towards full bore censorship.
Jackrabbit , Mar 23, 2019 9:00:35 PM | link
vk @43

We must be very careful ... and not to throw the bathtub with the baby inside.
Don't we already have plenty of evidence that there is no precious democratic baby in the bath? What do you think the Yellow Vests are doing every weekend?

If Bernie Sanders really was a "friend" of the Clintons, then he wouldn't even have disputed the primaries against Hillary.
Why not? Do you know him personally? Can you vouch for him?

Have you read this: Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders: Sheepdogging for Hillary and the Democrats in 2016 ?

Bernie referred to Hillary as "my friend" many times on the campaign trail. He told Politico that he's known her for 25 years but they are not "best friends". That's Sander's typical word judo. Like when he was asked about Zionism, his response: what's that?

The fact is, Bernie is friendly with all the top Democrats: Obama campaigned for him and Schumer wouldn't allow funding for democratic candidates that opposed him.

Then there's other strangeness. Like Bernie's refusal to release his 2014 tax returns. Bernie said his returns were "boring" but when his 2015 tax return was delayed the press asked him to release his 2014 return (Hillary boasted that she had released 10 years of returns). Bernie refused.

Now, I agree he's not a revolutionary socialist.... I believe the rise of Bernie Sanders had an overall positive impact in the world as it exists.
Really? LOL. Sanders REFUSED to lead a Movement for real change. That might've changed things for the better Mi>- like the Yellow Vests are changing things for the better.

What have we seen from the Democratics since 2016? Bullshit like Russiagate, meaningless astroturf activism around bathrooms and statues, and outlandish policies like open borders. These things just irritate most Americans and will lead to more failure for the Democrats and another 4 years for Trump.

Lastly, you said nothing about Bernie's refusal to attack Hillary on character issues and to counter her assertion that she NEVER changed her vote for money. Other examples: Bernie refused to discuss Hillary's home email server, never mentioned Hillary's well known work to squash investigations of Bill Clinton for abusing women (Jennifer Flowers), and didn't talk about other scandals like Benghazi ("What difference does it make") and her glee at the overthrow of Quadaffi ("we came, we saw, we kicked his ass").

And what of Trump? He was the ONLY republican populist in a field of 19. Do you find that even a little bit strange?

Jackrabbit , Mar 23, 2019 9:02:11 PM | link
Sorry, here's a more readable version:

We must be very careful ... and not to throw the bathtub with the baby inside.
Don't we already have plenty of evidence that there is no precious democratic baby in the bath? What do you think the Yellow Vests are doing every weekend?

If Bernie Sanders really was a "friend" of the Clintons, then he wouldn't even have disputed the primaries against Hillary.
Why not? Do you know him personally? Can you vouch for him?

Have you read this: Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders: Sheepdogging for Hillary and the Democrats in 2016 ?

Bernie referred to Hillary as "my friend" many times on the campaign trail. He told Politico that he's known her for 25 years but they are not "best friends". That's Sander's typical word judo. Like when he was asked about Zionism, his response: what's that?

The fact is, Bernie is friendly with all the top Democrats: Obama campaigned for him and Schumer wouldn't allow funding for democratic candidates that opposed him.

Then there's other strangeness. Like Bernie's refusal to release his 2014 tax returns. Bernie said his returns were "boring" but when his 2015 tax return was delayed the press asked him to release his 2014 return (Hillary boasted that she had released 10 years of returns) . Bernie refused.

Now, I agree he's not a revolutionary socialist.... I believe the rise of Bernie Sanders had an overall positive impact in the world as it exists.
Really? LOL. Sanders REFUSED to lead a Movement for real change. That might've changed things for the better Mi>- like the Yellow Vests are changing things for the better.

What have we seen from the Democratics since 2016? Bullshit like Russiagate, meaningless astroturf activism around bathrooms and statues, and outlandish policies like open borders. These things just irritate most Americans and will lead to more failure for the Democrats and another 4 years for Trump.

Lastly, you said nothing about Bernie's refusal to attack Hillary on character issues and to counter her assertion that she NEVER changed her vote for money. Other examples: Bernie refused to discuss Hillary's home email server, never mentioned Hillary's well known work to squash investigations of Bill Clinton for abusing women (Jennifer Flowers), and didn't talk about other scandals like Benghazi ("What difference does it make") and her glee at the overthrow of Quadaffi ("we came, we saw, we kicked his ass").

And what of Trump? He was the ONLY republican populist in a field of 19. Do you find that even a little bit strange?

mourning dove , Mar 23, 2019 9:06:00 PM | link
Jonathan @39
Exactly! It's the Electoral College that decides elections, not voters.
Jackrabbit , Mar 23, 2019 9:13:59 PM | link
mourning dove @57: Exactly! It's the Electoral College that decides elections, not voters.

Do you think Hillary didn't know that? She refused to campaign in the three mid-western states that would've won her the electoral college. Each of the states were won by Trump by a thin margin.

Hoarsewhisperer , Mar 23, 2019 9:14:04 PM | link
Gosh and Blimey!
Comment #56 in a thread about an utterly corrupt political system and no-one has mentioned the pro-"Israel" Lobby?
Words fail me. So I'll use someone else's...

From Xymphora March 21, 2019.

"Truth or Trope?" (Sailer):

"Of the top 50 political donors to either party at the federal level in 2018, 52 percent were Jewish and 48 percent were gentile. Individuals who identify as Jewish are usually estimated to make up perhaps 2.2 percent of the population.
Of the $675 million given by the top 50 donors, 66 percent of the money came from Jews and 34 percent from gentiles.
Of the $297 million that GOP candidates and conservative causes received from the top 50 donors, 56 percent was from Jewish individuals.
Of the $361 million Democratic politicians and liberal causes received, 76 percent came from Jewish givers.
So it turns out that Rep. Omar and Gov. LePage appear to have been correct, at least about the biggest 2018 donors. But you can also see why Pelosi wanted Omar to just shut up about it: 76 percent is a lot."

Erelis , Mar 23, 2019 9:35:12 PM | link
Next up another false flag operation. The thing is, it would have be non-trivial and involving the harming of people to jolt the narrative back to that favoring the deep state. And taking off the proverbial media table, that Mueller found no collusion. Yes, election in 2016 no collusion, but Putin was behind the latest horrific false flag, "oh look, Trump is not confronting Putin"...
daffyDuct , Mar 23, 2019 9:40:02 PM | link

Not even getting into the "treason", "putin's c*ckholster", "what's the time on Moscow, troll!" crap we've been subjected to for 3 years, please enjoy this mashup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjUvfZj-Fm0.

mourning dove , Mar 23, 2019 9:54:13 PM | link
Jackrabbit,

I've said before that she's a terrible strategist and she ran a terrible campaign and she's terribly out of touch. I think she expected a cake walk and was relying on Trump being so distasteful to voters that they'd have no other option.

I think Trump legitimately won the election and I don't believe for a second that she won the popular vote. There were so many problems with the election but since they were on the losing side, nobody cares. In 2012 I didn't know anyone else who was voting for Jill Stein, way too many people were still in love with Obama. She got .4% of the vote. In 2016 most of the people I knew were voting for Jill Stein, she drew a large crowd from DemExit, but they say she got .4% of the vote. Total bullshit. There was also ballot stuffing and lots of other problems, but it still wasn't enough.

I'm also convinced that Trump and Clinton colluded, but that they did so in order to get her elected. I don't think he really wanted the job. But still, Hillary can do nationalist, and the designs of the Empire would have proceeded either way.

jadan , Mar 23, 2019 9:56:37 PM | link

Trump is a crook who takes money wherever he can get it, from subcontractors foolish enough to work for him to bankers dumb enough to believe his financial statements. No doubt he has helped Russian crooks sanitize their booty, but that is apparently too difficult for Mueller to prove.

It is not good news that this troglodyte was not indicted, but it is good news that Russia was not found guilty of electing him. Russiagate is an existential issue for the "national security" establishment and just another propaganda offensive designed to justify the largely useless & destructive activities of the Pentagon.

It is time to build cooperation not continue the stupidity of US unilateralism and pursuit of global hegemony. Trump and his team have to be removed from office. Democrats don't need Russiagate to do it. The truth will work better.

[Mar 23, 2019] Killing for Credibility A Look Back at the 1999 NATO Air War on Serbia by Brett Wilkins

Mar 23, 2019 | original.antiwar.com

This month marks the 20th anniversary of Operation Allied Force, NATO's 78-day air war against Yugoslavia. It was a war waged as much against Serbian civilians – hundreds of whom perished – as it was against Slobodan Milošević's forces, and it was a campaign of breathtaking hypocrisy and selective outrage. More than anything, it was a war that by President Bill Clinton's own admission was fought for the sake of NATO's credibility.

One Man's Terrorist

Our story begins not in the war-torn Balkans of the 1990s but rather in the howling wilderness of Afghanistan at the end of the 1980s as defeated Soviet invaders withdrew from a decade of guerrilla warfare into the twilight of a once-mighty empire. The United States, which had provided arms, funding and training for the mujahideen fighters who had so bravely resisted the Soviet occupation, stopped supporting the jihadis as soon as the last Red Army units rolled across the Hairatan Bridge and back into the USSR. Afghanistan descended deeper into civil war.

The popular narrative posits that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network, Washington's former mujahideen allies, turned on the West after the US stationed hundreds of thousands of infidel troops in Saudi Arabia – home to two out of three of Sunni Islam's holiest sites – during Operation Desert Shield in 1990. Since then, the story goes, the relationship between the jihadists and their former benefactors has been one of enmity, characterized by sporadic terror attacks and fierce US retribution. The real story, however, is something altogether different.

From 1992 to 1995, the Pentagon flew thousands of al-Qaeda mujahideen, often accompanied by US Special Forces, from Central Asia to Europe to reinforce Bosnian Muslims as they fought Serbs to gain their independence from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Clinton administration armed and trained these fighters in flagrant violation of United Nations accords; weapons purchased by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran were secretly shipped to the jihadists via Croatia, which netted a hefty profit from each transaction. The official Dutch inquiry into the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which thousands of Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb and Serbian paramilitary forces, concluded that the United States was "very closely involved" in these arms transfers.

When the Bosnian war ended in 1995 the United States was faced with the problem of thousands of Islamist warriors on European soil. Many of them joined the burgeoning Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which mainly consisted of ethnic Albanian Kosovars from what was still southwestern Yugoslavia. Emboldened by the success of the Slovenes, Croats, Macedonians and Bosnians who had won their independence from Belgrade as Yugoslavia literally balkanized, KLA fighters began to violently expel as many non-Albanians from Kosovo as they could. Roma, Jews, Turks and, above all, Serbs were all victims of Albanian ethnic cleansing.

The United States was initially very honest in its assessment of the KLA. Robert Gelbard, the US special envoy to Bosnia, called it "without any question a terrorist group." KLA backers allegedly included Osama bin Laden and other Islamic radicals; the group largely bankrolled its activities by trafficking heroin and sex slaves. The State Department accordingly added the KLA to its list of terrorist organizations in 1998.

However, despite all its nastiness the KLA endeared itself to Washington by fighting the defiant Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milošević. By this time Yugoslavia, once composed of eight nominally autonomous republics, had been reduced by years of bloody civil war to a rump of Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo. To Serbs, the dominant ethnic group in what remained of the country, Kosovo is regarded as the very birthplace of their nation. Belgrade wasn't about to let it go without a fight and everyone knew it, especially the Clinton administration. Clinton's hypocrisy was immediately evident; when Chechnya fought for its independence from Moscow and Russian forces committed horrific atrocities in response, the American president called the war an internal Russian affair and barely criticized Russian President Boris Yeltsin. But when Milošević resorted to brute force in an attempt to prevent Yugoslavia from further fracturing, he soon found himself a marked man.

Although NATO called the KLA "the main initiator of the violence" in Kosovo and blasted "what appears to be a deliberate campaign of provocation" against the Serbs, the Clinton administration was nevertheless determined to attack the Milošević regime. US intelligence confirmed that the KLA was indeed provoking harsh retaliatory strikes by Serb forces in a bid to draw the United States and NATO into the conflict. President Clinton, however, apparently wasn't listening. The NATO powers, led by the United States, issued Milošević an ultimatum they knew he could never accept: allow NATO to occupy all of Kosovo and have free reign in Serbia as well. Assistant US Secretary of State James Rubin later admitted that "publicly we had to make clear we were seeking an agreement but privately we knew the chances of the Serbs agreeing were quite small."

Wagging the Dog?

In 1997 the film Wag the Dog debuted to rave reviews. The dark comedy concerns a Washington, DC spin doctor and a Hollywood producer who fabricate a fictional war in Albania to distract American voters from a presidential sex scandal. Many observers couldn't help but draw parallels between the film and the real-life events of 1998-99, which included the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Clinton's impeachment and a very real war brewing in the Balkans. As in Wag the Dog , there were exaggerated or completely fabricated tales of atrocities, and as in the film the US and NATO powers tried to sell their war as a humanitarian intervention. An attack on Yugoslavia, we were told, was needed to avert Serb ethnic cleansing of Albanians.

There were two main problems with this. First, there was no Serb ethnic cleansing of Albanian Kosovars until after NATO began mercilessly bombing Yugoslavia. The German government issued several reports confirming this. One, from October 1998, reads, in part:

The violent actions of the Yugoslav military and police since February 1998 were aimed at separatist activities and are no proof of a persecution of the whole Albanian ethnic group in Kosovo or a part of it. What was involved in the Yugoslav violent actions and excesses since February 1998 was a selective forcible action against the military underground movement (especially the KLA) A state program or persecution aimed at the whole ethnic group of Albanians exists neither now nor earlier.

Subsequent German government reports issued through the winter of 1999 tell a similar story. "Events since February and March 1998 do not evidence a persecution program based on Albanian ethnicity," stated one report released exactly one month before the NATO bombing started. "The measures taken by the armed Serbian forces are in the first instance directed toward combating the KLA and its supposed adherents and supporters."

While Serbs certainly did commit atrocities (especially after the ferocious NATO air campaign began), these were often greatly exaggerated by the Clinton administration and the US corporate mainstream media. Clinton claimed – and the media dutifully parroted – that 600,000 Albanians were "trapped within Kosovo lacking shelter, short of food, afraid to go home or buried in mass graves." This was completely false . US diplomat David Scheffer claimed that "225,000 ethnic Albanian men are missing, presumed dead." Again, a total fabrication . The FBI, International War Crimes Tribunal and global forensics experts flocked to Kosovo in droves after the NATO bombs stopped falling; the total number of victims they found was around 1 percent of the figure claimed by the United States.

However, once NATO attacked, the Serb response was predictably furious. Shockingly, NATO commander Gen. Wesley Clark declared that the ensuing Serbian atrocities against the Albanian Kosovar population had been "fully anticipated" and were apparently of little concern to Washington. Not only did NATO and the KLA provoke a war with Yugoslavia, they did so knowing that many innocent civilians would be killed, maimed or displaced by the certain and severe reprisals carried out by enraged Serb forces. Michael McGwire, a former top NATO planner, acknowledged that "to describe the bombing as a humanitarian intervention is really grotesque."

Bloody Hypocrites

The other big problem with the US claiming it was attacking Yugoslavia on humanitarian grounds was that the Clinton administration had recently allowed – and was at the time allowing – far worse humanitarian catastrophes to rage without American intervention. More than 800,000 men, women and children were slaughtered while Clinton and other world leaders stood idly by during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The US also courted the medievally brutal Taliban regime in hopes of achieving stability in Afghanistan and with an eye toward building a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. Clinton also did nothing to stop Russian forces from viciously crushing nationalist uprisings in the Caucuses, where Chechen rebels were fighting for their independence much the same as Albanian Kosovars were fighting the Serbs.

Colombia, the Western Hemisphere's leading recipient of US military and economic aid, was waging a fierce, decades-long campaign of terror against leftist insurgents and long-suffering indigenous peoples. Despite horrific brutality and pervasive human rights violations, US aid to Bogotá increased year after year. In Turkey, not only did Clinton do nothing to prevent government forces from committing widespread atrocities against Kurdish separatists, the administration positively encouraged its NATO ally with billions of dollars in loans and arms sales. Saudi Arabia, home to the most repressive fundamentalist regime this side of Afghanistan, was – and remains – a favored US ally despite having one of the world's worst human rights records. The list goes on and on.

Much closer to the conflict at hand, the United States tacitly approved the largest ethnic cleansing campaign in Europe since the Holocaust when as many as 200,000 Serbs were forcibly expelled from the Krajina region of Croatia by that country's US-trained military during Operation Storm in August 1995. Krajina Serbs had purged the region of its Croat minority four years earlier in their own ethnic cleansing campaign; now it was the Serbs' turn to be on the receiving end of the horror. Croatian forces stormed through Krajina, shelling towns and slaughtering innocent civilians. The sick and the elderly who couldn't escape were executed or burned alive in their homes as Croatian soldiers machine-gunned convoys of fleeing refugees.

"Painful for the Serbs"

Washington's selective indignation at Serb crimes both real and imagined is utterly inexcusable when held up to the horrific and seemingly indiscriminate atrocities committed during the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia. The prominent Australian journalist John Pilger noted that "in the attack on Serbia, 2 percent of NATO's missiles hit military targets, the rest hit hospitals, schools, factories, churches and broadcast studios." There is little doubt that US and allied warplanes and missiles were targeting the Serbian people as much as, or even more than, Serb forces. The bombing knocked out electricity in 70 percent of the country as well as much of its water supply.

NATO warplanes also deliberately bombed a building containing the headquarters of Serbian state television and radio in the middle of densely populated central Belgrade. The April 23, 1999 attack occurred without warning while 200 employees were at work in the building. Among the 16 people killed were a makeup artist, a cameraman, a program director, an editor and three security guards. There is no doubt that the attack was meant to demoralize the Serbian people. There is also no doubt that those who ordered the bombing knew exactly what outcome to expect: a NATO planning document viewed by Bill Clinton, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac forecast as many as 350 deaths in the event of such an attack, with as many as 250 of the victims expected to be innocent civilians living in nearby apartments.

Allied commanders wanted to fight a "zero casualty war" in Yugoslavia. As in zero casualties for NATO forces, not the people they were bombing. "This will be painful for the Serbs," Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon sadistically predicted. It sure was. NATO warplanes flew sorties at 15,000 feet (4,500 meters), a safe height for the pilots. But this decreased accuracy and increased civilian casualties on the ground. One attack on central Belgrade mistakenly hit Dragiša Mišović hospital with a laser-guided "precision" bomb, obliterating an intensive care unit and destroying a children's ward while wounding several pregnant women who had the misfortune of being in labor at the time of the attack. Dragana Krstić, age 23, was recovering from cancer surgery – she just had a 10-pound (4.5 kg) tumor removed from her stomach – when the bombs blew jagged shards of glass into her neck and shoulders. "I don't know which hurts more," she lamented, "my stomach, my shoulder or my heart."

Dragiša Mišović wasn't the only hospital bombed by NATO. Cluster bombs dropped by fighter jets of the Royal Netherlands Air Force struck a hospital and a market in the city of Niš on May 7, killing 15 people and wounding 60 more. An emergency clinic and medical dispensary were also bombed in the mining town of Aleksinac on April 6, killing at least five people and wounding dozens more.

Bridges were favorite targets of NATO bombing. An international passenger train traveling from Belgrade to Thessaloniki, Greece was blown apart by two missiles as it crossed over Grdelica gorge on April 12. Children and a pregnant woman were among the 15 people killed in the attack; 16 other passengers were wounded. Allied commander Gen. Wesley Clark claimed the train, which had been damaged by the first missile, had been traveling too rapidly for the pilot to abort the second strike on the bridge. He then offered up a doctored video that was sped up more than three times so that the pilot's behavior would appear acceptable.

On May 1, at least 24 civilians, many of them children, were killed when NATO warplanes bombed a bridge in Lužane just as a bus was crossing. An ambulance rushing to the scene of the carnage was struck by a second bomb. On the sunny spring afternoon of May 30, a bridge over the Velika Morava River in the small town of Vavarin was bombed by low-flying German Air Force F-16 fighters while hundreds of local residents gathered nearby to celebrate an Orthodox Christian holiday. Eleven people died, most of them when the warplanes returned and bombed the people who rushed to the bridge to help those wounded in the first strike.

No One Is Safe

The horrors suffered by the villagers of Surdulica shows that no one in Serbia was safe from NATO's fury. They endured some 175 bombardments during one three-week period alone, with 50 houses destroyed and 600 others damaged in a town with only around 10,000 residents. On April 27, 20 civilians, including 12 children, died when bombs meant to destroy an army barracks slammed into a residential neighborhood. As many as 100 others were wounded in the incident. Tragedy befell the tiny town again on May 31 when NATO warplanes returned to bomb an ammunition depot but instead hit an old people's home; 23 civilians, most of them helpless elderly men and women, were blown to pieces. Dozens more were wounded. The US military initially said "there were no errant weapons" in the attack. However, Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre later testified before Congress that it "was a case of the pilot getting confused."

The CIA was also apparently confused when it relied on what it claimed was an outdated map to approve a Stealth Bomber strike on what turned out to be the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Three Chinese journalists were killed and 27 other people were wounded. Some people aren't so sure the attack was an accident – Britain's Observer later reported that the US deliberately bombed the embassy after discovering it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications.

There were plenty of other accidents, some of them horrifically tragic and others just downright bizarre. Two separate attacks on the very Albanians NATO was claiming to help killed 160 people, many of them women and children. On April 14, NATO warplanes bombed refugees along a 12-mile (19-km) stretch of road between the towns of Gjakova and Deçan in western Kosovo, killing 73 people including 16 children and wounding 36 more. Journalists reported a grisly scene of "bodies charred or blown to pieces, tractors reduced to twisted wreckage and houses in ruins." Exactly one month later, another column of refugees was bombed near Koriša, killing 87 – mostly women, children and the elderly – and wounding 60 others. In the downright bizarre category, a wildly errant NATO missile struck a residential neighborhood in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, some 40 miles (64 km) outside of Serbia. The American AGM-88 HARM missile blew the roof off of a man's house while he was shaving in his bathroom.

NATO's "Murderous Thugs"

As the people of Yugoslavia were being terrorized by NATO's air war, the terrorists of the Kosovo Liberation Army stepped up their atrocities against Serbs and Roma in Kosovo. NATO troops deployed there to keep the peace often failed to protect these people from the KLA's brutal campaign. More than 164,000 Serbs fled or were forcibly driven from the Albanian-dominated province and by the summer of 2001 KLA ethnic cleansing had rendered Kosovo almost entirely Albanian, with just a few die-hard Serb holdouts living in fear and surrounded by barbed wire.

The KLA soon expanded its war into neighboring Macedonia. Although NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson called the terror group "murderous thugs," the United States – now with George W. Bush as president – continued to offer its invaluable support. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice personally intervened in an attempt to persuade Ukraine to halt arms sales to the Macedonian army and when a group of 400 KLA fighters were surrounded at Aracinovo in June 2001, NATO ordered Macedonian forces to hold off their attack while a convoy of US Army vehicles rescued the besieged militants. It later emerged that 17 American military advisers were embedded with the KLA at Aracinovo.

Credibility Conundrum

The bombing of Yugoslavia was really about preserving the credibility of the United States and NATO. The alliance's saber rattling toward Belgrade had painted it into a corner from which the only way out was with guns blazing. Failure to follow threats with deadly action, said President Clinton, "would discredit NATO." Clinton added that "our mission is clear, to demonstrate the seriousness of NATO's purpose." The president seemed willfully ignorant of NATO's real purpose, which is to defend member states from outside attack. British Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed with Clinton, declaring on the eve of the war that "to walk away now would destroy NATO's credibility." Gary Dempsey, a foreign policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, wrote that the Clinton administration "transformed a conflict that posed no threat to the territorial integrity, national sovereignty or general welfare of the United States into a major test of American resolve."

Waging or prolonging war for credibility's sake is always dangerous and seems always to yield disastrous results. Tens of thousands of US troops and many times as many Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian soldiers and civilians died while Richard Nixon sought an "honorable" way out of Vietnam. Ronald Reagan's dogged defense of US credibility cost the lives of 299 American and French troops killed in Hezbollah's 1983 Beirut barracks bombing. This time, ensuring American credibility meant backing the vicious KLA – some of whose fighters had trained at Osama bin Laden's terror camps in Afghanistan. This, despite the fact that al-Qaeda had already been responsible for deadly attacks against the United States, including the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

It is highly questionable whether bombing Yugoslavia affirmed NATO's credibility in the short term. In the long term, it certainly did not. The war marked the first and only time NATO had ever attacked a sovereign state. It did so unilaterally, absent any threat to any member nation, and without the approval of the United Nations Security Council. "If NATO can go for military action without international blessing, it calls into question the reliability of NATO as a security partner," Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, then Moscow's ambassador to NATO, told me at a San Francisco reception.

Twenty years later, Operation Allied force has been all but forgotten in the United States. In a country that has been waging nonstop war on terrorism for almost the entire 21st century, the 1999 NATO air war is but a footnote in modern American history. Serbs, however, still seethe at the injustice and hypocrisy of it all. The bombed-out ruins of the old Yugoslav Ministry of Defense, Radio Television of Serbia headquarters and other buildings serve as constant, painful reminders of the horrors endured by the Serbian people in service of NATO's credibility.

Brett Wilkins is a San Francisco-based author and activist. His work, which focuses on issues of war and peace and human rights, is archived at www.brettwilkins.com

Read more by Brett Wilkins

[Mar 23, 2019] Former CIA Director John Brennan Bashed on Twitter for Inaccurate Prediction of Coming Mueller Indictments by Chris Morran

Mar 23, 2019 | www.newsweek.com

Now that Robert Mueller has closed his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election without bringing any new indictments, some Twitter users have lashed out at former at political analyst and former CIA director for his recent prediction that Mueller would be bringing additional charges before finishing his probe.

Brennan appeared on MSNBC earlier this month, where he predicted that the special counsel's office would soon be bringing indictments to add to the list of 34 individuals already charged by Mueller's team.

In that interview, Brennan also opined that he expected that any indictment of anyone close to President Trump, including his family or extended family, would be named at the conclusion of the investigation.

"Bob Mueller and his team knows if he were to do something -- indicting a Trump family member or if he were to go forward with indictment on criminal conspiracy involving U.S. persons -- that would basically be the death of the special counsel's office, because I don't believe Donald Trump would allow Bob Mueller to continue in the aftermath of those types of actions," Brennan explained at the time.

Yet Mueller closed his investigation without bringing any further indictments and without any charges being brought against anyone within Trump's closest circle. The president's supporters and others took this opportunity to pounce on Brennan via Twitter.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has been openly critical of the Russia investigation, was among the first to call out Brennan's indictment prediction.

"You can't blame MSNBC viewers for being confused," tweeted Greenwald in the wake of news that Mueller had submitted his report. "They largely kept dissenters from their Trump/Russia spy tale off the air for 2 years. As recently as 2 weeks ago, they had @JohnBrennan strongly suggesting Mueller would indict Trump family members on collusion as his last act"

He later added, "The worst part of this video is how Brennan said Mueller would indict Trump Family members for conspiring with Russia before March 15 or after, because he was too noble to do it on the Ides of March. Will MSNBC or Brennan apologize? Will there be consequences for any of this? LOL"

Conservative political pundit Charlie Kirk listed Brenna on a list of other frequent targets -- Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, among others -- of people who should be investigated, though it was not clear which laws Kirk believes any of these individuals might have broken.

Actor Dean Cain likened Brennan's indictment prediction to Vermont Governor Howard Dean's infamous "Dean Scream" that helped to tank Dean's 2004 presidential campaign.

Conservative political consultant Frank Luntz used the incorrect Brennan prediction to criticize media outlets for what he saw as a failure to acknowledge errors on their part.

... ... ...

[Mar 23, 2019] Note on palace-coup attempts of Rod Rosenstein and Andrew McCabe

Mar 23, 2019 | news.yahoo.com

W e are still trying to fathom the apparent but transient palace-coup attempts of Rod Rosenstein and Andrew McCabe. No one has gotten to the bottom of the serial lying by McCabe and James Comey, much less their systematic and illegal leaking to pet reporters.

We do not know all the ways in which James Clapper and John Brennan seeded the dossier and its related gossip among the press and liberal politicians -- only that both were prior admitted fabricators who respectively while under oath misled congressional representatives on a host of issues.

The central role of Hillary Clinton in funding the anti-Trump, Russian-"collusion," Fusion/GPS/Christopher Steele dossier is still not fully disclosed. Did the deluded FISA court know it was being used by Obama-administration DOJ and FBI officials, who withheld from it evidence to ensure permission to spy on American citizens? Could any justice knowingly be so naïve?

Do we remember at all that Devin Nunes came to national prominence when he uncovered information that members of the Obama administration's national-security team, along with others, had systematically unmasked surveilled Americans, whose names then were leaked illegally to the press?

One day historians will have the full story of how Robert Mueller stocked his legal team inordinately with partisans. He certainly did not promptly disclose the chronology of, or the interconnected reasons for, the firings of Lisa Page and Peter Strozk. And his team has largely used process-crime allegations to leverage mostly minor figures to divulge some sort of incriminating evidence about the president -- none of it pertaining to the original mandated rationale of collusion.

These are the central issues and key players of this entire sordid attempt to remove a sitting president.

But we should remember there were dozens of other minor players who did their own parts in acting unethically, and in some cases illegally, to destroy a presidency. We have mostly forgotten them. But they reflect what can happen when Washington becomes unhinged, the media go berserk, and a reign of terror ensues in which any means necessary is redefined as what James Comey recently monetized as a "Higher Loyalty" to destroy an elected president.

Here are just a few of the foot soldiers we have forgotten.

Anonymous

On September 5, 2018 (a date seemingly picked roughly to coincide with the publication of Bob Woodward's sensational tell-all book about the inside of the Trump White House), the New York Times printed a credo from a supposed anonymous Republican official deep within the Trump administration. In a supposed fit of ethical conviction, he (or she) warned the nation of the dangers it faced under his boss, President Trump, and admitted to a systematic effort to subvert his presidency:

The dilemma -- which he does not fully grasp -- is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them.

Anonymous elaborated:

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until -- one way or another -- it's over.

We do not know whether Anonymous was describing the coup attempt as described by Andrew McCabe that apparently entailed Rod Rosenstein at the Justice Department informally polling cabinet officials, or marked a wider effort among Never Trump Republicans and deep-state functionaries to ensure that Trump failed -- whether marked by earlier efforts to leak confidential calls with foreign officials or to serve up unsubstantiated rumors to muckrakers or simply slow-walk or ignore presidential directives.

In any case, Anonymous's efforts largely explain why almost daily we hear yet another mostly unsubstantiated account that a paranoid, deranged, and dangerous Trump is holed up in his bedroom with his Big Macs as he plans unconstitutional measures to wreck the United States -- and then, by accident, achieves near-record-low peacetime unemployment, near-record-low minority unemployment, annualized 3 percent GDP growth, record natural-gas and oil production, record deregulation, comprehensive tax reform and reduction, and foreign-policy breakthroughs from the destruction of ISIS to cancellation of the flawed Iran deal.

James Baker

In the course of congressional testimony, it was learned that the FBI general counsel, James Baker, for a time had been under investigation for leaking classified information to the press. Among the leaks were rumored scraps from the Steele dossier passed to Mother Jones reporter David Corn (who has denied any such connection) that may have fueled his sensational pre-election accusation of Trump–Russian collusion.

Nonetheless, about a week before the 2016 election, Corn of Mother Jones was writing lurid exposés, such as the following, to spread gossip likely inspired from the Christopher Steele dossier (italics inserted):

Does this mean the FBI is investigating whether Russian intelligence has attempted to develop a secret relationship with Trump or cultivate him as an asset? Was the former intelligence officer and his material deemed credible or not?

An FBI spokeswoman says, "Normally, we don't talk about whether we are investigating anything." But a senior US government official not involved in this case but familiar with the former spy tells Mother Jones that he has been a credible source with a proven record of providing reliable, sensitive, and important information to the US government. In June, the former Western intelligence officer -- who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients -- was assigned the task of researching Trump's dealings in Russia and elsewhere, according to the former spy and his associates in this American firm.

What does "assigned" mean, and by whom? That Fusion/GPS (which, in fact, is a generic opposition-research firm with no particular expertise in Russia) hired with disguised Clinton campaign funds a has-been foreign-national spy to buy dirt from Russian sources to subvert a presidential campaign?

Those leaks of Christopher Steele's dirt also did their small part in planting doubt in voters' minds right that electing Trump was tantamount to implanting a Russian asset in the White House. Baker has been the alleged center of a number of reported leaks, even though the FBI's general counsel should have been the last person to disclose any government communication to the press during a heated presidential campaign. And there is still no accurate information concerning what role, if any, Baker played in Andrew McCabe's efforts to discuss removing the president following the Comey firing.

Evelyn Farkas

On March 1, 2017, just weeks after Trump took office, the New York Times revealed that. in a last-minute order, outgoing president Obama had vastly expanded the number of government officials with access to top-secret intelligence data. The Obama administration apparently sought to ensure a narrative spread that Trump may have colluded with the Russians. The day following the disclosure, a former Pentagon official, Evelyn Farkas (who might have been a source for the strange disclosure of a day earlier), explained Obama's desperate eleventh-hour effort in an MSNBC interview:

I was urging my former colleagues, and, and frankly speaking the people on the Hill . . . it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration.

Because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior people who left so it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy, um, that the [stutters] Trump folks -- if they found out how we knew what we knew about their [the] Trump staff, dealing with Russians -- that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we no longer have access to that intelligence.

So I became very worried because not enough was coming out into the open and I knew that there was more. We have very good intelligence on Russia, so then I had talked to some of my former colleagues and I knew that they were also trying to help get information to the Hill.

Despite media efforts to spin Farkas's disclosure, she was essentially contextualizing how outgoing Obama officials were worried that the incoming administration would discover their own past efforts ("sources and methods") to monitor and surveil Trump-campaign officials, and would seek an accounting. Her worry was not just that the dossier-inspired dirt would not spread after Trump took office, but that the Obama administration's methods used to thwart Trump might be disclosed (e.g., " if they found out how we knew what we knew about their [the] Trump staff, dealing with Russians -- that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we no longer have access to that intelligence" ).

So Farkas et al. desperately sought to change the law so that their rumors and narratives would be so deeply seeded within the administrative state that the collusion narrative would inevitably lead to Congress and the press, and thereby overshadow any shock at the improper or illegal methods the Obama-administration officials had authorized to monitor the Trump campaign.

And Farkas was correct. Even today, urination in a Russian hotel room has overshadowed perjury traps, warping the FISA courts, illegal leaking, inserting a spy into the Trump campaign, and Russian collusion with Clinton hireling and foreign agent Christopher Steele.

Samantha Power
We now forget that for some reason, in her last year in office, but especially during and after the 2016 election, Power, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, reportedly asked to unmask the names of over 260 Americans picked up in government surveillance. She offered no real explanations of such requests.

Even stranger than a U.N. ambassador suddenly playing the role of a counterintelligence officer, Power continued her requests literally until the moments before Trump took office in January 2017. And, strangest of all, after Power testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Representative Trey Gowdy reported that "her testimony is 'they [the unmasking requests] may be under my name, but I did not make those requests.'"

Who, in the world, then, did make those requests and why and, if true, did she know she was so being used?

And were some of those unmasking requests leaked, thus helping to fuel media rumors in late 2016 and early 2017 that Trump officials were veritable traitors in league with Russia? And why were John Brennan, James Clapper, Susan Rice, and Sally Yates reportedly in the last days (or, in some cases, the last hours) requesting that the names of Americans swept up in surveillance of others be unmasked? What was the point of it all?

In sum, did a U.N. ambassador let her name be used by aides or associates to spread rumors throughout the administrative state, and thereby brand them with classified government authenticity, and then all but ensure they were leaked to the press?

We the public most certainly wondered why the moment Trump was elected, the very name Carter Page became synonymous with collusion, and soon Michael Flynn went from a respected high-ranking military official to a near traitor, as both were announced as emblematic of their erstwhile complicit boss.

Ali Watkins and James Wolf

Watkins was the young reporter for Buzzfeed (which initially leaked the largely fake Steele dossier and erroneously reported that Michael Cohen would implicate Trump in suborning perjury) who conducted an affair with James Wolf, a staffer, 30 years her senior, on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Wolf, remember, systematically and illegally began leaking information to her that found its way into sensationalized stories about collusion. But as Margot Cleveland of the Federalist pointed out, Watkins was also identified by Buzzfeed "in court filings as one of the individuals who 'conducted newsgathering in connection with the Dossier before Buzzfeed published the Article' on the dossier. This fact raises the question of whether Watkins received information from Wolfe concerning the dossier and, if so, what he leaked."

In other words, the dossier was probably planted among U.S. senators and deliberately leaked through a senior Senate aide, who made sure that the unverified dirt was published by the press to damage Donald Trump.

And it did all that and more.

The list of these bit players could be easily expanded. These satellites were not coordinated in some tight-knit vast conspiracy, but rather took their cue from their superiors and the media to freelance with assumed impunity, as their part in either preventing or ending a Trump presidency. And no doubt the Left would argue that the sheer number of federal bureaucrats and political appointees, in a variety of cabinets and agencies, throughout the legislative and the executive branches, all proves that Trump is culpable of something.

Perhaps. But the most likely explanation is that a progressive administrative state, a liberal media, and an increasingly radicalized liberal order were terrified by the thought of an outsider Trump presidency. Therefore, they did what they could, often both unethically and illegally, to stop his election, and then to subvert his presidency.

In their arrogance, they assumed that their noble professions of higher loyalties and duties gave them exemption to do what they deemed necessary and patriotic. And others like them will continue to do so, thereby setting the precedent that unelected federal officials can break the law or violate any ethical protocols they please -- if they disagree with the ideology of the commander in chief. We ridicule Trump for going ballistic at each one of these periodically leaked and planted new stories that raised some new charge about his stupidity, insanity, incompetence, etc. But no one has before witnessed any president subjected to such a comprehensive effort of the media, the deep state, political opponents, and his own party establishment to destroy him.

Subversion is the new political opposition. The nation -- and the Left especially -- will come to regret the legacy of the foot soldiers of the Resistance in the decades to come.

[Mar 22, 2019] Mobsters have better morale that the Democratic establishment

But Clintons are mobsters in disguise, so what's the difference. Jared Kushner father is as close to a mobster as one can get (hiring a prostitute to compromise relative is one of his tricks)
Notable quotes:
"... Don't ever think the Democratic establishment is your friend. They want you to die in foreign wars and your children to work in starvation-wage service jobs until they're 70 so that the top 0.1% can buy their kids' way into Yale ..."
Mar 22, 2019 | twitter.com

Mike Gravel ‏ 9:37 AM - 22 Mar 2019

Don't ever think the Democratic establishment is your friend. They want you to die in foreign wars and your children to work in starvation-wage service jobs until they're 70 so that the top 0.1% can buy their kids' way into Yale

Navi ‏ 9:50 AM - 22 Mar 2019

"It's already happening" while the DCCC is trying their best to stop primary challenges is a little shortsighted no? If you don't call out what is wrong what are you really 'fixing'? We can walk and chew gum at the same time!

[Mar 20, 2019] The sex slave scandal that exposed pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein by Maureen Callahan

Notable quotes:
"... Another house manager, Alfredo Rodriguez, told Recarey that very young girls were giving Epstein massages at least twice a day, and in one instance, Epstein had Rodriguez deliver one dozen roses to Mary, at her high school. ..."
"... Palm Beach prosecutors said the evidence was weak, and after presenting the case to a grand jury, Epstein was charged with only one count of felony solicitation of prostitution. In 2008, he pleaded guilty and nominally served 13 months of an 18-month sentence in a county jail: Epstein spent one day a week there, the other six out on "work release." ..."
"... Today, Jeffrey Epstein is a free man, albeit one who routinely settles civil lawsuits against him, brought by young women, out of court. As of 2015, Epstein had settled multiple such cases. ..."
Oct 09, 2016 | nypost.com
Judge gives deadline for arguments relating to unsealing Jeffrey Epstein documents Documents related to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein may be unsealed Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's deal with feds was illegal: judge Northam has only himself to blame

In 2005, the world was introduced to reclusive billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, friend to princes and an American president, a power broker with the darkest of secrets: He was also a pedophile, accused of recruiting dozens of underage girls into a sex-slave network, buying their silence and moving along, although he has been convicted of only one count of soliciting prostitution from a minor. Visitors to his private Caribbean island, known as "Orgy Island," have included Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Stephen Hawking.

According to a 2011 court filing by alleged Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre, she saw Clinton and Prince Andrew on the island but never saw the former president do anything improper. Giuffre has accused Prince Andrew of having sex with her when she was a minor, a charge Buckingham Palace denies.

"Epstein lives less than one mile away from me in Palm Beach," author James Patterson tells The Post. In the 11 years since Epstein was investigated and charged by the Palm Beach police department, ultimately copping a plea and serving 13 months on one charge of soliciting prostitution from a 14-year-old girl, Patterson has remained obsessed with the case.

"He's a fascinating character to read about," Patterson says. "What is he thinking? Who is he?"

Patterson's new book, "Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the Sex Scandal That Undid Him, and All the Justice That Money Can Buy," is an attempt to answer such questions. Co-authored with John Connolly and Tim Malloy, the book contains detailed police interviews with girls who alleged sexual abuse by Epstein and others in his circle. Giuffre alleged that Epstein's ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late media tycoon Robert Maxwell, abused her. Ghislaine Maxwell has denied allegations of enabling abuse.

Epstein has spent the bulk of his adult life cultivating relationships with the world's most powerful men. Flight logs show that from 2001 to 2003, Bill Clinton flew on Epstein's private plane, dubbed "The Lolita Express" by the press, 26 times. After Epstein's arrest in July 2006, federal tax records show Epstein donated $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation that year.

Bill Clinton in 1994. AP

Epstein was also a regular visitor to Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago, and the two were friends. According to the Daily Mail, Trump was a frequent dinner guest at Epstein's home, which was often full of barely dressed models. In 2003, New York magazine reported that Trump also attended a dinner party at Epstein's honoring Bill Clinton.

Last year, The Guardian reported that Epstein's "little black book" contained contact numbers for A-listers including Tony Blair, Naomi Campbell, Dustin Hoffman, Michael Bloomberg and Richard Branson.

In a 2006 court filing, Palm Beach police noted that a search of Epstein's home uncovered two hidden cameras. The Mirror reported that in 2015, a 6-year-old civil lawsuit filed by "Jane Doe No. 3," believed to be the now-married Giuffre, alleged that Epstein wired his mansion with hidden cameras, secretly recording orgies involving his prominent friends and underage girls. The ultimate purpose: blackmail, according to court papers.

Britain's Prince Andrew in 2012 AP

"Jane Doe No. 3" also alleged that she had been forced to have sex with "numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, a well-known prime minister, and other world leaders."

"We uncovered a lot of details about the police investigation and a lot about the girls, what happened to them, the effect on their lives," Patterson says.

"The reader has to ask: Was justice done here or not?"

Epstein, now 63, has always been something of an international man of mystery. Born in Brooklyn, he had a middle-class upbringing: His father worked for the Parks Department, and his parents stressed hard work and education.

'We uncovered a lot of details about the police investigation and a lot about the girls, what happened to them, the effect on their lives.'

- James Patterson

Epstein was brilliant, skipping two grades and graduating Lafayette High School in 1969. He attended Cooper Union but dropped out in 1971 and by 1973 was teaching calculus and physics at Dalton, where he tutored the son of a Bear Stearns exec. Soon, Epstein applied his facility with numbers on Wall Street but left Bear Stearns under a cloud in 1981. He formed his own business, J. Epstein & Co.

The bar for entry at the new firm was high. According to a 2002 profile in New York magazine, Epstein only took on clients who turned over $1 billion, at minimum, for him to manage. Clients also had to pay a flat fee and sign power of attorney over to Epstein, allowing him to do whatever he saw fit with their money.

Still, no one knew exactly what Epstein did, or how he was able to amass a personal billion-dollar-plus fortune. In addition to a block-long, nine-story mansion on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Epstein owns the $6.8 million mansion in Palm Beach, an $18 million property in New Mexico, the 70-acre private Caribbean island, a helicopter, a Gulfstream IV and a Boeing 727.

"My belief is that Jeff maintains some sort of money-management firm, though you won't get a straight answer from him," one high-level investor told New York magazine. "He once told me he had 300 people working for him, and I've also heard that he manages Rockefeller money. But one never knows. It's like looking at the Wizard of Oz -- there may be less there than meets the eye."

Jeffrey Epstein's Palm Beach home Splash News

"He's very enigmatic," Rosa Monckton told Vanity Fair in 2003. Monckton was the former British CEO of Tiffany & Co. and confidante to the late Princess Diana. She was also a close friend of Epstein's since the 1980s. "He never reveals his hand . . . He's a classic iceberg. What you see is not what you get."

Both profiles intimated that Epstein had a predilection for young women but never went further. In the New York magazine piece, Trump said Epstein's self-professed image as a loner, an egghead and a teetotaler was not wholly accurate.

Donald Trump in 1990 AP

"I've known Jeff for 15 years," Trump said. "Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it -- Jeffrey enjoys his social life."

Three years after that profile ran, Palm Beach Police Officer Michele Pagan got a disturbing message. A woman reported that her 14-year-old stepdaughter confided to a friend that she'd had sex with an older man for money. The man's name was Jeff, and he lived in a mansion on a cul-de-sac.

Pagan persuaded the woman to bring her stepdaughter down to be interviewed. In his book, Patterson calls the girl Mary. And Mary, like so many of the other girls who eventually talked, came from the little-known working-class areas surrounding Palm Beach.

A friend of a friend, Mary said, told her she could make hundreds of dollars in one hour, just for massaging some middle-aged guy's feet. Lots of other girls had been doing it, some three times a week.

Mary claimed she had been driven to the mansion on El Brillo Way, where a female staffer escorted her up a pink-carpeted staircase, then into a room with a massage table, an armoire topped with sex toys and a photo of a little girl pulling her underwear off.

Ghislaine Maxwell Getty Images

Epstein entered the room, wearing only a towel, Mary said.

"He took off the towel," Mary told Pagan. "He was a really built guy. But his wee-wee was very tiny."

Mary said Epstein got on the table and barked orders at her. She told police she was alone in the room with him, terrified.

Pagan wrote the following in her incident report:

"She removed her pants, leaving her thong panties on. She straddled his back, whereby her exposed buttocks were touching Epstein's exposed buttocks. Epstein then turned to his side and started to rub his penis in an up-and-down motion. Epstein pulled out a purple vibrator and began to massage Mary's vaginal area."

Palm Beach assigned six more detectives to the investigation. They conducted a "trash pull" of Epstein's garbage, sifting through paper with phone numbers, used condoms, toothbrushes, worn underwear. In one pull, police found a piece of paper with Mary's phone number on it, along with the number of the person who recruited her.

On Sept. 11, 2005, detectives got another break. Alison, as she's called in the book, told Detective Joe Recarey that she had been going to Epstein's house since she was 16. Alison had been working at the Wellington Green Mall, saving up for a trip to Maine, when a friend told her, "You can get a plane ticket in two hours . . . We can go give this guy a massage and he'll pay $200," according to her statement to the police.

Alison told Recarey that she visited Epstein hundreds of times. She said he had bought her a new 2005 Dodge Neon, plane tickets, and gave her spending money. Alison said he even asked her to emancipate from her parents so she could live with him full-time as his "sex slave."

She said Epstein slowly escalated his sexual requests, and despite Alison's insistence that they never have intercourse, alleged, "This one time . . . he bent me over the table and put himself in me. Without my permission."

Alison then asked if what Epstein had done to her was rape and spoke of her abject fear of him.

An abridged version of her witness statement, as recounted in the book:

Alison : Before I say anything else . . . um, is there a possibility that I'm gonna have to go to court or anything?
Recarey : I mean, what he did to you is a crime. I'm not gonna lie to you.
Alison : Would you consider it rape, what he did?
Recarey : If he put himself inside you without permission . . . That, that is a crime. That is a crime.
Alison : I don't want my family to find out about this . . . 'Cause Jeffrey's gonna get me. You guys realize that, right? . . . I'm not safe now. I'm not safe.
Recarey : Why do you say you're not safe? Has he said he's hurt people before?
Alison : Well, I've heard him make threats to people on the telephone, yeah. Of course.
Recarey : You're gonna die? You're gonna break your legs? Or  --
Alison : All of the above!

Alison also told Recarey that Epstein got so violent with her that he ripped out her hair and threw her around. "I mean," she said, "there's been nights that I walked out of there barely able to walk, um, from him being so rough."

Two months later, Recarey interviewed Epstein's former house manager of 11 years, documented in his probable-cause affidavit as Mr. Alessi. "Alessi stated Epstein receives three massages a day . . . towards the end of his employment, the masseuses . . . appeared to be 16 or 17 years of age at the most . . . [Alessi] would have to wash off a massager/vibrator and a long rubber penis, which were in the sink after the massage."

Another house manager, Alfredo Rodriguez, told Recarey that very young girls were giving Epstein massages at least twice a day, and in one instance, Epstein had Rodriguez deliver one dozen roses to Mary, at her high school.

In May 2006, the Palm Beach Police Department filed a probable-cause affidavit, asking prosecutors to charge Epstein with four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor -- a second-degree felony -- and one count of lewd and lascivious molestation of a 14-year-old minor, also a second-degree felony.

Today, Jeffrey Epstein is a free man, albeit one who routinely settles civil lawsuits against him, brought by young women, out of court.

Palm Beach prosecutors said the evidence was weak, and after presenting the case to a grand jury, Epstein was charged with only one count of felony solicitation of prostitution. In 2008, he pleaded guilty and nominally served 13 months of an 18-month sentence in a county jail: Epstein spent one day a week there, the other six out on "work release."

Today, Jeffrey Epstein is a free man, albeit one who routinely settles civil lawsuits against him, brought by young women, out of court. As of 2015, Epstein had settled multiple such cases.

Giuffre has sued Ghislaine Maxwell in Manhattan federal court, charging defamation -- saying Maxwell stated Giuffre lied about Maxwell's recruitment of her and other underage girls. Epstein has been called upon to testify in court this month, on Oct. 20.

The true number of Epstein's victims may never be known.

He will be a registered sex offender for the rest of his life, not that it fazes him. "I'm not a sexual predator, I'm an 'offender,' " Epstein told The Post in 2011. "It's the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel."

[Mar 20, 2019] What Republicans and Billionaires Really Mean When They Talk About 'Freedom' by Thom Hartman

Mar 20, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Yves here. This post focuses on an important slice of history in what "freedom" has meant in political discourse in the US. But I wish it had at least mentioned how a well-funded, then extreme right wing effort launched an open-ended campaign to render US values more friendly to business. They explicitly sought to undo New Deal programs and weaken or end other social safety nets. Nixon Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell codified the strategy for this initiative in the so-called Powell Memo of 1971.

One of the most effective spokesmen for this libertarian program was Milton Friedman, whose bestseller Free to Choose became the foundation for a ten-part TV series.

By Thom Hartman, a talk-show host and author of more than 25 books in print . He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute . Produced by the Independent Media Institute

America is having a heated debate about the meaning of the word socialism . We'd be better served if, instead, we were debating the meaning of freedom .

The Oregonian reported last week that fully 156,000 families are on the edge of homelessness in our small-population state. Every one of those households is now paying more than 50 percent of its monthly income on rent, and none of them has any savings; one medical bill, major car repair or job loss, and they're on the streets.

While socialism may or may not solve their problem, the more pressing issue we have is an entire political party and a huge sector of the billionaire class who see homelessness not as a problem, but as a symptom of a "free" society.

The words freedom and liberty are iconic in American culture -- probably more so than with any other nation because they're so intrinsic to the literature, declarations and slogans of our nation's founding.

The irony -- of the nation founded on the world's greatest known genocide (the systematic state murder of tens of millions of Native Americans) and over three centuries of legalized slavery and a century and a half of oppression and exploitation of the descendants of those slaves -- is extraordinary. It presses us all to bring true freedom and liberty to all Americans.

But what do those words mean?

If you ask the Koch brothers and their buddies -- who slap those words on pretty much everything they do -- you'd get a definition that largely has to do with being "free" from taxation and regulation. And, truth be told, if you're morbidly rich, that makes a certain amount of sense, particularly if your main goal is to get richer and richer, regardless of your behavior's impact on working-class people, the environment, or the ability of government to function.

On the other hand, the definition of freedom and liberty that's been embraced by so-called "democratic socialist" countries -- from Canada to almost all of Europe to Japan and Australia -- you'd hear a definition that's closer to that articulated by Franklin D. Roosevelt when he proposed, in January 1944, a " second Bill of Rights " to be added to our Constitution.

FDR's proposed amendments included the right to a job, and the right to be paid enough to live comfortably; the right to "adequate food and clothing and recreation"; the right to start a business and run it without worrying about "unfair competition and domination by monopolies"; the right "of every family to a decent home"; the right to "adequate medical care to achieve and enjoy good health"; the right to government-based "protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment"; and the right "to a good education."

Roosevelt pointed out that, "All of these rights spell security." He added, "America's own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world."

The other nations mentioned earlier took President Roosevelt's advice to heart. Progressive "social democracy" has kept Europe, Canada, and the developed nations of the East and South Pacific free of war for almost a century -- a mind-boggling feat when considering the history of the developed world since the 1500s.

Just prior to FDR winning the White House in the election of 1932, the nation had been treated to 12 years of a bizarre Republican administration that was the model for today's GOP. In 1920, Warren Harding won the presidency on a campaign of "more industry in government, less government in industry" -- privatize and deregulate -- and a promise to drop the top tax rate of 91 percent down to 25 percent.

He kept both promises, putting the nation into a sugar-high spin called the Roaring '20s, where the rich got fabulously rich and working-class people were being beaten and murdered by industrialists when they tried to unionize. Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover (the three Republican presidents from 1920 to 1932) all cheered on the assaults, using phrases like "the right to work" to describe a union-free nation.

In the end, the result of the " horses and sparrows " economics advocated by Harding ("feed more oats to the horses and there'll be more oats in the horse poop to fatten the sparrows" -- that generation's version of trickle-down economics) was the Republican Great Depression (yes, they called it that until after World War II).

Even though Roosevelt was fabulously popular -- the only president to be elected four times -- the right-wingers of his day were loud and outspoken in their protests of what they called "socialist" programs like Social Security, the right to unionize, and government-guaranteed job programs including the WPA, REA, CCC, and others.

The Klan and American Nazis were assembling by the hundreds of thousands nationwide -- nearly 30,000 in Madison Square Garden alone -- encouraged by wealthy and powerful "economic royalists" preaching "freedom" and " liberty ." Like the Kochs' Freedomworks , that generation's huge and well-funded (principally by the DuPonts' chemical fortune) organization was the Liberty League .

Roosevelt's generation had seen the results of this kind of hard-right "freedom" rhetoric in Italy, Spain, Japan and Germany, the very nations with which we were then at war.

Speaking of "the grave dangers of 'rightist reaction' in this Nation," Roosevelt told America in that same speech that: "[I]f history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called 'normalcy' of the 1920s -- then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home."

Although right-wingers are still working hard to disassemble FDR's New Deal -- the GOP budget for 2019 contains massive cuts to Social Security, as well as to Medicare and Medicaid -- we got halfway toward his notion of freedom and liberty here in the United States:

You're not free if you're old and deep in poverty, so we have Social Security (although the GOP wants to gut it). You're not free if you're hungry, so we have food stamps/SNAP (although the GOP wants to gut them). You're not free if you're homeless, so we have housing assistance and homeless shelters (although the GOP fights every effort to help homeless people). You're not free if you're sick and can't get medical care, so we have Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare (although the GOP wants to gut them all). You're not free if you're working more than 40 hours a week and still can't meet basic expenses, so we have minimum wage laws and the right to unionize (although the GOP wants to gut both). You're not free if you can't read, so we have free public schools (although the GOP is actively working to gut them). You're not free if you can't vote, so we've passed numerous laws to guarantee the right to vote (although the GOP is doing everything it can to keep tens of millions of Americans from voting).

The billionaire class and their wholly owned Republican politicians keep trying to tell us that "freedom" means the government doesn't provide any of the things listed above.

Instead, they tell us (as Ron Paul famously did in a GOP primary debate years ago) that, if we're broke and sick, we're "free" to die like a feral dog in the gutter.

Freedom is homelessness, in the minds of the billionaires who own the GOP.

Poverty, lack of education, no access to health care, poor-paying jobs, and barriers to voting are all proof of a free society, they tell us, which is why America's lowest life expectancy, highest maternal and childhood death rates, lowest levels of education, and lowest pay are almost all in GOP-controlled states .

America -- particularly the Democratic Party -- is engaged in a debate right now about the meaning of socialism . It would be a big help for all of us if we were, instead, to have an honest debate about the meaning of the words freedom and liberty .



cuibono , , March 20, 2019 at 2:53 am

Know Your Rights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lfInFVPkQs

WheresOurTeddy , , March 20, 2019 at 12:28 pm

I have been informed by Fox that knowing your rights is un-American

everydayjoe , , March 20, 2019 at 4:26 am

Let us not forget the other propaganda arm of Republican party and big money- Fox news. They spew the freedom nonsense while not adhering to any definition of the word.

I worked in the midwest as an Engineer in the 90s to early 2000s and saw plants being gutted/shifted overseas, Union influence curtailed and mid level and bottom pay stay flat for decades; all in the name of free market.

Sadly the same families that are the worst affected vote Republican! But we know all this and have known it for a while. What will change?

lyman alpha blob , , March 20, 2019 at 8:00 am

They want freedom -- for the wolves to eat the sheep.

PKMKII , , March 20, 2019 at 1:08 pm

And then act like it's fair because they don't have laws against the sheep eating the wolves.

Norb , , March 20, 2019 at 8:39 am

The intro to this post is spot on. The Powell memo outlined a strategy for a corporate coup d'eta. Is was completely successful. Now that the business class rules America, their only vision is to continue the quest and cannibalize the country and enslave its people by any means possible. What tools do they use to achieve these ends? -- debt, fear, violence and pandering to human vanity as a motivator. Again, very successful.

Instead of honest public debate- which is impossible when undertaken with liars and thieves, a good old manifesto or pamphlet like Common Sense is in order. Something calling out concrete action that can be taken by commoners to regain their social respect and power. That should scare the living daylights out of the complacent and smug elite.

Its that, or a lot of public infrastructure is gong to be broken up by the mob- which doesn't work out in the long run. The nations that learn to work with and inspire their populations will prosper- the rest will have a hard time of it. Look no further than America's fall.

Carla , , March 20, 2019 at 12:00 pm

Thank you, Norb. You've inspired me to start by reading Common Sense.

Jamie S , , March 20, 2019 at 9:13 am

This piece raises some important points, but aims too narrowly at one political party, when the D-party has also been complicit in sharing the framing of "freedom" as less government/regulation/taxation. After all, it was the Clinton administration that did welfare "reform", deregulation of finance, and declared the end of the era of "big government", and both Clinton and Obama showed willingness to cut Social Security and Medicare in a "grand bargain".

WJ , , March 20, 2019 at 12:10 pm

+100

If in place of "the GOP," the author had written, "The national Democratic and Republican parties over the past fifty years," his claim would be much more accurate. To believe what he says about "the GOP," you have to pretend that Clinton, and Obama, and Pelosi, and Schumer, and Feinstein simply don't exist and never did. The author's implicit valorization of Obamacare is even more disheartening.

But perhaps this is the *point* of the piece after all? If I were a consultant to the DNC (and I make less than $100,000/yr so I am clearly not), I would advocate that they commission, underscore, and reward pieces exactly like this one. For the smartest ones surely grasp that the rightist oligarchic policy takeover has in fact happened, and that it has left in its wake millions of disaffected, indebted, uneducated, uninsured Americans.

(Suggesting that it hadn't was the worst idiocy of Clinton's 2016 campaign. It would have been much better had she admitted it and blamed it on the Republican Senate while holding dear old Obama up as a hamstrung martyr for the cause. I mean, this is what everybody at DailyKos already believes, and the masses -- being poor and uneducated and desperate -- can be brought around to believe anything, or anyway, enough of them can be.)

I would advocate that the DNC double down on its rightful claims to Roosevelt's inheritance, embrace phrases like "social democracy" and "freedom from economic insecurity," and shift leftward in all its official rhetoric. Admit the evisceration of the Roosevelt tradition, but blame it all on the GOP. Maybe *maybe* even acknowledge that past Democratic leaders were a little naive and idealistic in their pursuit of bipartisanship, and did not understand the truly horrible intentions of the GOP. But today's Democrats are committed to wresting back the rights of the people from the evil clutches of the Koch Republicans. This sort of thing.

Would my advice be followed? Or would the *really* smart ones in the room demure? If so, why do you think they would?

In short, I read this piece as one stage in an ongoing dialectic in the Democratic Party in the run-up to the 2020 election wherein party leaders try to determine how leftward its "official" rhetoric is able to sway before becoming *so* unbelievable (in light of historical facts) that it cannot serve as effective propaganda -- even among Americans!

NotTimothyGeithner , , March 20, 2019 at 1:34 pm

Team Blue elites are the children of Bill Clinton and the Third Way, so the echo chamber was probably terrible. Was Bill Clinton a bad President? He was the greatest Republican President! The perception of this answer is a key. Who rose and joined Team Blue through this run? Many Democrats don't recognize this, or they don't want to rock the boat. This is the structural problem with Team Blue. The "generic Democrat" is AOC, Omar, Sanders, Warren, and a handful of others.

Can the Team Blue elites embrace a Roosevelt identity? The answer is no. Their ideology is so wildly divergent they can't adjust without a whole sale conversion.

More succinctly, the Third Way isn't about helping Democrats win by accepting not every battle can be won. Its about advancing right wing politics and pretending this isn't what its about. If they are too clear about good policy, they will be accused of betrayal.

jefemt , , March 20, 2019 at 9:18 am

Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose Kris Kristofferson

shinola , , March 20, 2019 at 1:06 pm

"nothin' ain't worth nothin' but it's free"
;)

Trick Shroade , , March 20, 2019 at 9:46 am

The modern GOP has a very brutalist interpretation of Christianity, one where the money changers bring much needed liquidity to the market.

where , , March 20, 2019 at 12:30 pm

it's been 2 generations, but we assure you, the wealth will eventually trickle down

Dwight , , March 20, 2019 at 1:51 pm

Be patient, the horse has to digest your oat.

The Rev Kev , , March 20, 2019 at 10:13 am

This article makes me wonder if the GOP is still a political party anymore. I know, I know, they have the party structure, the candidates, the budget and all the rest of it but when you look at their policies and what they are trying to do, the question does arise. Are they doing it because this is what they believe is their identity as a party or is it that they are simply a vehicle with the billionaires doing the real driving and recruiting? An obvious point is that among billionaires, they see no need to form their own political party which should be telling clue. Certainly the Democrats are no better.

Maybe the question that American should ask themselves is just what does it mean to be an American in the year 2020? People like Norman Rockwell and his Four Freedoms could have said a lot of what it meant some 60 years ago and his work has been updated to reflect the modern era ( https://www.galeriemagazine.com/norman-rockwell-four-freedoms-modern/ ) but the long and the short of it is that things are no longer working for most people anymore -- and not just in America. But a powerful spring can only be pushed back and held in place for so long before there is a rebound effect and I believe that I am seeing signs of this the past few years.

GF , , March 20, 2019 at 11:06 am

And don't forget FRD's Second Bill of Rights:

" a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all -- regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security."

Frank Little , , March 20, 2019 at 10:20 am

America is having a heated debate about the meaning of the word socialism. We'd be better served if, instead, we were debating the meaning of freedom.

I agree, and we should also be having a debate about capitalism as it actually exists. In the US capitalism is always talked about in rosy non-specific terms (e.g. a preference for markets or support for entrepreneurship) while anybody who says they don't necessarily support capitalism has to answer for Stalin's gulag's or the Khmer Rouge. All the inequalities and injustices that have helped people like Howard Schultz or Jeff Bezos become billionaire capitalists somehow aren't part of capitalism, just different problems to be solved somehow but definitely not by questioning capitalism.

Last night I watched the HBO documentary on Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos and I couldn't help but laugh at all these powerful politicians, investors, and legal giants going along with someone who never once demonstrated or even explained how her groundbreaking innovation actually worked. $900 million was poured into that company before people realized something that a Stanford professor interviewed in the documentary saw when she first met Holmes. Fracking companies have been able to consistently raise funding despite consistently losing money and destroying the environment in the process. Bank balance sheets were protected while working people lost everything in the name of preserving American capitalism. I think it's good to debate socialism and capitalism, but there's not really any point if we aren't going to be talking about Actually Existing Capitalism rather than the hypothetical version that's trotted out anytime someone suggests an alternative.

Trick Shroade , , March 20, 2019 at 10:53 am

There was a great comment here on NC a little while ago, something to the effect of "capitalism has the logic of a cancer cell. It's a pile of money whose only goal is to become a bigger pile of money." Of course good things can happen as a side effect of it becoming a bigger pile of money: innovation, efficiencies, improved standard of living, etc. but we need government (not industry) regulation to keep the bad side effects of capitalism in check (like the cancer eventually killing its host).

Carey , , March 20, 2019 at 12:21 pm

"efficiency" is very often not good for the Commons, in the long term.

Frank Little , , March 20, 2019 at 12:31 pm

Shoot, must have missed that comment but it's a good metaphor. Reminds me of Capital vol. 1, which Marx starts with a long and dense treatment of the nature of commodities and commodification in order to capture this process whereby capitalists produce things people really do want or need in order to get at what they really want: return on their investment.

Jack Gavin , , March 20, 2019 at 12:36 pm

I also agree but I think we need to have a the same heated debate over what capitalism means. Over the years I have been subjected to (exposed) to more flavors of socialism than I can count. Yet, other than an introductory economics class way back when, no debatable words about what 'capitalism' is seems to get attention. Maybe it's time to do that and hope that some agreeable definition of 'freedom' falls out.

jrs , , March 20, 2019 at 12:42 pm

of course maybe socialism is the only thing that ever really could solve homelessness, given that it seems to be at this point a worldwide problem, although better some places than others (like the U.S. and UK).

Stratos , , March 20, 2019 at 11:11 am

This article lets the Dems off the hook. They have actively supported the Billionaire Agenda for decades now; sometimes actively (like when they helped gut welfare) and sometimes by enabling Repubs objectives (like voter suppression).

At this point in time, the Dem leadership is working to deep six Medicare for All.

With 'friends' like the Dems, who needs the Repubs?

WheresOurTeddy , , March 20, 2019 at 12:30 pm

our last democratic president was Carter

thump , , March 20, 2019 at 12:38 pm

1) In the history, a mention of the attempted coup against FDR would be good. See The Plot to Seize the White House by Jules Archer. ( Amazon link )

2) For the contemporary intellectual history, I really appreciated Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains . ( Amazon link ) Look her up on youtube or Democracy Now . Her book got a bit of press and she interviews well.

Bob of Newton , , March 20, 2019 at 1:58 pm

Please refer to these folks as 'rightwingers'. There are Democratic as well as Republicans who believe in this type of 'freedom'.

Jerry B , , March 20, 2019 at 2:38 pm

This post seems heavily slanted against the GOP and does not take into account how pro-business the Democrats have become. I tenuously agree with Yves intro that much of the current pro business value system campaign in the US was started with the political far right and the Lewis Powell Memo. And that campaign kicked into high gear during the Reagan Presidency.

But as that "pro business campaign" gained steam, the Democratic Party, IMO, realized that they could partake in the "riches" as well and sold their political soul for a piece of the action. Hartman's quote about the billionaire class should include their "wholly owned Republicans and Democrat politicians".

As Lambert mentions (paraphrasing), "The left puts the working class first. Both liberals and conservatives put markets first, liberals with many more layers of indirection (e.g., complex eligibility requirements, credentialing) because that creates niches from which their professional base benefits".

As an aside, while the pro-business/capitalism on steroids people have sought more "freedom", they have made the US and the world less free for the rest of us.

Also the over focusing on freedom is not uniquely GOP. As Hartman mentions, "the words freedom and liberty are iconic in American culture -- probably more so than with any other nation because they're so intrinsic to the literature, declarations and slogans of our nation's founding." US culture has taken the concept of freedom to an extreme version of individualism.

That is not surprising given our history.

The DRD4 gene is a dopamine receptor gene. One stretch of the gene is repeated a variable number of times, and the version with seven repeats (the "7R" form) produces a receptor protein that is relatively unresponsive to dopamine. Being unresponsive to dopamine means that people who have this gene have a host of related traits -- sensation and novelty seeking, risk taking, impulsivity, and, probably most consistently, ADHD. -- -- Seems like the type of people that would value extreme (i.e. non-collective) forms of freedom

The United States is the individualism poster child for at least two reasons. First there's immigration. Currently, 12 percent of Americans are immigrants, another 12 percent are children of immigrants, and everyone else except for the 0.9 percent pure Native Americans descend from people who emigrated within the last five hundred years.

And who were the immigrants?' Those in the settled world who were cranks, malcontents, restless, heretical, black sheep, hyperactive, hypomanic, misanthropic, itchy, unconventional, yearning to be free, yearning to be rich, yearning to be out of their, damn boring repressive little hamlet, yearning. -- -- Again seems like the type of people that would value freedom in all aspects of life and not be interested in collectivism

Couple that with the second reason -- for the majority of its colonial and independent history, America has had a moving frontier luring those whose extreme prickly optimism made merely booking passage to the New World insufficiently, novel -- and you've got America the individualistic.

The 7R variant mentioned above occurs in about 23 percent of Europeans and European Americans. And in East Asians? 1 percent. When East Asians domesticated rice and invented collectivist society, there was massive selection against the 7R variant. Regardless of the cause, East Asian cultural collectivism coevolved with selection against the 7R variant.

So which came first, 7R frequency or cultural style? The 4R and 7R variants, along with the 2R, occur worldwide, implying they already existed when humans radiated out of Africa 60,000 to 130,000 years ago. A high incidence of 7R, associated with impulsivity and novelty seeking, is the legacy of humans who made the greatest migrations in human history.

So it seems that many of the people who immigrated to the US were impulsive, novelty seeking, risk takers. As a counterpoint, many people that migrated to the US did not do so by choice but were forced from their homes and their countries by wars.

The point of this long comment is that for some people the concept of freedom can be taken to extreme -- a lack of gun control laws, financial regulation, extremes of wealth, etc. After a brief period in the 1940's, 1950's, and early 1960's when the US was more collective, we became greedy, consumerist, and consumption oriented, aided by the political and business elites as mentioned in the post.

If we want the US to be a more collective society we have to initially do so in our behaviors i.e. laws and regulations that rein in the people who would take the concept of freedom to an extreme. Then maybe over an evolutionary time period some of the move impulsive, sensation seeking, ADHDness, genes can be altered to a more balance mix of what makes the US great with more of the collective genes.

IMO, if we do not begin to work on becoming a collective culture now, then climate change, water scarcity, food scarcity, and resource scarcity will do it for us the hard way.

In these days of short attention spans I apologize for the long comment. The rest of my day is busy and I do not have more time to shorten the comment. I wanted to develop an argument for how the evolutionary and dysfunctional forms of freedom have gotten us to this point. And what we need to do to still have some freedom but also "play nice and share in the future sandbox of climate change and post fossil fuel society.

[Mar 19, 2019] Blackout During Orgy Island Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein Hearing

Was Bill Clinton in addition to all his sins a pedophile?
Mar 03, 2019 | theduran.com

Epstein, a billionaire and friend of the Clintons (Bill Clinton flew on his "Lolita Express" Boeing 727 jet dozens of times), was convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution. Published

Via Zerohedge

The legal team for Attorney Alan Dershowitz has cautioned against press access to a hearing regarding his former client and associate, convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein – who was given a slap on the wrist in 2008 by then-US Attorney for southern Florida (and current Labor Secretary) Alex Acosta. Epstein, who reportedly has an egg shaped penis , sexually abused dozens of underage girls in his Palm Beach mansion, while Acosta is under fire separately of the sealed records appeal.

Epstein, a billionaire and friend of the Clintons (Bill Clinton flew on his "Lolita Express" Boeing 727 jet dozens of times ), was convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution – on of two counts for which he served 13 months in "custody with work release."

Epstein, now 66, reached the deal in 2008 with then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta's office to end the federal probe that could have landed him in prison for life. Epstein instead pleaded guilty to lesser state charges, spent 13 months in jail, paid financial settlements to victims and is a registered sex offender. – Time

Background facts from 2/21/2019 ruling in Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 vs. United States

The sealed records appeal relates to a 2015 defamation lawsuit in New York brought by Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre against British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell. Giuffre says Maxwell helped Epstein traffic herself and other underage girls to sex parties at the billionaire pedophile's many residences. The case was settled in 2017 and the records were sealed – leading to an appeal by the Miami Herald and several other parties seeking to make them public in the hopes of shedding more light on the scope of Epstein's crimes – along with determining who else was involved and whether any undue influence tainted the case .

Oral arguments are scheduled Wednesday.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/yPjn6rcJqsI?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Dershowitz's attorney asked a New York judge whether the media should be barred from Wednesday's hearing in the US District Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, since " his oral arguments on behalf of his client could contain sensitive information that has been under seal ," reports the Miami Herald 's Julie K. Brown.

The appeals court had not responded to his concern as of Friday, but if the hearing is closed during his lawyer's argument, it would represent the latest in a long history of successful efforts to keep details of Epstein's sex crimes sealed .

Two women -- one of whom was underage -- have said Epstein and his partner, British socialite and environmentalist Ghislaine Maxwell, directed them to have sex with Dershowitz, 80, and other wealthy, powerful men. Dershowitz and Maxwell have denied the claim s. – Miami Herald

Dershowitz – having been publicly implicated in Epstein's crimes by Giuffre, attempted to have the judge to unseal certain records in the case which he claims will exonerate him. Conservative pundit Mike Cernovich, a Dershowitz associate, also filed a motion to release some of the sealed documents. Both requests were denied in 2016, as the case (which settled in 2017) was ongoing, with the judge citing the need to avoid taining a potential jury pool.

After the case was settled, the Herald filed a more extensive motion, arguing that with the case now closed, all the documents should be made public. The motion, filed in April 2018, came as the Herald was working on an investigative series, Perversion of Justice , which detailed how Epstein and his lawyers manipulated federal prosecutors to obtain one of the most lenient sentences for a child sex offender in history.

Dershowitz's lawyer, Andrew G. Celli Jr., emphasized to the Herald that Dershowitz is not trying to ban the media from the proceeding; he is simply giving the court a heads up that his arguments could include information that has never been made public because it's under seal. – Miami Herald

"What the letter says very clearly is we intend to make reference to the sealed material in open court, so we want to notify the judges that this is my intention to make my arguments," said Dershowitz attorney, Andrew Celli. "We want the courtroom to be open so long as we can argue the substance of what we want to unseal."

[Mar 18, 2019] Time for both clintons is over: Neoliberals Passing the Baton by Robert Waldmann

Mar 11, 2019 | angrybearblog.com
Healthcare Hot Topics Politics US/Global Economics Brad DeLong got a huge amount of attention by saying it was time for neoliberals such as Brad DeLong to pass the baton to those to their left. Alarmingly, he seems to have written this first on twitter.

Zach Beuchamp rescued it from tawdry twitter to now very respectable blogosphere with an interview.

One interesting aspect is that Brad has very little criticism of 90s era Brad's policy proposals. Basically, the argument is that Democrats must stick together, because Republicans are purely partisan and no compromise with them is possible. I absolutely agree with Brad on this.

But I also want to look at criticisms of Clinton/Obama center left policy as policy.

Brad tries to come up with 2 examples

I could be confident in 2005 that [recession] stabilization should be the responsibility of the Federal Reserve. That you look at something like laser-eye surgery or rapid technological progress in hearing aids, you can kind of think that keeping a market in the most innovative parts of health care would be a good thing. So something like an insurance-plus-exchange system would be a good thing to have in America as a whole.

It's much harder to believe in those things now. That's one part of it. The world appears to be more like what lefties thought it was than what I thought it was for the last 10 or 15 years.

Now monetary vs fiscal policy is only considered right vs left because of the prominence and fanaticism of Milton Friedman. Is see no connection between laser eye surgery, hearing aids, and private health insurance. Medicare for all is not a National Health Service (note I am not conceding that a national health service would be bad for medical innovation). Brad did not advocate insurance/plus/exchange system in 1993. He (and Bentson, Summers and Rubin) advocated a payroll tax financed system not the Clinton-Clinton and Magaziner mess. I think he is stretching to get a second example.

I think the first isn't really left vs right and the second is and always was a bad political calculation. IIRC Obama certainly said that he thought single payer was better policy but politically impossible. That was the general line on the center left wonkosphere. I think the case for insurance-plus-exchange was at most a bad political argument disguised as a bad policy argument.

In another twitter thread (no not the one where he says twitter is a horrible medium for serious discussion) Paul Krugman comments

I want to focus on two of his tweets

Last point: wages. Here's where research has convinced me and others that wages are much less determined by supply and demand, much more determined by market power, than we used to believe. This implies a much bigger role for "predistribution" policies like minimum wage hikes 10/

Pro-union policies, and more than we used to think. "Let the market do its thing, but spend more on education/training and a bigger EITC" no longer sounds like wisdom 11/

I listed this as the one economist's mea culpa based on empirical evidence which came to my mind. A lot of center left economists used to oppose minimum wage increases and were convinced by empirical evidence (mostly by Card and Krueger) that this is actually good policy. But I don't see any problem with the EITC. Rather, economics 101 based arguments against the minimum wage and unions have been undermined by evidence*.

I think Krugman's problem with "a bigger EITC" is political. It appears on the Federal budget so deficit hawks won't allow a really huge increase. In contrast, people can think firms pay the minimum wage, so increasing it sounds like a cheap way to help the working poor.

More generally, I don't see any reason to abandone redistribution (like the EITC). In fact, I think that is both excellent policy and political dynamite. I note that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama campaigned promising to raise taxes on the rich and cut taxes on everyone else. Also they won. Other Democrats didn't promise that and they lost. A more progressive income tax is a relatively market respecting policy long supported by left of center economists. Oh and also Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. I don't think there is any evidence against the Clinton 1993 tax increase combined with EITC increase.

The fact that it is totally obvious that it is good politics (rejected absolutely by the Republican party and supported by most self identified Republicans) doesn't mean that it is too obvious to stress. It means debating redistribution vs predistribution is a distraction (which one here is not like the others) ?

I personally have criticisms of Bill Clinton type neoliberalism after the jump

OK so what can I add ?

I could bring up a really bad Clinton administration policy proposal based on neoliberalism: financial deregulation, and, in particular, Clinton's last act signing the commodity futures modernization act. This was absolutely policy based on pro free market beliefs of people who cared about fighting poverty (Rubin himself was a relative skeptic compared to other people and the Clinton Treasury whom I will not name and criticize).

I won't discuss welfare reform or the Clinton crime bill. Both were opposed by the center left wonks. That was politics not policy.

But there was strong support among neoliberal wonks for reinventing government, that is for outsourcing and replacing public provision of services with vouchers. There clearly was a strong view that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector. There was I think sincere support for reducing the number of Federal employees.

I think there is now strong evidence that the public sector is often more efficient than the private sector. Part of the case was politics disguised as policy. Voters hate the bloated Federal Bureacuracy (based on total fantasy about its size and cost). There is a theoretical argument that civil servants don't work because it is very hard to fire them. In fact, they do work. This is a failure of vulgar economics 101 in which people are assumed to care only about consumption and leisure.

In contrast there are huge problems with contracting out to private firms. The incentives civil servants face is enough to overcome the laziness of people less lazy than me (almost everyone) but it is nothing compared to the incentives private contractors have to take advantage of the government. What I always say is that a large state is costly, but the cost depends on the surface area -- it is very costly for the state for modestly paid civil servants negotiate with businessmen and highly paid private managers (before going out the revolving door). Reinventing government makes it more costly. The key example is not a Clinton reform (although Clinton reluctantly signed the bill) Medicare Advantage was supposed to cause Medicare to wither on the vine because the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) couldn't compete with private insurance. By 2010 defenders of private insurance (crucially including Joe Lieberman) were absolutely determined to prevent the CMS from competing with private insurance, because they knew private insurance companies couldn't survive the competition.

Also school vouchers have been shown to have large negative effects on achievement.

I'd say considerable evidence of positive long term effects of welfare programs has accumulated. The assumption based on economimics 101 that welfare reduces pre-transfer income by distorting incentives has not fared so well. The evidence tends to suggest direct benefits. I promised not to discuss this one, because I am sure that welfare reform was based on political calculations not bad policy analysis (it was not a policy of the Rubin wing of the party -- Rubin advised Clinton to veto the bill).

Now on another topic. How about winning elections. Isn't that important too ?

In the interview, Brad discusses policy and parliamentary (in the USA Congressional) politics. He could also argue about electoral politics and say Democrats have to move left to win elections. In any case I will argue that.

Brad's argument is distantly related to the mobilize the base vs capture the center political strategies. He doesn't stress this in the twitter thread or the interview, but he could discuss voters and how few genuinely indpendent voters there are. Like me, he can vividly recall the 80s when lots of smart Democrats (and also Robert Waldmann) argued that the party had to move rightward to recapture the center. I recall reading something by Robert Kuttner about what the party needed was left populism and this was blocked by the power of money in the Democratic party (think Bernie Sanders back when Sanders was mayor of Burlington). When I first read that, I thought it was crazy. Now I think it is totally right. Also note that, by promoting the internet, Al Gore saved the party from centrists like Al Gore. Now candidates and candidate-candidates can raise huge amounts of money with small donations and don't have to get along with and flatter rich people. Obama proved this 8 years before Sanders proved it again.

There are fewer swing voters and much less ticket splitting than their used to be. This means that elections are determined mainly by whether young people vote. Sneering and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is not good political strategy (also unwise unless one is a smart as she is and few people are).

* I have to say what I think of unions there was a liberaltarian argument that unions help insiders and create inequality (and support racial segregation). Also it was argued that unions prevented productivity growth by featherbeading and generally being rigid. These claims were never supported by evidence (empirically oriented labor economists like Richard Friedman always contested them}. In any case, the extreme decline of unions in the USA provides strong evidence that unions weren't the problem. They declined at the same time that there was a huge increase in inequality (there has also been an increase in racial wage differentials). Also their decline correlated with a marked decline in the rate of productivity growth. This is crude evidence, but detailed evidence long contradicted the case against unions. I think part of the shift is new evidence and part of the shift is more respect for evidence vs theory among economists. On the other hand, it's a whole lot easier to raise taxes on the rich and cut taxes on the non rich than to bring unions back.

[Mar 17, 2019] Epstein, Clinton and Trump are all connected to Lolita Express scandal

Notable quotes:
"... Both Clinton and Trump were close to Epstein. To me this smells like there was a bi-partisan consensus to bury this, and only now that the Clintons are no longer dominating the Democrat party, do we get some results. ..."
"... "I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy," Trump said of Epstein during a 2002 interview with New York magazine. "He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." ..."
"... "The Government aligned themselves with Epstein, working against his victims, for 11 years..." THE SAME can be said for this: "The Government aligned themselves with APARTHEID Israhell, working against their Palestinians victims, for over 70 years... " WARNING: Graphic Images ..."
"... Epstein has dirt on EVERYONE ... If he ever gets in a legitimate court room? - many, many, shitty people will be in trouble ... GOP and Democrat. ..."
"... The ruling comes after Senators on the Judiciary Committee asked that the DOJ open an investigation into the deal, which was offered at a time when Robert Mueller was running the FBI . ..."
"... I assume MOSSAD & friends will have to pull some very fancy rabbits out of their hat to get this buried again . The $wamp can't afford to have him cooperating, so I'm guessing Epstein will have to 'retire' to Tel-Aviv - or have an accident/become 'depressed, etc.' ..."
Feb 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Judge Rules Plea Deal For Orgy Island Billionaire Broke Federal Law

youshallnotkill, 1 hour ago link

Both Clinton and Trump were close to Epstein. To me this smells like there was a bi-partisan consensus to bury this, and only now that the Clintons are no longer dominating the Democrat party, do we get some results.

While Trump has recently distanced himself from Epstein, a 64-year-old financier, it wasn't always that way.

"I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy," Trump said of Epstein during a 2002 interview with New York magazine. "He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."

Attorney Spencer Kuvin, one of dozens of lawyers who successfully sued Epstein on behalf of roughly 30 women who claimed he lured them to his Palm Beach mansion for sexually-charged massages when they were as young as 14, said he always found the comment curious.

"How would he know that?" he said of Trump's acknowledgement of Epstein's penchant for young women. The interview came nearly six years before Epstein's secret sex life exploded into public view when the money manager pleaded guilty to Florida charges of procuring and soliciting a minor for prostitution. "Why would he make a joke like that?" the West Palm Beach attorney asked.

SOURCE: https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/20170512/will-president-trump-be-used-as-witness-in-sex-offender-epstein-case

Justin Case, 1 hour ago link

Bill has frequent flier points on Lolita Express. He had a 14yr.old toy on the island and the flight logs can prove his attendance.

zeezrom2point0, 2 hours ago link

Be nice if someone found the guest list because Bill Clinton wouldn't be able to kill that many people to cover it up. It'd be sweet if they found evidence that Trump went, because he definitely did. He's probably the one to name it "Lolita Express."...no, that was probably Bill.

TeraByte, 2 hours ago link

Manford´s life time vs a slap on the wrist. I does not matter, what you do, but whom you know.

loop, 2 hours ago link

"The Government aligned themselves with Epstein, working against his victims, for 11 years..." THE SAME can be said for this: "The Government aligned themselves with APARTHEID Israhell, working against their Palestinians victims, for over 70 years... " WARNING: Graphic Images

DFGTC , 2 hours ago link

Epstein has dirt on EVERYONE ... If he ever gets in a legitimate court room? - many, many, shitty people will be in trouble ... GOP and Democrat.

And Trump? Acosta is in his admin, right? Or, he didn't fire the scum yet? And when is Hillary going to jail?

William Dorritt , 2 hours ago link

Billionaire Palm Beach serial sex offender allowed to serve time in luxurious milieu | Fred Grimm

... ... ...

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/fl-op-col-fred-grimm-jeffrey-epste ...

2 of 2 2/7/2019, 10:41 AM

4 wheel drift , 3 hours ago link

The ruling comes after Senators on the Judiciary Committee asked that the DOJ open an investigation into the deal, which was offered at a time when Robert Mueller was running the FBI .

LOLOLOL.... THAT explains a lot... ******* criminals the entire lot of them

Baron Samedi , 3 hours ago link

I assume MOSSAD & friends will have to pull some very fancy rabbits out of their hat to get this buried again. The $wamp can't afford to have him cooperating, so I'm guessing Epstein will have to 'retire' to Tel-Aviv - or have an accident/become 'depressed, etc.'

I will further bet that JE has had adequate notice of all this to be getting out of the USA to Balfourstan - a non-extradition country - ASAP.

Reaper , 3 hours ago link

The DOJ can prosecute now for the conspiracy of prosecutors and Epstein: https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-923-18-usc-371-conspiracy-defraud-us

dirty fingernails , 3 hours ago link

Don't hold your breath.

William Dorritt , 3 hours ago link
Hastert mentioned in WikiLeaks: https://wearechange.org/disgraced-house-speaker-pedophile-dennis-hastert/
As you dig into these stories, one singular theory emerges again and again: Sexual deviants and psychos have been groomed for office because they are easier to blackmail and control.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/01/1389654/-Dennis-Hastert-as-the-Tip-of-the-Iceberg

[Mar 17, 2019] As Hemingway replied to Scott Fitzgerald assertion The rich are different than you and me : yes, they have more money.

Highly recommended!
Human society is way to complex for alpha males to succeed unconditionally... Quite a different set of traits is often needed.
Notable quotes:
"... Superficially, Hemingway was correct. But on a deeper level, he missed the reality of the heightened sense of entitlement that the very rich possess, as well as the deference that so many people automatically show to them. ..."
"... Hemingway is saying: take away all that money and the behavior would change as well. It's the money (or the power in your example) that makes the difference. ..."
"... I feel Fitzgerald got the basic idea right ..."
"... Apparently Fitzgerald was referring specifically to the attitudes of those who are born rich, attitudes that Fitzgerald thought remained unaltered by events, including the loss of economic status. ..."
"... "They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different." ..."
"... "He thought they were a special glamorous race and when he found they weren't it wrecked him as much as any other thing that wrecked him." ..."
Dec 31, 2015 | nakedcapitalism.com

Carolinian December 29, 2015

As Hemingway replied to that alum: "yes, they have more money."

Vatch December 29, 2015 at 11:25 am

Superficially, Hemingway was correct. But on a deeper level, he missed the reality of the heightened sense of entitlement that the very rich possess, as well as the deference that so many people automatically show to them. The rich shouldn't be different in this way, but they are. In some other societies, such entitlement and deference would accrue to senior party members, senior clergymen, or hereditary nobility (who might not have much money at all).

MyLessThanPrimeBeef December 29, 2015 at 11:45 am

"Go with the winner." That is how it works for the alpha male (a chimp, an ape, or a gorilla) for most followers anyway. Some will challenge. If victorious, followers will line up (more go-with-the-winner). If defeated, an outcast.

Carolinian December 29, 2015 at 12:04 pm

Without a doubt Hemingway had a rather catty attitude toward his literary rival, but in this instance I think the debunking is merited. It's quite possible that rich people act the way we would act if we were rich, and that Fitzgerald's tiresome obsession with rich people didn't cut very deep. Hemingway is saying: take away all that money and the behavior would change as well. It's the money (or the power in your example) that makes the difference.

Massinissa December 29, 2015 at 1:58 pm

In my opinion, the fact that if they had less money would change the way they think, does not change the fact that, while they have more money, they think differently, and different rules apply to them.

Massinissa December 29, 2015 at 2:00 pm

Addendum: The fact that an Alpha Chimp would act differently if someone else was the Alpha Chimp does not change the fact that an Alpha Chimp has fundamentally different behavior than the rest of the group.

Carolinian December 29, 2015 at 2:17 pm

Sounds like you are saying the behavior of the rich is different -- not what F. Scott Fitzgerald said.

Massinissa December 29, 2015 at 2:29 pm

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:F._Scott_Fitzgerald

"Hemingway is responsible for a famous misquotation of Fitzgerald's. According to Hemingway, a conversation between him and Fitzgerald went:

Fitzgerald: The rich are different than you and me.
Hemingway: Yes, they have more money.

This never actually happened; it is a retelling of an actual encounter between Hemingway and Mary Colum, which went as follows:

Hemingway: I am getting to know the rich.

Colum: I think you'll find the only difference between the rich and other people is that the rich have more money."

Just want to point out that that quote of Hemingways wasn't about Fitzgerald and wasn't even by Hemingway. Anyway I was more attacking the "rich have more money" thing than I was trying to defend Fitzgerald, but I feel Fitzgerald got the basic idea right

craazyman December 29, 2015 at 3:35 pm

I read somewhere, maybe a biography of one of them when I read books like that, that Hemingway actually said it and only said that F. Scott said it.

There are no heroes among famous men. I said that!

giantsquid December 29, 2015 at 4:00 pm

Here's an interesting take on this reputed exchange between Fitzgerald and Hemingway:

"The rich are different" The real story behind the famed "exchange" between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.

http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2009/11/rich-are-different-famous-quote.html

Apparently Fitzgerald was referring specifically to the attitudes of those who are born rich, attitudes that Fitzgerald thought remained unaltered by events, including the loss of economic status.

"They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different."

Hemingway suggested that Fitzgerald had once been especially enamored of the rich, seeing them as a "special glamorous race" but ultimately became disillusioned.

"He thought they were a special glamorous race and when he found they weren't it wrecked him as much as any other thing that wrecked him."

[Mar 11, 2019] Is There Any Real Evidence of Elite Pedophile Sex Rings Involving Government Pop Culture – Collective Evolution

Mar 11, 2019 | www.collective-evolution.com

Pedophilia has come up in the mainstream a lot lately, as PizzaGate came to light fairly recently and more and more pedophile rings are being exposed, some of which have involved government officials.

If you're unfamiliar with PizzaGate, it refers to a wide range of email correspondence leaked from the DNC that allegedly unearthed a high-level elitist global pedophile ring in which the U.S. government was involved.

It emerged when Wikileaks released tens of thousands of emails from the former White House Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton, John Podesta, who also served as Hillary Clinton's campaign manager. It's because of these emails that many claimed John Podesta was a part of these child trafficking rings as well.

Since then, conspiracy theorists and world renowned journalists alike have been looking into the topic and speculating how big this problem could be and who could be involved within these underground rings.

For example, award winning American journalist Ben Swann explained the Pizzagate controversy in detail on mainstream news:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/-GZFHLAcG8A?start=0&modestbranding=1&showinfo=0&theme=light

Not long after, Swann's entire online personal brand and accounts had all but vanished from the internet. Why?

More recently, there's been some speculation that these pedophile rings could stretch into pop culture, potentially involving more pedophilia scandals and symbolism within the media. The question here is: Is there any tangible evidence of all of this, or is it mere speculation?

Pedophilia Symbolism

I'd like to begin by identifying the symbols that are used by pedophiles to identify themselves and make their requests within underground networks. Here is a link to a declassified FBI document illustrating the symbols and images used by pedophiles to "identify their sexual preferences."

So, how do these images relate to pizza? First of all, before PizzaGate was even suggested, "cheese pizza" was used as a code word to discuss "child porn" (hint: it's the same initials, CP). A quick Google search will reveal that the market for underage sex workers is fairly substantial, and you can even see a 2015 post on Urban Dictionary that explains how "cheese pizza" is used as code for child porn.

As per PizzaGate and the symbolism, it all started when multiple emails involving John Podesta, his brother, and Hillary Clinton simply didn't add up. Strange wording discussing pizza and cheese left readers confused, and because the emails made so little sense, it led many to suspect that they were code for something else.

For example, this email addressed to John Podesta reads: "The realtor found a handkerchief (I think it has a map that seems pizza-related)," and this email sent from John Podesta asks: "Do you think I'll do better playing dominos on cheese than on pasta?" There are many more examples, and I encourage you to go through the Wikileaks vault to explore.

On top of that, the DNC was associated with two pizza places, Comet Ping Pong and Besta Pizza, which use very clear symbols of pedophilia in their advertising and have strange images of children and other ritualistic type images and suspicious videos on their social media accounts – which has since been made private given the controversy over the images and their link to the DNC, but again, a quick Google search will show you what those images looked like. You can read the email correspondence between John Podesta and Comet Ping Pong's owner, James Alefantis, here .

... ... ...

[Feb 23, 2019] It looks like an effort is going on to stamp out news of what these other "bigger fish" were up to

Feb 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

chunga , 5 hours ago

It's really interesting that I was listening to a Boston sports radio station as the thing with Kraft and prostitution was unfolding and ESPN's reporter Adam Schefter was on and he denied his initial reporting about the 200 other guys and "bigger fish".

It looks like an effort is going on to stamp out news of what these other "bigger fish" were up to.

edit to expound on that. Adam Schefter got caught, and remains in, a fake news warp. Right before he came on the WEEI radio show they had a TMZ guy come on and he said the names they showed were the only ones.

Schefter said what he said and the radio guys were talking about it and asked him about the 200 names and the bigger fish and he denied saying it. So what happened as far as I can tell is TMZ got the memo from fake news hqtrs to *** it and Schefter/ESPN did not.

People are saying who cares about old guys paying for blow jobs - but according to the popo spokesman - this multi-agency investigation is not about prostitution but about human trafficking which moves the needle from raunchy to sinister.

[Feb 23, 2019] Trump appoints the prosecutor who slapped Epstein on the wrist for Lolita Express crime

Notable quotes:
"... Trump didn't drain the swamp, he pour fertilizer in it. ..."
"... The shekel counting big snout alligators? They're particularly nasty. ..."
"... Acosta = Epstein Pedogate Prosecutor "When I first heard the name Alexander Acosta, Trump's new pick for Labor Secretary, I knew it sounded eerily familiar. And then it dawned on me. He was the U.S. Attorney in charge of the Southern District of Florida from 2006 through 2009, and oversaw a sweetheart deal for Jeffrey Epstein." ..."
"... Trump - Epstein civil suit COMPLAINT FOR RAPE, SEXUAL MISCONDUCT, CRIMINAL SEXUAL ACTS, SEXUAL ABUSE, FORCIBLE TOUCHING, ASSAULT, BATTERY, INTENTIONAL AND RECKLESS INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS, DURESS, FALSE IMPRISONMENT, AND DEFAMATION ..."
"... Over 200 children. 12,13,14 years old. Broken homes. Different countries. "Punishment" = Empty wing of a comfy 'prison' with liberal leave privledges for him to work from his office, where he could receive guests including females. That's not prison Tyler's, it's ******* daycare - which is the kind of place he's attracted to. Stop calling it / quoting it as a "prison sentence". ..."
Feb 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

gildedtime , 3 hours ago link

So Trump appoints the prosecutor who slapped Epstein on the wrist for a cabinet position. This is so obvious as Trump was part of the Lolita Express as was lifelong Democrat Alan Dershowitz who has suddenly flipped to Trump's most ardent supporter as well as the usual group of pervs like Clinton and Spacey (who cares I guess).

Trump didn't drain the swamp, he pour fertilizer in it.

Karl Malden's Nose , 54 minutes ago link

The shekel counting big snout alligators? They're particularly nasty.

William Dorritt , 3 hours ago link
Acosta = Epstein Pedogate Prosecutor "When I first heard the name Alexander Acosta, Trump's new pick for Labor Secretary, I knew it sounded eerily familiar. And then it dawned on me. He was the U.S. Attorney in charge of the Southern District of Florida from 2006 through 2009, and oversaw a sweetheart deal for Jeffrey Epstein."
http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/trumps-new-labor-secretary-pick-protected-convicted-pedophile-billionaire-jeffrey-epstein-from-prosecution/
Anonymous_Beneficiary , 3 hours ago link

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000158-26b6-dda3-afd8-b6fe46f40000

Trump - Epstein civil suit COMPLAINT FOR RAPE, SEXUAL MISCONDUCT, CRIMINAL SEXUAL ACTS, SEXUAL ABUSE, FORCIBLE TOUCHING, ASSAULT, BATTERY, INTENTIONAL AND RECKLESS INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS, DURESS, FALSE IMPRISONMENT, AND DEFAMATION

SpinDrift , 4 hours ago link

Over 200 children. 12,13,14 years old. Broken homes. Different countries. "Punishment" = Empty wing of a comfy 'prison' with liberal leave privledges for him to work from his office, where he could receive guests including females. That's not prison Tyler's, it's ******* daycare - which is the kind of place he's attracted to. Stop calling it / quoting it as a "prison sentence".

Must be some really compromising video footage with some very powerful people on it to get that kind of deal. Day of the rope for that **** and all who let him walk. No exceptions.

Return_of_Byzantium , 4 hours ago link

I had to search this up to believe what you said. Holy ****... the rabbit hole is deeper than most realize:

" Instead of being sent to state prison, Epstein was housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County jail. And rather than having him sit in a cell most of the day, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office allowed Epstein work release privileges, which enabled him to leave the jail six days a week, for 12 hours a day, to go to a comfortable office that Epstein had set up in West Palm Beach. This was granted despite explicit sheriff's department rules stating that sex offenders don't qualify for work release ."

Helena Bonham-Carter , 3 hours ago link

When you have dirt on the Clintons, and you **** up, and they can't kill you, this is what you get.

Anonymous_Beneficiary , 3 hours ago link

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/new-photos-bill-clinton-trump-melania-227945

Groundround , 4 hours ago link

Note how they spent hours to placate and kowtow to the pedophile while dumping on the victims. That is because the government is loaded with dog **** like the half monkey Epstein and his fellow tribe members. The only justice left to Americans will come from the streets. I am completely against torture and war, yet this piece of scum should be waterboarded for names. They need to clear out those members of government who have been compromised by the activities of the tribe.

Realname , 4 hours ago link

Well, the swamp would, finally, be drained.

ashu.lsa56 , 4 hours ago link

I g­e­t p­a­i­d o­v­e­r $­9­0 p­e­r h­o­u­r w­o­r­k­i­n­g f­r­o­m h­o­m­e w­i­t­h 2 k­i­d­s a­t h­o­m­e. I n­e­v­e­r t­h­o­u­g­h­t I­'­d b­e a­b­l­e t­o d­o i­t b­u­t m­y b­e­s­t f­r­i­e­n­d e­a­r­n­s o­v­e­r 1­0­k a m­o­n­t­h d­o­i­n­g t­h­i­s a­n­d s­h­e c­o­n­v­i­n­c­e­d m­e t­o t­r­y. T­h­e p­o­t­e­n­t­i­a­l w­i­t­h t­h­i­s i­s e­n­d­l­e­s­s. H­e­r­e­s w­h­a­t I'v­e b­e­e­n d­o­i­n­g,

HERE►► http://www.todaysfox.com

Miss Tick , 2 hours ago link

Those spammers are criminals

The websites contain not only virus, malware, spyware whatever. .. (depends on your PC protection)

It is a ripoff . You never get paid a cent. But if one is gullible and naive enough to give away to shady strangers personal data as address, birth date, social security number, credit card number, bank account etc., they empty your account , and they do Identity theft.

p.e. They ask for an initial payment for training, or they sell you a starter kit etc., so they get your data. Or they promise you to pay salary in advance, before they ever saw you. Sometimes they have "real" job interviews with a "recruiter" by Skype or Smartphones facial, no skills required, with faked websites of real companies, faked or personal email addresses.

Grandad Grumps , 4 hours ago link

Cage Mueller!!

SocratesSolutions , 4 hours ago link

Every last pedophile is dead meat just like Judaica is dead meat which promoted it. No, you cannot touch a kid any longer, ignorant arrogant sick followers of the Talmud and Kabbalah, for the Talmud and Kabbalah will be burned out of every last Synagogue on the planet just as the entire religion will be burned down to the ground. Including many dumb parts of the Bible. Take for example that sick *** stupid mother ******* event where some guy holds a knife up to his son because God told him to. You ignorant arrogant assholes. God never said any such thing, and God sure as hell never said you were chosen! Well, I take that back. You see, God told me that you are actually especially chosen for the *** kicking of a millenia.

www.21stcenturyworldmessage.com

charlie_don't_surf , 4 hours ago link

Root em out.

Walter Melon , 4 hours ago link

Ruh roh!

That's right, I said it.

RayUSA , 4 hours ago link

This is the manner that the scum in the so called "Justice Department" works to protect pedophiles. If it wasn't for an intense amount of corruption, Epstein would have been prosecuted by the full extent of the law. Instead, sneaky deals by the scum bags that "prosecuted" this fraud of a case ended up with a plea agreement which "punished" this slimy creep with a measly 13 month sentence.

To add insult to injury to the victims, the civil case is dragged on for 11 years.

This is the same type of "justice" that is in place that has protected the Catholic clergy pedophiles, which for the most part, never saw the inside of a court room for their unspeakable crimes.

Why are pedophiles seemingly protected in this society? Is it because pedophilia is rampant among so many that are in powerful positions? I think we all know the answer to that one.

stubb , 4 hours ago link

LOL. Since when do the courts or any other part of the government care about breaking laws.

dirty fingernails , 4 hours ago link

When you and I do it. 2 tier justice system.

ConservativeOldMan , 4 hours ago link

And then there are all Epstein's friends, who enjoyed themselves with little girls on that benighted island: hearsay includes both the Clintons among them, and the Queen of England's second son, prince someone or the other. I assume that what they did on that island was felonious. Need to go after them.

And then there's ACOSTA - our current Federal Secretary of Labor. TRUMP NEEDS TO FIRE HIM, perhaps to prosecute him.

Realname , 4 hours ago link

Hasnt Trump, also, been a guest there?

Karl Malden's Nose , 4 hours ago link

Shhhh, never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Orange Jesus is their messiah. He can do no wrong. He was misquoted when he said he'd bang his daughter, ignore those creepy photos too.

Realname , 4 hours ago link

Apparently, critical thinking is becoming rare. Go team!

Proud-Christian-White-American-Man , 3 hours ago link

Karl Malden's Nose: Guess you are letting Trump Derangement Syndrome get in the way of the facts.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-12/fusion-gps-tried-and-failed-link-trump-jeffrey-epstein

Karl Malden's Nose , 1 hour ago link

Facts? Oh you mean like the Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislane Maxwell connection? Yeah. Wait, they obviously never met right? "He's a lot of fun to be with," "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."

https://fitzinfo.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/trump-and-epstein.jpg

https://fitzinfo.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/epstein-and-trump-at-mar-a-lago.jpg

https://i0.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/JeffreyEpsteinDonaldTrumpBillClintonSexOffenderBearStearnsChildMolestation.jpg?w=1920&ssl=1

Who could forget this gem?

https://fitzinfo.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/trump_daughter-ivanka_creepy_01.jpg

tmosley , 4 hours ago link

No, he just borrowed the plane.

gildedtime , 3 hours ago link

Trump needs to fire him? Trump hired him! It wasn't a coincidence.

MasterPo , 4 hours ago link

This ****** is toast. If you don't get that, you're just not ready for what's happening, and it's OK. The adults have stepped in, and are cleaning house. The streets will be paved with the carcases of these pedophiles, satanists, and assorted scumbags. Some will be from the dregs of society, others from the highest echelons, but none will escape.

[So it has been spoken, so it shall be done... (Yul Brenner as Pharoah - from The Ten Commandments)]

Groundround , 4 hours ago link

I think the only justice to be done will be that we do ourselves. But that time is coming. A lot of folks have had enough of Epstein and his cronies.

Ignorance is bliss , 4 hours ago link

Double jepopardy. Can't go to trial twice for the same crime. The pedophile walks among us.

UmbilicalMosqueSweeper , 4 hours ago link

Multiple crimes, not just one crime.

Karl Malden's Nose , 4 hours ago link

Except he was never tried for sex trafficking. He plead guilty to two prostitution charges. Send the **** to the slammer, better still the gallows.

Shadow1275 , 4 hours ago link

Got Em!

khnum , 4 hours ago link

You can run on for a long time

run on for a long time

run on for a long time

Sooner or later God'll cut you down

Sooner or later God'll cut you down,

(from Johnny Cash,God's Gonna Cut You Down)

johnnycanuck , 4 hours ago link

One can only hope, but hope never amounts to anything so long as the robber barons continue to run everything.

As my old bro used to say; We thank God for the blessings we are about to receive, the ones I worked hard for.

khnum , 4 hours ago link

I figure God helps those that help themselves,there is an afterlife though,the trick is being in this world but not of it.I have a roof over my head,a full belly,an income and good family and friends hell thats better than 70 per cent on this planet so I tend not to be much of a God botherer.

johnny two shoes , 4 hours ago link

And Epstein was there at Chelsea Hubbell's wedding...

UmbilicalMosqueSweeper , 4 hours ago link

Think he banged her?

RufusMacDuff , 4 hours ago link

Nah, it was far too old...

Karl Malden's Nose , 4 hours ago link

Come now, even Chelsea's hubby hasn't fucked around in that hairy cabbage patch. They sent her to the vet to get inseminated.

johnny two shoes , 4 hours ago link

I must apologize, it seems his pimpette (?) named Ghislaine was there, representing Prince Andrew, who also seems to like them young, ... not sure if thats why Fergie left him... its complicated...

As far as the Clinton Foundation paying for the 3 million dollar wedding, well that's murky too

sorry

johnnycanuck , 4 hours ago link

Far more important in the here and now is Bernie Sanders refused to go with the Dims and back fat Mike's 'Guido' in Venezuela. The head of the Clinton Foundation , a Congresswoman from Florida and ex Bill Clinton Secretary of something, loudly condemned Bernie and said he will NEVER be the Dems candidate for President.

https://www.rt.com/usa/452141-sanders-venezuela-guaido-maduro/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Shalala

[Feb 23, 2019] Sen. Bob Menendez was also a passenger, and who knows who else

Feb 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

LetThemEatRand , 5 hours ago link

For all of you ZH'rs who hate civil trial lawyers, there were several prominent ones who literally devoted a decade to this (many at the risk of their practices, taking on TPTB). And without any real chance of ever seeing a penny for their efforts. Kudos and cheers for the victory in the battle.

TeamDepends , 5 hours ago link

Amen, and maybe they will never see a penny but they will live to see vindication.

7thGenMO , 3 hours ago link

If they do see vindication, The Miami Herald should get some credit. The reporters there have been doing the investigative work to reveal that there were many children involved. Funny how the MSM couldn't get to the bottom of this story. ///

Theosebes Goodfellow , 46 minutes ago link

It wasn't just Bill Clinton and actor Kevin Spacey who got ferried, (sorry, but when it comes to Spacey, there's an inside joke there I'm sure). Sen. Bob Menendez was also a passenger, and who knows who else. I personally would like for AG Barr to have a chance at squeezing Epstein's nutz for evidence on the [DS].

[Feb 16, 2019] All roads lead to Obama

Feb 16, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

05/27/2018

macholatte -> Richard Chesler Sun, 05/27/2018 - 10:30 Permalink

All roads lead to Obama.

Trump's BIGGEST single mistake was making Sessions AG and then failing to fire Sessions after Sessions recused himself. We now know Sessions is Trump's Judas Iscariot.

How about the very well documented and obvious Crimes & Felonies:
1. On Rosenstein's advice, Sessions recused himself from getting involved with any Trump campaign related investigations - here come the Trump campaign related investigations.
2. Sessions appoints Rosenstein assistant AG.
3. Rosenstein recommends that Comey be fired.
4. Trump fires Comey.
5. Rosenstein recommends Wray, good buddy of Comey & Mueller, to be new FBI director.
6. Comey testifies that he leaked a memo (stuff he made up) because he knew it would trigger a special council to investigate the Trump campaign for Russia collusion (how did Comey know that? Was it part of the plan with Rosenstein?)
7. Rosenstein appoints Mueller (good friend of Rosenstein & Comey) as the special council with open authority to investigate "collusion", a suspected activity that is not a crime if it did exist. We now know Mueller's appointment & authority might be illegal.
8. Rosenstein & Wray stonewall congressional investigations into DOJ & FBI criminality.
9. Sessions refuses to appoint special council to investigate obvious Hitlary, DOJ & FBI criminality.
10. Sessions appoints John Huber, Obama appointee & swamp rat, to assist Inspector General without any power to subpoena or seat a Grand Jury.
11. Stormy Daniels is used to demoralize Trump and is assisted by FBI. Since when does the FBI get involved in the kind of civil actions raised by a prostitute?
12. Michael Cohen is raided by FBI regarding an issue that should be reserved for state court. Attorney client privilege is violated. This alone is a criminal act but nobody to prosecute it.
13. Months before the Cohen raid, Rosenstein-Mueller used the Cohen-Stormy situation to launch investigation into Cohen and thereby spy on Trump conversations with his attorney.
14. Judge appointed to hear the Cohen case is Prog Hack & Soros-Clinton crony Kimba Wood.

Conclusion: Sessions, Rosenstein, Comey, Wray and Mueller conspired to assist the "Soros-Clinton-Obama Resistance" to thwart all efforts to indict Clintons and Obama and expose the corruption at the FBI, DOJ and State Dept.

[Jan 14, 2019] An American villain such as Bill Clinton likewise had charismatic qualities. From further back, an anti-Establishment outsider like Huey Long was successful through building an almost visceral connection to his electorate. He was killed.

Jan 14, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

ambrit , , January 11, 2019 at 12:02 pm

How many of those who actually vote in an election watch debates? Back in horse and buggy days, a debate was the premier way to reach the 'interested' parties in a district. Debates, and hand shaking, baby kissing and newspaper/handbill politics was the game before electronic media.

Then there is that indefinable quality known a "charisma." There, the 'art' part of politics comes into play. To get someone who is marginally cognizant of policies to vote for one, there must be some affinity between candidate and voter. To the extent that 'charisma' drives the political relationship, 'charisma' is that "eternal quality."

In that regard, 'charisma' is not a media trope, but a personal quality. Thus, villains like Hitler can succeed. If you read contemporary accounts of Hitler's political style, he was very popular and actually described as "charismatic." An American villain such as Bill Clinton likewise had charismatic qualities. From further back, an anti-Establishment outsider like Huey Long was successful through building an almost visceral connection to his electorate. He was killed.

[Jan 11, 2019] As Democratic Elites Reunite With Neocons, The Party's Voters Are Becoming Far More Militaristic And Pro-War Than Republicans by Glenn Greenwald

Clinton Democrats (DemoRats) are so close to neocons that the current re-alliance is only natural and only partially caused by Trump. Under Obama some of leading figures of his administration were undistinguishable from neocons (Samantha Power is a good example here -- she was as crazy as Niki Haley, if not more). There is only one "war party in the USA which continently consists of two wings: Repugs and DemoRats.
Notable quotes:
"... Both GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham , one of the country's most reliable war supporters, and Hillary Clinton , who repeatedly criticized former President Barack Obama for insufficient hawkishness, condemned Trump's decision in very similar terms, invoking standard war on terror jargon. ..."
"... That's not surprising given that Americans by a similarly large plurality agree with the proposition that "the U.S. has been engaged in too many military conflicts in places such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan for too long and should prioritize getting Americans out of harm's way" ..."
"... But what is remarkable about the new polling data on Syria is that the vast bulk of support for keeping troops there comes from Democratic Party voters, while Republicans and independents overwhelming favor their removal. The numbers are stark: Of people who voted for Clinton in 2016, only 26 percent support withdrawing troops from Syria, while 59 percent oppose it. Trump voters overwhelmingly support withdraw by 76 percent to 14 percent. ..."
"... This case is even more stark since Obama ran in 2008 on a pledge to end the war in Afghanistan and bring all troops home. Throughout the Obama years, polling data consistently showed that huge majorities of Democrats favored a withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan ..."
"... While Democrats were more or less evenly divided early last year on whether the U.S. should continue to intervene in Syria, all that changed once Trump announced his intention to withdraw, which provoked a huge surge in Democratic support for remaining ..."
"... At the same time, Democratic policy elites in Washington are once again formally aligning with neoconservatives , even to the point of creating joint foreign policy advocacy groups (a reunion that predated Trump ). The leading Democratic Party think tank, the Center for American Progress, donated $200,000 to the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute and has multilevel alliances with warmongering institutions. ..."
"... By far the most influential [neo]liberal media outlet, MSNBC, is stuffed full of former Bush-Cheney officials, security state operatives, and agents , while even the liberal stars are notably hawkish (a decade ago, long before she went as far down the pro-war and Cold Warrior rabbit hole that she now occupies, Rachel Maddow heralded herself as a "national security liberal" who was "all about counterterrorism"). ..."
"... All of this has resulted in a new generation of Democrats, politically engaged for the first time as a result of fears over Trump, being inculcated with values of militarism and imperialism, trained to view once-discredited, war-loving neocons such as Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and David Frum, and former CIA and FBI leaders as noble experts and trusted voices of conscience. It's inevitable that all of these trends would produce a party that is increasingly pro-war and militaristic, and polling data now leaves little doubt that this transformation -- which will endure long after Trump is gone -- is well under way. ..."
Jan 11, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Via Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP'S December 18 announcement that he intends to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria produced some isolated support in the anti-war wings of both parties , but largely provoked bipartisan outrage among in Washington's reflexively pro-war establishment.

Both GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the country's most reliable war supporters, and Hillary Clinton, who repeatedly criticized former President Barack Obama for insufficient hawkishness, condemned Trump's decision in very similar terms, invoking standard war on terror jargon.

But while official Washington united in opposition, new polling data from Morning Consult/Politico shows that a large plurality of Americans support Trump's Syria withdrawal announcement: 49 percent support to 33 percent opposition.

That's not surprising given that Americans by a similarly large plurality agree with the proposition that "the U.S. has been engaged in too many military conflicts in places such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan for too long and should prioritize getting Americans out of harm's way" far more than they agree with the pro-war view that "the U.S. needs to keep troops in places such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan to help support our allies fight terrorism and maintain our foreign policy interests in the region."

But what is remarkable about the new polling data on Syria is that the vast bulk of support for keeping troops there comes from Democratic Party voters, while Republicans and independents overwhelming favor their removal. The numbers are stark: Of people who voted for Clinton in 2016, only 26 percent support withdrawing troops from Syria, while 59 percent oppose it. Trump voters overwhelmingly support withdraw by 76 percent to 14 percent.

A similar gap is seen among those who voted Democrat in the 2018 midterm elections (28 percent support withdrawal while 54 percent oppose it), as opposed to the widespread support for withdrawal among 2018 GOP voters: 74 percent to 18 percent.

Identical trends can be seen on the question of Trump's announced intention to withdraw half of the U.S. troops currently in Afghanistan, where Democrats are far more supportive of keeping troops there than Republicans and independents.

This case is even more stark since Obama ran in 2008 on a pledge to end the war in Afghanistan and bring all troops home. Throughout the Obama years, polling data consistently showed that huge majorities of Democrats favored a withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan:

With Trump rather than Obama now advocating troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, all of this has changed. The new polling data shows far more support for troop withdrawal among Republicans and independents, while Democrats are now split or even opposed . Among 2016 Trump voters, there is massive support for withdrawal: 81 percent to 11 percent; Clinton voters, however, oppose the removal of troops from Afghanistan by a margin of 37 percent in favor and 47 percent opposed.

This latest poll is far from aberrational. As the Huffington Post's Ariel Edwards-Levy documented early this week , separate polling shows a similar reversal by Democrats on questions of war and militarism in the Trump era.

While Democrats were more or less evenly divided early last year on whether the U.S. should continue to intervene in Syria, all that changed once Trump announced his intention to withdraw, which provoked a huge surge in Democratic support for remaining. "Those who voted for Democrat Clinton now said by a 42-point margin that the U.S. had a responsibility to do something about the fighting in Syria involving ISIS," Edwards-Levy wrote, "while Trump voters said by a 16-point margin that the nation had no such responsibility." (Similar trends can be seen among GOP voters, whose support for intervention in Syria has steadily declined as Trump has moved away from his posture of the last two years -- escalating bombings in both Syria and Iraq and killing far more civilians , as he repeatedly vowed to do during the campaign -- to his return to his other campaign pledge to remove troops from the region.)

This is, of course, not the first time that Democratic voters have wildly shifted their "beliefs" based on the party affiliation of the person occupying the Oval Office. The party's base spent the Bush-Cheney years denouncing war on terror policies, such as assassinations, drones, and Guantánamo as moral atrocities and war crimes, only to suddenly support those policies once they became hallmarks of the Obama presidency .

But what's happening here is far more insidious. A core ethos of the anti-Trump #Resistance has become militarism, jingoism, and neoconservatism. Trump is frequently attacked by Democrats using longstanding Cold War scripts wielded for decades against them by the far right: Trump is insufficiently belligerent with U.S. enemies; he's willing to allow the Bad Countries to take over by bringing home U.S. soldiers; his efforts to establish less hostile relations with adversary countries is indicative of weakness or even treason.

At the same time, Democratic policy elites in Washington are once again formally aligning with neoconservatives , even to the point of creating joint foreign policy advocacy groups (a reunion that predated Trump ). The leading Democratic Party think tank, the Center for American Progress, donated $200,000 to the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute and has multilevel alliances with warmongering institutions.

By far the most influential [neo]liberal media outlet, MSNBC, is stuffed full of former Bush-Cheney officials, security state operatives, and agents , while even the liberal stars are notably hawkish (a decade ago, long before she went as far down the pro-war and Cold Warrior rabbit hole that she now occupies, Rachel Maddow heralded herself as a "national security liberal" who was "all about counterterrorism").

All of this has resulted in a new generation of Democrats, politically engaged for the first time as a result of fears over Trump, being inculcated with values of militarism and imperialism, trained to view once-discredited, war-loving neocons such as Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and David Frum, and former CIA and FBI leaders as noble experts and trusted voices of conscience. It's inevitable that all of these trends would produce a party that is increasingly pro-war and militaristic, and polling data now leaves little doubt that this transformation -- which will endure long after Trump is gone -- is well under way.

[Jan 05, 2019] Obama as the agent of the Deep State consciously deciving his voters with faux populism promises which he never intended to follow

Obama strategy in Syria was replica of Clinton strategy in Yugoslavia during the Balkan Wars. Divide everybody up by ethnicity or religion (Croats are Catholics, Serbians are Orthodox not to mention the various Muslims and Albanians lurking about), arm them, create false flags to set them at each other's throats. Enjoy the results.
Obama like Clinton before him was a real wolve in sheep's clothing
Notable quotes:
"... Jackrabbit, I agree with Bevin. Obama was really useful to the deep state because, as the "First Black President" he was widely popular, not just inside the US but outside it as well. Before the 2016 election, there was a widespread hope inside the US elite that Hillary Clinton, as the "First Woman President" would be able to serve a similar function in giving US imperialism a pleasing face. ..."
"... Trump, by contrast, hurts the US deep state because his true nature as a greedy, incompetent egotist is just too blatantly obvious to too many people. And he won't follow a script, the way GW Bush usually did. That's why we see major sections of the US deep state going out of their way to be publically hostile towards Trump. ..."
Jan 05, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jackrabbit , Jan 5, 2019 6:10:33 PM | 17

bevin @10:

But the notion that it is part of a complex and tightly scripted conspiracy in which he plays his public part and the deep state play theirs, pretending to be at odds with each other, is bizarre.
I would've agreed with you before Obama. I followed the criticisms of Obama from true progressives closely. It was clear within 2 or 3 years that Obama was betraying his 'base'.

His lofty rhetoric didn't match his actions. His Nobel Peace Prize can only be viewed today as a ruse. He talked of peace and fairness but worked behind the scenes to further the establishment.

Fast forward to the 2016 election where Sanders was a sheepdog and Hillary ran a terrible campaign. It's difficult to look back and not be at least somewhat suspicious of the 2016 election. A populist nationalist was what the Deep State NEEDED to face the threat from Russia and China to their NWO project. And that is what they got. After recognizing the threat in 2013-14 (when Russia countered the Empire in Syria and Ukraine).

Similar excuses are made for both Obama and Trump. We are told that they were FORCED to succumb to Deep State scheming and political power. But a much more logical view is that these "populists" know exactly what they are doing: they know what their 'job' is to serve the establishment and act as the leader of the Deep State's political arm. In return they get financial gain, social standing, and life long protection. Sweet.

Obama 'turned the page' on the Bush Administration's warmongering. He promised a more peaceful USA. But he conducted covert wars and bragged of his drone targeting.

Trump 'turned the page' on Obama's deceitfulness. He promised to put 'America First' but within months attacked Syria with missiles "for the babies". Evidence that his first attack was prompted by a false flag didn't deter him from attacking AGAIN - also based on a false flag. Trump is still helping the Saudis in Yemen. And he's not doing what's necessary to get peace in Korea.

Obama promised 'transparency' ("Sunlight is the best disinfectant") but 'no drama' Obama protected CIA torturers, NSA spies, and bankers. Trump promised to "drain the swamp" but has welcomed oligarchs and neocons into his Administration.

How much sly BS do we have to see before people connect the dots? A real populist will NEVER be elected in USA unless there is a revolution; USA political elites are fully committed to a neoliberal economics that make society neofeudal, and a neoconservative-driven foreign policy that demands full spectrum dominance that brooks no opposition to its NWO goals.

Anyone who believes otherwise has drunk the Kool-Aid, an addictive, saccharine concoction, provided without charge and in abundance.

Glenn Brown | Jan 5, 2019 10:27:14 PM |

39@ 10 17

Jackrabbit, I agree with Bevin. Obama was really useful to the deep state because, as the "First Black President" he was widely popular, not just inside the US but outside it as well. Before the 2016 election, there was a widespread hope inside the US elite that Hillary Clinton, as the "First Woman President" would be able to serve a similar function in giving US imperialism a pleasing face.

Trump, by contrast, hurts the US deep state because his true nature as a greedy, incompetent egotist is just too blatantly obvious to too many people. And he won't follow a script, the way GW Bush usually did. That's why we see major sections of the US deep state going out of their way to be publically hostile towards Trump.

Yes, their public rejection of Trump is partly motivated by the need to be able to claim that Trump is an aberration from all previous US Presidents, as opposed to Trump and his policies being just a particularly explicit continuation of the same underlying trends.

But I see no reason to doubt that the US elites really wish they had someone as President who was better at supplying the right propaganda and less obviously an incompetent fool. So I don't understand why you think the US oligarchy and deep state would have thought they needed someone like Trump, or would have greatly preferred him to Hillary Clinton.

[Dec 17, 2018] 'Unregistered foreign agent' Clinton Foundation oversight panel hears explosive testimony

Notable quotes:
"... early in its life and throughout its existence ..."
"... The foundation began acting as an agent of foreign governments early in its life and continued doing so throughout its existence, as such, the foundation should have registered under FARA. ..."
"... good foundation for truth and transparency ..."
"... "These are not our facts. They are not your facts. They are the facts of the Clinton Foundation," ..."
"... misuse of donated public funds ..."
"... falsely attested that it received funds and used them for charitable purposes which was, in fact, not the case. Rather the foundation pursued in an array of activities both domestically and abroad ..."
"... properly characterized as profit-oriented and taxable undertakings of private enterprise, again failing the operational tests of philanthropy referenced above ..."
"... it was hard to tell where the Clinton State Department ended and the Clinton Foundation began ..."
"... Alice in Wonderland ..."
"... We have a ruling saying there is sufficient grounds to go forward with a criminal investigation of the Trump Foundation, not the Clinton Foundation ..."
Dec 15, 2018 | www.rt.com
Fraud investigators have exposed the Clinton Foundation's alleged misdeeds in a Congressional hearing, describing it as a de facto "foreign agent" devoted not to charity but to "advancing the personal interests of its principals." The Clinton Foundation acted as an agent of foreign governments " early in its life and throughout its existence ," according to testimony by former government forensic investigator John Moynihan, which, if true, would not only render it in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act but also would violate its nonprofit charter, putting it on the hook for a massive quantity of unpaid taxes.

The foundation began acting as an agent of foreign governments early in its life and continued doing so throughout its existence, as such, the foundation should have registered under FARA.

https://www.c-span.org/video/standalone/?455872-1/hearing-clinton-foundation

Moynihan and fellow ex-government investigator Lawrence Doyle shared 6,000 pages of evidence with the IRS over 18 months ago, only to be met with silence. They shared them with the FBI multiple times – ditto. Yet when the pair testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, they refused to turn over the documents, stating they did not want to interfere with any ongoing investigations.

Read more A Uranium One milling facility in Utah © George Frey FBI documents detail Clinton and Mueller's own 'Russiagate' – but they're classified

The committee chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) said witnesses' reluctance to share all the documents was hardly a " good foundation for truth and transparency ," while Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) said he felt the duo was " using " the panel for their own benefit.

"These are not our facts. They are not your facts. They are the facts of the Clinton Foundation," said Moynihan, maintaining his interest in the case is purely financial – not political.

Testifying on their findings, Doyle highlighted the Foundation's alleged " misuse of donated public funds ," explaining that it " falsely attested that it received funds and used them for charitable purposes which was, in fact, not the case. Rather the foundation pursued in an array of activities both domestically and abroad ," which included activities " properly characterized as profit-oriented and taxable undertakings of private enterprise, again failing the operational tests of philanthropy referenced above ," referring to the equally non-charitable pursuit of funding the Clinton Presidential Library.

John Huber, appointed by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate the Clinton Foundation after Sessions recused himself from doing so, was conspicuously absent from the hearing, even though his job is to probe Clinton's approval of the sale of US uranium assets to Russia.

Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton also gave testimony, outlining how " it was hard to tell where the Clinton State Department ended and the Clinton Foundation began " – so much so that the King of Bahrain, unable to meet with Clinton as Secretary of State, secured a meeting with the Foundation instead.

Also on rt.com FBI raids home of whistleblower who had 'dirt' on Clinton Foundation, Mueller

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) likened the testimony to " Alice in Wonderland ," claiming yet another investigation of the Clintons was an attempt to distract from the ongoing investigations of Trump. " We have a ruling saying there is sufficient grounds to go forward with a criminal investigation of the Trump Foundation, not the Clinton Foundation ," he said, adding that the committee had an informant in the Uranium One deal-making process who was unable to present any evidence of wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, the FBI has missed a deadline to turn over information on why they raided the home of another Clinton Foundation whistleblower, Nathan Cain, earlier this week. Cain's lawyer says his client – who reportedly gave the Justice Department documents showing federal officials failed to investigate criminal activity related to the Uranium One deal – was accused of possessing stolen federal property.

[Dec 17, 2018] The Clintons' Neoliberal Dystopian Ties to Russia's Billionaires

Dec 17, 2018 | observer.com

13 minutes ago The Clintons' Neoliberal Dystopian Ties to Russia's Billionaires

https://observer.com/2017/03/bill-hillary-clinton-ties-russia-billionaires-corporations/

[Dec 13, 2018] Toxic Philanthropy The Spirit of Giving While Taking by By Lynn Parramore

Yves: "Homer had this figured out long ago: "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts." But the press has done a great job of presenting squillionaires trying to remake society along their preferred lines as disinterested philanthropy. "
Notable quotes:
"... By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst, the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website ..."
"... America's new "philanthrocapitalists" are enabling social problems rather than solving them ..."
"... British novelist Anthony Trollope once observed, "I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so bloodthirsty as a professed philanthropist." ..."
"... Legendary short seller Jim Chanos, who teaches business students to spot fraud, understands why: when he scrutinizes a company for signs of shady activity, one of the things he looks for is an uptick in philanthropy -- a strategy business ethics professor Marianne Jennings has named as one of the "seven signs of ethical collapse" in organizations. Chanos refers to the ruse as "doing good to mask doing bad." ..."
Dec 13, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst, the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website

America's new "philanthrocapitalists" are enabling social problems rather than solving them

A new breed of wealthy do-gooders armed with apps and PowerPoints claim they want to change the world. But with their market-oriented values and often-shortsighted prescriptions, are really they going to change it for the better?

Or change it at all?

Anand Giridharadas, who has traveled first-class in the rarefied realm of 21 st -century "philanthrocapitalists," harbors serious doubts. In his acclaimed book, " Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World ," the business reporter and former McKinsey consultant exposes the willful blindness of bright-eyed social entrepreneurs and TED-talking executives who, having drunk their own late-stage capitalist Kool-Aid, are now ready to serve us all. Compliments of the house.

Doing Good, Masking Bad

British novelist Anthony Trollope once observed, "I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so bloodthirsty as a professed philanthropist."

Legendary short seller Jim Chanos, who teaches business students to spot fraud, understands why: when he scrutinizes a company for signs of shady activity, one of the things he looks for is an uptick in philanthropy -- a strategy business ethics professor Marianne Jennings has named as one of the "seven signs of ethical collapse" in organizations. Chanos refers to the ruse as "doing good to mask doing bad."

Such cynical public relations gambits are familiar enough to New Yorkers using Citi Bike, the public-private bike share system funded by Citigroup, whose misdeeds helped spark the global financial crisis of 2007-8. Or visitors to the Sackler Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, named for the family whose members own Purdue, the pharmaceutical company that fueled America's opioid crisis through deceptive marketing of the addictive painkiller OxyContin.

But another sort of deep-pocketed philanthropist is harder to pin down. The harm she causes seems less direct; her motives more lofty. This type is fond of touting "win-win" solutions to social problems and tossing out terms like "impactful" and "scalable" and "paradigm-shifting" -- the kind of lingo fed to business school students in lieu of critical thinking. Members of this group nevertheless refer to themselves as "thought leaders."

These would-be benefactors of humanity tend to like former president Bill Clinton, whose Clinton Global Initiative became the ultimate road show for eager converts to what Giridharadas calls the faith of "win-winnerism," i.e. "I'm doing great in this racket, and so can you." Inhabiting Silicon Valley start-ups, venture capital firms, think tanks, and consulting companies in large metropolitan areas, philanthrocapitalists speak reverently of global poverty, but rarely touch down in places like Appalachia or rural Mississippi.

They are people like John Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods Market, whose book "Conscious Capitalism" is the bible for those aspiring to the win-win faith. In his formulation, CEOs are not simply the heads of companies, but transcendent beings that find "great joy and beauty in their work, and in the opportunity to serve, lead, and help shape a better future." Mackey's philosophy is one in which the beneficiaries of commerce should dedicate themselves to social improvement because they are obviously the best equipped to do the job. The public is meant to humbly follow.

This last bit, as Giridharadas shrewdly points out, may be far more radical than the old trickle-down philosophy of yesterday's winners, who lobbied the government to get out of their way so that the bounteous by-products of their cutthroat activities could descend unimpeded to the poor. The new winners want something even more audacious: to replace the role of government as guardian of the common good.

Giridharadas presents searching conversations with well-educated, often well-meaning people floating above and apart from the lives of ordinary Americans, wishing to ease their consciences but failing both to clearly see the problems of society and to notice, for more than a nagging moment, the ways in which their own lives are financed by the fruits of injustice. They end up embracing a warm-and-fuzzy vision of changing the world that leaves brutal underlying structures securely in place.

The author has said what few who have traveled in this world have said plainly, lest their passport be revoked: the efforts of philanthrocapitalists are largely disruptive, rather than beneficial, to public life.

You can see it in the kind of ideas they embrace. Lecture slots at Davos don't get doled out for discussing the need to expand popular, time-tested programs like Social Security and Medicare that are proven to reduce poverty and economic inequality. Such sensible fare is not nearly "innovative" or exotic enough -- and besides, it might require the wealthy to pay additional taxes. Better are schemes like universal basic income that tend to favor elite interests (such as continuing to pay workers inadequate wages) or creating technological solutions like the one offered in the book by a young win-winnerist: an app that charges workers to manage the unpredictable cash flow caused by erratic work schedules.

And what of campaigning to outlaw the exploitative business practice that causes the problem in the first place? Notsomuch.

Talking about victims plays well on the philanthrocapitalist circuit, but pointing out perpetrators is largely forbidden. You can wow the crowd by peddling for-profit schemes to help the poor, but you won't get the same applause by calling to jail criminal executives. Yet, as Giridharadas makes clear, even the fanciest app will not erase the feeling among ordinary people that the system has been captured by a small group of the rich and powerful -- a feeling that drives them away in disgust from establishment politics and makes them very angry indeed.

What the philanthrocapitalist has a hard time admitting is that meaningful structural change involves a lot more than an app and a PowerPoint. It means taking on financialized corporations that engage in stock market manipulation to enrich shareholders rather than investing in workers and products that are actually useful to human beings. It requires fixing a regressive tax system in which the wealthy pay less on their investments than working people pay on their earned income. It means empowering workers and taking on the coercive hierarchies of wealth and power that are locking into place a dual economy where the affluent become so removed from the struggles of the majority that they hardly speak the same language.

Antidemocratic and unaccountable, the new philanthropists emerge in Giridharadas's cautionary book less as the solvers of social problems than the deluded enablers. The emperor may stand there in his organic underpants waving a pie chart, but in the court of public opinion, it is increasingly obvious that he's not in the least interested in dismantling his own palace.

[Dec 08, 2018] In office, both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama rarely fought for progressive principles -- and routinely undermined them."

Dec 08, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

ben , Dec 5, 2018 4:54:14 PM | link

"The last two Democratic presidencies largely involved talking progressive while serving Wall Street and the military-industrial complex. The obvious differences in personalities and behavior of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama diverted attention from their underlying political similarities. In office, both men rarely fought for progressive principles -- and routinely undermined them."

Article from Truthdig: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/what-it-means-that-hillary-clinton-might-run-for-president-in-2020/

[Dec 01, 2018] Dan Bongino - Obama, Mueller and the Biggest Scam in American History

Dec 01, 2018 | www.youtube.com

Not You , 1 day ago

Mueller has been destroying evidence since day one. That is his primary job.

KelMaster Construction , 2 days ago (edited)

With all of this verifiable information out there, and yet there are still so many that believe even more of fabricated lies propagated by the Bush, Obama and Clinton crime families. At some point you must ask yourself who was more likely to have enough power, influence and connections to collude with foreign governments. Now remember, all of this started long before anyone thought Donald J. Trump would even win the primaries, let alone the Presidency. Realizing that Santa Claus was just a fairy tale was a difficult disillusionment for children, but at some point, they had to grow up. Barrack, Hillary, and all of these high level government employees all reek of criminal activity, and if you cannot see this, you likely still believe in fairy tales.

DTrueView , 2 days ago

Having served in the military and currently being a Federal Officer, I was able read rough the media camouflage to protect Obama, Hillary, Comie, and the rest. I have been able to put the players on the board, but not see how it all fit together. This speech made it all crystal clear. Thank you Dan; for your service and God bless your courage.

Joseph NA , 2 days ago

Dan Dan Dan... How could you miss this?? Democrats trade in the dirty secrets of others. Do you really think the NSA spying Network is there because they want to know what I had for breakfast? Oh sure they'll keep a file on me and if I ever make trouble they can pull it up and then use everything about me to trash me in public... But come on the people they really want to spy on its each other! They have compromising information on one another and people they wish to control... How many people have we seen do the strangest things suddenly... Chief Justice John Roberts writing Obama care for them... they own the compromised, the complicit, and the corrupt people with power and they are legion

Philscbx , 1 week ago (edited)

Dan's the Man. Saved to file, images of Dan from 10-15 years ago standing behind Hillary as agent to protecting them. There is nothing Dan doesn't know. We owe Dan huge respect of his knowledge - I'd be first shaking his hand. Those watching, you'd be smart to download this, to play back from any device, even if just a sound file. Cheers

Largesse1000 , 1 week ago

I am from the UK, and our country is dying. The neo liberal elites are destroying the culture. We MUST have Trump safe and America as a bastion of freedom in the West. Those who did this to Trump MUST be found and imprisoned. They are a threat to Western culture at a time when the world is moving into a very difficult phase of its history. Personally, I would want to see them executed as traitors, endangering a sitting President and attacking the State. THAT is extremely serious and deserves execution.

19pete17 , 2 days ago (edited)

This nest of corruption involves the "progressive" establishment and was their attempt to seize and maintain power. Their agenda is geared towards bringing the kind of political consolidation we see in the EU to our shores. What that will mean is the whittling down of our national sovereignty. In other words, the end of the USA as we know it, all under the guise of American values and progress. Open borders, the whole works. All while keeping American citizens divided using what is known as identity politics, under the pretense that they are bringing people together. Up is down and down is up. Thank God Trump got elected.

ElectricAngel19 , 2 days ago

ROBERT MUELLER: UNMASKED by Congressman Louie Gohmert

Jimmy , 2 days ago (edited)

When Hillary Clinton pivoted to Russia hacking her campaign during the 2016 Presidential debates after she was caught in lie after lie after more Wikileaks lies, she said that 17 intel agencies confirm Russia did the hacking...she said so but provided not one source or name. We now know she lied because nobody knows (aside from Assange) who leaked or hacked the emails. But when she kept blaming Russia for "interfering in our elections and democracy" because her campaign was hit and exposed I knew she would further the Putin-Trump narrative. You can actually see these wheels spinning in her head as Trump says he doesn't know Putin, but it'd be good to get along with Russia...she and those protecting her are a scourge a cancer in America. I say this as someone mentally healthy and if I were suicided I just want it on record that I am no way no how ever going to commit suicide. That said Russia Investigation and Mueller are a political hit job, a concerted effort with their media to cloud and confuse the average American who has no clue what is going on.

Stan Dupp , 1 week ago

The Military Tribunals will have to get the job done. The justice system is too corrupt and guilty as well of sedition and Treason.Remember the Kavanaugh hearing when Sen. Graham brought up the function of Military Tribunals for high ranking officials to be tried and sentenced. The evidence is all there and it is now up to the President to invoke the Constitutional powers to arrest all of them for committing Treason and Sedition. It's the only way to drain the swamp for good.

bg147 , 1 day ago

Sure, they were corrupt.... yes, and so was Trump and his people for meeting with Russian KGB. Trump also pressure Comey into dropping the investigation into Flynn. There is also the question of him placing relatives in positions they know nothing about, pardoning individuals for political reasons, campaigning for political purposes with taxpayer money... flying around during the mid-terms. Rogers is the good guy? He is also the sponsor of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act which is the biggest invasion into your privacy in history. There is plenty of corruption to go around and both sides regularly abuse their power.

BENNIEDARRELL , 2 days ago

msm is propaganda and left wing activism that supports communist control and destruction of anyone who is able to protect our rights to own property and remain prosperous by using self sustainability as a means of securing our communities, our states and our country by shutting down illegal immigration invasions that steal jobs from people born here. and they vote for communism, the thing they ran from in their country. makes no sense. they're used and then turned on by democrats after they gain power.

Sine Cera Consulting , 14 hours ago

The problem of confirmation bias, is that people seek supportive insights. Less than two weeks after special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 individuals and a trio of Russian companies for "interference operations targeting the United States," NSA Director Mike Rogers told members of Congress that the Trump administration hasn't even authorized him to take measures to prevent election meddling going forward. In response to a question from Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) about the authority that NSA "mission teams" have to "do something" about foreign interference, Rogers pointed out that he's only empowered to do something when "if granted the authority." "I don't have the day-to-day authority to do that," he said, prompting Reed to follow up about whether he has been "directed to do so given the strategic threat that face the united States and the significant consequences you recognize already?" "No I have not," Rogers replied. Mr Rogers...an interesting character.

Eric Dalais Noël , 1 day ago

Dan, you have joined all the dots, hammered all the nails for so many, many of us who are prone to critical thinking and never bought this Russian collusion delusion because which ever way we looked at it, it just didn't add up, it just didn't make sense. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm trying to get a copy of your book in Australia. There are just no winners in this terrible, horrible story. Best regards and stay safe my friend. Eric from DownUnder

Melvin Holliday , 6 hours ago

This is the Second biggest Scam in American history and Obama and Clinton are involved in both of them. The biggest scam ever perpetrated on the world was the one that got Obama elected to the Presidency and kept him there for 8 long year with the scam still continuing every time someone mentions the Forged Birth Certificate that has been presented as real just like the Gay Muslim Hypocrite that continues to lie and keep us all in the dark even though many of us know the truth.

BAC , 1 hour ago

Imagine being so powerful and well connected to every head of all the alphabet agencies that you can break laws that amount to treason and walk away unscathed. It's truly amazing to see this unfold. The only this works if everyone is dirty. Clinton's made hundreds of millions of dollars and set the standard on how to get away with it by brokering power and influence at the highest levels for a price. The sheep love her and celebrate her and her rapist husband. Fucking amazing.


JonSobieski , 4 hours ago

Media suffers from erosion of credibility, says Ingraham. What credibility?

MIFNP , 1 week ago

Admiral Rogers is an honorable man and PATRIOT. He will go down as one of the greatest men in US history.

Melvin Holliday , 6 hours ago

Please be advised that the crime family Obama is a lot bigger than the story that Dan tells. Everyone involved is married or some kind of relation or through political favors and government taxpayer pay outs and there are hundreds of crooks that can all be traced back to Obama or someone in his group of Liars & Thieves.

TheMozzaok , 1 hour ago

Cohen pleading guilty makes this all very problematic. The potential for Cohen doing illegal stuff for Trump is massively high. It is as high as Hillary doing illegal stuff. The massive problem with this whole story is that if it is true, Trump has had it for two years, and done nothing. That makes no sense. I trust not a one of them. I KNOW Hillary is a horrible piece of dirt that protects her sex abusing husband, but I also KNOW Trump has done so many dirty deals, and slept with innumerable low life wealth and power groupies, so neither is Snow White. Dirty Vs Filthy. I like Trump, and despise Hillary, but I am not delusional enough to think he is not hiding shit he does not want the people to know.

Philscbx , 3 days ago (edited)

Agent Dan Bongino brought up this video today in his podcast, He and the crew are quite surprised how it exploded viral. Other news channel sites have now posted the direct video link to here as well. One is forced to hit stop every 11 seconds to Take notes, download it, and it will obviously educate everyone that never had a clue, or at least update as it unfolds further. No Doubt, everyone Bongino noted,,, watch now, as they scramble & bail packing as others did. Oh the hell, another one suddenly retires. Someone claimed Dan's knowledge _ is for some reason, he's deep state,,, clearly, they have no idea about the 7th floor. I'll just leave it there. Cheers

Roy Loeffler , 1 day ago

OMG You can't make this stuff up. its crazy, crazy stuff

Tina Boyd , 2 days ago

cosmic justice? send them ALL to jail

Big Troll , 2 days ago

Dan Bongino is the truth!! Sheriff Clark is the truth, too. They need to team up!

PECOSO , 2 days ago

Everything leads back to Obama and Clinton. Follow the money and power

Floyd Maxwell , 3 days ago

Dan is the Gatling gun spraying truth

Miche Mehall , 2 days ago (edited)

Thank you Dan Bongino!!! We know that if you keep exposing the lies and liars, your life will be in jeopardy, so I'm praying God's DEVINE protection over your life, family and property...and calling ALL GOD-FEARING BELIEVERS do likewise!

Trumpshe honors , 2 days ago

The question still remains: when do we do something about the corruption. So far only the good guys are being punished.

Wilson Poss , 1 day ago

Obama ,Hilary , should get the death penalty! To betray the American people and ABUSE there authority. That is the lowest of lows. Trump is the best thing that has happened in the USA, EVER!

Not You , 1 day ago

Mueller has been destroying evidence since day one. That is his primary job.

South African - Future US citizen , 1 week ago

I'm black from South Africa - and believe me, the USA is the last hope for mankind, if the day ever comes that the USA dies - I wanna be long dead by then... MAGA❤️🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸❤️❤️❤️🇺🇸🇺🇸

wayne mcclory , 2 days ago

So funny then got the wrong Michel Cohen ! Haaa this is so good thank you DAN !

JD plus , 2 days ago

They should all be in jail, enough said!!!

Josh , 2 days ago

funny how some of these liberals are for open borders but live in a gated ,guarded community .With an additional fence around their houses. hypocrites

LeBronda James , 1 day ago

Plz don't wind up dead dan

Stephen Scott , 1 week ago

Absolutely fascinating, every detail, want to see all these assholes in jail.

todd Brewer , 2 days ago

I hope hillary doesn't have Dan killed like she has so many others.

KelMaster Construction , 2 days ago (edited)

With all of this verifiable information out there, and yet there are still so many that believe even more of fabricated lies propagated by the Bush, Obama and Clinton crime families. At some point you must ask yourself who was more likely to have enough power, influence and connections to collude with foreign governments. Now remember, all of this started long before anyone thought Donald J. Trump would even win the primaries, let alone the Presidency. Realizing that Santa Claus was just a fairy tale was a difficult disillusionment for children, but at some point, they had to grow up. Barrack, Hillary, and all of these high level government employees all reek of criminal activity, and if you cannot see this, you likely still believe in fairy tales.

S Erick , 2 days ago

Thank God Republicans have control of the senate. We can get this investigated and prosecuted. Release the classifieds Trump!

Steve Trueblue , 1 day ago

Military court obvious solution

Jet Jeti , 6 days ago

Love finding stuff like this on YouTube. I can't stand cable news anymore

philip horner , 2 days ago

FISA court lack of corroboration is the crux of the problem.

hella good , 2 days ago

This guy is a hero a HERO PATRIOT

DTrueView , 2 days ago

Having served in the military and currently being a Federal Officer, I was able read rough the media camouflage to protect Obama, Hillary, Comie, and the rest. I have been able to put the players on the board, but not see how it all fit together. This speech made it all crystal clear. Thank you Dan; for your service and God bless your courage.

LD NOTW , 2 days ago

Will we ever see justice done?

Age OF Reason , 1 week ago

They have to be exposed, and in our lifetime.

Jim Scott , 2 days ago

Thank God for men like you! Hillary for Prison 2019!!!

Geronimo553 , 1 day ago

Knew Obama's admin was dirty with everything they kept trying to hide. Now their exposed yet again and they cannot hide the evidence this time.

Charles Harrison , 2 days ago

Perfectly laid out... that's what I like ,,,facts and no fat... love it.

Dorota Galas , 2 days ago

Nothing can be done ???!! Why....tons of evidence...its pretty obvious...and nothing can be done ? One party who lost can do everthing and get oway with it ..and conservatives cant do anything about it ???! Strange....conservatives won....they have evidence...they have conservative meda...and still nothing can be done ? Why ????! Somehow i just cannot buy it...!!! Dems can do everything..and u can do nothing ??? Sometning is wrong with it ....UNLESS....AND THIS IS MY GUT FEELING....UNLESS THE LEFT WING AND THE RIGHT WING...BELONGS TO THE SAME BIRD.....!!!!????!!!!

victor Batista , 3 days ago

And the truth shall set you free.... JOHN 8:31 - 34 . Than you Mr Dan Bongino for bring the truth once again.

eddie julian , 1 day ago

1,475 people who don't care about the truth thumbs downed this video.

Jon Doe , 1 day ago

God bless you Mr. Bongino

Michelle Green , 1 day ago

The 1.4kdislikes is the media and players of this scandal..

Dave Joe , 2 days ago

Dan Bongino, For President!

Michael Maman , 1 week ago

All Americans should be enraged at what the Obama administration did. Left, right, center, it shouldn't matter. Our Republic is at stake

Methadras , 2 days ago

Dan, I don't want divine justice. Let God deal with it. I want to see these jokers dealt with now.

Joseph NA , 2 days ago

Dan Dan Dan... How could you miss this?? Democrats trade in the dirty secrets of others. Do you really think the NSA spying Network is there because they want to know what I had for breakfast? Oh sure they'll keep a file on me and if I ever make trouble they can pull it up and then use everything about me to trash me in public... But come on the people they really want to spy on its each other! They have compromising information on one another and people they wish to control... How many people have we seen do the strangest things suddenly... Chief Justice John Roberts writing Obama care for them... they own the compromised, the complicit, and the corrupt people with power and they are legion

optician53 , 2 days ago

Dan Bongino would walk-up and bite the devil on the nose!!! I love it! :-)

reginol invincent , 2 days ago

we would rather die on our feet than live on our knees franklin d roosevelt, address,1939

Micah Edwards , 3 days ago

PLEASE let there be justice. Restore American faith

Bob Touson , 1 day ago

Thanks 🙏 DAN for being a great American , 🇺🇸, Never give up on setting the liberals straight, Keep fighting 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Bud Wiser , 1 day ago

Shouldn't everything that came from this dossier be null and void? All investigations and charges halt and dismissed.

Arnie Willis , 2 days ago

Why wait why not blow it all open and sink the demonrats

Allan Simoes , 2 days ago

Mueller is the main Cover up of White Water and Little Rock for Governor Clinton. Allan Simoes.

Philscbx , 1 week ago (edited)

Dan's the Man. Saved to file, images of Dan from 10-15 years ago standing behind Hillary as agent to protecting them. There is nothing Dan doesn't know. We owe Dan huge respect of his knowledge - I'd be first shaking his hand. Those watching, you'd be smart to download this, to play back from any device, even if just a sound file. Cheers

Sean Hurley , 2 days ago

Dan is awesome! The Obama administration is so disgusting. They all need to be incarcerated! For 8 years we've had nothing but corrupt Turds! It's such a shame. Thank you again Dan.

Miss Priss , 2 days ago

Didn't Obama just a few months ago give a speech in another country where he admitted to being from Kenya? Why hasn't he been arrested for that?!

Lia Flexx , 1 day ago (edited)

We must take back our media and wake the NPC left up. I feel like most of them would be on our side if they knew the truth. How could they not be? Whatever label you give the democrats the truth of them is pure evil. These aren't the democrats I used to hang out with. They used to have more morals than me.

YouMad Bruh , 1 day ago

And CNN is still talking about Trump and Russia. No really, that's all they talk about there. I wonder why

Largesse1000 , 1 week ago

I am from the UK, and our country is dying. The neo liberal elites are destroying the culture. We MUST have Trump safe and America as a bastion of freedom in the West. Those who did this to Trump MUST be found and imprisoned. They are a threat to Western culture at a time when the world is moving into a very difficult phase of its history. Personally, I would want to see them executed as traitors, endangering a sitting President and attacking the State. THAT is extremely serious and deserves execution.

19pete17 , 2 days ago (edited)

This nest of corruption involves the "progressive" establishment and was their attempt to seize and maintain power. Their agenda is geared towards bringing the kind of political consolidation we see in the EU to our shores. What that will mean is the whittling down of our national sovereignty. In other words, the end of the USA as we know it, all under the guise of American values and progress. Open borders, the whole works. All while keeping American citizens divided using what is known as identity politics, under the pretense that they are bringing people together. Up is down and down is up. Thank God Trump got elected.

Michael DeSilvio , 2 days ago

George Soros real name is Guy Orgy Schwartz. Look it up. Baracka Hussein Obamas real name is bath house Barry SODOMITE Soetoro. Michelle Obamas real name is RAMROD!

ElectricAngel19 , 2 days ago

ROBERT MUELLER: UNMASKED by Congressman Louie Gohmert

ELE 1978 , 2 days ago (edited)

Nice! Good guy.

Santty 0718 , 1 week ago

Thank God we have Don Bongino on our side 🇺🇸🇺🇸👍👍👏👏

Fobby Jose , 1 day ago (edited)

Dan Bongino has dethroned Nixon and placed Hillary and Obama in his place.God save Trump!

Angela Porisky , 1 day ago

Canada needs you too, Dan!

stitt29rg , 2 days ago

Why does nothing happen...what's the holdup? It's like brexit...

Laurie Van Tuyl , 2 days ago

There's no media because it's owned by George Soros and the Socialist New World Order .... So they are puppets and work on demand with no dignity and no soul

madminute , 3 days ago

Mr. Bongino is a breath of fresh air, a voice of logic and reason.

Kelly Scheldt , 1 day ago

Dam Bongino for president 2024. 🇺🇸🇺🇸

SonnyGTA , 2 days ago

This guy is Dead. On. Point.

Nicholas Frechen , 1 day ago

1 million! This is exploding. Keep spreading this everywhere. Doesn't matter what your politics is. Obama wasn't a progressive lol. Just a con artist. Have a good day.

william stockdale , 1 week ago

BOY OH BOY......THAT WAS A FANTASTIC PRESENTATION.....PLEASE PLEASE AMERICA CLEAN OUT THESE POISONED PLAYERS

optician53 , 2 days ago

(cough, clearing throat) ..... The President of the United States of America ....... has been ripping off mattress tags .... IMPEACH! IMPEACH! IMPEACH!

Ken , 1 day ago

And I thought my dog disappearing for a half hour every day hopping the fence doing the "Wild Thing" with my neighbors goat was drama... WOW !!!!! Glad he figured this All out for ME and us !!!! He's got them nailed down for sure !!!! MAGA...!!

The Great Homo Sapien , 2 days ago

ALL HIS BOOK IS GOOD DAN BANGINO THE MAN.

Jean Wetherbee , 1 day ago (edited)

I love when Dan Bongino is on Fox news.

Brandy Pompeo , 1 week ago

WOW. I had no idea this went sooo deep.

Elizabeth Cuevas-Neunder , 1 day ago

I want Dan B to run for Florida Senate because we need Rubio out.

bill reed , 1 day ago

If you voted Democrat... leave the USA.

james vale , 9 hours ago

the Republic has never been in more perilous times...............Democrats will go down in history as traitors

Carols Ortiz , 1 day ago

Good stuff

Jimmy , 2 days ago (edited)

When Hillary Clinton pivoted to Russia hacking her campaign during the 2016 Presidential debates after she was caught in lie after lie after more Wikileaks lies, she said that 17 intel agencies confirm Russia did the hacking...she said so but provided not one source or name. We now know she lied because nobody knows (aside from Assange) who leaked or hacked the emails. But when she kept blaming Russia for "interfering in our elections and democracy" because her campaign was hit and exposed I knew she would further the Putin-Trump narrative. You can actually see these wheels spinning in her head as Trump says he doesn't know Putin, but it'd be good to get along with Russia...she and those protecting her are a scourge a cancer in America. I say this as someone mentally healthy and if I were suicided I just want it on record that I am no way no how ever going to commit suicide. That said Russia Investigation and Mueller are a political hit job, a concerted effort with their media to cloud and confuse the average American who has no clue what is going on.

Mr. ProLogic , 1 day ago (edited)

#WWG1WGA 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🌐

Michelle Green , 1 day ago

RIVETING SPEECH !!!

DA Poppa , 1 day ago

This guy is a real American Hero. Go Man Go!

White Tuberose , 1 day ago

Can't be a criminal thief and a good father at the same time. Typical conservative empathy that is wonderful in a high trust society, suicidal in a multi cultural low trust society.

Slyfox68 , 2 days ago

Dan bongino is awesome! He is a down to earth real hardworking Patriotic American. God Bless him & keep him safe, we need him in this fight! If you have Amazon Prime, watch this documentary: "Enemy Of The State". It was written by a New Zealander, and is about the Communists hiding in plain sight in America. Very eye opening, and scary!

Tim Patz , 1 day ago

eventually, maybe 2, 5, 10, 20 years the truth will come out. Borrock Hoosayn Obammah will be investigated for this crime against the USA. this is THE biggest crime in American history. PERIOD.

Woody Prather , 1 day ago

Awesome! So glad I watched this! Stay safe!

THE ONE , 1 day ago

Dan bongino is a true American hero.

N. W. Dood , 2 days ago (edited)

Funny how (ALMOST) nobody cares about Israeli or Saudi influence...

Stan Dupp , 1 week ago

The Military Tribunals will have to get the job done. The justice system is too corrupt and guilty as well of sedition and Treason.Remember the Kavanaugh hearing when Sen. Graham brought up the function of Military Tribunals for high ranking officials to be tried and sentenced. The evidence is all there and it is now up to the President to invoke the Constitutional powers to arrest all of them for committing Treason and Sedition. It's the only way to drain the swamp for good.

Dennis King , 2 days ago

Dan's truth and facts do not care for your liberal feelings.

bg147 , 1 day ago

Sure, they were corrupt.... yes, and so was Trump and his people for meeting with Russian KGB. Trump also pressure Comey into dropping the investigation into Flynn. There is also the question of him placing relatives in positions they know nothing about, pardoning individuals for political reasons, campaigning for political purposes with taxpayer money... flying around during the mid-terms. Rogers is the good guy? He is also the sponsor of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act which is the biggest invasion into your privacy in history. There is plenty of corruption to go around and both sides regularly abuse their power.

colt1911com , 2 days ago

Dan is the MAN!!!...HE SHOULD RUN FOR GOVERNOR OF kalifornia!!...so he can turn this commie state around and free us!!!

Amy Vass , 2 days ago

Dang! Bongino ❤️

Edgar Kalonji , 3 days ago

I'm a congolese in DRC Congo (Central Africa) Love Dan Bongino, Jim Jordan, Trey Gowdy, Joe Digenova, Mark Levin, Lindsey Graham------ Deep State is against God, America and good peoples!

Alex Sasmay , 2 days ago

Este discurso es épico. Esto debe estar con doblaje español

Marriet Visser , 2 days ago

Dan for AG

Ginger D , 1 day ago (edited)

WOW, Dan this is brilliant. President Trump is not stupid. These guys are going down. Clean up on the scrum bags. No wonder Obama gave all that money to Iran. They never expected Clinton to lose. Massive Corruptions! Knowing the way President Trump is, I see massive indictments...WATCH!

cemetery things , 1 day ago

Blessings Dan

Earl Peterson , 1 week ago

Man, am I grateful for the Dan Bonginos out there. Gotta get this book.

Liberty Enterprises , 9 hours ago

As big a scam as the "Federal" Reserve...

BENNIEDARRELL , 2 days ago

msm is propaganda and left wing activism that supports communist control and destruction of anyone who is able to protect our rights to own property and remain prosperous by using self sustainability as a means of securing our communities, our states and our country by shutting down illegal immigration invasions that steal jobs from people born here. and they vote for communism, the thing they ran from in their country. makes no sense. they're used and then turned on by democrats after they gain power.

Jason Inchcliff , 1 day ago

No I'm not a lawyer... But wouldn't they have enough evidence to ARREST. No need for behind scene questioning

PATRICIA EYLER , 1 day ago

POWER GRAB ONE didn't get started for any particular reason,,, it was classic clinton... BECAUSE THEY COULD AND BECAUSE IT WAS ALREADY THEIR MO.. They didn't even consider they HAD JUST STEPPED OVER A NEW REAL LINE.

Nell philpott , 1 week ago

The judges shouldn't rubber stamp everything that passes their desk. Let justice be done and Brennan and Obama should be afraid.

Bill Perez , 1 day ago

When we have idiot's that report the news in the main street media. The characters that are in our government like Nancy Pelosi, who can't put two syllables together, the scary Chucky Schumer and the notorious RBG who reminds me of a Weekend at Bernie's. You have to appreciate Donald J Trump and his Twitter Machine.

Paul Regalado , 1 day ago

Why won't you ever see Robert Mulluer trying with enthusiasm to present his report in public with a straight eye...like Dan made his video. I challenge democrates to get Robert Mulluer,s butt in gear and make an out front video like Dan,s..why is Robert Mulluer hiding? Robert Mulluer is hiding something. This is his demeanor.

Digg .Dangler , 21 hours ago (edited)

This video needs to be shared to everyone you know. WWG1WGA. The only way to see justice on this, is if We The People make it happen scream loud and wide and back up what the Trump Administration knows. The MSM/ big tech has been weaponized by the left, and our voice needs to be louder than their fake news. Call your representative weekly, write to your Senators, post memes everywhere, send them to everyone you know, the squeaky wheel gets the grease! Hillary, Obama, Et al need to be brought to real justice for nearly destroying our nation, a nation who millions of patriots have spilled blood to give you! We need to DEMAND Justice!

Al B , 1 day ago

Bongino is a true patriot and deserves a job in the White House.

james1stful , 1 week ago

When this man speaks I damn sure listen !!!! He well knows because hes been there !!! He protected the clintons for many years and has a great deal of inside knowledge !!

Hardus Steenkamp , 1 day ago

Thanx Bongino for telling the truth.

Peter Lemmon , 9 hours ago

Russian Derapaska is an oligarch connected to Soros, Rothschild, Lindsey Graham, McCain and other prominent Neoconservatives. President Putin of Russia threw Oligarch Derapaska out of Russia and humiliated him. Bongino is a liar, deliberately. Bongino there is no Cosmic justice. There is the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. Stop covering for Hillary Clinton who committed espionage for Israel, China and UK and possibly Suadi Arabia. Why? High Technology was stolen by these nations from the USA to bring in their New World Order and the Silk Road given to China by the Rothschilds; USA fiat currency is dead. Trump has his ticket to the "Empty City in China." His kids have learned Mandarin Chinese. During the provoked attack against Russia for nuclear war, Elite will go under ground to a bullet train which will carry them to EU, then to China to the "Empty Cities." Nuclear War is what is planned for America on American military bases, after the Rothschild Banking Network collapses the economy. Pray for Humanity.

georgemarsone , 2 days ago

AMAZING......FOR SURE....THIS IS NOT CNN FAKE NEWS......THE LIB'S / DEM'S DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT WE THE PEOPLE...

Michael Lacher , 2 days ago

Liberals live in 5,000 square foot mansions ? Talk about bs generalizations

Pirabee , 1 week ago

Only the tip of the iceberg to the biggest crime and treason story of the century!!

Ronnie Blasko , 1 day ago

Cosmic Justice? No thanks! If she's not locked away in our lifetime with the way the cultural Marxists are infiltrating every branch of our lives, there will be NO truthful writing of history for future generations. See to her NOW!

David Vice Bangura , 1 day ago (edited)

Your will Be surprise the things ex secret service knows about this governments and corrupted movement behind close doors they know more than the media knows

ExtremeRecluse , 2 days ago

I guess this former law enforcement officer does not believe in law enforcement.

John Doey , 1 day ago

Not even close! The biggest scam in history is... The "Income Tax..."

Rosalyn Kaplan , 1 week ago

Dan Bongino, Thank You!

America Rocks , 13 hours ago

Dan Bongino= One of the greatest, brave, strong ,voice of truth, and great American. They have come against our President, with lies, since before he was even sworn in. The scariest thing in all of this is the lack of critical thinking skills in many young people. Let's say, God forbid, if Hillary was in power. Let's say she said... we have to eliminate all non- necessary citizens,as in everyone but the elites over the age of 50, due to climate change, for the "common good" of the world. These young, non critical thinking young people, would go right along with it. She already , during the 2016 election spoke of the need for "fun camps" AKA concentration camps.

David F , 2 days ago

Dan, Thank you very much for all you have done. You're my newest hero!

Evan Ogren , 1 day ago

Whoever gave a thumbs down is just a Democrat denier

Shawna Boyko , 2 days ago

Bob "the mop" Mueller been cleaning up deep state loose ends since before 911.

Media Buster , 1 week ago

Everyone should watch this.

Mythical Vigilante , 2 days ago

Riveting... Dan Bongino is such a BOSS.

Zimmenator , 1 day ago

Wow !!! This guy left me speechless !! Unbelievably beautiful !!! There needs to be more people like this. God bless him !!

I. Bks , 20 hours ago

This guy is so cool...I need a wool jacket... CAN'T WAIT TO READ THIS BOOK!!!

BILLY BUDDY , 2 days ago

Tyrannical governance is two sets of laws. One for the plebs. The other for the ruling elite. Lock them up and restore the Rule of Law to the Republic.

MEGA 2020 , 1 week ago

Mueller is the SECOND biggest scam on America, Obama was the first.

#BLACKRIGHTSMATTER , 9 hours ago

Q Sent Me!! Personally, I think that crystal clear transparency, not just transparency is needed with everything shown!! Regardless of how heinous and sickening it is. We The People after being lied to for decades deserve that. @

fourorthree2 , 8 hours ago

I can't watch any movies anymore! The real stuff is way more interesting!

Banjo Bob Trapp , 1 day ago

Get ropes, the guillotines and the firing squads!

Stephen Dunn , 1 week ago

Dan Bongino is a Rock Star!!

Elizabeth Mullins , 19 hours ago

We are literally at the most important turning point in our history - since the original American Revolution. I can't stress enough how we should focus our attention on supporting our President. We needed someone strong, brilliant, and unafraid to be our leader...thank Gd that Donald Trump stepped up to the plate... The Mighty Casey lives!

Zoobilee Zoo , 22 hours ago

The Conspiracy is deep my friends. Nothing will change. It depends on you, and YOU KNOW. We can protest until death: they will not listen. Don't sit back and think this will happen. They will NEVER give up what they have robbed from us. Stand up and resist. They are fully prepared for civil war, while we argue about who does what or who says more. They must plunge the US into a terrible civil conflict. They will destroy the nation, before they can rebuild it with themselves as the masters. Why have republicans and democrats allowed the invasion of illegals to continue? Several reasons. Americans will never fall for socialism: Central/South Americans are socialism friendly. Central/South Americans are poorly educated. Many cannot read or write spanish. Therefore; they are more aloof of political matters. The illegals are the beneficiaries of affirmative action. This means that your white american children are now permanent second class citizens. Politicians have encouraged the Balkanization of the US, by creating sanctuary cities. The illegals have been repeatedly told that the Southwestern US was stolen from them by Americans, and is rightfully theirs. The illegals literally call their "migration"(sic) "the reconquest". South/Central Americans are very "pro" violent revolution. Did you think that the leftists would take up weapons to fight against patriotic Americans? The handfuls that will take up arms will act as political commisars, soviet union style. The illegal immigrants, along with other hostile minority groups, are the standing army that will fight against American citizens. They are the hessian mercinaries. You see: the situation is dire

Mick Kelly , 19 hours ago

I am impressed with the presentation but not the judgement. If the USA does not pursue justice to conclusion, it will disintegrate.

1charlastar , 1 day ago

Trump is now tweeting a pic of them all behind bars and talking about treason. Let's not lose hope that at least some of the top ones go down.

Procommenter , 1 week ago

⚡️ President Trump is destroying cultural Marxism. ⚡️ President Trump is ending the war on coal. ⚡️ He's nullifying common core. ⚡️ He ended the Trans-Pacific Partnership ⚡️ He's de-regulating a bloated bureaucracy. ⚡️ He's bringing factories back to the U.S. ⚡️ He's ending illegal immigration. ⚡️ President Trump has busted 10,000 pederasts & pedophiles. ⚡️ President Trump rescued America from the job-killing Paris Accords.

N. W. Dood , 2 days ago

However, kudos to Dan for speaking out and up about the most corrupt Presidency (of Obama) in our history.

Sine Cera Consulting , 14 hours ago

The problem of confirmation bias, is that people seek supportive insights. Less than two weeks after special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 individuals and a trio of Russian companies for "interference operations targeting the United States," NSA Director Mike Rogers told members of Congress that the Trump administration hasn't even authorized him to take measures to prevent election meddling going forward. In response to a question from Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) about the authority that NSA "mission teams" have to "do something" about foreign interference, Rogers pointed out that he's only empowered to do something when "if granted the authority." "I don't have the day-to-day authority to do that," he said, prompting Reed to follow up about whether he has been "directed to do so given the strategic threat that face the united States and the significant consequences you recognize already?" "No I have not," Rogers replied. Mr Rogers...an interesting character.

Abandoned&Forgotten , 20 hours ago

Pray for the white hats to save this nation.

william jonas , 13 hours ago

IF JUSTICE WILL NEVER COME TO THE GUILTY , THEN WHY BOTHER ? I GUESS JUST TO INFORM THOSE WHO HAVE NO POWER TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT EXCEPT TO VOTE IN ELECTIONS THAT ARE RIGGED BY DEMOCRATS WITH VOTER FRAUD . VERY SCARY.

LostinSweden , 1 week ago

Terrifying that most of the major news networks in the world are ignoring this. Even if it wasn't true, you'd HAVE TO investigate it.

Peopled Diagram , 1 day ago (edited)

"Clean up on aisles 1,2,3 and 4". Its beginning to sound a lot like Christmas.

JOE - , 1 day ago

Truly one of the greatest Americans to ever be. #FACT

ron l , 4 hours ago

Dan for president!

Gramma Kathryn , 21 hours ago

Thank you Dan Bongino!

Deals togo , 1 week ago

Bongino is a100% common sense smart man.

Phx Wife , 2 days ago

What an egotistical A$$HAT!

Seth Adam , 2 days ago (edited)

This butt clown needs to get on his old knees & thank God for our American Treasure & Hero Bob Mueller.

John , 2 days ago (edited)

I hope they all go down in the gas chambers. Such a disgrace that we have such swine in our government.

bgoodfella7413 , 1 day ago

This sounds like a complicated mob movie and somebody is about to get whacked.

Perpetual vera Dapaah , 6 days ago

Obama was a mistake for American people

The Harmonic Reactor , 14 hours ago (edited)

All of them are going down NOW. It is New Beginning now, God knows what to do. GOD, YOU ARE. Hello New Earth :)

Ann Zak , 4 hours ago

I so need to read this book. God Bless President Trump and, God Bless America ♥️🇺🇸♥️ #WWG1WGA ♥️🇺🇸♥️

Philscbx , 6 hours ago (edited)

Somewhere in Dan's speech, I missed this KEY Point, and everyone wonders, as I do, when do we show up latenite with LED lit cordless drills, assembling the gallows? Looking for related data, stumbled on this great site as always, they caught it ~ He stated One of the key points Bongino highlights is how none of the paper-trail; nothing about the substance of the conspiracy; can possibly surface until after 'AFTER' #RobertMueller is no longer in the picture. Until Robert Mueller is removed, none of this information can/will surface. That's why every political and media entity are desperate to protect Mueller; and also why Mueller's investigation will never end. 👇 from this site https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/11/23/dan-bongino-presentation-of-spygate Makes me wonder what Stewie would do,, So this is what @Trump was watching the night before - Rocketman https://youtu.be/fi8MI7jjpSY

Tommy Rocket , 2 hours ago

America has some serious, serious, serious Obama leftover problems... Question is what are the people going to do about it?

Educate cluster b , 1 week ago

Justice has to be done.

Eric Dalais Noël , 1 day ago

Dan, you have joined all the dots, hammered all the nails for so many, many of us who are prone to critical thinking and never bought this Russian collusion delusion because which ever way we looked at it, it just didn't add up, it just didn't make sense. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm trying to get a copy of your book in Australia. There are just no winners in this terrible, horrible story. Best regards and stay safe my friend. Eric from DownUnder

Paula Marshall , 1 day ago

Please Lord that I may live to see Obama and Hillary get proper justice....and Comey.and.....

hirkimer wilberfart , 1 day ago

No wonder Sessions never came up for air to often, 63,000+ indictments passed to Whitaker. I'd like to shake Dan's hand and show some respect !

TUFF LOVE NEEDED , 4 hours ago

Please send a copy of this book to OUR PRESIDENT..........and those he trust in his cabinet!

Kass Arthur , 1 week ago

I'm a Canadian who loves, loves, loves Dan Bongino

theodore stefatos , 11 hours ago

Mayor David Dinkins was loser payed for drug dealers funerals.

Melvin Holliday , 6 hours ago

This is the Second biggest Scam in American history and Obama and Clinton are involved in both of them. The biggest scam ever perpetrated on the world was the one that got Obama elected to the Presidency and kept him there for 8 long year with the scam still continuing every time someone mentions the Forged Birth Certificate that has been presented as real just like the Gay Muslim Hypocrite that continues to lie and keep us all in the dark even though many of us know the truth.

BAC , 1 hour ago

Imagine being so powerful and well connected to every head of all the alphabet agencies that you can break laws that amount to treason and walk away unscathed. It's truly amazing to see this unfold. The only this works if everyone is dirty. Clinton's made hundreds of millions of dollars and set the standard on how to get away with it by brokering power and influence at the highest levels for a price. The sheep love her and celebrate her and her rapist husband. Fucking amazing.

M.K. Carol , 45 minutes ago

When you raise your right hand and swear to God it means something only if you believe in God.

Weofthe People , 3 days ago

They must be Indicted - because no one should be above the Law.

Steven Henson , 1 day ago

when he was campaigning Trump I was telling people and Friends he will be the next president they're not going to let Hillary either president they don't want her to be the president

P4OUR , 6 hours ago

This is using facts with conspiracy FBI was investigating Trump for trump. Obama did authorize spying to catch terrorists plots & successfully & effectively caught many terrorists. That fact combined with his conspiracy looks pretty good. Probably ? None of these things are for what HE SAYS they are for LIES! Did you see a shred of evidence? Who does he use for facts, THE ONE MEDIA OUTLET THAT HE ACCUSES OF BEING FAKE, NONE OTHER THAN CNN!

American Woman , 11 hours ago

If Justice isn't done #WeThePeople Lose every right and Rouge Government has a the power.. Communism. They allowed our right to elect a President to be removed. Selling Nuke materials to those that want America Destroyed? They have destroyed America..

Joboo Luvs u , 15 minutes ago

Mueller will be invested himself, in the very near future. Russian uranium, Treason against America.

Richard Fox , 1 week ago

The swamp is deep and dirty. Most of the embedded regulars in D.C. are crooked despicable bastards. D.C. should be nuked.

mary howland , 2 hours ago

Mueller is arresting people without cause. These people have already been to court and got sentenced. He brings them in to squeeze them and tell them if they lie he will lighten their jail time. This in it.s self is illgal. The demorats don.t care. They kill people to get at Trump and have killed many. no shame from them or their supporters they agree with this killings. Pigs

ikkin , 2 hours ago

Awesome. I love how he explains all the Obama/Clinton shenanigans in an easy to understand - though difficult to follow- manner. Difficult to follow just bc there are sooooo many players in this scheme to undermine President Trump.

SuperVt100 , 1 day ago

Why does POTUS Trump let the Mueller investigation keep going at this point? If Mueller is plan C, then the Mueller investigation should be over..

Charles Cary , 4 hours ago

FOR AN EX SECRETSERVICE AGENT DAN BONGINO HAS COME A LONG WAY AND IS VERY IMPRESSIVE IN HIS ABILITY TO TIE THINGS TOGETHER SO CONVINCINGLY WITH NAMES AND THERE ASSOCIATION AND HISTORY. THE BOOK WILL BE A BEST SELLER . DAN WILL PROFIT MONETARILY, BUT AS FAR AS JUSTICE BEING SERVED ,THE MOST IT WILL DO IS PROVE TO REINFORCE THE NEGATIVE MESSAGE OF HOW CORRUPT THE POLITICIANS ARE AND THE SWAMP WILL STAY TRUE TO ITSELF.

Candy Clews , 1 week ago

When is the mainstream public going to find out all about this? Trump HAS to declassify FISA

reginol invincent , 2 days ago

the law does punish man or women,that steals a goose from off the common,but lets the greater felon loose,that steals the common from the goose, hillary and russians stole the law will rightly try all fairly mueller shows us the truth.we americans are but slaves ,and knaves if we in power say it.

Larry Zackeroff , 15 hours ago

Mr. Bongino I have just one question. With all this proof of scandal why has nothing been done? Why are all these criminals still walking free? From Oboma and the Clinton Crime Machine down to the janitor sweeping the floors. Why are they not being prosecuted? Why did the Republican house investigators wait untill now to call in Comey to testify? Comey will continue to obstruct and use his stall tactics till the Democrat House majority takes over in January and all of this will be swept under the rug .Then WHAT? I feel that President Trump stands alone knee deep in the Washington Swamp. I feel that both the Left and the Right are the epiitomy of those Swamp Dwellers.All talk to keep us believing that they are working hard for justice and what happens when nothing comes out of this. They are all in bed with each other to keep us lining their pockets. WHAT A SCAM. I will continue to support our President. We the people are all he has. GOD BLESS PRESIDENT TRUMP and GOD BLESS AMERICA. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

CaptRip0127 , 1 day ago

It's people like Dan Bongino who will save our country.

Eric Dalais Noël , 1 day ago

Dan, yet again you've given us tomorrow's headlines today. The fact the the Bushs and the Clintons are corrupt to the core has now been established beyond all fact and argument. The missing piece however, what will now rightly demolish the Obama false legacy, is the declassification of the unredacted email trades between Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton transmitted on Clinton's unsecured private server account. These emails exist, they are on file and they will be released. When they do see the public light of day they will testify to the greatest abuse of political power in the free world of our lifetimes and well beyond. The Obama/Clinton email exchange will completely vindicate the granular questions that so many of us have been asking for so long. There are and nor will there be any winners in this whole disgusting affair other than the whole truth.

vincem1957 , 1 week ago

I wish Dan Bongiono had a bigger audience!! He makes total common sense and there is an honesty abouyt hgim that I just know is RIGHT...from my gut instincts..rememberr those or are you too brainwasshed to know thats what you should count on!

KaseyJosh Kaseyjosh , 6 hours ago

Lol Trump was put as president by the simpsons 2 decades ago if you think for one moment that it's legit you need to take a look at yourself it's a Hollywood joke....!!!

Astor Marshall the Airedale , 2 days ago

LOL rich liberals what about the corporations and their top dogs that just got one of the biggest tax cuts that live in 20,000 square-foot mansions. Thanks conservative Republicans

geofo60 Geof Harris , 13 hours ago

I'd like to see Dan sit down with George Webb live on TV. Excellent summary of the plot but GW has spent three years joining the dots. If he's right & I haven't found anything to the contrary, then Americans of all political persuasions should be (1st) very angry and (2nd) extremely worried. George Webb channel on YouTube also on Twitter & the web, Spyring in Congress. Incredible group of researchers, contributors & Patriots.

P4OUR , 7 hours ago

Ok, let me see if I can get this right he says that the left leaning media is lost it's gone out! In the beginning, true or false? HE'S IMPLYING THAT THEY LIE, RIGHT? Then, as right wing conservatives do without fail he relies exclusively on the SAME MEDIA OUTLETS TO VARIFY HIS FACTS ON FOOTNOTES! Tell me people is there ANYTHING WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

Mark Williams , 1 week ago

Daniel...Thank you for your Service....I Feel Humbled Sir....

Trumpshe honors , 12 hours ago

How do we stop them from impeaching him before he nails them???? They're apparently above the law, they are the law!!!. They have to take Trump down to save their hinds. Catch 22.

Godspeed , 1 day ago

Fn conservative oligarchy minion. So what's this guys skeleton in the closet going to be disclosed?

razor blade , 1 day ago

This is mind blowing. I thought this sort of thing went on in third world countries. Hard to believe it is in the US of A

Free Ma , 7 hours ago

So it's the "media" that protects the dems from this "justice" you people seek? Somebody's nuts.

Amber Hays Brannon , 1 week ago

I knew before he ever said out loud he was going to run for presidency that I he will be president one day and that he would save our country and liberate us from our corrupt gov't. Truth I am not a psychic don't believe in it but I swear I knew it years before and I never knew much about him other than he was a business man that spoke out about 9/11 and that he had a tower in NYC that I seen while visiting there to see ground zero. He is truly God sent and he is the greatest President and has made History books get a heck of a lot bigger.

Christina Kinne , 19 hours ago

Drain the swamp, investigate these criminals in the Justice Dept. Replace Justices that will not follow the law

XR IX , 17 hours ago

Is it Christmas time again so soon? Time for another scandal or conspiracy theory to plant seeds of fear. Fear motivates the mindless Americans into consumption. Consumption is the belief you can hold the wicked world at bay by providing anesthesia to your loved ones by material offerings. America is Truth, Justice, the American way. How is Trump providing that? Nationalism, and alternative reality. Yeah, a Flat Earth and Neo-Ns, good work America... now some orange dude who can't get a believable tan working, wants to rake the forest floor. This is so dumb. Our old allies laugh at us, and Russia could invade the US today because we've become the porn star republic. Have a Merry X-Mass with your orange Satan Claus.

123tominator007 , 21 hours ago (edited)

Wow. corrupt corrupt corrupt x100. We have snakes as our leaders. Slithering slimy snakes. And a witch who almost became prez.

BUD T , 3 days ago

The LEFT in America has become downright evil.

Rob Robster1 , 3 hours ago

Wow what a bombshell and now we know why they call it the swamp......they may get away with it but karma has a way of catching up to them

parinit , 22 hours ago

americans really like talking..... hard to follow till it gets to the point

Don Townsend , 16 hours ago

DEMOCRAT Has BECOME A SYNONYM FOR HOMOsexual ! DEMS TIME TO #WALKAWAY After being a life- long Democrat, since Carter ,I'll be voting Republican for ever for several reasons such as the disproportionate proliferation of HOMOSEXUAL TV programs and movies and the GUN GRAB ATTEMPTS by the Democrat Party. But , these next reasons really burn me up ! Recently, an openly HOMOSEXUAL teacher in EFLAND , N.C. recently read the book," KING AND KING ", TO HIS 3RD GRADE CLASS. It's the story of TWO HOMOSEXUAL PRINCES getting married and it shows them kissing. Also The Girl Scouts of America has been FORCED, by HOMOSEXUAL Groups, TO ACCEPT BOYS WHO IDENTIFY AS GIRLS. There even pushing to have sex education taught in Kindergarten "Chicago Passes Sex-Ed for Kindergartners - ABC News" "Obama: Sex Ed for Kindergartners 'Is the Right Thing to Do' In the state of California, heterosexual married couples can no longer be referred to as Husbands and Wives , Democrat Governor Jerry Brown has signed a bill into law that not only redefines marriage, but eliminates any reference to husband and wife, replacing each with the Generic Term Spouse ! People this is beyond the pale. The rampant proliferation of this kind of behavior is what we can expect if we continue to let the 2% TAIL OF THE HOMOSEXUAL POPULATION continue to WAG THE ENTIRE DEMOCRAT PARTY. The REPUBLICAN PARTY is our last hope in maintaining some kind of MORAL COMPASS AND TRADITIONAL FAMILY VALUES that are the foundation of this Country . Voting in a another Democrat President and Congress will give them the opportunity to appoint Liberal Supreme Court Justices giving the Court a LIBERAL MAJORITY FOR GENERATIONS. Meaning we can expect more of this. The following is the Genesis of a Lawsuit filed in 2006 against the reading of the HOMOSEXUAL BOOK."KING AND KING" TO 7 YEAR OLDS IN A CLASSROOM. In 2006 Robb and Robin Wirthlin and David and Tonia Parker filed a federal lawsuit against the school district of Eastbrook Elementary School, which their second graders attended in Lexington, Massachusetts. The Wirthlins' son's teacher had read King & King aloud to the class as part of an educational unit on weddings. Parents countered that the school's job was to teach about the world and that Massachusetts sanctioned same-sex marriage The plaintiffs claimed that using the book in school constituted sex education without parental notification, which would be a violation of their civil rights and state law. Robin Wirthlin appeared on CNN, saying " We felt like seven years old is not appropriate to introduce homosexual themes. My problem is that this issue of romantic attraction between two men is being presented to my seven-year-old as wonderful, and good and the way things should be. Let us know and let us excuse our child from the discussion. " HERE'S WHAT THE LIBERAL JUDGES RULED: IF THIS IS THE KIND OF RULINGS YOU WANT , ELECT ANOTHER DEMOCRAT PRESIDENT The judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying "Diversity is a hallmark of our nation. The Wirthlins and the Parkers appealed the decision; a three-judge panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously in favor of the school. Judge Sandra Lynch, writing for the court, rejected the plaintiff's argument that their religious beliefs were being singled out as well as their argument that their First Amendment right to free exercise of religion was violated, writing, "There is no evidence of systemic indoctrination. There is no allegation that [the second-grader] was asked to affirm gay marriage. Requiring a student to read a particular book is generally not coercive of free exercise rights." The court also ruled that the parents' substantive due process rights were not violated, as these rights did not legally give them the degree of control they sought over the curriculum. Funny how you can't read a moral lesson from the Bible ,but you can Promote HOMOsexual marriage to 2nd and 3rd graders ! TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS ! Here's a small % of shows with Homosexual Characters or Content without doing an in depth search ,let's see we have the one that started it all Will and Grace, then Strange Angel, Kidding, The First , Star Trek Discovery, Ozark , Ballers, The Killing, Aquarius , True Detective ,Bosch, Grace & Frankie , Zoo ,CSI- New Orleans ,Six Feet Under , Complications ,Entourage , Angels in America ,Community , Girls, The L Word, The Walking Dead ,The Last Man Standing, The Following, Empire , Backstrom , Chicago Fire , The Royals ,The Big Bang Theory, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Bored to Death , The Cleveland Show, King of the Hill, South park, The Simpsons, Glee, The 100,Black Sails, Madame Secretary , Gotham , Kingdom, How to get Away With Murder, The Modern Family, Dominion, Tyrant, The Night Shift, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Penny Dreadful, Nurse Jackie ,Star Crossed, The Fall , Peaky Blinders , Wentworth , Defiance, Hemlock Grove, Hannibal , The Bridge , Under The Dome ,Ray Donavan , Orphan Black, Banshee, Betrayal , House of Cards , Alpha House , Masters of Sex , Nashville, Da Vinci's Demons , Arrow, Sons of Anarchy ,Orange is the New Black, Sherlock ,Skins , Lip Service, How I met your Mother, Xena ,Prison Break , Homicide Life On The Streets , East Enders , Teen Wolf , Torchwood, Sex and the City , Bad Girls ,True Blood , Spartacus ,Game of Thrones , The Vampire Dairies , Shameless , Queer As Folk , The Wire ,The Office , Weeds ,Ripper Street , Schitt's Creek , Eye Candy ,Transparent, The Flash ,Chasing Life ,Hit The Floor ,Dracula , Dates , The Originals ,A Place To Call Home , The Fosters , The Carrie Dairies , Undateable , and American Horror Story just to mention a few there are dozens more. The HOMOsexualS are 2-5% of the population ,but 90% of the TV Shows have HOMOsexual content . Don't you think that's a bit disproportionate and does stuff like the following need to be on TV. Scene From Ballers: Episode 2 Actor 1 : Would you mind if I took you in my mouth Right now ! Actor 2: (formerly The Rock): The whole thing ? Actor 1: The whole shebang ! Actor 2: Make it quick ! Actor 1: Thank you for the blue balls !

JonSobieski , 4 hours ago

Media suffers from erosion of credibility, says Ingraham. What credibility?

MIFNP , 1 week ago

Admiral Rogers is an honorable man and PATRIOT. He will go down as one of the greatest men in US history.

super saiyan 4 , 1 day ago (edited)

Did you see trump retweet a picture with obama,hillary and bill behind bars? With text saying "trials for treason begin"???? THEY ARE ALL GOING TO PRISON or DEATH BY HANGING

Charles Queener , 3 hours ago (edited)

If these politician criminals don't get their just dues legally they will lethally

Tim Whaley , 1 day ago

Dan, your last four minutes made me cry. Its why I had to stop with 911 truth. I had to move on just hoping justice will be served...really great Dan!

TheConshuscriterion , 2 days ago

Meta Query?? QANON?? Q=Query??? Maybe that's why Trump is secretly communicating with Q?!

Melvin Holliday , 6 hours ago

Please be advised that the crime family Obama is a lot bigger than the story that Dan tells. Everyone involved is married or some kind of relation or through political favors and government taxpayer pay outs and there are hundreds of crooks that can all be traced back to Obama or someone in his group of Liars & Thieves.

TheMozzaok , 1 hour ago

Cohen pleading guilty makes this all very problematic. The potential for Cohen doing illegal stuff for Trump is massively high. It is as high as Hillary doing illegal stuff. The massive problem with this whole story is that if it is true, Trump has had it for two years, and done nothing. That makes no sense. I trust not a one of them. I KNOW Hillary is a horrible piece of dirt that protects her sex abusing husband, but I also KNOW Trump has done so many dirty deals, and slept with innumerable low life wealth and power groupies, so neither is Snow White. Dirty Vs Filthy. I like Trump, and despise Hillary, but I am not delusional enough to think he is not hiding shit he does not want the people to know.

A V , 9 hours ago

Dan Bongino needs to become an elected official - we need Americans like him in office!!!

brent sargent , 1 day ago

DO WHAT YOU WANT FOLKS I GUESS THERE ARE NO LAWS ANYMORE.

Charles Campbell , 1 week ago

Thank you Don I watch you and Gorka thank keep safe, God Bless for telling the truth

Steve Canada , 1 day ago (edited)

Could the case be made for collusion to commit sedition it's just what they done since Trump was a candidate they probably done a lot worse before he even announced he was running there Traders

Tim Temple , 1 day ago

This is the biggest "youtube" article i have seen out here.! I am amazed you are still alive! Move into the white house with Donald Trump for two months.

Kristene Murphy , 5 hours ago

Please produce another vid on the Australian involvement - Australians would like to know who!!!

John , 1 day ago

The media has brainwashed you with lies that's why people don't have understanding anymore they think the truth is a lie and the lies truth that's why blind people can understand Dan bongino

Steven Lissner , 1 week ago

I recommend watching the Dan Bongino Podcast also available on utube daily, Mon-Fri.

Frederick Friaday , 1 day ago

Mueller is a traitor to this country. He brought shame and dishonor to the Marines. The only way out for him is to go in to his bathroom and put a full metal jacket into his worthless brain. Maybe even take his family with him.

Cat Girl , 12 hours ago

Trump is bringing Cosmic Justice and it will be a beautiful thing!

turquoise770 , 21 hours ago

Wonder if Bongino is part of Q.

VbFit1 , 1 day ago

" 3rd country corruption Government" - Abused the power and betrayed the American people. Obama, Clinton, Mueller, Comey, Clipper and many others should be in jail now.

bonesport , 1 week ago

The entire Mueller probe has been a sham from the start, and we the people are still paying for this???? When does outrage turn into a shooting war

odell daniel , 1 day ago (edited)

Olbama is a low life con man, The real "bad guy", these people have to be prosecuted or our justice system is a joke.

SilentWolff , 1 day ago

1500 Down votes from liberal wackjobs who cant deal with the truth

Gregory Veenhuizen , 13 hours ago

How did we ever let things get this bad how could we have let a few people have all this power we the people can be blamed because we voted these idiots into office now we need to vote them out and show them who is boss and it's not them! Stand with this President and bring these corrupt people down and put them where there rightful place is in prison or gallows!

Timo H , 1 day ago

All those people Thumbed this video down because they couldn't accept the truth, the TRUTH hurts, and their feeling.

Anthony Baguinat , 1 week ago

""Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime."" - Lavrentiy Beria, head of Joseph Stalin's secret police

[Nov 27, 2018] The political fraud of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal"

Highly recommended!
After Democratic party was co-opted by neoliberals there is no way back. And since Obama the trend of Democratic Party is toward strengthening the wing of CIA-democratic notthe wing of the party friendly to workers. Bought by Wall Street leadership is uncable of intruting any change that undermine thier current neoliberal platform. that's why they criminally derailed Sanders.
Notable quotes:
"... When you think about the issue of how exactly a clean-energy jobs program would address the elephant in the room of private accumulation and how such a program, under capitalism, would be able to pay living wages to the people put to work under it, it exposes how non threatening these Green New Deals actually are to capitalism. ..."
"... To quote Trotsky, "These people are capable of and ready for anything!" ..."
"... "Any serious measures to stop global warming, let alone assure a job and livable wage to everyone, would require a massive redistribution of wealth and the reallocation of trillions currently spent on US imperialism's neo-colonial wars abroad." ..."
"... "It includes various left-sounding rhetoric, but is entirely directed to and dependent upon the Democratic Party." ..."
"... "And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical policy is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and exploiting you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth face today -- falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of world war." - New York Times tries to shame "disillusioned young voters" into supporting the Democrats ..."
"... It is an illusion that technical innovation within the capitalist system will magically fundamentally resolve the material problems produced by capitalism. But the inconvenient facts are entirely ignored by the corporate shills in the DSA and the whole lot of establishment politicians, who prefer to indulge their addiction to wealth and power with delusions of grandeur, technological utopianism, and other figments that serve the needs of their class. ..."
"... First it was Obama with his phoney "hope and change" that lured young voters to the Dumbicrats and now it's Ocacia Cortez promising a "green deal" in order to herd them back into the Democratic party--a total fraud of course--totally obvious! ..."
"... from Greenwald: The Democratic Party's deceitful game https://www.salon.com/2010/... ..."
Nov 27, 2018 | www.wsws.org

Raymond Colison4 days ago

they literally ripped this out of the 2016 Green Party platform. Jill Stein spoke repeatedly about the same exact kind of Green New Deal, a full-employment, transition-to-100%-renewables program that would supposedly solve all the world's problems.

When you think about the issue of how exactly a clean-energy jobs program would address the elephant in the room of private accumulation and how such a program, under capitalism, would be able to pay living wages to the people put to work under it, it exposes how non threatening these Green New Deals actually are to capitalism.

In 2016, when the Greens made this their central economic policy proposal, the Democrats responded by calling that platform irresponsible and dangerous ("even if it's a good idea, you can't actually vote for a non-two-party candidate!"). Why would they suddenly find a green new deal appealing now except for its true purpose: left cover for the very system destroying the planet.

To quote Trotsky, "These people are capable of and ready for anything!"

Greg4 days ago
"Any serious measures to stop global warming, let alone assure a job and livable wage to everyone, would require a massive redistribution of wealth and the reallocation of trillions currently spent on US imperialism's neo-colonial wars abroad."

Their political position not only lacks seriousness, unserious is their political position.

"It includes various left-sounding rhetoric, but is entirely directed to and dependent upon the Democratic Party."

For subjective-idealists, what you want to believe, think and feel is just so much more convincing than objective reality. Especially when it covers over single-minded class interests at play.

"And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical policy is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and exploiting you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth face today -- falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of world war." - New York Times tries to shame "disillusioned young voters" into supporting the Democrats

Penny Smith4 days ago
It is an illusion that technical innovation within the capitalist system will magically fundamentally resolve the material problems produced by capitalism. But the inconvenient facts are entirely ignored by the corporate shills in the DSA and the whole lot of establishment politicians, who prefer to indulge their addiction to wealth and power with delusions of grandeur, technological utopianism, and other figments that serve the needs of their class.
Jim Bergren4 days ago
First it was Obama with his phoney "hope and change" that lured young voters to the Dumbicrats and now it's Ocacia Cortez promising a "green deal" in order to herd them back into the Democratic party--a total fraud of course--totally obvious!

Only an International Socialist program led by Workers can truly lead a "green revolution" by expropriating the billionaire oil barons of their capital and redirecting that wealth into the socialist reconstruction of the entire economy.

Master Oroko4 days ago
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal" is a nice laugh. Really, it sure is funny hearing these lies given any credence at all. This showmanship belongs in a fantasy book, not in real life. The Democratic Party as a force for good social change Now that's a laugh!
Vivek Jain4 days ago
from Greenwald: The Democratic Party's deceitful game https://www.salon.com/2010/...
лидия5 days ago
"Greenwashing" of capitalism (and also of Zionist apartheid colony in Palestine) is but one of dirty tricks by Dems and their "left" backers.
Kalen5 days ago
Lies, empty promises, meaningless tautologies and morality plays, qualified and conditional declarations to be backpedalled pending appropriate political expediencies, devoid any practical content that is what AOC, card carrying member of DSA, and in fact young energetic political apparatchik of calcified political body of Dems establishment, duty engulfs. And working for socialist revolution is no one of them.

What kind of socialist would reject socialist revolution, class struggle and class emancipation and choose, as a suppose socialist path, accommodation with oligarchic ruling elite via political, not revolutionary process that would have necessarily overthrown ruling elite.

What socialist would acquiesce to legalized exploitation of people for profit, legalized greed and inequality and would negotiate away fundamental principle of egalitarianism and working people self rule?

Only National Socialist would; and that is exactly what AOC campaign turned out to be all about.

National Socialism with imperial flavor is her affiliation and what her praises for Pelosi, wife of a billionaire and dead warmonger McCain proved.

Now she is peddling magical thinking about global change and plunge herself into falacy of entrepreneurship, Market solution to the very problem that the market solutions were designed to create and aggravate namely horrific inequality that is robbing people from their own opportunities to mitigate devastating effects of global change.

The insidiousness of phony socialists expresses itself in the fact that they lie that any social problem can be fixed by current of future technical means, namely via so called technological revolution instead by socialist revolution they deem unnecessary or detrimental.

Me at home Kalen4 days ago
The technical means for achieving socialism has existed since the late 19th century, with the telegraph, the coal-powered factory, and modern fertilizer. The improvements since then have only made socialism even more streamlined and efficient, if such technologies could only be liberated from capital! The idea that "we need a new technological revolution just to achieve socialism" reflects the indoctrination in capitalism by many "socialist" theorists because it is only in capitalism where "technological growth" is essential simply to maintain the system. It is only in capitalism (especially America, the most advanced capitalist nation, and thus, the one where capitalism is actually closest towards total crisis) where the dogma of a technological savior is most entrenched because America cannot offer any other kind of palliative to the more literate and productive sections of its population. Religion will not convince most and any attempt at a sociological or economic understanding would inevitably prove the truth of socialism.

[Nov 26, 2018] Christopher Hitchens interview on the Clintons (1999)

Jun 06, 2016 | www.youtube.com

Watch more on the Christopher Hitchens playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...

Christopher Hitchens discusses American politicians and his book on Bill Clinton.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/hlrM0Siszq8?feature=oembed


flanker22 , 4 months ago

its funny how charlie rose adamantly defend's clinton's predatory sexual behavior now we know why.

Here_We_Go_Again2 , 7 months ago (edited)

Christopher Hitchens was 100% right about Bill and Hillary Clinton!

American Citizen , 11 months ago

Hitchens died, Rose was effectively taken out by the liberals, and Hillary lost the 2016 election. And Bill has still evaded responsibility for his actions while others have fallen for less.

Byron Welichko , 9 months ago

33:31 is the best. Watch Hitchens face as he knows rose is lying in a horrendously vain attempt to excuse Clinton.

Mike Orsini , 3 months ago (edited)

Hitchen's won my respect with this interview. He was exactly right in his assessment of Bill Clinton and was the only man who had the balls to say it out loud at the expense of his own status and reputation. In defending the weak and vulnerable against the strong and powerful, Hitchens really was living up to his namesake as a ''CHRIST BEARER.''

Si mon , 9 months ago

Hitchens was fully aware Rose was a Clinton man.

slappy happy , 7 months ago

Charlie keeps asking Hitch if he is wrapped up in mania about Clinton. This guy never thought to ask himself if he, Charlie, was wrapped up in the worship of the Clintons.

Siren Denied , 5 months ago

The irony of Charlie Rose sitting across from Hitchens as the Hitch lambastes (rightfully) President Clinton for sexual misconduct is not lost on me. If Christopher were alive I think he would laugh wryly over it.

[Nov 23, 2018] Sitting on corruption hill

Highly recommended!
Mueller is in the cave just below the Clinton foundation" sign. Entrance is behind the bag with the dollars ;-)
Nov 23, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

[Nov 10, 2018] Burying The Other Russia Story: WSJ Editors Expose The House Democrats' Real Plan

Notable quotes:
"... Adam Schiff will shut down the probe that found FBI abuses. ..."
"... Credit for knowing anything at all goes to Intel Chairman Devin Nunes and more recently a joint investigation by Reps. Bob Goodlatte (Judiciary) and Trey Gowdy (Oversight). Over 18 months of reviewing tens of thousands of documents and interviewing every relevant witness, no Senate or House Committee has unearthed evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the presidential election. If Special Counsel Robert Mueller has found more, he hasn't made it public. ..."
"... But House investigators have uncovered details of a Democratic scheme to prod the FBI to investigate the Trump campaign. We now know that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee hired Fusion GPS, which hired an intelligence-gun-for-hire, Christopher Steele, to write a "dossier" on Donald Trump's supposed links to Russia. ..."
"... Mr. Steele fed that document to the FBI, even as he secretly alerted the media to the FBI probe that Team Clinton had helped to initiate. Fusion, the oppo-research firm, was also supplying its dossier info to senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion. ..."
"... This abuse of the FBI's surveillance powers took place as part of a counterintelligence investigation into a presidential campaign -- which the FBI also hid from Congress. Such an investigation is unprecedented in post-J. Edgar Hoover American politics, and it included running informants into the Trump campaign, obtaining surveillance warrants, and using national security letters, which are secret subpoenas to obtain phone records and documents. ..."
Nov 10, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Via The Wall Street Journal

Adam Schiff will shut down the probe that found FBI abuses.

Arguably the most important power at stake in Tuesday's election was Congressional oversight, and the most important change may be Adam Schiff at the House Intelligence Committee. The Democrat says his top priority is re-opening the Trump-Russia collusion probe, but more important may be his intention to stop investigating how the FBI and Justice Department abused their power in 2016. So let's walk through what we've learned to date.

Credit for knowing anything at all goes to Intel Chairman Devin Nunes and more recently a joint investigation by Reps. Bob Goodlatte (Judiciary) and Trey Gowdy (Oversight). Over 18 months of reviewing tens of thousands of documents and interviewing every relevant witness, no Senate or House Committee has unearthed evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the presidential election. If Special Counsel Robert Mueller has found more, he hasn't made it public.

But House investigators have uncovered details of a Democratic scheme to prod the FBI to investigate the Trump campaign. We now know that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee hired Fusion GPS, which hired an intelligence-gun-for-hire, Christopher Steele, to write a "dossier" on Donald Trump's supposed links to Russia.

Mr. Steele fed that document to the FBI, even as he secretly alerted the media to the FBI probe that Team Clinton had helped to initiate. Fusion, the oppo-research firm, was also supplying its dossier info to senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion.

House investigators have also documented the FBI's lack of judgment in using the dossier to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against former Trump aide Carter Page. The four FISA warrants against Mr. Page show that the FBI relied almost exclusively on the unproven Clinton-financed accusations, as well as a news story that was also ginned up by Mr. Steele.

The FBI told the FISA court that Mr. Steele was "credible," despite Mr. Steele having admitted to Mr. Ohr that he passionately opposed a Trump Presidency. The FBI also failed to tell the FISA court about the Clinton campaign's tie to the dossier.

This abuse of the FBI's surveillance powers took place as part of a counterintelligence investigation into a presidential campaign -- which the FBI also hid from Congress. Such an investigation is unprecedented in post-J. Edgar Hoover American politics, and it included running informants into the Trump campaign, obtaining surveillance warrants, and using national security letters, which are secret subpoenas to obtain phone records and documents.

Mr. Nunes and his colleagues also found that officials in Barack Obama's White House "unmasked" Trump campaign officials to learn about their conversations with foreigners; that FBI officials exhibited anti-Trump bias in text messages; and that the FBI team that interviewed then Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn reported that they did not think Mr. Flynn had lied about his Russian contacts. Mr. Mueller still squeezed Mr. Flynn to cop a guilty plea.

All of this information had to be gathered despite relentless opposition from Democrats and their media contacts. Liberal groups ginned up a phony ethics complaint against Mr. Nunes, derailing his committee leadership for months. Much of the media became Mr. Schiff's scribes rather than independent reporters. Meanwhile, the FBI and Justice continue to stonewall Congress, defying subpoenas and hiding names and information behind heavy redactions.

There is still much more the public deserves to know. This includes how and when the FBI's Trump investigation began, the extent of FBI surveillance, and the role of Obama officials and foreigners such as Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic who in spring 2016 supposedly told Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that Russia held damaging Clinton emails. When he takes over the committee, Mr. Schiff will stop asking these questions and bless the FBI-Justice refusal to cooperate.

Senate Republicans could continue to dig next year, but Mr. Mueller seems uninterested. Attorney General Jeff Sessions in March asked Utah U.S. Attorney John Huber to look into FBI misconduct, but there has been little public reporting of what he is finding, if he is even still looking. Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz is investigating, though that report is likely to take many more months.

* * *

All of which puts an additional onus on Mr. Trump to declassify key FBI and Justice documents sought by Mr. Nunes and other House investigators before Mr. Schiff buries the truth. A few weeks ago Mr. Trump decided to release important documents, only to renege under pressure from Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and members of the intelligence community.

Mr. Sessions resigned this week and perhaps Mr. Rosenstein will as well. Meantime, Mr. Trump should revisit his decision and help Mr. Nunes and House Republicans finish the job in the lame duck session of revealing the truth about the misuse of U.S. intelligence and the FISA court in a presidential election.

[Nov 06, 2018] 'Somebody' made fradulent promises and put people in danger to acheive some political goal. Sounds like Clintons or Soros.

Notable quotes:
"... "a group called CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project" a group that has received funding from Soros, to Pueblo Sin Fronteras through a person named 'Alex Mensing' who works both for CARA and as "an on-the ground coordinator in Mexico for the Pueblo Sin Fronteras". ..."
"... ..A vital part of that expansion has involved money: major donations from some of the nation's wealthiest liberal foundations, including the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Open Society Foundations of the financier George Soros, and the Atlantic Philanthropies. Over the past decade those donors have invested more than $300 million in immigrant organizations, including many fighting for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants here illegally.... ..."
"... US based groups or cutouts are the organizers of the caravan. ..."
"... The list of Democratic Party-connected organizations that might have originated the idea of a caravan from Central America is small. I surmise Clinton Global Initiative because they would have the requisite connections and blaming Soros seems to easy and convenient. But Soros is also rumored to be behind support for European migrants so it's certainly possible. ..."
Nov 06, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Peter AU 1 , Nov 5, 2018 2:28:56 PM | link

How did this group of thousands come together to walk to US were Trump has vowed to keep illegals out. People like this would naturally come together if they were catching a ship, or at some sort of aid post refugee camp ect.

After a search on caravan starting point, I found this at the Guardian.

"Who organized the caravan?
In interviews, Honduran members of the group said that they learned about the caravan from Facebook posts, and a report on the local HCH television station, which erroneously suggested that a former congressman and radio host would cover the costs of the journey.
After that, rumours spread quickly, including the mistaken promise that any member would be given asylum in the US. Darwin Ramos, 30, said he was desperate to flee threats from a local drug gang, and when news of the caravan reached his neighbourhood, he seized on it as his best chance to escape."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/24/caravan-migrants-what-is-it-where-from-guatemala-honduras-immigrants-mexico


Uh huh. 'Somebody' made mistaken promises.

Peter AU 1 , Nov 5, 2018 4:06:27 PM | link

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueblo_Sin_Fronteras
"Pueblo Sin Fronteras (en: People without Borders) is an immigration rights group known for organizing several high profile migrant caravans in Mexico and Central America. The organization's efforts to facilitate immigration and calls for open borders attracted considerable amounts of coverage in the Mexican and American media."

Pueblo Sin Fronteras website. Zero information there other than the have bases or offices in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Tijuana in Mexico.
https://www.pueblosinfronteras.org/commitees.html
No information on who they are or who funds them. Very much a political organization.
On two caravans like this have occurred, both organized by this shadowy group.
Slow moving lots of press coverage that can last for weeks so long as the peasant suckers stay suckers and don't pull out. Very much an anti Trump political show put on by whoever funds and controls this Pueblo Sin Fronteras organisation.

Peter AU 1 , Nov 5, 2018 4:34:48 PM | link
Centro Sin Fronteras is the parent group to Pueblo Sin Fronteras.
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/centro-sin-fronteras/
"Elvira Arellano, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, former fugitive from U.S. immigration authorities, and activist for illegal immigrants in the U.S., formed the activist group La Familia Latina Unida ("The United Latin Family") as an expansion of the Centro Sin Fronteras. [7] La Familia Latina Unida runs Pueblo Sin Fronteras ("People Without Borders"), a group that organizes "migrant caravans" from Mexico and Latin America to cross the U.S. border illegally"

CSF website here https://fluenglish.wordpress.com/about/
Again nothing on who finances them.

Peter AU 1 , Nov 5, 2018 4:41:49 PM | link
The majority of people in the caravan may be leaving their own countries due to violence poverty ect, but the caravan itself is a manufactured political event. left to their own devices, some may have moved towards the US in small groups, others would have been deterred due to Trumps immigration policy, but they have joined this so called caravan on false promises made by the organisers. Nothing better than kids, women and oldies doing it tough or better yet dying for political media coverage.
dh-mtl , Nov 5, 2018 5:26:11 PM | link
Peter AU 1 | Nov 5, 2018 4:34:48 PM | 73 says:

"Again nothing on who finances them. (Pueblo Sin Fronteras)"


This article, published the last time that Pueblo Sin Fronteras was in the headlines, ( https://joeforamerica.com/2018/04/whos-really-behind-the-illegal-immigrants-the-migrant-caravan-and-pueblo-sin-fronteras/) links "a group called CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project" a group that has received funding from Soros, to Pueblo Sin Fronteras through a person named 'Alex Mensing' who works both for CARA and as "an on-the ground coordinator in Mexico for the Pueblo Sin Fronteras".

Peter AU 1 , Nov 5, 2018 5:41:08 PM | link
Sleepy "If they request asylum, their entry is legal"

If they get into the US, immediately present themselves to authorities and request asylum, then their entry is deemed legal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Status_of_Refugees
US has signed up to the 1967 protocol but not the 1951 convention.

As for the politically organized caravan, the peasants have officially been offered a home in Mexico, but the organizers prefer them to go on to the US. As they have been offered a place in mexico, they are now economic migrants wanting greener pastures in the US rather than refugees.

The peasants themselves, I think are mostly genuine though organizers are mixed through the group. The peasants are no more than consumables in a political action.

Peter AU 1 , Nov 5, 2018 6:16:23 PM | link
The money.

. ..A vital part of that expansion has involved money: major donations from some of the nation's wealthiest liberal foundations, including the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Open Society Foundations of the financier George Soros, and the Atlantic Philanthropies. Over the past decade those donors have invested more than $300 million in immigrant organizations, including many fighting for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants here illegally....
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/us/obama-immigration-policy-changes.html

Pft , Nov 5, 2018 6:36:34 PM | link
How can people not see this caravan march as the obvious false flag it is to influence the election. The actors are being paid and busses have been mobilized and paid for to move them forward. The right says Soros money might be behind it and they may be right. Surprised the left has not blamed Putin. Which proves my point that the left is actively conspiring with the right the keep them in power. Why wouldnt they care?. As Caitlin Johnstone says, after I said it, they get paid the same no matter what. As part of a 2 party monopoly,with 2 parties the minimum to serve the illusion of a representative Democracy,the oiligarchs will continue to throw money to the loser.

This has been scripted well in advance. Republicans need to maintain both houses for the 2nd stage of Trumps destruction of America (credibility and finance), especially its government and middle class as the elite will be protected from the damage. Democrats are standing on the sidelines rambling about Russia Gate or Khashoggi Gate or mobilizing their forces to support gay marriages and transgender access to bathrooms. And to boot they bring out Hillary and Obama at the last moment to bash Trump to galvanize the rights voters even more. No other purpose for doing so.

To be sure, a Democratic win means nothing except perhaps as a poor proxy for a lack of support for Trump. 40% of their candidates come from the military or intelligence services. They are owned by the oligarchs as much as tbe Republicans. The only difference in the parties is the costumes they wear and the rhetoric the speak

Or perhaps its as simple as not wanting to share responsibility for what is to come as their best shot to win in 2020

Frankly the best outcome would be the decimation of the Democrat Party and its subsequent dissolution. Lets end the farce of a Democracy. One party for all. Hail Trump or whomever he appoints as his successor, or just let the elites vote and announce who they voted for every 4 years. Thats pretty much what the constitution meant for us to be doing anyways. The idea of a Direct vote by all citizens for President and Senate would have horrified them. Seeing the results of elections these past 40 years I have concluded they are right.


Jackrabbit , Nov 5, 2018 6:42:21 PM | link
b, RJPJR, Jay, Yeah Right, et al

Invaders or Dupes? Have the caravan migrants been misled?

While it's true that anyone can request asylum, the caravan migrants appear to be under the impression that they have a legitimate claim to asylum in USA because they are fleeing gang violence in their home country. That is very likely to be untrue.

Such a claim MIGHT be valid in countries that have signed the Cartagena Declaration and ratified it into law - but the US has not. The Declaration expands the definition of refugees to include:

"persons who have fled their country because their lives, security or freedom have been threatened by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order".

The Brazil Declaration is an effort to expand the Cartegena Declaration . The USA is also not involved in this effort either, though I believe that they have "observer" status.

FYI
The 1951 UN Convention as amended defines a refugee as someone with a "well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion" . The caravan stories I have heard are unlikely to qualify under this definition.

Some countries that have loads of asylum seekers have set up camps to hold them. Some, like Australia, even have camps in foreign countries. Trump's talk of setting up tents implies that USA will also establish such camps. Life in these camps is likely to be uncomfortable and unproductive. Only those will genuine asylum claims would tough it out.

Grieved , Nov 5, 2018 7:40:05 PM | link
How telling it is that when we disagree on the nature of the Caravan, we fall into an either-or choice between 2 absolutes. Either it is a complete hoax from the ground up, or it's a completely authentic grass-roots happening.

But we have seen enough color revolutions to understand that there is always an authentic component to each one. I have commented several times on how delicately the CIA and other organizers of color revolutions symbiotically fuse with good and authentic people who have a noble cause. How these bad people can merge with such good people is a wonder to me.

But this itself is the fact that must demolish the partisan thinking of "one side or the other". It's clear that the people who run things and their henchmen who arrange things are marvelously nuanced when it comes to good and evil. They'll be good when it suits them and evil for the same reason, and treat people well and badly, all depending on the exigencies of the mission.

In simple words, there undoubtedly is a core heart to the population of the caravan that is good, hopeful, enterprising and industrious, and that hopes to receive just one little break from the world, and a sliver of social justice. This radiating core of goodness and humanity, which would break open the hearts of ordinary people like you and me, to the organizers and their fixers is simply the perfect place to hide, concealed by superb protective coloration.

Take a look at the Maidan in Ukraine, and see how many good people thought they were fighting to create a wonderful new world, until the snipers fired on both sides and brought off the color revolution with superb skill and complete amoral ruthlessness - all as a result of long planning and preparation, not to mention the cash to hire mercenaries and provide the best logistics.

So I personally will stand by my thought that we will see what this is when the shooters begin to provoke the violence. And if that happens, then sadly, it will be the innocents who again, as always, are massacred.

But if the US handles it well, and permits controlled entry under the supervision of the border authorities, and there are no shooters and no provocations coming either from the Caravan people - or from some other force off to the side that doesn't seem to belong to anyone, but which seems to be the cause of death to both sides - then this will all fizzle out as another political skirmish of short duration, and the Democrats and Republicans will move on to their next diversions.

RJPJR , Nov 5, 2018 7:47:23 PM | link
Posted by: Grieved | Nov 5, 2018 7:40:05 PM | 97

You wrote: "Either it is a complete hoax from the ground up, or it's a completely authentic grass-roots happening."

I am inclined to believe that it is both, to wit an authentic grass-roots happening that has been hijacked (like so many others) by interested parties for their own ends.

Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 5, 2018 6:59:25 PM | 95

Thanks for the link!

Peter AU 1 , Nov 5, 2018 7:53:13 PM | link
Grieved 97
That's the way I'm seeing it. "But we have seen enough color revolutions to understand that there is always an authentic component to each one. I have commented several times on how delicately the CIA and other organizers of color revolutions symbiotically fuse with good and authentic people who have a noble cause. How these bad people can merge with such good people is a wonder to me."

Well put, not only the above paragragh but the whole comment. Not much most of us can do to help the naive perhaps desperate people sucked in to the US political caravan but we should at least be exposing those who are exploiting and furthingf their misery for political purposes.

Jackrabbit , Nov 5, 2018 8:27:50 PM | link
RJPJR:
I am inclined to believe that it is both, to wit an authentic grass-roots happening that has been hijacked ...

I think it is fake as per info @93.

The caravan people are real and hopeful of a better life but they have been duped into believing that they could get asylum.

Pft , Nov 5, 2018 8:40:05 PM | link
Nemesiscalling@94

Requirement for any President or political leader is to be a good actor. I believe they simply follow a script prepared by the real rulers operating in the shadows. Maybe I am wrong. Its like fake wrestling as Caitlin Johnstone pointed out. You have to be a good actor and pretend to care while actually making sure you qlose if the script calls for it

Jackrabbit@100

Its true they have been duped but the point is that desparate and poor people rarely work together spontaneously in an organized fashion and a caravan such as this must be organized and paid for. Someone is feeding them. The timing is too good to be true. Obviously they have been promised something, asylum, money or whatever and assured of their safety. To determine who is behind it you simply need to look at who benefits.

Jackrabbit , Nov 5, 2018 9:35:42 PM | link
Pft

@91 you wrote: The actors are being paid ...

When discussing this caravan "false flag", many people will dismiss "conspiracy theories" that involve paid actors.

RJPJR @98 thought the caravan an an "authentic grass-roots happening that has been hi-jacked" . But that theory is also unsatisfying. As you point out (Pft), it is strange that ordinary people organize themselves to make a march like the caravan.

The best explanation is that people were organized to make the march by local groups [connected to Clinton Global Initiative?] which got PAID to do so. These trusted local groups then told the marchers that: 1) they would get support along the way, and 2) that they have a good/great chance of actually getting asylum.

Organizers would not want a member of the caravan to tell a reporter that the march was fake, or that they are paid. But it has been reported that "well wishers" have given the marchers food and money. And the press has not questioned that support. And the marchers seem to have a genuine belief that they qualify for asylum. Such a belief would be easy to instill in poor, uneducated people who can be easily duped into believing that an international treaty like the Cartegena Declaration applies to all countries.

Peter AU 1 , Nov 5, 2018 9:55:29 PM | link
Jackrabbit, in my post @67 I linked the Pueblo Sin Fronteras website. When I found out about this group I looked for their website which I was able to access, and although information was sparse on this shadowy group, they proudly advertised their work on this caravan.
Since posting a link here I am now censored from that website - security exceptions blah blah.
Not local globalist groups but US based groups or cutouts are the organizers of the caravan.
Jackrabbit , Nov 5, 2018 10:24:10 PM | link
Peter AU1

Good detective work!

But my hunch is that the trail ends with a one or more local groups that are known to people in the area. These poor people basically had to be sold a 'bill of goods'. That's difficult unless you are known/trusted (have a "brand" like Coca-Cola).

There would be several intermediary groups. Maybe a large in-country charity with US connections? And one or more groups outside the country (US, Mexico, even EU) that are connected to / get funding and direction from a major US group.

Let's face it, whoever was behind this would not want the caravan to be connected to back to group with US political connections. And it's probably unlikely that we will find any 'smoking gun' that does that.

The list of Democratic Party-connected organizations that might have originated the idea of a caravan from Central America is small. I surmise Clinton Global Initiative because they would have the requisite connections and blaming Soros seems to easy and convenient. But Soros is also rumored to be behind support for European migrants so it's certainly possible.

It really the same reasoning that led b to suspect that it was CIA/MI6 that foiled assassination plot in Denmark, not Mossad.

[Nov 03, 2018] Kunstler The Midterm Endgame Democrats' Perpetual Hysteria

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The Democratic Party split into a four-headed monster comprised of Wall Street patrons seeking favors, war hawks and their corporate allies looking for new global rumbles, the permanent bureaucracy looking to always expand itself, and the various ethnic and sexual minorities whose needs and grievances are serviced by that bureaucracy. It's the last group that has become the party's most public face while the party's other activities – many of them sinister -- remain at least partially concealed. ..."
"... the Republicans are being forced to engage on some real issues, such as the need for a coherent and effective immigration policy and the need to redefine formal trade relations. (Other issues like the insane system of medical racketeering and the deadly racket of the college loan industry just skate along on thin ice. And then, of course, there's the national debt and all its grotesque outgrowths.) ..."
"... Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has become the party of bad ideas and bad faith, starting with the position that "diversity and inclusion" means shutting down free speech, an unforgivable transgression against common sense and common decency. It's a party that lies even more systematically than Mr. Trump, and does so knowingly (as when Google execs say they "Do no Evil"). Its dirty secret is that it relishes coercion, it likes pushing people around, telling them what to think and how to act. Its idea of "social justice" is a campus kangaroo court, where due process of law is suspended. And it is deeply corrupt, with good old-fashioned grift, new-fashioned gross political misconduct in federal law enforcement, and utter intellectual depravity in higher education. ..."
"... I hope that the party is shoved into an existential crisis and is forced to confront its astounding dishonesty. I hope that the process prompts them to purge their leadership across the board. ..."
Nov 03, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Kunstler: The Midterm Endgame & Democrats' "Perpetual Hysteria"

by Tyler Durden Fri, 11/02/2018 - 17:05 44 SHARES Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Back in the last century, when this was a different country, the Democrats were the "smart" party and the Republicans were the "stupid" party.

How did that work?

Well, back then the Democrats represented a broad middle class, with a base of factory workers, many of them unionized, and the party had to be smart, especially in the courts, to overcome the natural advantages of the owner class.

In contrast, the Republicans looked like a claque of country club drunks who staggered home at night to sleep on their moneybags. Bad optics, as we say nowadays.

The Democrats also occupied the moral high ground as the champion of the little guy. If not for the Dems, factory workers would be laboring twelve hours a day and children would still be maimed in the machinery. Once the relationship between business and labor was settled in the 1950s, the party moved on to a new crusade on even loftier moral high ground: civil rights, aiming to correct arrant and long-lived injustices against downtrodden black Americans. That was a natural move, considering America's self-proclaimed post-war status as the world's Beacon of Liberty. It had to be done and a political consensus that included Republicans got it done. Consensus was still possible.

The Dems built their fortress on that high ground and fifty years later they find themselves prisoners in it. The factory jobs all vamoosed overseas. The middle class has been pounded into penury and addiction.

The Democratic Party split into a four-headed monster comprised of Wall Street patrons seeking favors, war hawks and their corporate allies looking for new global rumbles, the permanent bureaucracy looking to always expand itself, and the various ethnic and sexual minorities whose needs and grievances are serviced by that bureaucracy. It's the last group that has become the party's most public face while the party's other activities – many of them sinister -- remain at least partially concealed.

The Republican Party has, at least, sobered up some after getting blindsided by Trump and Trumpism. Like a drunk out of rehab, it's attempting to get a life. Two years in, the party marvels at Mr. Trump's audacity, despite his obvious lack of savoir faire. And despite a longstanding lack of political will to face the country's problems, the Republicans are being forced to engage on some real issues, such as the need for a coherent and effective immigration policy and the need to redefine formal trade relations. (Other issues like the insane system of medical racketeering and the deadly racket of the college loan industry just skate along on thin ice. And then, of course, there's the national debt and all its grotesque outgrowths.)

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has become the party of bad ideas and bad faith, starting with the position that "diversity and inclusion" means shutting down free speech, an unforgivable transgression against common sense and common decency. It's a party that lies even more systematically than Mr. Trump, and does so knowingly (as when Google execs say they "Do no Evil"). Its dirty secret is that it relishes coercion, it likes pushing people around, telling them what to think and how to act. Its idea of "social justice" is a campus kangaroo court, where due process of law is suspended. And it is deeply corrupt, with good old-fashioned grift, new-fashioned gross political misconduct in federal law enforcement, and utter intellectual depravity in higher education.

I hope that Democrats lose as many congressional and senate seats as possible. I hope that the party is shoved into an existential crisis and is forced to confront its astounding dishonesty. I hope that the process prompts them to purge their leadership across the board. If there is anything to salvage in this organization, I hope it discovers aims and principles that are unrecognizable from its current agenda of perpetual hysteria. But if the party actually blows up and disappears, as the Whigs did a hundred and fifty years ago, I will be content. Out of the terrible turbulence, maybe something better will be born.

Or, there's the possibility that the dregs of a defeated Democratic Party will just go batshit crazy and use the last of its mojo to incite actual sedition. Of course, there's also a distinct possibility that the Dems will take over congress, in which case they'll ramp up an even more horrific three-ring-circus of political hysteria and persecution that will make the Spanish Inquisition look like a backyard barbeque. That will happen as the US enters the most punishing financial train wreck in our history, an interesting recipe for epic political upheaval.

[Oct 27, 2018] Is Obama Staging a Color Revolution in the US by Martin Berger

Some people understood that this is a color revolution even in 2016
Notable quotes:
"... And even though the corporate elites have formally acknowledged Trump's victory, they are pressuring the current government to fight the next US President tooth and nail, until all resources are exhausted. ..."
"... Over the last eight years, the Obama administration has acquired a long list of tricks that were used against undesired governments in various parts of the world, while the most effective among them is the so-called "color revolutions," where essentially a coup d'etat is achieved by media manipulation and large mobs. US intelligence services are now prepared to unleash such a revolution on the home front, since they are fairly concerned about their future under Trump, as the Washington Post would report. ..."
"... It goes without saying that an attempt to launch a "color revolution" in the United States is being supported by a number of Europe states in addition to the US ..."
"... Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook." ..."
Nov 12, 2016 | journal-neo.org

The recent victory of now President-elect Donald Trump has taken a lot of Americans by surprise. But it would be safe to say that the corporate ruling elites that went all in on Hillary Clinton were literally shocked by her defeat. Without her at the head of the state they fear they may not be able to carry on spreading the corruption, which is believed to be at the foundation of the Clinton clan, or carry on waging wars upon other states which includes arming terrorists responsible for killing thousands of civilians around the world.

And even though the corporate elites have formally acknowledged Trump's victory, they are pressuring the current government to fight the next US President tooth and nail, until all resources are exhausted.

Over the last eight years, the Obama administration has acquired a long list of tricks that were used against undesired governments in various parts of the world, while the most effective among them is the so-called "color revolutions," where essentially a coup d'etat is achieved by media manipulation and large mobs. US intelligence services are now prepared to unleash such a revolution on the home front, since they are fairly concerned about their future under Trump, as the Washington Post would report.

The fact that Obama still believes in Trump's inability to replace him in the White House has already been announced by the White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. At the same time, he would point out, while commenting on the anti-Trump protests in the US, that the right for freedom of expression must be exercised without violence, clearly alluding to the current administration's arsenal of "peaceful" tools that would allow it to get rid of Trump.

That is why we already are witnessing a wave of "protests" being unleashed under the control of the Obama administration. The corporate media and social networks are openly arrayed against the incoming 45th US President. These very tactics have been used by US intelligence agencies in Brazil, Nicaragua, Hong Kong, Thailand, as well as across the Middle East and Eastern Europe to unleash a "color revolution". In some countries, such actions have brought foreign government under the direct control of the White House, as we can see it in Ukraine, Brazil and several other countries.

As a result, we are now being told about thousands of protesters in US cities rallying against the Trump election victory. These claims were followed by a petition published on Change.org that demands the US authorities change the results of the recent election, demanding the electoral college be revised, and that the election results be overturned on December 19. It is being reported that this petition has already been signed by a total of two million people .

It goes without saying that an attempt to launch a "color revolution" in the United States is being supported by a number of Europe states in addition to the US , including France and Germany, since the political order there is concerned about the impunity they've been enjoying coming to an end, with Trump failing to openly signal continued open US support for them.. The British Independent wants Trump to be impeached, citing law professor Christopher Peterson, who would claim that there is a strong case for the beginning of legal proceedings that would stop Donald Trump from being president. The impeachment process is usually initiated when a president of a state has committed some sort of a serious offense, but Trump hasn't been able to do anything yet, since he hasn't been inaugurated. Still the Independent believes there must be some legal ground for his impeachment.

It's clear the train of "color revolution" is under full steam in the US today. What will come up from this attempt to ignore the US Constitution, remains to be seen.

Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook."


https://journal-neo.org/2016/11/12/is-obama-staging-a-color-revolution-in-the-us-2/

[Oct 26, 2018] FBI Concealed Evidence That Directly Refutes Premise Of Trump-Russia Probe GOP Lawmaker

Notable quotes:
"... Department of Justice and FBI officials in the Obama administration in October of 2016 only presented to the court the evidence that made the government's case to get a warrant to spy on a Trump campaign associate ..."
"... The FBI referred to Papadopoulos in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application - however what has been released to the public is so heavily redacted that it's unclear why he is mentioned. ..."
"... As The Hill 's John Solomon notes, based on Congressional testimony by former FBI General Counsel James Baker - the DOJ / FBI redactions aren't hiding national security issues - only embarrassment . ..."
"... President Trump issued an order to declassify the documents on September 17, but then walked it back - announcing that the DOJ would be allowed to review the documents first after two foreign allies asked him to keep them classified. ..."
"... "My opinion is that declassifying them would not expose any national security information, would not expose any sources and methods," said Ratcliffe. "It would expose certain folks at the Obama Justice Department and FBI and their actions taken to conceal material facts from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court." ..."
Oct 15, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

After hinting for months that the FBI was not forthcoming with federal surveillance court judges when they made their case to spy on the Trump campaign, Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe (R) said on Sunday that the agency is holding evidence which "directly refutes" its premise for launching the probe, reports the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross.

Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe provided Sunday the clearest picture to date of what the FBI allegedly withheld from the surveillance court.

Ratcliffe suggested that the FBI failed to include evidence regarding former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos , in an interview with Fox News.

Ratcliffe noted that the FBI opened its investigation on July 31, 2016, after receiving information from the Australian government about a conversation that Papadopoulos had on May 10, 2016, with Alexander Downer , the top Australian diplomat to the U.K. - Daily Caller

While Australia's Alexander Downer claimed that Papadopoulos revealed Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, Ratcliffe - who sits on the House Judiciary Committee - suggested on Sunday that the FBI and DOJ possess information which directly contradicts that account.

"Hypothetically, if the Department of Justice and the FBI have another piece of evidence that directly refutes that, that directly contradicts that, what you would expect is for the Department of Justice to present both sides of the coin to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to evaluate the weight and sufficiency of that evidence," Ratcliffe said, adding: "Instead, what happened here was Department of Justice and FBI officials in the Obama administration in October of 2016 only presented to the court the evidence that made the government's case to get a warrant to spy on a Trump campaign associate."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/p7nmAFpzyD4

The FBI referred to Papadopoulos in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application - however what has been released to the public is so heavily redacted that it's unclear why he is mentioned.

As The Hill 's John Solomon notes, based on Congressional testimony by former FBI General Counsel James Baker - the DOJ / FBI redactions aren't hiding national security issues - only embarrassment .

Other GOP lawmakers have suggested that evidence exists which would exonerate Papadopoulos - who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Maltese professor (and self-professed member of the Clinton Foundation), Joseph Mifsud.

Ratcliffe suggested that declassifying DOJ / FBI documents related to the matter "would corroborate" his claims about Papadopoulos.

Republicans have pressed President Trump to declassify the documents, which include 21 pages from a June 2016 FISA application against Page. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has said that the FBI failed to provide "exculpatory evidence" in the FISA applications. He has also said that Americans will be "shocked" by the information behind the FISA redactions. - Daily Caller

President Trump issued an order to declassify the documents on September 17, but then walked it back - announcing that the DOJ would be allowed to review the documents first after two foreign allies asked him to keep them classified.

"My opinion is that declassifying them would not expose any national security information, would not expose any sources and methods," said Ratcliffe. "It would expose certain folks at the Obama Justice Department and FBI and their actions taken to conceal material facts from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court."

[Oct 18, 2018] Treasury Official Arrested, Charged With Leaking Confidential Info On Ex-Trump Advisers; BuzzFeed Implicated

Oct 18, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Treasury Official Arrested, Charged With Leaking Confidential Info On Ex-Trump Advisers; BuzzFeed Implicated

by Tyler Durden Wed, 10/17/2018 - 16:22 1.3K SHARES

In the latest indication of the Trump administration's efforts to root out alleged leakers, a senior Treasury Department official working in the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN), Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, has been charged with leaking confidential financial reports to the media concerning former Trump campaign advisers Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, according to The Hill .

Prosecutors say that Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards , a senior adviser to FinCEN, photographed what are called suspicious activity reports, or SARs, and other sensitive government files and sent them to an unnamed reporter, in violation of U.S. law. - The Hill

Suspicious Activity Reports are filed by banks in order to confidentially notify law enforcement of potentially illegal financial transactions. The documents leaked by the Treasury official, which began last October, are reported to have been used as the basis for 12 news articles published by an unnamed organization.

While the news organization was not named in the complaint, it lists the headlines and other details of six BuzzFeed articles published between October 2017 to as recently as Monday which they allege were based on the leaks.

BuzzFeed reporters Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier are commonly listed on several of the articles referenced in the government's complaint. (examples here , here and here ).

Edwards has been charged with one count of unauthorized disclosures of SAR reports and one count of conspiracy to make unauthorized disclousres of SARs. She will be tried in the Southern District of New York, and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted on both charges.

When she was arrested, Edwards was in possession of a flash drive which was allegedly used to save the unlawfully disclosed SARs, as well as a cell phone " containing numerous communications over an encrypted application in which she transmitted SARs and other sensitive government information to Reporter-1."

"We hope today's charges remind those in positions of trust within government agencies that the unlawful sharing of sensitive documents will not be tolerated and will be met with swift justice by this Office," said US Attorney Geoffrey Berman in a statement.

According to the criminal complaint, agents in the Treasury inspector general's office detected "a pattern" of unauthorized media disclosures of the sensitive financial files beginning in October 2017 and continuing for a year . The disclosures were related to matters being investigated either by special counsel Robert Mueller , the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York or the Justice Department's National Security Division.

They included leaks about suspicious transactions made by Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, and Gates, Manafort's longtime business partner who also served on the Trump campaign and the transition team. Both individuals were charged in connection with Mueller's Russia investigation last October with crimes stemming from their foreign lobbying activity. Both have since decided to plead guilty and cooperate with Mueller's probe. - The Hill

Could Manafort now make the case that unauthorized media leaks saturating national headlines baised the jury against him?

Edwards is also accused of leaking sensitive financial information regarding Russian national, Maria Butina, who was charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the Russian government.

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/391061819/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-LJB9WLnO3KUJYXPOAsFe&show_recommendations=true

The alleged leak announced Wednesday would be the second major suspected breach at FinCEN reported this year, after a federal law enforcement official told The New Yorker in May that he leaked SARs on a shell company set up by Michael Cohen , Trump's former attorney, after two similar bank records appeared to be missing from the FinCEN database. - The Hill

Edwards is also accused of sending the reproter internal FinCEN emails, investigative memos and intelligence assessments

[Oct 15, 2018] Some say that declassifying the FBI documents related to "Russiagate" would expose "sources and methods". Others say that the documents are being kept secret to prevent the DOJ and FBI from major embarrassment. I say that both can be true

Notable quotes:
"... Not sure about that, as at least 2 crucial allies, the UK and Australia, were pressured by the Obama and Hillary camps to set this whole narrative off...and therefore does he seriously damage those international and key security countries with info or does he compromise to keep the peace? ..."
"... I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.... That's that the UK's GCHQ initiated spying on Popadolous and Trump Tower at the request of Obummer and/or Rice and/or Brennan, BEFORE the FBI/Comey said UNDER OATH that they started in May, and were denied a FISA warrant in June 2016.... that's why they needed the 'golden shower dossier.' ..."
Oct 15, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

this_circus_is_no_fun , 12 minutes ago link

Some say that declassifying the documents would expose " sources and methods ". Others say that the documents are being kept secret to prevent the DOJ and FBI from becoming embarrassed . I say that both can be true.

If the documents expose the liars and fabrications that went into the entire Russia Gate fraud, then declassifying the documents will indeed embarrass the DOJ and FBI by showing that their " sources " are liars and that their " methods " are fabrications.

See, everything always makes sense in the circus.

Paddyo2 , 37 minutes ago link

Either Trump is constantly threatened, boxed into a corner, or it IS ALL FOR SHOW!

The best example is now, Trump "walking back the release" because of Aussie and UK complicity. The threatened release of USA dirty laundry, of which there is plenty knowing how our CIA works. Or we are being played once more.

Frankly, I'm beyond sick of these walk backs! IG report! Rosenstein resigns! FISA Declas!!

I'm an independent voter. It's high time I WALK BACK my vote for all Republicans on November 6th UNLESS WE THE People that they represent get a FULL UNREDACTED FISA AND IG REPORT published .

Tell Trump and the Republican party . Protect NOT ONE Criminal. If UK or Aus threaten exposing spies or military secrets then threaten back with annihilation should they endanger Americans.

I'm fed up beyond return with Holder, Brennan et al.

Anunnaki , 30 minutes ago link

It is all for show.

Our elites don't put each other in jail. That is reserved for the Deplorables.

Remember what Trump said after the election, "The Clinton's are good people."

Bingo Hammer , 49 minutes ago link

Obama, Hillary and the DNC pressured the UK's M16 as the No.1 instigator via Steele, its lapdog Australia's intelligence service, then told Alexander Downer to forward "salted" info to US agencies...and 2.5 years later here we are

wolf pup , 35 minutes ago link

It's always something that causes The Never Ending Wait..

and it always makes decent sense in the short term (memory loss)..

and it always; and for years now, happens.

I can't buy that those involved are powerful, savvy, or more importantly, courageous enough to finally stand the hell UP to the powers that be bullshitting the Citizenry. It's clearly not the case.

And what does Sundance say of the MIA Sessions? Is he really wearing tights and cape under those rumpled wee suits of his, and just snarling to leap out, indictments in hand, to read off tens of thousands of the accused' names? "Stealth Jeff"; actor par excellence? Sessions as Hero? Any day now to be proved The Truth's Hitman?

A GOP-won Midterms would benefit from the declassification of criminal intent that supports the US President. -> Before the vote. Afterward, and if the vote gone badly, lol it'll be as useful as John Brennan's soul. And a "Mueller surprise"; if the declassification happened before the vote, would be tainted beyond its .. surprise.

So why the wait this time - again?

I'm sorry; I don't mean to come across rudely, but "hoping; forever" is exhausting, damaging to fact based living, induces apathy and entirely suits those who have so much to hide, and offers nothing to the targets involved; We, the People.

scraping_by , 1 hour ago link

The factions in the FBI/DOJ who want to keep the Russian collusion hoax going are the same ones who protected Hillary from the most outrageous violation of the espionage laws ever to bubble to the surface. Office politics in that axis are a lot like any other large company, with the exception of sending people to prison. So her supporters are still on the job.

The investigation never made first page news, living out here in the alternate press, and now that The Donald seems to walk back obvious Donaldesque moves, it might never come to light. Remember his campaign promise was to prosecute Sec. Clinton, and he settled for firing Comey. So they may get away with most of this yet.

Any time the US government cooperates with the British, we get stuck. The Austrailians are colonials and love it. So the paperwork for the Comey-McCabe-Rosenstien conspiracy might never be published.

tunetopper , 1 hour ago link

When the FBI wants a warrant, its presumed that they are not going to make an even-handed case to the FISA Court. All they have to do is deny that they had sufficient infomation to the contrary. Thats what makes this court an abomination to our freedom. This is why the US Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act are a bunch of crap. We are now finding out that intelligence services knew who concocted 911 (elements within the Saudi Govt along side the wealthy dissident near-royals ie. the Khashoggis and the Bin-Ladens, and possibly the Israelis knew too).

JethroBodien , 1 hour ago link

Everyone, none of this matters. Has everyone forgotten about 9/11 and the conspiracy perpetrated on the American people. Frankly all is not what it seems and most of what we are seeing is simply theatre for the masses.

Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."

~ Woodrow Wilson (1856 – 1924), 28th President of the United States

"The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings...Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe...no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of "clear and present danger," then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent...For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed."
― President John F. Kennedy

trutherator , 1 hour ago link

Remember? The FBI lovers email that said the president wants to "know everything"?

Start there. Did Congress ask either of them where they heard this, and how much of this treachery Obama was complicit in?

cheech_wizard , 1 hour ago link

Might I reference this:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/07/24/clapper_obama_ordered_the_intelligence_assessment_that_resulted_in_mueller_investigation.html

Dornier27 , 2 hours ago link

Anyone else worried that the President keeps doing an about face or being unable or unwilling to deliver on important issues? Orders papers to be published unredacted then they are not? Hillary walking free. No Wall, no withdrawal from Afghanistan and now backtracking on punishing Saudi Arabia....

business as stusual , 1 hour ago link

Just like the rest, he is owned.

DjangoCat , 1 hour ago link

" and now backtracking on punishing Saudi Arabia.."

And you think the Russian's really poisoned the Skripals, or that Assad merrily gassed his own people just before entering peace talks, or that the White Helmet people being invited into Canada are not Al Nusra terrorists?

You had better be prepared to believe all that if you think the Saudis are stupid enough to dismember a Washington Post journalist in a Saudi consulate, and to let it be recorded to boot. How dumb can you get? But then, maybe I misjudge you. Maybe you do believe all that. Not me, pal.

PS For extra confirmation, just look at who has decided not to attend Davos in the Desert. Top of the list are the New Yawk banksters.

Bavarian , 1 hour ago link

You want to might ask yourself why the Post ran this story, employed the journalist and published that John Brennan demand that we "punish" Saudi Arabia. You might ask yourself why the NYT pushed the narrative that RR should be fired before mid-terms.

'Misunderstanding all you see' - John Lennon

Jim in MN , 2 hours ago link

Weiner laptop please. Now, please. thx

WorkingClassMan , 2 hours ago link

Domestic terrorists (the Federal Bureau of Intimidation) generally is dramatic.

bh2 , 3 hours ago link

Guess which specific portions of the released documents will be redacted "for national security reasons".

Hulk , 3 hours ago link

and while we are at it, declassify the whistleblower report generated by the William Binney complaint.

Then put Haydn's treasonous *** in jail too...

DingleBarryObummer , 3 hours ago link

i watched a documentary about that. basically, binney was genius who created a genius system to find terrorists while maintaining the integrity of the constitution (and for relatively cheap cost!). The deep state was like "piss on that," spent 100x more money than they had to, and wiped their *** with the constitution.

Hulk , 3 hours ago link

dont forget that the FBI fabricated evidence about Binney and three of his colleagues.The criminal case against Binney and his colleagues was then thrown out of court once the fabrication was revealed. This out of control corruption has been going on a long time...

ardent , 3 hours ago link

It's obvious the FUNDAMENTALS of the conflict with Russia

have NOT changed one iota. Even with Trump.

lester1 , 3 hours ago link

FBI is a criminal racket!

And where the hell are the "honorable" FBI agents to blow the lid off all the corruption/ conspiracy against the President ??🤔

Totally_Disillusioned , 3 hours ago link

I've stated for months that rank and file are in the tank w/leadership corruption OR they have been threatened either with harm to themselves of family members if they didn't go along. However at this point, no whistleblowers proves the former.

DaBard51 , 3 hours ago link

Have they opened Weiner's laptop or found Hillary's laptop yet?

A trend... as reported by (!) CNN & NY Times (!)...

When nine hundred years old you become, look this good you will not.

Totally_Disillusioned , 3 hours ago link

Strzok testifed several CDs of ALL 680K emails that included crimes against children, classified info was handed over to Comey who merely placed them in his office. Comey has been gone for over six months, why have those CDs not been reviewed and acted on?

There are a LOT of dots and THEY count on YOU not connecting them. I keep a journal.

Everybodys All American , 3 hours ago link

Lets suppose its all true. Which we pretty much know if you have been paying attention that the FBI has gone rogue. Then what? Arrests? Mueller? I don't think that's even close to what is needed. We are talking major treason from multiple levels and people through out government.

hooligan2009 , 3 hours ago link

this:

" the DOJ would be allowed to review the documents first after two foreign allies asked him to keep them classified. "

refers to the British and Australian governments who would be embarassed because rogue agents wishing to arrange for the impeachment of Trump would be exposed.

as such, this would represent a threat to the apolitical use of five eyes security pact for intelligence purposes - a pact intended to detect and prevent EXTERNAL threats to the five eyes nations - rather than instigate POLITICAL control of INTERNAL affairs of the democratic functioning of five eyes countries.

treason and sedition has been exposed within the US - aided and abetted by drunks and sycophants in britain and australia,

Joe Davola , 3 hours ago link

My impression is that FIVE EYES exists so that the individual members can ask one of the other members to spy on their own people without violating constitutional limits on such activity.

Madcow , 3 hours ago link

In my humble opinion, politicians and government bureaucrats should be strictly prohibited from falsely accusing their ideological opponents of criminal activity and then manufacturing fake evidence to support those claims.

No amount of sanctimonious political-correctness justifies Authoritarian rule squarely in opposition to the US Constitution.

NoDebt , 3 hours ago link

"Americans will be "shocked" by the information behind the FISA redactions"

Not after waiting for this evidence for two ******* years. I'm worn out. Do something about it or **** off.

lester1 , 3 hours ago link

Trump caved and allowed the deep state members at the FBI to conceal the truth!

Think for yourself , 2 hours ago link

Exactly @NoDebt. Nearly every day or multiple times a day there's something huge that radically alters the narrative... people are worn out. This is so huge!

ypczh , 5 minutes ago link

Timing is everything and Trump knows it. All heads of the hydra must be cut off at the same time.

Bingo Hammer , 55 minutes ago link

Not sure about that, as at least 2 crucial allies, the UK and Australia, were pressured by the Obama and Hillary camps to set this whole narrative off...and therefore does he seriously damage those international and key security countries with info or does he compromise to keep the peace? Too much is at play here for Trump expose the truth

otschelnik , 3 hours ago link

I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.... That's that the UK's GCHQ initiated spying on Popadolous and Trump Tower at the request of Obummer and/or Rice and/or Brennan, BEFORE the FBI/Comey said UNDER OATH that they started in May, and were denied a FISA warrant in June 2016.... that's why they needed the 'golden shower dossier.' That's i-l-l-e-g-a-l.

Oh, and Brennan said he pushed the FBI to initiate an investigation but Nunes said there was no intelligence (EC) which they could base it on. It was a set-up from day 1.

[Oct 14, 2018] BRIBERY by Patrick Armstron)

Oct 14, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

A question and discussion for all you Americans. It occurred to me some time ago and I am struck with the fact that it doesn't seem to be raised by anyone.

When did it become unremarkable for American presidents to be come very very rich on retirement?

  • FDR was pretty well-off but there's nothing to suggest he became richer in the White House.
  • Truman retired and went home and lived on his pension.
  • Eisenhower ditto.
  • Johnson ditto.
  • Nixon ditto and wrote many real books (real as opposed to pseudo biographies)
  • Carter ditto.
  • ... ... ...

But Clinton upon retirement made big bucks -- several 100 million. I used to wonder why anyone would pay money to listen to Clinton give a speech on "what I would do if I became POTUS" until I realized that the speaking fees were post-bribes (and, as the husband of the next POTUS, pre-bribes.)

Obama's on the way to that kind of money.


  • TTG , 10 days ago

    Jimmy Carter seems to be the one modern exception. He either accepts no fees for his speeches or donates his fee (up to $50,000) to his foundation... for which he still occasionally swings a hammer.
    TTG -> TTG , 10 days ago
    I came across a recent article on Jimmy Carter's life today. What a class act. His and Rosslyn's attitude and example should light our way back to a much better America, if we can drop the freakin' smartphones for a while.
    https://www.washingtonpost....
    Timothy Bassett , 10 days ago
    Same in UK, Blair and to some extent John Major got a lot of money on leaving office (Gordon Brown to his credit has not). Think this pattern of 'modern corruption' (no brown envelopes, Swiss bank accounts etc) extends down through cabinet ministers, senior civil servants, regulators and military officers to local Government on a much smaller scale. No money changes hands, and the 'bribee' doesn't even do anything directly but they know that if they look after the interests of particular industries and lobbies when in office then they in turn will be looked after with such things as non-exec directorships, consultancy contracts and speaking engagements on leaving office (there is also the old trick of paying massive advances for biographies even their own mother would not read).

    We need to pay our servants well with decent pensions but then strictly regulate their retirement activities.

    ted richard , 10 days ago
    the clinton foundation and hillarys behaviour while sec state easily passed the smell test for prosecution under the rico act.

    she and her hubby were obscenely obvious selling private favors from within their public office.

    the fact that nothing has been done to prosecute them is more a testament to the collapse in the rule of law within the united states than any cleverness on the clintons part.

    TTG , 10 days ago
    There was a lot of outrage about Reagan earning $2 million for a speech in Japan back in 1989. Of course he had no political ambitions after he left the presidency. Bush the Younger earns $100 to $150 K per speech. Obama and his wife probably make more. And their books are also raking it in. The Clinton Foundation is a whole different story. I have no doubt most of the big contributors did so to curry favor with a probable future president. It was bribery even if it's not specific enough to be a crime. Trump's doing the same thing with his properties. There's big money in politics. Why do you think there are no many millionaires in Congress?
    English Outsider -> TTG , 9 days ago
    Patrick Armstrong - I hope this is not too far off topic from the question you discuss above.

    TTG - as your comment implies, Carter must surely be the most attractive recent President by far as regards his personal life. But did it make much odds?

    http://biography.yourdictio...

    "Brzezinski was openly eager to be appointed assistant to the president for national security affairs and delighted when President-elect Carter offered him the position in December 1976. He had not wanted to be secretary of state, confident that he would be more effective in the White House, at the president's side. From the outset he was uneasy about the president's idealism and the absence of other appointees likely to give Carter the "realistic and hard-nosed" advice needed in world affairs."

    Some sources assert that Carter presided over the initial destabilisation of Afghanistan. I've been reading other sources recently that state that the US Administration was reacting to events in Afghanistan rather than causing them.

    Is it fair to say that either way Carter was caught up in American foreign policy rather than directing it?

    If so, is that the case today as well? I ask because it's directly related to the foreign policy of the current President. Is Trump the boss, or is he in the main merely implementing an already established policy that he can have little influence over?

    marc b. -> TTG , 10 days ago
    people who take bribes are subject to blackmail, like any good mafioso knows.
    Adrestia , 8 days ago
    In the Netherlands the same is happening, although the gains are not that much as in the US.

    Generally what's happening is that politicians who are supportive of the (Euro)Borg or Globalists are rewarded when they leave office. They become partners in Consulting firms, directors of NGO's, insurance companies or other semi-public organizations or public companies such as Akzo-Nobel.

    This also applies to left (social-democrat and even communist) politicians. A good example is the former leader of the major Green party (who by the way is from a very wealthy family and started as a Maoist and trade union leader). He is now the lobbyist for blue chip companies.

    The trade unions have also fallen for money. They invest in real estate and a trade union-initiated bank (SNS Reaal) collapsed and had to be rescued with tax money. Former prime-ministers with a trade union background are members of the board of large banks.

    • This applies from national to local politicians. Local politicians are rewarded with local management jobs.

      Our current prime minister is under attack for abolishing dividend tax of corporation which is financed by increasing the low VAT tariff with 50% to 9%. (Our high VAT tariff will become 23%. Looking at the long-term trend in the past (big) business and citizens paid about the same amount of total tax. Now citizens pay twice the amount of corporations)

      https://www.reuters.com/art...

      This is becoming hot again since Unilever (where our prime-minister worked before becoming a professional politician!) decided not to move their HQ from London to Rotterdam.

    RBD , 9 days ago
    Much of Barack Obama's wealth came from book royalties. Since leaving the Presidency he has made a lot of money from speeches, including speeches to Wall Street groups for $400K a clip. Not a good look, as far as I'm concerned as a Democrat.

    George W Bush is no different. He has been doing the same thing since retirement. The OP is mistaken in that respect.

    In regards to the basic point that Presidents now make more hay after retirement than they once did, I think the basic sense of respect / sense of shame in society has eroded.

    Links:

    https://www.businessinsider...

    https://www.politico.com/st...

    Adrestia -> RBD , 9 days ago
    Book royalties?

    Seems like a great way to create 'cleaned' wealth for someone without a paper trail to the source. Book sales have been dropping and dropping for decades and keep dropping. Why would somebody buy a biography from an unknown?

    Artemesia -> Adrestia , 7 days ago
    That raises a subtopic that I think about a lot: public libraries buy books by the thousands. I've been informally researching pop culture NYTimes bestseller fiction; most of it is boilerplate, much of it is pure propaganda -- it seems likely CIA subsidizes authors like Brad Thor, Daniel Silva, etc. They sell in the tens of thousands each iteration of their same old schtick, and public libraries buy them by the gross -- my local library own 944 books by Thor, 955 by James Grippando, 1299 by Daniel Silva.
    Thus, taxpayer dollars are used by US bureaucracies (State Dept, CIA) to subsidize propaganda fiction that public libraries buy with taxpayer money. A few authors get stinking rich (Thor moved from Illinois to Tennessee to minimize the income tax bite); publishers rake in tremendous revenue. Rupert Murdoch owns one of the largest publishing networks profiting from what I call prop-fiction.

    My interest in this was piqued when C Span began focusing on writers of pop fiction -- Thor, Ignatius, Baldacci, Jodi Picoult, Brad Meltzer, etc. So the cable network owners use the "public service network" to promote fiction published by their ideological confreres, and the whole lot is tied into US government information dissemination (disinformation) agencies.

    Adrestia -> Artemesia , 6 days ago
    Interesting observation. Not sure if its the government (I doubt that libraries refuse gifts from others for their collection) but with these kind of numbers somebody is buying them. It could be interesting to calculate the money involved with these sales.

    You do have a point with collection management. I have a membership (in the Netherlands) that includes university libraries and other collections, but a lot of books cannot be found. This includes for example works of John Ralston Saul or Wolfgang Streeck.

    To solve this we as individuals can donate books to libraries. Especially when these are qualitative good fiction or non-fiction books, there should not be a reason to exclude these? Even when adding a small amount for binding.

    RBD -> Adrestia , 8 days ago
    Obama is not unknown.
    Adrestia -> RBD , 8 days ago
    He was before he was president. He was one of the many congressmen.
    Taras77 , 10 days ago
    I have long believed just from watching obama for 8 years and after that money played a huge role in his decisions-maybe not immediate money but down the line money-same goes for his wife and some of his camp followers.

    The clintons? well that is a story in itself and it continues to amaze that they have not done the perp walk.

    Pat Lang Mod -> Taras77 , 10 days ago
    There have been a number of famous people around DC in the last 15 years who have participated in corrupt contracting and grants with the payout after they left office. The vast seas of money that sloshed around in Afghanistan and Iraq were easy to loot. I was offered 500K for my signature on one particular request for a grant. I declined but the group got the grant. Do you think the granting authority was not rewarded eventually?
    exSpec4Chuck , 10 days ago
    exSpec4Chuck here, also known as Ex-PFC Chuck. But I'm traveling and logging in from a different computer and don't have the password for that Disqus identity with me. Ahem.

    Eisenhower had more than his pension to live on. Not long before he became president he had received a lucrative contract for publishing his memoirs, Crusade in Europe . IIRC he also had seats on several Fortune 500 boards of directors before or/and after his two terms in the White House.

    As for Johnson, it is widely asserted he had substantial interests in Texas TV stations that were in his wife's name, as well as early investments petroleum ventures. Roger Stone (yes, it's that Roger Stone), in his recent book The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case against LBJ) , asserts that the Robert Kennedy Justice Department was within weeks of indicting him for influence peddling in relation to the acquisition of much of that wealth. Stone provides extensive sourcing for these assertions although I haven't checked any of them out for fair representation.

    As for the Bushes, I'd guess that their family had considerably more wealth than did the Roosevelts, even adjusted for inflation. The majority of which, according to Kitty Kelly in The Family and Russ Baker in Family of Secrets , originated from the Walker side of the lineage.

    Nobby Stiles , 10 days ago
    I have noted the same and agree with you. There is a more general problem with corruption in American life. It can be seen in CEO pay, in Congressional pay and perks, and insider trading. In the rewards to ex presidents. In the payment of benefits to the poor. If not addressed it will slowly overwhelm the country and destroy its governance. It will become a Soviet Union.
    Harlan Easley , 10 days ago
    I would disagree with Johnson. He entered politics a broke man and left the Presidency worth 40 million in some accounts I have read. It is well established he was beyond corrupt while holding power. Everybody who was anybody in Washington, DC during that era knew that to do business with Lyndon would at the least require substantial radio buys(commercials) at his radio station.
    RBD -> Harlan Easley , 9 days ago
    This is true. Not just radio but TV. The FTC awarded Lady Bird Johnson the first and for years the only commercial TV station license in Austin.

[Oct 14, 2018] RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 11 OCTOBER 2018 by Patrick Armstrong

Oct 14, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

THE CONSPIRACY. Bit by bit, slowly (far too slowly) the story comes out . A DNC/FBI/CIA conspiracy to discredit Trump. I just read Shattered where it is stated that the Russia story was invented as the excuse for failure: but the book establishes that defeat was the consequence of never being able to articulate a reason to vote for her, a disorganized campaign and not observing the dissatisfaction that Sanders and Trump (and Bill Clinton) perceived. The Russia stuff is 1) a distraction from failure, 2) a hook on which to hang Trump and 3) propaganda for the "Mackinder war".

[Oct 08, 2018] Clinton and CIA

Oct 08, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

chu teh , Oct 7, 2018 6:54:39 PM | link

The Secret Team has matured .

  • So Bill Clinton was [quietly] expelled from Oxford University on a rape incident?
  • So Bill Clinton at Oxford was buddies with Stepfan Halper ?
  • So Clinton and Halper left Oxford and toured Soviet Union for couple years?
  • So Halper was recruited by both CIA and MI6 [England's Military Intel Div. 6] ?
  • So Halper let CIA know of Clinton's hidden Oxford rape incident [as if CIA did not know] ?
  • So Clinton was thus compromised [owned/pwned] by both CIA and MI6, jointly?
  • So Israel/Mossad thus would also know and share ownership of Clinton?
  • So Clinton's owners opened the political doors for Clinton to be Governor of Arkansas?
  • So CIA drugs-for-weapons via Mena, Arkansas was thus enabled by the Governor?
  • So Clinton would just float-up thru all obstacles to be President of United States?
  • So under Clinton, the Senior Executive Service, as CIA conduit, would enormously expand its infiltration into all US Gov departments? [re brilliant expansion of (Prouty's) Secret Team]
  • So any later investigation of Clintons was effectively blocked at FBI/CIA/NSA/DIA/DOJ/DOState [and IRS re: Clinton family pseudo-charities] ?
  • So under Clinton, Banking and Wall Street operations were freed from the Glass-Steagall anti-fraud reforms?

Etc.?

[Oct 05, 2018] How the Russia Spin Got So Much Torque by Norman Solomon

Notable quotes:
"... Shattered ..."
"... Yet last year, notably without success, the Clinton campaign devoted plenty of its messaging to the Trump-Russia theme. As the "Shattered" book notes, "Hillary would raise the issue herself repeatedly in debates" with Trump. For example, in one of those debates she said: "We have seventeen – seventeen ..."
"... In early spring, the former communications director of the 2016 Clinton presidential campaign, Jennifer Palmieri, summed up the post-election approach neatly in a Washington Post ..."
"... The inability of top Clinton operatives to identify with the non-wealthy is so tenacious that they still want to assume "the public will be with us" the more they talk about Russia Russia Russia. Imagine sitting at a kitchen table with average-income voters who are worried sick about their financial futures – and explaining to them that the biggest threat they face is from the Kremlin rather than from US government policies that benefit the rich and corporate America at their expense ..."
"... One of the most promising progressives to arrive in Congress this year, Rep. Jamie Raskin from the Maryland suburbs of D.C., promptly drank what might be called the "Klinton Kremlin Kool-Aid." His official website features an article about a town-hall meeting that quotes him describing Trump as a "hoax perpetrated by the Russians on the United States of America. ..."
"... Like hundreds of other Democrats on Capitol Hill, Raskin is on message with talking points from the party leadership. That came across in an email that he recently sent to supporters for a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser. It said: "We pull the curtain back further each day on the Russian Connection, forcing National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to resign, Attorney General Sessions to recuse, and America to reflect on who's calling the shots in Washington. ..."
A new book about Hillary Clinton's last campaign for president – Shattered , by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes – has gotten a lot of publicity since it appeared two weeks ago. But major media have ignored a revealing passage near the end of the book.

Soon after Clinton's defeat, top strategists decided where to place the blame. "Within 24 hours of her concession speech," the authors report, campaign manager Robby Mook and campaign chair John Podesta "assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument."

Six months later, that centerpiece of the argument is rampant – with claims often lurching from unsubstantiated overreach to outright demagoguery.

A lavishly-funded example is the "Moscow Project," a mega-spin effort that surfaced in midwinter as a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It's led by Neera Tanden, a self-described "loyal soldier" for Clinton who also runs the Center for American Progress (where she succeeded Podesta as president). The Center's board includes several billionaires.

The "Moscow Project" is expressly inclined to go over the top, aiming to help normalize ultra-partisan conjectures as supposedly factual. And so, the homepage of the "Moscow Project" prominently declares: "Given Trump's obedience to Vladimir Putin and the deep ties between his advisers and the Kremlin, Russia's actions are a significant and ongoing cause for concern."

Let's freeze-frame how that sentence begins: "Given Trump's obedience to Vladimir Putin." It's a jaw-dropping claim; a preposterous smear.

Echoes of such tactics can be heard from many Democrats in Congress and from allied media. Along the way, no outlet has been more in sync than MSNBC, and no one on the network has been more promotional of the Russia-runs-Trump meme than Rachel Maddow, tirelessly promoting the line and sometimes connecting dots in Glenn Beck fashion to the point of journalistic malpractice.

Yet last year, notably without success, the Clinton campaign devoted plenty of its messaging to the Trump-Russia theme. As the "Shattered" book notes, "Hillary would raise the issue herself repeatedly in debates" with Trump. For example, in one of those debates she said: "We have seventeen – seventeen – intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyber attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election ."

After Trump's election triumph, the top tier of Clinton strategists quickly moved to seize as much of the narrative as they could, surely mindful of what George Orwell observed: "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." After all, they hardly wanted the public discourse to dwell on Clinton's lack of voter appeal because of her deep ties to Wall Street. Political recriminations would be much better focused on the Russian government.

In early spring, the former communications director of the 2016 Clinton presidential campaign, Jennifer Palmieri, summed up the post-election approach neatly in a Washington Post opinion article : "If we make plain that what Russia has done is nothing less than an attack on our republic, the public will be with us. And the more we talk about it, the more they'll be with us."

The inability of top Clinton operatives to identify with the non-wealthy is so tenacious that they still want to assume "the public will be with us" the more they talk about Russia Russia Russia. Imagine sitting at a kitchen table with average-income voters who are worried sick about their financial futures – and explaining to them that the biggest threat they face is from the Kremlin rather than from US government policies that benefit the rich and corporate America at their expense.

Tone deaf hardly describes the severe political impairment of those who insist that denouncing Russia will be key to the Democratic Party's political fortunes in 2018 and 2020. But the top-down pressure for conformity among elected Democrats is enormous and effective.

One of the most promising progressives to arrive in Congress this year, Rep. Jamie Raskin from the Maryland suburbs of D.C., promptly drank what might be called the "Klinton Kremlin Kool-Aid." His official website features an article about a town-hall meeting that quotes him describing Trump as a "hoax perpetrated by the Russians on the United States of America. "

Like hundreds of other Democrats on Capitol Hill, Raskin is on message with talking points from the party leadership. That came across in an email that he recently sent to supporters for a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser. It said: "We pull the curtain back further each day on the Russian Connection, forcing National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to resign, Attorney General Sessions to recuse, and America to reflect on who's calling the shots in Washington. "

You might think that Wall Street, big banks, hugely funded lobbyists, fat-check campaign contributors, the fossil fuel industry, insurance companies, military contractors and the like are calling the shots in Washington. Maybe you didn't get the memo.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy . His books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death .

[Oct 02, 2018] I like the suggestion Monica Lewinsky should sit behind Kavanaugh in the hearing

Oct 02, 2018 | www.eschatonblog.com

noblejoanie 10 days ago ,

I like the suggestion Monica Lewinsky should sit behind Kavanaugh in the hearing. Trumpish move

Wapiti noblejoanie 10 days ago ,

I think this should happen.

I also think that former AG Harris should lead off her questioning with "When investigating President Clinton, did you ask Monica Lewinsky under oath if Mr. Clinton came in her mouth?"

Then start questioning his sexual history. I'm curious if he ever had sex with two women. Or a guy and a woman.

[Oct 02, 2018] I m puzzled why CIA is so against Kavanaugh?

Highly recommended!
An interesting hypothesis. CIA definitly became a powerful political force in the USA -- a rogue political force which starting from JFK assasination tries to control who is elected to important offices. But in truth Cavanaugh is a pro-CIA candidate so to speak. So why CIA would try to derail him.
Notable quotes:
"... I think I've figured out why they had to go to couples counseling about an outside door and why she came up with claim that she needed an outside bedroom door because she'd been assaulted 37 years ago. The Palo Alto building codes for single family homes were created to make sure single family homes remained single family and weren't chopped up into apartments. ..."
"... An outside door into a master bedroom with attached bathroom is a red flag that it's intended for an illegal what's called in law apartment ..."
"... So she wants the door. Husband says waste of money and trouble. Contractor says call me when you're ready. So they go to counseling Husband explains why the door's unreasonable. Therapist asks wife why she " really deep down" needs the door. Wife makes up the story about attempted rape 35 years ago flashbacks If only there were 2 doors in that imaginary bedroom she could have escaped. ..."
"... Kacanaugh was nominated. CIA searched for sex problems in his working life. Found nothing Searched law school and college found nothing. In desperation searched high school found nothing. Searched CIA personnel records which go back to grade school and found one of their own employees was about Kavanaugh's age and attended a high school near his and the students socialized. ..."
"... She's 3rd generation CIA. grandfather assistant director. Father CIA contractor who managed CIA unofficial band accounts. And she runs a CIA recruitment office. ..."
Oct 02, 2018 | www.unz.com

Anon [257] Disclaimer says: September 29, 2018 at 8:28 am GMT 400 Words

I think I've figured out why they had to go to couples counseling about an outside door and why she came up with claim that she needed an outside bedroom door because she'd been assaulted 37 years ago. The Palo Alto building codes for single family homes were created to make sure single family homes remained single family and weren't chopped up into apartments.

Outside doors enter public areas kitchen sunroom living rooms not bedrooms. An outside door into a master bedroom with attached bathroom is a red flag that it's intended for an illegal what's called in law apartment

There's a unit It's a stove 2 ft counter space and sink. The stoves electric and plugs into an ordinary household electricity. It's backed against the bathroom wall. Break through the wall, connect the pipes running water for the sink. Add an outside door and it's a small apartment.

Assume they didn't want to make it an apartment just a master bedroom. Usually the contractor pulls the permits routinely. But an outside bedroom door is complicated. The permits will cost more. It might require an exemption and a hearing They night need a lawyer. And they might not get the permit.

So she wants the door. Husband says waste of money and trouble. Contractor says call me when you're ready. So they go to counseling Husband explains why the door's unreasonable. Therapist asks wife why she " really deep down" needs the door. Wife makes up the story about attempted rape 35 years ago flashbacks If only there were 2 doors in that imaginary bedroom she could have escaped.

Kacanaugh was nominated. CIA searched for sex problems in his working life. Found nothing Searched law school and college found nothing. In desperation searched high school found nothing. Searched CIA personnel records which go back to grade school and found one of their own employees was about Kavanaugh's age and attended a high school near his and the students socialized.

She's 3rd generation CIA. grandfather assistant director. Father CIA contractor who managed CIA unofficial band accounts. And she runs a CIA recruitment office.

I'm puzzled why CIA is so against Kavanaugh?

[Oct 02, 2018] Kavanaugh vs Bill Clinton

Looks like Neoliberal Democrats have zero problem with rapists as long as they are democrats.
Oct 02, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

Jean , September 28, 2018 at 11:58 pm

BS

I Believe Juanita

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/opinion/juanita-broaddrick-bill-clinton.html

What About Bil

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/us/politics/bill-clinton-sexual-misconduct-debate.amp.html

What Hillary Knew
Hillary Clinton once tweeted that "every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported." What about Juanita Broaddrick?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/546170/

The Clinton Double Standard

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/10/bill-clinton-harvey-weinstein-sexual-assault

rife kimler , September 29, 2018 at 6:18 am

So Clinton did not fly around with Jeffery Epstein?

jean , September 29, 2018 at 7:43 pm

https://www.salon.com/2017/10/16/hillary-clinton-weinstein-bbc-trump-bill/

You'd Better Put Some Ice On That: How I Survived Being Raped by Bill Clinton

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37797819-you-d-better-put-some-ice-on-that

[Sep 12, 2018] If You Read This Book, It'll Make You a Radical A Conversation with Thomas Frank by John Siman

Notable quotes:
"... "Let us linger over the perversity," he writes in "Why Millions of Ordinary Americans Support Donald Trump," one of the seventeen component essays in Rendezvous with Oblivion : "Let us linger over the perversity. Left parties the world over were founded to advance the fortunes of working people. But our left party in America -- one of our two monopoly parties -- chose long ago to turn its back on these people's concerns, making itself instead into the tribune of the enlightened professional class, a 'creative class' that makes innovative things like derivative securities and smartphone apps ..."
"... And the real bad news is not that this Creative Class, this Expert Class, this Meritocratic Class, this Professional Class -- this Liberal Class, with all its techno-ecstasy and virtue-questing and unleashing of innovation -- is so deeply narcissistic and hypocritical, but rather that it is so self-interestedly parasitical and predatory. ..."
Sep 11, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Thomas Frank's new collection of essays: Rendezvous with Oblivion: Reports from a Sinking Society (Metropolitan Books 2018) and Listen, Liberal; or,Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? (ibid. 2016)

To hang out with Thomas Frank for a couple of hours is to be reminded that, going back to 1607, say, or to 1620, for a period of about three hundred and fifty years, the most archetypal of American characters was, arguably, the hard-working, earnest, self-controlled, dependable white Protestant guy, last presented without irony a generation or two -- or three -- ago in the television personas of men like Ward Cleaver and Mister Rogers.

Thomas Frank, who grew up in Kansas and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, who at age 53 has the vibe of a happy eager college nerd, not only glows with authentic Midwestern Nice (and sometimes his face turns red when he laughs, which is often), he actually lives in suburbia, just outside of D.C., in Bethesda, where, he told me, he takes pleasure in mowing the lawn and doing some auto repair and fixing dinner for his wife and two children. (Until I met him, I had always assumed it was impossible for a serious intellectual to live in suburbia and stay sane, but Thomas Frank has proven me quite wrong on this.)

Frank is sincerely worried about the possibility of offending friends and acquaintances by the topics he chooses to write about. He told me that he was a B oy Scout back in Kansas, but didn't make Eagle. He told me that he was perhaps a little too harsh on Hillary Clinton in his brilliantly perspicacious "Liberal Gilt [ sic ]" chapter at the end of Listen, Liberal . His piercing insight into and fascination with the moral rot and the hypocrisy that lies in the American soul brings, well, Nathaniel Hawthorne to mind, yet he refuses to say anything (and I tried so hard to bait him!) mean about anyone, no matter how culpable he or she is in the ongoing dissolving and crumbling and sinking -- all his metaphors -- of our society. And with such metaphors Frank describes the "one essential story" he is telling in Rendezvous with Oblivion : "This is what a society looks like when the glue that holds it together starts to dissolve. This is the way ordinary citizens react when they learn that the structure beneath them is crumbling. And this is the thrill that pulses through the veins of the well-to-do when they discover that there is no longer any limit on their power to accumulate" ( Thomas Frank in NYC on book tour https://youtu.be/DBNthCKtc1Y ).

And I believe that Frank's self-restraint, his refusal to indulge in bitter satire even as he parses our every national lie, makes him unique as social critic. "You will notice," he writes in the introduction to Rendezvous with Oblivion, "that I describe [these disasters] with a certain amount of levity. I do that because that's the only way to confront the issues of our time without sinking into debilitating gloom" (p. 8). And so rather than succumbing to an existential nausea, Frank descends into the abyss with a dependable flashlight and a ca. 1956 sitcom-dad chuckle.

"Let us linger over the perversity," he writes in "Why Millions of Ordinary Americans Support Donald Trump," one of the seventeen component essays in Rendezvous with Oblivion : "Let us linger over the perversity. Left parties the world over were founded to advance the fortunes of working people. But our left party in America -- one of our two monopoly parties -- chose long ago to turn its back on these people's concerns, making itself instead into the tribune of the enlightened professional class, a 'creative class' that makes innovative things like derivative securities and smartphone apps " (p. 178).

And it is his analysis of this "Creative Class" -- he usually refers to it as the "Liberal Class" and sometimes as the "Meritocratic Class" in Listen, Liberal (while Barbara Ehrenreich uses the term " Professional Managerial Class ,"and Matthew Stewart recently published an article entitled "The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy" in the Atlantic ) -- that makes it clear that Frank's work is a continuation of the profound sociological critique that goes back to Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) and, more recently, to Christopher Lasch's The Revolt of the Elites (1994).

Unlike Veblen and Lasch, however, Frank is able to deliver the harshest news without any hauteur or irascibility, but rather with a deftness and tranquillity of mind, for he is both in and of the Creative Class; he abides among those afflicted by the epidemic which he diagnoses: "Today we live in a world of predatory bankers, predatory educators, even predatory health care providers, all of them out for themselves . Liberalism itself has changed to accommodate its new constituents' technocratic views. Today, liberalism is the philosophy not of the sons of toil but of the 'knowledge economy' and, specifically, of the knowledge economy's winners: the Silicon Valley chieftains, the big university systems, and the Wall Street titans who gave so much to Barack Obama's 2008 campaign . They are a 'learning class' that truly gets the power of education. They are a 'creative class' that naturally rebels against fakeness and conformity. They are an ' innovation class ' that just can't stop coming up with awesome new stuff" ( Listen, Liberal , pp. 27-29).

And the real bad news is not that this Creative Class, this Expert Class, this Meritocratic Class, this Professional Class -- this Liberal Class, with all its techno-ecstasy and virtue-questing and unleashing of innovation -- is so deeply narcissistic and hypocritical, but rather that it is so self-interestedly parasitical and predatory.

The class that now runs the so-called Party of the People is impoverishing the people; the genius value-creators at Amazon and Google and Uber are Robber Barons, although, one must grant, hipper, cooler, and oh so much more innovative than their historical predecessors. "In reality," Frank writes in Listen, Liberal ,

.there is little new about this stuff except the software, the convenience, and the spying. Each of the innovations I have mentioned merely updates or digitizes some business strategy that Americans learned long ago to be wary of. Amazon updates the practices of Wal-Mart, for example, while Google has dusted off corporate behavior from the days of the Robber Barons. What Uber does has been compared to the every-man-for-himself hiring procedures of the pre-union shipping docks . Together, as Robert Reich has written, all these developments are 'the logical culmination of a process that began thirty years ago when corporations began turning over full-time jobs to temporary workers, independent contractors, free-lancers, and consultants.' This is atavism, not innovation . And if we keep going in this direction, it will one day reduce all of us to day laborers, standing around like the guys outside the local hardware store, hoping for work. (p. 215).

And who gets this message? The YouTube patriot/comedian Jimmy Dore, Chicago-born, ex-Catholic, son of a cop, does for one. "If you read this b ook, " Dore said while interviewing Frank back in January of 2017, "it'll make y ou a radical" (Frank Interview Part 4 https://youtu.be/JONbGkQaq8Q ).

But to what extent, on the other hand, is Frank being actively excluded from our elite media outlets? He's certainly not on TV or radio or in print as much as he used to be. So is he a prophet without honor in his own country? Frank, of course, is too self-restrained to speculate about the motives of these Creative Class decision-makers and influencers. "But it is ironic and worth mentioning," he told me, "that most of my writing for the last few years has been in a British publication, The Guardian and (in translation) in Le Monde Diplomatique . The way to put it, I think, is to describe me as an ex-pundit."

Frank was, nevertheless, happy to tell me in vivid detail about how his most fundamental observation about America, viz. that the Party of the People has become hostile to the people , was for years effectively discredited in the Creative Class media -- among the bien-pensants , that is -- and about what he learned from their denialism.

JS: Going all the way back to your 2004 book What's the Matter with Kansas? -- I just looked at Larry Bartels's attack on it, "What's the Matter with What's the Matter with Kansas?" -- and I saw that his first objection to your book was, Well, Thomas Frank says the working class is alienated from the Democrats, but I have the math to show that that's false. How out of touch does that sound now?

TCF: [laughs merrily] I know.

JS: I remember at the time that was considered a serious objection to your thesis.

TCF: Yeah. Well, he was a professor at Princeton. And he had numbers. So it looked real. And I actually wrote a response to that in which I pointed out that there were other statistical ways of looking at it, and he had chosen the one that makes his point.

JS: Well, what did Mark Twain say?

TCF: Mark Twain?

JS: There are lies, damned lies --

TCF: [laughs merrily] -- and statistics! Yeah. Well, anyhow, Bartels's take became the common sense of the highly educated -- there needs to be a term for these people by the way, in France they're called the bien-pensants -- the "right-thinking," the people who read The Atlantic, The New York Times op-ed page, The Washington Post op-ed page, and who all agree with each other on everything -- there's this tight little circle of unanimity. And they all agreed that Bartels was right about that, and that was a costly mistake. For example, Paul Krugman, a guy whom I admire in a lot of ways, he referenced this four or five times. He agreed with it . No, the Democrats are not losing the white working class outside the South -- they were not going over to the Republicans. The suggestion was that there is nothing to worry about. Yes. And there were people saying this right up to the 2016 election. But it was a mistake.

JS: I remember being perplexed at the time. I had thought you had written this brilliant book, and you weren't being taken seriously -- because somebody at Princeton had run some software -- as if that had proven you wrong.

TCF: Yeah, that's correct . That was a very widespread take on it. And Bartels was incorrect, and I am right, and [laughs merrily] that's that.

JS: So do you think Russiagate is a way of saying, Oh no no no no, Hillary didn't really lose?

TCF: Well, she did win the popular vote -- but there's a whole set of pathologies out there right now that all stem from Hillary Denialism. And I don't want to say that Russiagate is one of them, because we don't know the answer to that yet.

JS: Um, ok.

TCF: Well, there are all kinds of questionable reactions to 2016 out there, and what they all have in common is the faith that Democrats did nothing wrong. For example, this same circle of the bien-pensants have decided that the only acceptable explanation for Trump's victory is the racism of his supporters. Racism can be the only explanation for the behavior of Trump voters. But that just seems odd to me because, while it's true of course that there's lots of racism in this country, and while Trump is clearly a bigot and clearly won the bigot vote, racism is just one of several factors that went into what happened in 2016. Those who focus on this as the only possible answer are implying that all Trump voters are irredeemable, lost forever.

And it comes back to the same point that was made by all those people who denied what was happening with the white working class, which is: The Democratic Party needs to do nothing differently . All the post-election arguments come back to this same point. So a couple years ago they were saying about the white working class -- we don't have to worry about them -- they're not leaving the Democratic Party, they're totally loyal, especially in the northern states, or whatever the hell it was. And now they say, well, Those people are racists, and therefore they're lost to us forever. What is the common theme of these two arguments? It's always that there's nothing the Democratic Party needs to do differently. First, you haven't lost them; now you have lost them and they're irretrievable: Either way -- you see what I'm getting at? -- you don't have to do anything differently to win them.

JS: Yes, I do.

TCF: The argument in What's the Matter with Kansas? was that this is a long-term process, the movement of the white working class away from the Democratic Party. This has been going on for a long time. It begins in the '60s, and the response of the Democrats by and large has been to mock those people, deride those people, and to move away from organized labor, to move away from class issues -- working class issues -- and so their response has been to make this situation worse, and it gets worse, and it gets worse, and it gets worse, and it gets worse! And there's really no excuse for them not seeing it. But they say, believe, rationalize, you know, come up with anything that gets then off the hook for this, that allows them to ignore this change. Anything. They will say or believe whatever it takes.

JS: Yes.

TCF: By the way, these are the smartest people! These are tenured professors at Ivy League institutions, these are people with Nobel Prizes, people with foundation grants, people with, you know, chairs at prestigious universities, people who work at our most prestigious media outlets -- that's who's wrong about all this stuff.

JS: [quoting the title of David Halberstam's 1972 book, an excerpt from which Frank uses as an epigraph for Listen, Liberal ] The best and the brightest!

TCF: [laughing merrily] Exactly. Isn't it fascinating?

JS: But this gets to the irony of the thing. [locates highlighted passage in book] I'm going to ask you one of the questions you ask in Rendezvous with Oblivion: "Why are worshippers of competence so often incompetent?" (p. 165). That's a huge question.

TCF: That's one of the big mysteries. Look. Take a step back. I had met Barack Obama. He was a professor at the University of Chicago, and I'd been a student there. And he was super smart. Anyhow, I met him and was really impressed by him. All the liberals in Hyde Park -- that's the neighborhood we lived in -- loved him, and I was one of them, and I loved him too. And I was so happy when he got elected.

Anyhow, I knew one thing he would do for sure, and that is he would end the reign of cronyism and incompetence that marked the Bush administration and before them the Reagan administration. These were administrations that actively promoted incompetent people. And I knew Obama wouldn't do that, and I knew Obama would bring in the smartest people, and he'd get the best economists. Remember, when he got elected we were in the pit of the crisis -- we were at this terrible moment -- and here comes exactly the right man to solve the problem. He did exactly what I just described: He brought in [pause] Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard, considered the greatest economist of his generation -- and, you know, go down the list: He had Nobel Prize winners, he had people who'd won genius grants, he had The Best and the Brightest . And they didn't really deal with the problem. They let the Wall Street perpetrators off the hook -- in a catastrophic way, I would argue. They come up with a health care system that was half-baked. Anyhow, the question becomes -- after watching the great disappointments of the Obama years -- the question becomes: Why did government-by-expert fail?

JS: So how did this happen? Why?

TCF: The answer is understanding experts not as individual geniuses but as members of a class . This is the great missing link in all of our talk about expertise. Experts aren't just experts: They are members of a class. And they act like a class. They have loyalty to one another; they have a disdain for others, people who aren't like them, who they perceive as being lower than them, and there's this whole hierarchy of status that they are at the pinnacle of.

And once you understand this, then everything falls into place! So why did they let the Wall Street bankers off the hook? Because these people were them. These people are their peers. Why did they refuse to do what obviously needed to be done with the health care system? Because they didn't want to do that to their friends in Big Pharma. Why didn't Obama get tough with Google and Facebook? They obviously have this kind of scary monopoly power that we haven't seen in a long time. Instead, he brought them into the White House, he identified with them. Again, it's the same thing. Once you understand this, you say: Wait a minute -- so the Democratic Party is a vehicle of this particular social class! It all makes sense. And all of a sudden all of these screw-ups make sense. And, you know, all of their rhetoric makes sense. And the way they treat working class people makes sense. And they way they treat so many other demographic groups makes sense -- all of the old-time elements of the Democratic Party: unions, minorities, et cetera. They all get to ride in back. It's the professionals -- you know, the professional class -- that sits up front and has its hands on the steering wheel.

* * *

It is, given Frank's persona, not surprising that he is able to conclude Listen, Liberal with a certain hopefulness, and so let me end by quoting some of his final words:

What I saw in Kansas eleven years ago is now everywhere . It is time to face the obvious: that the direction the Democrats have chosen to follow for the last few decades has been a failure for both the nation and for their own partisan health . The Democrats posture as the 'party of the people' even as they dedicate themselves ever more resolutely to serving and glorifying the professional class. Worse: they combine self-righteousness and class privilege in a way that Americans find stomach-turning . The Democrats have no interest in reforming themselves in a more egalitarian way . What we can do is strip away the Democrats' precious sense of their own moral probity -- to make liberals live without the comforting knowledge that righteousness is always on their side . Once that smooth, seamless sense of liberal virtue has been cracked, anything becomes possible. (pp. 256-257).

[Aug 08, 2018] Bill Clinton's Rules of Engagement on the already identified Enemies of the People

Notable quotes:
"... please recall Bill Clinton's rules of engagement as applied to the Serbs in 1999, wherein he decided that the political leaders, bureaucratic support structure, media infrastructure and intellectual underpinnings of his enemies' war effort were legitimate targets of war. ..."
Aug 08, 2018 | www.unz.com

Anonymous [207] Disclaimer , Next New Comment August 8, 2018 at 7:08 am GMT

After observing Skynet's coordinated attack on Alex Jone's Infowars yesterday, we can hardly wait to implement Bill Clinton's Rules of Engagement on the already identified Enemies of the People, and eagerly await the God-Emperor's word.

Second, please recall Bill Clinton's rules of engagement as applied to the Serbs in 1999, wherein he decided that the political leaders, bureaucratic support structure, media infrastructure and intellectual underpinnings of his enemies' war effort were legitimate targets of war.

No one else may have been paying attention to the unintended consequences of that, but many folks on our side of the present divide were. Food for thought. A reminder about the shape of the battlefield (legal and otherwise) and Bill Clinton's Rules of Engagement.

http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2010/03/man-bites-dog-dogs-get-pissed-off.html

[Jul 24, 2018] Bernie Sanders embraces the anti-Russia campaign by Patrick Martin

Notable quotes:
"... Sanders's support for the anti-Russia and anti-Wikileaks campaign is all the more telling because he was himself the victim of efforts by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party leadership to block his 2016 campaign. In June and July 2016, Wikileaks published internal Democratic emails in which officials ridiculed the Sanders campaign, forcing the DNC to issue a public apology: "On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email." ..."
"... In the aftermath of his election campaign, Sanders was elevated into a top-level position in the Democratic Party caucus in the US Senate. His first response to the inauguration of Trump was to declare his willingness to "work with" the president, closely tracking remarks of Obama that the election of Trump was part of an "intramural scrimmage" in which all sides were on the same team. As the campaign of the military-intelligence agencies intensifies, however, Sanders is toeing the line. ..."
"... The Sanders campaign did not push the Democrats to the left, but rather the state apparatus of the ruling class brought Sanders in to give a "left" veneer to a thoroughly right-wing party. ..."
"... There is no contradiction between the influx of military-intelligence candidates into the Democratic Party and the Democrats' making use of the services of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to give the party a "left" cover. Both the CIA Democrats and their pseudo-left "comrades" agree on the most important questions: the defense of the global interests of American imperialism and a more aggressive intervention in the Syrian civil war and other areas where Washington and Moscow are in conflict. ..."
Jul 23, 2018 | www.wsws.org

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders appeared on the CBS interview program "Face the Nation" Sunday and fully embraced the anti-Russia campaign of the US military-intelligence apparatus, backed by the Democratic Party and much of the media.

In response to a question from CBS host Margaret Brennan, Sanders unleashed a torrent of denunciations of Trump's meeting and press conference in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A preliminary transcript reads:

SANDERS: "I will tell you that I was absolutely outraged by his behavior in Helsinki, where he really sold the American people out. And it makes me think that either Trump doesn't understand what Russia has done, not only to our elections, but through cyber attacks against all parts of our infrastructure, either he doesn't understand it, or perhaps he is being blackmailed by Russia, because they may have compromising information about him.

"Or perhaps also you have a president who really does have strong authoritarian tendencies. And maybe he admires the kind of government that Putin is running in Russia. And I think all of that is a disgrace and a disservice to the American people. And we have got to make sure that Russia does not interfere, not only in our elections, but in other aspects of our lives."

These comments, which echo remarks he gave at a rally in Kansas late last week, signal Sanders' full embrace of the right-wing campaign launched by the Democrats and backed by dominant sections of the military-intelligence apparatus. Their opposition to Trump is centered on issues of foreign policy, based on the concern that Trump, due to his own "America First" brand of imperialist strategy, has run afoul of geostrategic imperatives that are considered inviolable -- in particular, the conflict with Russia.

Sanders did not use his time on a national television program to condemn Trump's persecution of immigrants and the separation of children from their parents, or to denounce his naming of ultra-right jurist Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, or to attack the White House declaration last week that the "war on poverty" had ended victoriously -- in order to justify the destruction of social programs for impoverished working people. Nor did he seek to advance his supposedly left-wing program on domestic issues like health care, jobs and education.

Sanders' embrace of the anti-Russia campaign is not surprising, but it is instructive. This is, after all, an individual who presented himself as "left-wing," even a "socialist." During the 2016 election campaign, he won the support of millions of people attracted to his call for a "political revolution" against the "billionaire class." For Sanders, who has a long history of opportunist and pro-imperialist politics in the orbit of the Democratic Party, the aim of the campaign was always to direct social discontent into establishment channels, culminating in his endorsement of the campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Sanders's support for the anti-Russia and anti-Wikileaks campaign is all the more telling because he was himself the victim of efforts by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party leadership to block his 2016 campaign. In June and July 2016, Wikileaks published internal Democratic emails in which officials ridiculed the Sanders campaign, forcing the DNC to issue a public apology: "On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email."

In the aftermath of his election campaign, Sanders was elevated into a top-level position in the Democratic Party caucus in the US Senate. His first response to the inauguration of Trump was to declare his willingness to "work with" the president, closely tracking remarks of Obama that the election of Trump was part of an "intramural scrimmage" in which all sides were on the same team. As the campaign of the military-intelligence agencies intensifies, however, Sanders is toeing the line.

The experience is instructive not only in relation to Sanders, but to an entire social milieu and the political perspective with which it is associated. This is what it means to work within the Democratic Party. The Sanders campaign did not push the Democrats to the left, but rather the state apparatus of the ruling class brought Sanders in to give a "left" veneer to a thoroughly right-wing party.

New political figures, many associated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are being brought in for the same purpose. As Sanders gave his anti-Russia rant, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sat next to him nodding her agreement. The 28-year-old member of the DSA last month won the Democratic nomination in New York's 14th Congressional District, unseating the Democratic incumbent, Joseph Crowley, the fourth-ranking member of the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives.

Since then, Ocasio-Cortez has been given massive and largely uncritical publicity by the corporate media, summed up in an editorial puff piece by the New York Times that described her as "a bright light in the Democratic Party who has brought desperately needed energy back to New York politics "

Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders were jointly interviewed from Kansas, where the two appeared Friday at a campaign rally for James Thompson, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the US House of Representatives from the Fourth Congressional District, based in Wichita, in an August 7 primary election.

Thompson might appear to be an unusual ally for the "socialist" Sanders and the DSA member Ocasio-Cortez. His campaign celebrates his role as an Army veteran, and his website opens under the slogan "Join the Thompson Army," followed by pledges that the candidate will "Fight for America." In an interview with the Associated Press, Thompson indicated that despite his support for Sanders' call for "Medicare for all," and his own endorsement by the DSA, he was wary of any association with socialism. "I don't like the term socialist, because people do associate that with bad things in history," he said.

Such anticommunism fits right in with the anti-Russian campaign, which is the principal theme of the Democratic Party in the 2018 elections. As the World Socialist Web Site has pointed out for many months, the real thrust of the Democratic Party campaign is demonstrated by its recruitment as congressional candidates of dozens of former CIA and military intelligence agents, combat commanders from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and war planners from the Pentagon, State Department and White House.

There is no contradiction between the influx of military-intelligence candidates into the Democratic Party and the Democrats' making use of the services of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to give the party a "left" cover. Both the CIA Democrats and their pseudo-left "comrades" agree on the most important questions: the defense of the global interests of American imperialism and a more aggressive intervention in the Syrian civil war and other areas where Washington and Moscow are in conflict.

[Jul 23, 2018] The Democratic Party's Pitch to Billionaires by Eric Zuesse

Notable quotes:
"... The wing of the Democratic Party that looks for the dollars instead of the votes is called "The Third Way" and it presents itself as representing the supposedly vast political center, nothing "extremist" or "marginal." But didn't liberal Republicanism go out when Nelson Rockefeller did? Conservative Democrats are like liberal Republicans -- they attract flies and billionaires, but not many votes. And didn't the Rockefeller drug laws fill our prisons with millions of pathetic drug-users and small drug-dealers but not with the kingpins in either the narcotics business or the bankster rackets (such as had crashed the economy in 2008 -- and the Third Way Democrat who had been the exceptional politician and liar that was so slick he actually did attract many votes, President Barack Obama, told the banksters privately, on 27 March 2009, "I'm not out there to go after you. I'm protecting you." And, he did keep his promise to them, though not to his voters .) ..."
"... They want another Barack Obama. There aren't any more of those (unless, perhaps, Michelle Obama enters the contest). But, even if there were: How many Democrats would fall for that scam, yet again -- after the disaster of 2016? ..."
"... Maybe the Third Way is right, and there's a sucker born every minute. But if that's what the Democratic Party is going to rely upon, then America's stunningly low voter-participation rate is set to plunge even lower, because even more voters than before will either be leaving the Presidential line blank, or even perhaps voting for the Republican candidate (as some felt driven to do in 2016). ..."
"... Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity . He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. ..."
Jul 23, 2018 | www.globalresearch.ca

The wing of the Democratic Party that looks for the dollars instead of the votes is called "The Third Way" and it presents itself as representing the supposedly vast political center, nothing "extremist" or "marginal." But didn't liberal Republicanism go out when Nelson Rockefeller did? Conservative Democrats are like liberal Republicans -- they attract flies and billionaires, but not many votes. And didn't the Rockefeller drug laws fill our prisons with millions of pathetic drug-users and small drug-dealers but not with the kingpins in either the narcotics business or the bankster rackets (such as had crashed the economy in 2008 -- and the Third Way Democrat who had been the exceptional politician and liar that was so slick he actually did attract many votes, President Barack Obama, told the banksters privately, on 27 March 2009, "I'm not out there to go after you. I'm protecting you." And, he did keep his promise to them, though not to his voters .)

They're at it, yet again. On July 22nd, NBC News's Alex Seitz-Wald headlined "Sanders' wing of the party terrifies moderate Dems. Here's how they plan to stop it." And he described what was publicly available from the 3-day private meeting in Columbus Ohio of The Third Way, July 18-20, the planning conference between the Party's chiefs and its billionaires. Evidently, they hate Bernie Sanders and are already scheming and spending in order to block him, now a second time, from obtaining the Party's Presidential nomination. "Anxiety has largely been kept to a whisper among the party's moderates and big donors, with some of the major fundraisers pressing operatives on what can be done to stop the Vermonter if he runs for the White House again." This passage in Seitz-Wald's article was especially striking to me:

The gathering here was an effort to offer an attractive alternative to the rising Sanders-style populist left in the upcoming presidential race. Where progressives see a rare opportunity to capitalize on an energized Democratic base, moderates see a better chance to win over Republicans turned off by Trump.

The fact that a billionaire real estate developer, Winston Fisher, cohosted the event and addressed attendees twice, underscored that this group is not interested in the class warfare vilifying the "millionaires and billionaires" found in Sanders' stump speech.

"You're not going to make me hate somebody just because they're rich. I want to be rich!" Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, a potential presidential candidate, said Friday to laughs.

I would reply to congressman Ryan's remark: If you want to be rich, then get the hell out of politics! Don't run for President! I don't want you there! And that's no joke!

Anyone who doesn't recognize that an inevitable trade-off exists between serving the public and serving oneself, is a libertarian -- an Ayn Rander, in fact -- and there aren't many of those in the Democratic Party, but plenty of them are in the Republican Party.

Just as a clergyman in some faiths is supposed to take a vow of chastity, and in some faiths also to take a vow of poverty, in order to serve "the calling" instead of oneself, anyone who enters 'public service' and who aspires to "be rich" is inevitably inviting corruption -- not prepared to do war against it . That kind of politician is a Manchurian candidate, like Obama perhaps, but certainly not what this or any country needs, in any case. Voters like that can be won only by means of deceit, which is the way that politicians like that do win.

No decent political leader enters or stays in politics in order to "be rich," because no political leader can be decent who isn't in it as a calling, to public service, and as a repudiation, of any self-service in politics.

Republican Party voters invite corrupt government, because their Party's ideology is committed to it ("Freedom [for the rich]!"); but the only Democratic Party voters who at all tolerate corrupt politicians (such as Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York State) are actually Republican Democrats -- people who are confused enough so as not really to care much about what they believe; whatever their garbage happens to be, they believe in it and don't want to know differently than it.

The Third Way is hoping that there are enough of such 'Democrats' so that they can, yet again, end up with a Third Way Democrat being offered to that Party's voters in 2020, just like happened in 2016. They want another Barack Obama. There aren't any more of those (unless, perhaps, Michelle Obama enters the contest). But, even if there were: How many Democrats would fall for that scam, yet again -- after the disaster of 2016?

Maybe the Third Way is right, and there's a sucker born every minute. But if that's what the Democratic Party is going to rely upon, then America's stunningly low voter-participation rate is set to plunge even lower, because even more voters than before will either be leaving the Presidential line blank, or even perhaps voting for the Republican candidate (as some felt driven to do in 2016).

The Third Way is the way to the death of democracy, if it's not already dead . It is no answer to anything, except to the desires of billionaires -- both Republican and Democratic.

The center of American politics isn't the center of America's aristocracy. The goal of groups such as The Third Way is to fool the American public to equate the two. The result of such groups is the contempt that America's public have for America's Government . But, pushed too far, mass disillusionment becomes revolution. Is that what America's billionaires are willing to risk? They might get it.

*

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity . He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

[Jun 26, 2018] Clinton was parachuted from Arkansas as a suitable puppet.

Jun 26, 2018 | www.unz.com

utu , June 25, 2018 at 5:37 am GMT

If the claims in the 1990s tell-all bestsellers of Mossad defector Victor Ostrovsky can be credited, Israel even considered the assassination of President George H.W. Bush in 1992 for his threats to cut off financial aid to Israel during a conflict over West Bank settlement policies, and I have been informed that the Bush Administration took those reports seriously at the time.

I did not know of Ostrovsky's claim but I was very aware of George H.W. Bush conflict with Yitzhak Shamir which most likely costed him the second term. The conflict obviously was very deemphasized by the MSM. Iirc Patrick Buchanan wrote about it. Bush decided to say NO to Israel and put conditions on providing further funding for immigrants form Russia to Israel. He did it having exceptionally high (90%) approval ratings in the wake of the Desert Storm. So timing was good. But after Congress going against him and AIPAC busing supporters of Israel to DC Bush caved in sometime in Sept. 1991. Buchanan believed that if Bush brought the issue to 'American people' he could have won this conflict but Bush decided to keep Americans in the dark which is a norm when it come to Israel issues. Bush only complained about being all alone in the White House during some press conference but most American did not get the idea what he was compliant about. The Lobby however did not forgive Bush and did not trust him getting the second term in the office. It must have been decided he had to go. An anti Bush campaign was continued by Safire and Friedman in weekly columns in the NYT and negative mostly exaggerated and bogus articles about weak economy were published. The 'It's the economy, stupid' was bogus made up meme. Clinton was parachuted from Arkansas and Ross Perot was encouraged to run and then dis-encouraged when he suspended his campaign and then again encouraged to re-enter the race. He played exactly the same role as Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 election that stopped the incumbent Taft from getting the 2nd term. This gave presidency to Wilson who brought Federal Reserve and federal tax the the following year and the entrance into the WWI few years later. Was assassination considered as the plan B in case Bush was reelected? Do people from The Lobby talk about killing American presidents among themselves? Yes, they do – even publicly:

ATLANTA JEWISH NEWSPAPER CALLS FOR OBAMA ASSASSINATION. (Jan 22, 2012)

https://www.jpost.com/International/Atlanta-Jewish-newspaper-calls-for-Obama-assassination

Could Obama be trusted with the 2nd term? Netnayahu's Israel was as not very happy with him and Obama in the very beginning was talking very tough about Israel (University of Cairo). W/o his 2nd term there would be no treaty with Iran and there would be a veto of anti-Israel UN resolution.

It seems like George H.W. Bush must have resigned himself to not being reelected. What message was he sending by checking the watch during a debate? Was the message: Do not worry I am just going through the motions. Do not need to kill me.

The question is how come the neocons decided to trust GW Bush? Richard Perle went to Austin TX and announced that Bush ignorance of the world affairs was an advantage: an empty vessel that they can fill. Did he also mean that it will be easy to control him like sending him against Iraq to avenge his father?

GW Bush got coached and tutored by Prince Bandar in 1997:

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=afall97bandargwbush

He lands in Austin, and is surprised when Governor Bush boards the plane before Bandar can disembark. Bush comes straight to the point: he is considering a run for the presidency, and though he already knows what his domestic agenda will be, says, "I don't have the foggiest idea about what I think about international, foreign policy."

Finally, Bush says, "There are people who are your enemies in this country who also think my dad is your enemy." Bandar knows Bush is speaking of US supporters of Israel, and wants to know how he should handle the Israeli-Jewish lobby as well as the neoconservatives who loathe both the Saudis and the elder Bush. Bandar replies: "Can I give you one advice? If you tell me that [you want to be president], I want to tell you one thing. To hell with Saudi Arabia or who likes Saudi Arabia or who doesn't, who likes Bandar or who doesn't. Anyone who you think hates your dad or your friend who can be important to make a difference in winning, swallow your pride and make friends of them. And I can help you. I can help you out and complain about you, make sure they understand that, and that will make sure they help you." Bandar's message is clear: if Bush needs the neoconservatives to help him win the presidency, then he should do what it takes to get them on his side. "Never mind if you really want to be honest," Bandar continues. "This is not a confession booth. In the big boys' game, it's cutthroat, it's bloody and it's not pleasant."

Ivan , June 25, 2018 at 10:06 am GMT
@utu

Yes it is strange that the elder George Bush, who had exorcised the 'ghost of Vietnam', through his rout of Saddam's forces in Kuwait and earned a 90% approval rating, went on to lose to Clinton supposedly on account of the economy. The idiot Ross Perot, a capitalist weaned on the government teat had of course a role. But I thought that the elder Bush was a shoo-in. Then came Clinton, selling off the Americans' industrial birthright for a song to the Chinese and the kabuki theatre of the Israeli-Palestinian 'peace process'. In James Baker, one had the least sympathetic of Secretary of States to Israel in a long time

I recall the image making by the press when GB became inconvenient, although a veteran pilot in WW2, he was painted as a proverbial wimp.

utu , June 25, 2018 at 5:41 pm GMT
@Ivan

I recall the image making by the press when GB became inconvenient, although a veteran pilot in WW2, he was painted as a proverbial wimp.

Why the neocons called him a wimp?

In 1990 George H.W. Bush was very reluctant to go against Saddam Hussain. He seemed to really believe in the so called "peace dividends", base closings and scaling military down. And then Saddam Hussain with possible approval April Glaspie fucked it all up for him and us. It was Margaret Thatcher that twisted his arms to go against Saddam Hussein. Then when in the Dessert Storm he did not let escalate the plan and stopped the troops form going all the way into Iraq. The neocons did not like him.

Why we can call him a wimp?

In 1991 he decided to confront Israel but then backed off instead of escalating and letting the American people know that he needed their support against The Lobby and the sold out Congress.

[May 23, 2018] 2016 Hillary fiasco post mortem by Lambert Strether

Notable quotes:
"... Chasing Hillary ..."
"... As one person who had talked to Clinton about the difference between Trump and Sanders crowds recounted, her feeling was that 'at least white supremacists shaved.'" ..."
"... Why does Trump get away with corruption? Because Bill and Hillary Clinton normalized it ..."
May 23, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

"Clinton to be honored at Harvard for 'transformative impact'" [ The Hill ]. Irony is not dead.

"From the Jaws of Victory" [ Jacobin ]. Some highlights from Amy Chozick's Chasing Hillary , which really does sound like a fun read:

"In the public's mind, Clinton's 'deplorables' quip is remembered as evidence of her disdain for much of Trump's fan base. But there was one other group Clinton had a similar dislike of: Bernie Sanders supporters.

As one person who had talked to Clinton about the difference between Trump and Sanders crowds recounted, her feeling was that 'at least white supremacists shaved.'"

UPDATE "Why does Trump get away with corruption? Because Bill and Hillary Clinton normalized it" [Josh Barro, Business Insider ].

[May 03, 2018] Alert The Clintonian empire is still here and tries to steal the popular vote throug

Highly recommended!
The dramatic rise fo the number of CIA-democrats as candidates from Democratic Party is not assedental. As regular clintonites are discredited those guys can still appeal to patriotism to get elected.
Notable quotes:
"... Bernie continuously forcing Hillary to appear apologetic about her campaign funding from big financial interests. She tries hard to persuade the public that she will not serve specific interests. Her anxiety can be identified in many cases and it was very clear at the moment when she accused Bernie of attacking her, concerning this funding. Hillary was forced to respond with a deeply irrational argument: anyone who takes money from big interests doesn't mean that he/she will vote for policies in favor of these interests! ..."
"... Bernie drives the discussion towards fundamental ideological issues. He forced Hillary to defend her "progressiveness". She was forced to speak even about economic interests by names. A few years ago, this would be nearly a taboo in any debate between any primaries. ..."
"... After the disastrous defeat by Trump in 2016 election, the corporate Democrats realized that the progressive movement, supported mostly by the American youth, would not retreat and vanish. On the contrary, Bernie Sanders' popularity still goes up and there is a wave of progressive candidates who appear to be a real threat to the DNC establishment and the Clintonian empire. ..."
"... It seems that the empire has upgraded its dirty tactics beyond Hillary's false relocation to the Left. Seeing the big threat from the real progressives, the empire seeks to "plant" its own agents, masked as progressives, inside the electoral process, to disorientate voters and steal the popular vote. ..."
"... This is a Master's class in blatant historical revisionism and outright dishonesty. Beals was not a soldier unwillingly drafted into service, but an intelligence officer who voluntarily accepted an influential and critically important post for the Bush Administration in its ever-expanding crime against humanity in Iraq. ..."
May 03, 2018 | failedevolution.blogspot.gr

Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing

globinfo freexchange

During the 2016 Democratic party primaries we wrote that what Bernie achieved, is to bring back the real political discussion in America, at least concerning the Democratic camp. Bernie smartly "drags" his primary rival, Hillary Clinton, into the heart of the politics. Up until a few years ago, you could not observe too much difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, who were just following the pro-establishment "politics as usual", probably with a few, occasional exceptions. The "politics as usual" so far, was "you can't touch the Wall Street", for example.

Bernie continuously forcing Hillary to appear apologetic about her campaign funding from big financial interests. She tries hard to persuade the public that she will not serve specific interests. Her anxiety can be identified in many cases and it was very clear at the moment when she accused Bernie of attacking her, concerning this funding. Hillary was forced to respond with a deeply irrational argument: anyone who takes money from big interests doesn't mean that he/she will vote for policies in favor of these interests!

Bernie drives the discussion towards fundamental ideological issues. He forced Hillary to defend her "progressiveness". She was forced to speak even about economic interests by names. A few years ago, this would be nearly a taboo in any debate between any primaries.

After the disastrous defeat by Trump in 2016 election, the corporate Democrats realized that the progressive movement, supported mostly by the American youth, would not retreat and vanish. On the contrary, Bernie Sanders' popularity still goes up and there is a wave of progressive candidates who appear to be a real threat to the DNC establishment and the Clintonian empire.

It seems that the empire has upgraded its dirty tactics beyond Hillary's false relocation to the Left. Seeing the big threat from the real progressives, the empire seeks to "plant" its own agents, masked as progressives, inside the electoral process, to disorientate voters and steal the popular vote.

Eric Draitser gives us valuable information for such a type of candidate. Key points:

One candidate currently generating some buzz in the race is Jeff Beals, a self-identified "Bernie democrat" whose campaign website homepage describes him as a " local teacher and former U.S. diplomat endorsed by the national organization of former Bernie Sanders staffers, the Justice Democrats. " And indeed, Beals centers his progressive bona fides to brand himself as one of the inheritors of the progressive torch lit by Sanders in 2016. A smart political move, to be sure. But is it true?

Beals describes himself as a "former U.S. diplomat," touting his expertise on international issues born of his experience overseas. In an email interview with CounterPunch, Beals describes his campaign as a " movement for diplomacy and peace in foreign affairs and an end to militarism my experience as a U.S. diplomat is what drives it and gives this movement such force. " OK, sounds good, a very progressive sounding answer. But what did Beals actually do during his time overseas?

By his own admission, Beals' overseas career began as an intelligence officer with the CIA. His fluency in Arabic and knowledge of the region made him an obvious choice to be an intelligence spook during the latter stages of the Clinton Administration.

Beals shrewdly attempts to portray himself as an opponent of neocon imperialism in Iraq. In his interview with CounterPunch, Beals argued that " The State Department was sidelined as the Bush administration and a neoconservative cabal plunged America into the tragic Iraq War. As a U.S. diplomat fluent in Arabic and posted in Jerusalem at the time, I was called over a year into the war to help our country find a way out. "

This is a Master's class in blatant historical revisionism and outright dishonesty. Beals was not a soldier unwillingly drafted into service, but an intelligence officer who voluntarily accepted an influential and critically important post for the Bush Administration in its ever-expanding crime against humanity in Iraq.

Moreover, no one who knows anything about the Iraq War could possibly swallow the tripe that CIA/State Department officials in Iraq were " looking to help our country find a way out " a year into the war. A year into the war, the bloodletting was only just beginning, and Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the other corporate vultures had yet to fully exploit the country and make billions off it. So, unfortunately for Beals, the historical memory of the anti-war Left is not that short.

It is self-evident that Beals has a laundry list of things in his past that he must answer for. For those of us, especially Millennials, who cut our activist teeth demonstrating and organizing against the Iraq War, Beals' distortions about his role in Iraq go down like hemlock tea. But it is the associations Beals maintains today that really should give any progressive serious pause.

When asked by CounterPunch whether he has any connections to either Bernie Sanders and his surrogates or Hillary Clinton and hers, Beals responded by stating: " I am endorsed by Justice Democrats, a group of former Bernie Sanders staffers who are pledged to electing progressives nationwide. I am also endorsed for the Greene County chapter of the New York Progressive Action Network, formerly the Bernie Sanders network. My first hire was a former Sanders field coordinator who worked here in NY-19. "

However, conveniently missing from that response is the fact that Beals' campaign has been, and continues to be, directly managed in nearly every respect by Bennett Ratcliff, a longtime friend and ally of Hillary Clinton. Ratcliff is not mentioned in any publicly available documents as a campaign manager, though the most recent FEC filings show that as of April 1, 2018, Ratcliff was still on the payroll of the Beals campaign. And in the video of Beals' campaign kickoff rally, Ratcliff introduces Beals, while only being described as a member of the Onteora School Board in Ulster County . This is sort of like referring to Donald Trump as an avid golfer.

Beals has studiously, and rather intelligently, avoided mentioning Ratcliff, or the presence of Clinton's inner circle on his campaign. However, according to internal campaign documents and emails obtained by CounterPunch, Ratcliff manages nearly every aspect of the campaign, acting as a sort of éminence grise behind the artifice of a progressive campaign fronted by a highly educated and photogenic political novice.

By his own admission, Ratcliff's role on the campaign is strategy, message, and management. Sounds like a rather textbook description of a campaign manager. Indeed, Ratcliff has been intimately involved in "guiding" Beals on nearly every important campaign decision, especially those involving fundraising .

And it is in the realm of fundraising that Ratcliff really shines, but not in the way one would traditionally think. Rather than focusing on large donations and powerful interests, Ratcliff is using the Beals campaign as a laboratory for his strategy of winning elections without raising millions of dollars.

In fact, leaked campaign documents show that Ratcliff has explicitly instructed Beals and his staffers not to spend money on food, decorations, and other standard campaign expenses in hopes of presenting the illusion of a grassroots, people-powered campaign with no connections to big time donors or financial elites .

It seems that Ratcliff is the wizard behind the curtain, leveraging his decades of contact building and close ties to the Democratic Party establishment while at the same time manufacturing an astroturfed progressive campaign using a front man in Beals .

One of Ratcliff's most infamous, and indefensible, acts of fealty to the Clinton machine came in 2009 when he and longtime Clinton attorney and lobbyist, Lanny Davis, stumped around Washington to garner support for the illegal right-wing coup in Honduras, which ousted the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya in favor of the right-wing oligarchs who control the country today. Although the UN, and even U.S. diplomats on the ground in Honduras, openly stated that the coup was illegal, Clinton was adamant to actively keep Zelaya out.

Essentially then, Ratcliff is a chief architect of the right-wing government in Honduras – the same government assassinating feminist and indigenous activists like Berta Cáceres, Margarita Murillo, and others, and forcibly displacing and ethnically cleansing Afro-indigenous communities to make way for Carribbean resorts and golf courses.

And this Washington insider lobbyist and apologist for war criminals and crimes against humanity is the guy who's on a crusade to reform campaign finance and fix Washington? This is the guy masquerading as a progressive? This is the guy working to elect an "anti-war progressive"?

In a twisted way it makes sense. Ratcliff has the blood of tens of thousands of Hondurans (among others) on his hands, while Beals is a creature of Langley, a CIA boy whose exceptional work in the service of Bush and Clinton administration war criminals is touted as some kind of merit badge on his resume.

What also becomes clear after establishing the Ratcliff-Beals connection is the fact that Ratcliff's purported concern with campaign financing and "taking back the Republic" is really just a pretext for attempting to provide a "proof of concept," as it were, that neoliberal Democrats shouldn't fear and subvert the progressive wing of the party, but rather that they should co-opt it with a phony grassroots facade all while maintaining links to U.S. intelligence, Wall Street, and the power brokers of the Democratic Party .

Info from the article How Clintonites Are Manufacturing Faux Progressive Congressional Campaigns by Eric Draitser

[Apr 30, 2018] Mueller s past is so laden with misfeasance and malfeasance that he should have been disbarred a few decades ago

Key figures on anti-trump color revolution including Mueller, Rosenstein and Comey are closely connected with Clinton foundation
Notable quotes:
"... Guess who took over this investigation in 2002? Bet you can't guess. No other than James Comey. ..."
"... Guess who ran the Tax Division inside the Department of Injustice from 2001 to 2005? No other than the Assistant Attorney General of the United States, Rod Rosenstein. ..."
"... Guess who was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation during this time frame??? I know, it's a miracle, just a coincidence, just an anomaly in statistics and chances: Robert Mueller. ..."
"... Then of all surprises, in April 2016, James Comey drafts an exoneration letter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, meanwhile the DOJ is handing out immunity deals like candy on Halloween. ..."
"... The DOJ didn't even convene a Grand Jury. Like a lightning bolt of statistical impossibility, like a miracle from God himself, like the true "Gangsta" Homey is, James steps out into the cameras of an awaiting press conference on July the 8th of 2016 and exonerates the Hillary from any wrongdoing. ..."
"... It goes on and on, Rosenstein becomes Asst. Attorney General, Comey gets fired based upon a letter by Rosenstein, Comey leaks government information to the press, Mueller is assigned to the Russian Investigation witch hunt by Rosenstein to provide cover for decades of malfeasance within the FBI and DOJ and the story continues. ..."
Apr 30, 2018 | www.unz.com

NoseytheDuke , April 23, 2018 at 11:39 am GMT

@renfro

I'm on the other side of the planet but a friend in the Mid-West sent me this and I thought I'd ask if anyone else had seen it?

Is there corruption in DC?

From 2001 to 2005 there was an ongoing investigation into the Clinton Foundation. A Grand Jury had been empaneled. The investigation was triggered by the pardon of Marc Rich ..

Governments from around the world had donated to the "Charity". Yet, from 2001 to 2003 none of those "Donations" to the Clinton Foundation were declared.

Guess who took over this investigation in 2002? Bet you can't guess. No other than James Comey.

Guess who was transferred in to the Internal Revenue Service to run the Tax Exemption Branch of the IRS? Your friend and mine, Lois "Be on The Look Out" (BOLO) Lerner.

It gets better, well not really, but this is all just a series of strange coincidences, right?

Guess who ran the Tax Division inside the Department of Injustice from 2001 to 2005? No other than the Assistant Attorney General of the United States, Rod Rosenstein.

Guess who was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation during this time frame??? I know, it's a miracle, just a coincidence, just an anomaly in statistics and chances: Robert Mueller.

What do all four casting characters have in common? They all were briefed and were front line investigators into the Clinton Foundation Investigation.

Now that's just a coincidence, right? Ok, lets chalk the last one up to mere chance.

Let's fast forward to 2009. James Comey leaves the Justice Department to go and cash-in at Lockheed Martin.

Hillary Clinton is running the State Department, on her own personal email server.

The Uranium One "issue" comes to the attention of the Hillary. Like all good public servants do, you know looking out for America's best interest, she decides to support the decision and approve the sale of 20% of US Uranium to no other than, the Russians.

Now you would think that this is a fairly straight up deal, except it wasn't, I question what did the People get out of it?? Oddly enough, prior to the sales approval, Bill Clinton goes to Moscow, gets paid 500K for a one-hour speech then meets with Vladimir Putin at his home for a few hours.

Ok, no big deal right? Well, not so fast, the FBI had a mole inside this scheme.

Guess who was the FBI Director during this time frame? Yep, Robert Mueller. He requested the State Department allow himself to deliver a Uranium Sample to Moscow in 2009, under the guise of a "sting" operation -- (see leaked secret cable 09STATE38943).. while it is never clear if Mueller did deliver the sample, the "implication" is there ..

Guess who was handling that case within the Justice Department out of the US Attorney's Office in Maryland ?? No other than, Rod Rosenstein.

Remember the "informant" inside the FBI -- - Guess what happened to the informant? Department of Justice placed a GAG order on him and threatened to lock him up if he spoke about the Uranium Deal. Personally, I have to question how does 20% of the most strategic asset of the United States of America end up in Russian hands??? The FBI had an informant, a mole providing inside information to the FBI on the criminal enterprise and NOTHING happens, except to the informant -- Strange !!

Guess what happened soon after the sale was approved? 145 million dollars in "donations" made their way into the Clinton Foundation from entities directly connected to the Uranium One deal.

Guess who was still at the Internal Revenue Service working the Charitable Division?

No other than, Lois Lerner. Ok, that's all just another series of coincidences, nothing to see here, right? Let's fast forward to 2015.

Due to a series of tragic events in Benghazi and after the nine "investigations" the House, Senate and at State Department, Trey Gowdy who was running the 10th investigation as Chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, discovers that the Hillary ran the State Department on an unclassified, unauthorized, outlaw personal email server.

He also discovered that none of those emails had been turned over when she departed her "Public Service" as Secretary of State which was required by law.

He also discovered that there was Top Secret information contained within her personally archived email. Sparing you the State Departments cover up, the nostrums they floated, the delay tactics that were employed and the outright lies that were spewed forth from the necks of the Kerry State Department, they did everything humanly possible to cover for Hillary.

Guess who became FBI Director in 2013? Guess who secured 17 no bid contracts for his employer (Lockheed Martin) with the State Department and was rewarded with a six million dollar thank you present when he departed his employer. No other than James Comey. Folks if I did this when I worked for the government, I would have been locked up -- The State Department didn't even comply with the EEO and small business requirements the government places on all Request For Proposals (RFP) on contracts -- It amazes me how all those no-bids just went right through at State -- simply amazing and no Inspector General investigation !!

Next after leaving the private sector Comey is the FBI Director in charge of the "Clinton Email Investigation" after of course his FBI Investigates the Lois Lerner "Matter" at the Internal Revenue Service and exonerates her. Nope couldn't find any crimes there. Nothing here to report --

Then of all surprises, in April 2016, James Comey drafts an exoneration letter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, meanwhile the DOJ is handing out immunity deals like candy on Halloween.

The DOJ didn't even convene a Grand Jury. Like a lightning bolt of statistical impossibility, like a miracle from God himself, like the true "Gangsta" Homey is, James steps out into the cameras of an awaiting press conference on July the 8th of 2016 and exonerates the Hillary from any wrongdoing. As I've said many times, July 8, 2016 is the date that will live in infamy of the American Justice System ..

Can you see the pattern?

It goes on and on, Rosenstein becomes Asst. Attorney General, Comey gets fired based upon a letter by Rosenstein, Comey leaks government information to the press, Mueller is assigned to the Russian Investigation witch hunt by Rosenstein to provide cover for decades of malfeasance within the FBI and DOJ and the story continues.

FISA Abuse, political espionage .. pick a crime, any crime, chances are this group and a few others did it. All the same players. All compromised and conflicted. All working fervently to NOT go to jail themselves. All connected in one way or another to the Clinton's. They are like battery acid, they corrode and corrupt everything they touch. How many lives have the Clinton's destroyed?

As of this writing, the Clinton Foundation, in its 20+ years of operation of being the largest International Charity Fraud in the history of mankind, has never been audited by the Internal Revenue Service.

Let us not forget that Comey's brother works for DLA Piper, the law firm that does the Clinton Foundation's taxes.

Twodees Partain , April 23, 2018 at 10:23 pm GMT
@NoseytheDuke

More on Mueller for renfro, who seems to think that Mueller has some kind of integrity hidden somewhere:

http://themillenniumreport.com/2017/05/robert-mueller-the-old-fixer-is-back-in-town/

[Apr 22, 2018] Yeah. Sociopath. Gives me the shivers. Bill is the same, but conceals it better.

Notable quotes:
"... Yeah. Sociopath. Gives me the shivers. Bill is the same, but conceals it better. I mean, WTF, the guy had state troopers bringing him any pussy he spotted on his lunch break. ..."
Apr 22, 2018 | www.unz.com

Steve Gittelson , April 18, 2018 at 1:55 am GMT

@Rurik

Yeah. Sociopath. Gives me the shivers. Bill is the same, but conceals it better. I mean, WTF, the guy had state troopers bringing him any pussy he spotted on his lunch break.

Jesus, the rejects this country brings to the White House it's a wonder there's anything left of this country at all.

[Apr 21, 2018] On the Criminal Referral of Comey, Clinton et al by Ray McGovern

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Putting aside his partisan motivations, House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) was unusually blunt two months ago in warning of legal consequences for officials who misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to enable surveillance on Trump and his associates. Nunes's words are likely to have sent chills down the spine of those with lots to hide: "If they need to be put on trial, we will put them on trial," he said ."The reason Congress exists is to oversee these agencies that we created." ..."
"... The media will be key to whether this Constitutional issue is resolved. Largely because of Trump's own well earned reputation for lying, most Americans are susceptible to slanted headlines like this recent one -- "Trump escalates attacks on FBI " -- from an article in The Washington Post , commiserating with the treatment accorded fired-before-retired prevaricator McCabe and the FBI he ( dis)served . ..."
"... What motivated the characters now criminally "referred" is clear enough from a wide variety of sources, including the text messages exchange between Strzok and Page. Many, however, have been unable to understand how these law enforcement officials thought they could get away with taking such major liberties with the law. ..."
"... None of the leaking, unmasking, surveillance, "opposition research," or other activities directed against the Trump campaign can be properly understood, if one does not bear in mind that it was considered a sure thing that Secretary Clinton would become President, at which point illegal and extralegal activities undertaken to help her win would garner praise, not prison. The activities were hardly considered high-risk, because candidate Clinton was sure to win. ..."
"... Comey admits, "It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the re-started investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in the polls." ..."
"... The key point is not Comey's tortured reasoning, but rather that Clinton was "sure to be the next president." This would, of course, confer automatic immunity on those now criminally referred to the Department of Justice. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men -- even very tall men. One wag claimed that the "Higher" in "A Higher Loyalty" refers simply to the very tall body that houses an outsized ego. ..."
"... "Hope springs eternal" would be the cynical folk wisdom. FYI we haven't had a functioning constitution since the National Security Act of 1947 brought this nation under color of law, but the IC types wouldn't have you know that. Too tough to square the idea you'd never have had your CIA career in a world where the FISA court couldn't exist either. ..."
"... there is concrete evidence that the Democratic party/Clinton manipulated the primaries to destroy Clinton's challanger. That the DOJ, FBI & other alphabet agencies conspired with Clinton to equally, destroy Trump's campaign. ..."
"... We saw the same nonsense with Obama, the "peace president". Obama a man who never saw a Muslim he did not want to bomb or a Jew he did not want to bail out ..."
"... The best thing about this referral is that it also demands deputy AG Rod Rosenstein the weasel to recluse himself from this case. Rosenstein is the pinnacle of corruption by the deep state. ..."
"... Former CIA Director John Brennan is the prime mover behind the ongoing coup attempt against Trump. He gathered his deep state allies at DOJ and the FBI to join him in this endeavor. Brennan's allies -- McCabe, Lynch, Strzok, Yates, ect., may or may not be aware of Brennan's true motive behind creating all the noise and distraction since the 2016 election. It could be they're just partisan hacks; or they're on board with Brennan to keep secret what was revealed in the hack of the Podesta emails. ..."
"... Assange had 'physical proof' Russians didn't hack DNC, Rohrabacher says https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/19/julian-assange-has-physical-proof-russians-didnt-h/ ..."
"... I noticed Comey tried to pull a J Edgar-style subtle blackmail on Trump by the way he brought up the so-called "dossier" ..."
"... Bill Clinton got recruited into CIA by Cord Meyer, who bragged of it himself in his cups. ..."
"... Hillary cut her teeth on CIA's Watergate purge of Nixon. (If it's news to anyone that the Watergate cast of characters was straight out of CIA central casting, Russ Baker has conclusively tied the elaborate ratfeck to the intelligence community.) ..."
"... Obama was son of spooks, grandson of spooks, greased in to Harvard by Alwaleed bin-Talal's bagman. ..."
Apr 21, 2018 | www.unz.com

Wednesday's criminal referral by 11 House Republicans of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as several former and serving top FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials is a giant step toward a Constitutional crisis.

Named in the referral to the DOJ for possible violations of federal law are: Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey; former Attorney General Loretta Lynch; former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe; FBI Agent Peter Strzok; FBI Counsel Lisa Page; and those DOJ and FBI personnel "connected to" work on the "Steele Dossier," including former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente.

With no attention from corporate media, the referral was sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah John Huber. Sessions appointed Huber months ago to assist DOJ Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz. By most accounts, Horowitz is doing a thoroughly professional job. As IG, however, Horowitz lacks the authority to prosecute; he needs a U.S. Attorney for that. And this has to be disturbing to the alleged perps.

This is no law-school case-study exercise, no arcane disputation over the fine points of this or that law. Rather, as we say in the inner-city, "It has now hit the fan." Criminal referrals can lead to serious jail time. Granted, the upper-crust luminaries criminally "referred" enjoy very powerful support. And that will come especially from the mainstream media, which will find it hard to retool and switch from Russia-gate to the much more delicate and much less welcome "FBI-gate."

As of this writing, a full day has gone by since the letter/referral was reported, with total silence so far from T he New York Times and The Washington Post and other big media as they grapple with how to spin this major development. News of the criminal referral also slipped by Amy Goodman's non-mainstream DemocracyNow!, as well as many alternative websites.

The 11 House members chose to include the following egalitarian observation in the first paragraph of the letter conveying the criminal referral: "Because we believe that those in positions of high authority should be treated the same as every other American, we want to be sure that the potential violations of law outlined below are vetted appropriately." If this uncommon attitude is allowed to prevail at DOJ, it would, in effect, revoke the de facto "David Petraeus exemption" for the be-riboned, be-medaled, and well-heeled.

Stonewalling

Meanwhile, the patience of the chairmen of House committees investigating abuses at DOJ and the FBI is wearing thin at the slow-rolling they are encountering in response to requests for key documents from the FBI. This in-your-face intransigence is all the more odd, since several committee members have already had access to the documents in question, and are hardly likely to forget the content of those they know about. (Moreover, there seems to be a good chance that a patriotic whistleblower or two will tip them off to key documents being withheld.)

The DOJ IG, whose purview includes the FBI, has been cooperative in responding to committee requests for information, but those requests can hardly include documents of which the committees are unaware.

Putting aside his partisan motivations, House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) was unusually blunt two months ago in warning of legal consequences for officials who misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to enable surveillance on Trump and his associates. Nunes's words are likely to have sent chills down the spine of those with lots to hide: "If they need to be put on trial, we will put them on trial," he said ."The reason Congress exists is to oversee these agencies that we created."

Whether the House will succeed in overcoming the resistance of those criminally referred and their many accomplices and will prove able to exercise its Constitutional prerogative of oversight is, of course, another matter -- a matter that matters.

And Nothing Matters More Than the Media

The media will be key to whether this Constitutional issue is resolved. Largely because of Trump's own well earned reputation for lying, most Americans are susceptible to slanted headlines like this recent one -- "Trump escalates attacks on FBI " -- from an article in The Washington Post , commiserating with the treatment accorded fired-before-retired prevaricator McCabe and the FBI he ( dis)served .

Nor is the Post above issuing transparently clever warnings -- like this one in a lead article on March 17: "Some Trump allies say they worry he is playing with fire by taunting the FBI. 'This is open, all-out war. And guess what? The FBI's going to win,' said one ally, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. 'You can't fight the FBI. They're going to torch him.'" [sic]

Mind-Boggling Criminal Activity

What motivated the characters now criminally "referred" is clear enough from a wide variety of sources, including the text messages exchange between Strzok and Page. Many, however, have been unable to understand how these law enforcement officials thought they could get away with taking such major liberties with the law.

None of the leaking, unmasking, surveillance, "opposition research," or other activities directed against the Trump campaign can be properly understood, if one does not bear in mind that it was considered a sure thing that Secretary Clinton would become President, at which point illegal and extralegal activities undertaken to help her win would garner praise, not prison. The activities were hardly considered high-risk, because candidate Clinton was sure to win.

But she lost.

Comey himself gives this away in the embarrassingly puerile book he has been hawking, "A Higher Loyalty" -- which

amounts to a pre-emptive move motivated mostly by loyalty-to-self, in order to obtain a Stay-Out-of-Jail card. Hat tip to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone for a key observation, in his recent article , "James Comey, the Would-Be J. Edgar Hoover," about what Taibbi deems the book's most damning passage, where Comey discusses his decision to make public the re-opening of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Comey admits, "It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the re-started investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in the polls."

The key point is not Comey's tortured reasoning, but rather that Clinton was "sure to be the next president." This would, of course, confer automatic immunity on those now criminally referred to the Department of Justice. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men -- even very tall men. One wag claimed that the "Higher" in "A Higher Loyalty" refers simply to the very tall body that houses an outsized ego.

I think it can be said that readers of Consortiumnews.com may be unusually well equipped to understand the anatomy of FBI-gate as well as Russia-gate. Listed below chronologically are several links that might be viewed as a kind of "whiteboard" to refresh memories. You may wish to refer them to any friends who may still be confused.

2017

2018

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for a total of 30 years. In retirement, he co-created Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).


Mike Whitney , April 20, 2018 at 4:15 am GMT

This story appears to be developing very fast. Interested readers might want to look at this short video on the Tucker Carlson show last night: http://video.foxnews.com/v/5773524495001/?playlist_id=5198073478001#sp=show-clips

Will McCabe wind up in jail? Will Comey? Will Hillary face justice? Fingers crossed!

jilles dykstra , April 20, 2018 at 6:05 am GMT
A weird country, the USA. Reading the article I'm reminded of the 1946 Senate investigation into Pearl Harbour, where, in my opinion, the truth was unearthed. At the same time, this truth hardly ever reached the wider public, no articles, the book, ed. Harry Elmer Barnes, never reviewed.
Greg Bacon , Website April 20, 2018 at 6:54 am GMT

Will McCabe wind up in jail? Will Comey? Will Hillary face justice? Fingers crossed!

The short answer is NO. McCabe might, but not Comey and the Killer Queen, they've both served Satan, uh I mean the Deep State too long and too well.Satan and the banksters–who really run the show–take care of their own and apex predators like Hillary won't go to jail. But it does keep the rubes entertained while the banksters continue to loot, pillage and plunder and Israel keeps getting Congress to fight their wars.

Ronald Thomas West , Website April 20, 2018 at 7:23 am GMT
"Hope springs eternal" would be the cynical folk wisdom. FYI we haven't had a functioning constitution since the National Security Act of 1947 brought this nation under color of law, but the IC types wouldn't have you know that. Too tough to square the idea you'd never have had your CIA career in a world where the FISA court couldn't exist either.

Consortium News many sops tossed to 'realpolitik' where false narrative is attacked with alternative false narrative, example given, drunk Ukrainian soldiers supposedly downing MH 17 with a BUK as opposed to Kiev's Interior Ministry behind the Ukrainian combat jet that actually brought down MH 17, poisons everything (trust issues) spewed from that news service.

The realpolitik 'face saving' exit/offer implied in the Consortium News narrative where Russia doesn't have to confront the West with Ukraine's (and by implication the western intelligence agencies) premeditated murder of 300 innocents does truth no favors.

Time to grow up and face reality. Realpolitik is dead; the caliber of 'statesman' required for these finessed geopolitical lies to function no longer exist on the Western side, and the Russians (I believe) are beginning to understand there is no agreement can be made behind closed doors that will hold up; as opposed to experiencing a backstabbing (like NATO not moving east.)

Back on topic; the National Security Act of 1947 and the USA's constitution are mutually exclusive concepts, where you have a Chief Justice appoints members of our FISA Court, er, nix that, let's call a spade a spade, it's a Star Chamber. There is no constitution to uphold, no matter well intended self deceits. There will be no constitutional crisis, only a workaround to pretend a constitution still exists:

https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2017/12/01/the-oath-and-the-trash-bin/

For those who prefer the satire:

https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2016/01/07/moot-court/^

animalogic , April 20, 2018 at 8:00 am GMT
To comprehend the internal machinations s of US politics one needs a mind capable of high level yoga or of squaring a circle. On the one hand there is a multimillion, full throttle investigation into – at best – nebulus, inconsequential links between trump/ his campaign & Russia.
On the other there is concrete evidence that the Democratic party/Clinton manipulated the primaries to destroy Clinton's challanger. That the DOJ, FBI & other alphabet agencies conspired with Clinton to equally, destroy Trump's campaign.

Naturally, its this 2nd conspiracy which is retarded. Imagine, a mere agency of a dept, the FBI, is widely considered untouchable by The President ! Indeed, they will "torch" him. AND the "the third estate" ie: the msm will support them the whole way! As a script the "The Twilight Zone" would have rejected all this as too ludicrous, too psychotic for even its broad minded viewers.

Jake , April 20, 2018 at 11:29 am GMT
The Deep State will make certain none of its most important functionaries get anything close to what they deserve.
redmudhooch , April 20, 2018 at 11:43 am GMT
Just a show, nothing will happen. Anything to keep you talking about anything other than 9/11, fake economy, fake war on terror, or Zionists..
jacques sheete , April 20, 2018 at 11:49 am GMT

And that will come especially from the mainstream media

I quit reading right there. Use of that term indicates mental laziness at best. What's mainstream about it? Please refer to corporate media in proper terms, such as PCR's "presstitute" media. Speaking of PCR, it's too bad he doesn't allow comments.

DESERT FOX , April 20, 2018 at 12:58 pm GMT
The MSM is controlled by Zionists as is the U.S. gov and the banks, so it is no surprise that the MSM protects the ones destroying America, this is what they do. Nothing of consequence will be done to any of the ones involved, it will all be covered up, as usual.
tjm , April 20, 2018 at 1:06 pm GMT
What utter nonsense. These people are ALL actors, no one will go to jail, because everything they do is contrived, no consequence for doing as your Zionist owners command.

There is no there there. This is nothing but another distraction, something o feed the dual narratives, that Clinton and her ilk are out to get Trump, and the "liberal media" will cover it up. This narrative feeds very nicely into the primary goal of driving Republicans/conservatives to support Trump, even as Trump does everything they elected him NOT TO DO!

We saw the same nonsense with Obama, the "peace president". Obama a man who never saw a Muslim he did not want to bomb or a Jew he did not want to bail out

Yet even while Obama did the work of the Zionist money machine, the media played up the fake battle between those who thought he was not born in America, "birthers" and his blind supporters.

Nothing came of any of it, just like Monica Lewinsky, nothing but theater, fill the air waves, divide the people, while America is driven insane.

anon [321] Disclaimer , April 20, 2018 at 1:49 pm GMT
The best thing about this referral is that it also demands deputy AG Rod Rosenstein the weasel to recluse himself from this case. Rosenstein is the pinnacle of corruption by the deep state. It's seriously way pass time for Jeff Sessions to grow a pair, put on his big boy pants, unrecuse himself from the Russian collusion bullshit case, fire Rosenstein and Mueller and end the case once and for all. These two traitors are in danger of completely derailing the Trump agenda and toppling the Republican majority in November, yet Jeff Sessions is still busy arresting people for marijuana, talk about missing the forest for the trees.

As far as where this referral will go from here, my guess is, nowhere. Not as long as Jeff Sessions the pussy is the AG. It's good to hear that Giuliani has now been recruited by Trump to be on his legal team. What Trump really needs to do is replace Jeff Sessions with Giuliani, or even Chris Christie, and let them do what a real AG should be doing, which is clean house in the DOJ, and prosecute the Clintons for their pay-to-play scheme with their foundation. Not only is the Clinton corruption case the biggest corruption case in US history, but this might be the only way to save the GOP from losing their majority in November.

anon [321] Disclaimer , April 20, 2018 at 1:54 pm GMT
@Greg Bacon

But it does keep the rubes entertained while the banksters continue to loot, pillage and plunder and Israel keeps getting Congress to fight their wars.

Sadly I think you're right. Things might be different if we had a real AG, but Jeff Sessions is not the man I thought he was. He's been swallowed by the deep state just like Trump. At least Trump is putting up a fight, Sessions just threw in the towel and recused himself from Day 1. Truly pathetic. Some patriot he is.

Twodees Partain , April 20, 2018 at 2:32 pm GMT
@Nick Granite

" He's ferreted out more than a few and probably has a lot better idea who his friends are he certainly knows the enemies by now."

He failed to ferret out Haley, Pompeo, or Sessions and he just recently appointed John Bolton, so I don't agree with your assessment. If his friends include those three, that says enough about Trump to make any of his earlier supporters drop him.

Anyway, not having a ready made team, or at least a solid short list of key appointees shows that he was just too clueless to have even been a serious candidate. It looks more as though Trump is doing now what he intended to do all along. That means he was bullshitting everybody during his campaign.

So, maybe the neocons really have been his friends all along.

Twodees Partain , April 20, 2018 at 2:46 pm GMT
@jacques sheete

It's also telling that Ray didn't mention what was included in the referral regarding an enforced recusal of Rosenstein going forward.

https://desantis.house.gov/_cache/files/8/0/8002ca75-52fc-4995-b87e-43584da268db/472EBC7D8F55C0F9E830D37CF96376A2.final-criminal-referral.pdf

Authenticjazzman , April 20, 2018 at 6:02 pm GMT
@Renoman

" America is a very crooked country, nothing suprises me".

Every country on this insane planet is "crooked" to a greater or lesser degree, when to a lesser degree, this is simply because they, the PTB, have not yet figured out how to accelerate, how to increase their corruption and thereby how to increase their unearned monetary holdings.

Money is the most potent singular factor which causes humans to lose their minds, and all of their ethics and decency.
And within the confines of a "socialist" system, "money" is replaced by rubber-stamps, which then wield, exactly in the manner of "wealth", the power of life or death, over the unwashed masses.

Authenticjazzman "Mensa" qualified since 1973, airborne trained US Army vet, and pro jazz musician.

anon [140] Disclaimer , April 20, 2018 at 7:24 pm GMT
@Ronald Thomas West

BTW Jeff Sessions is a fraternal brother of Pence (a member of the same club, same [recently deceased] guru) and is no friend of Trump.

That would explain why Sessions reclused himself from the start, and refused to appoint a special council to investigate the Clintons. He's in on this with Pence.

anon [140] Disclaimer , April 20, 2018 at 7:30 pm GMT
Just as it looks like the Comey memos will further exonerate Trump, we now have this farce extended by the DNC with this latest lawsuit on the "Trump campaign". The Democrats are now the most pathetic sore losers in history, they are hell bent on dragging the whole country down the pit of hell just because they can't handle a loss.
anon [140] Disclaimer , April 20, 2018 at 7:34 pm GMT
Wishful thinking that anything will come of this, just like when the Nunes memo was released. Nothing will happen as long as Jeff Sessions is AG. Trump needs to fire either Sessions or Rosenstein ASAP, before he gets dragged down by this whole Russian collusion bullshit case.
SunBakedSuburb , April 20, 2018 at 7:45 pm GMT
Former CIA Director John Brennan is the prime mover behind the ongoing coup attempt against Trump. He gathered his deep state allies at DOJ and the FBI to join him in this endeavor. Brennan's allies -- McCabe, Lynch, Strzok, Yates, ect., may or may not be aware of Brennan's true motive behind creating all the noise and distraction since the 2016 election. It could be they're just partisan hacks; or they're on board with Brennan to keep secret what was revealed in the hack of the Podesta emails.

John Podesta, in addition to being a top Democrat/DC lobbyist and a criminal deviant, is also a long-time CIA asset running a blackmail/influence operation that utilized his deviancy: the sexual exploitation of children.

Haxo Angmark , Website April 20, 2018 at 10:38 pm GMT
Seth Rich is still dead...
utu , April 20, 2018 at 11:33 pm GMT
Assange had 'physical proof' Russians didn't hack DNC, Rohrabacher says https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/19/julian-assange-has-physical-proof-russians-didnt-h/
UrbaneFrancoOntarian , April 21, 2018 at 12:18 am GMT
@anon

His cowardice is shocking. I wonder what they have on him? Probably some Roy Moore shit. Some shady stuff happened in the old South.

Ronald Thomas West , Website April 21, 2018 at 12:56 am GMT
@utu

https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2017/09/16/incompetent-espionage-wikileaks-iii/

Yeah, and General Kelly won't let Rohrabacher meet with Trump. What do you suppose is up with that (rhetorical question)

RobinG , April 21, 2018 at 1:02 am GMT
@utu

What kind of "physical proof" could Assange have? A thumb drive that was provably American, or something? Rohrabacher only got Red Pilled on Russia because he had one very determined (and well heeled) constituent. But he did cosponsor one of Tulsi Gabbard's "Stop Funding Terrorists" bills, which he figured out on his own. Nevertheless, a bit of a loose cannon and an eff'd up hawk on Iran He's probably an 'ISIS now, Assad later' on Syria.

anonymous [185] Disclaimer , April 21, 2018 at 2:36 am GMT
I noticed Comey tried to pull a J Edgar-style subtle blackmail on Trump by the way he brought up the so-called "dossier". Anyone could see it was absurd but he played his hand with it, pretending it was being looked at. I would say Trump could see through this sleazy game Comey was trying to play and sized him up. Comey is about as slimy as they get even as he parades around trying to look noble. What a corrupt bunch.
Culloden , April 21, 2018 at 2:45 am GMT
"The culprit has swayed with the immediate need for a villain "

[What follows is excerpted from an article headlined Robert Mueller's Questionable Past that appeared yesterday on the American Free Press website:]

During his tenure with the Justice Department under President George H W Bush, Mueller supervised the prosecutions of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, the Lockerbie bombing (Pan Am Flight 103) case, and Gambino crime boss John Gotti. In the Noriega case, Mueller ignored the ties to the Bush family that Victor Thorn illustrated in Hillary (and Bill): The Drugs Volume: Part Two of the Clinton Trilogy. Noriega had long been associated with CIA operations that involved drug smuggling, money laundering, and arms running. Thorn significantly links Noriega to Bush family involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Regarding Pan Am Flight 103, the culprit has swayed with the immediate need for a villain. Pro-Palestinian activists, Libyans, and Iranians have all officially been blamed when US intelligence and the mainstream mass media needed to paint each as the antagonist to American freedom. Mueller toed the line, publicly ignoring rumors that agents onboard were said to have learned that a CIA drug-smuggling operation was afoot in conjunction with Pan Am flights. According to the theory, the agents were going to take their questions to Congress upon landing. The flight blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland.

http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/

"We were in Libya for oil" (only). Who said that:

http://www.firmmagazine.com

Bennis Mardens , April 21, 2018 at 2:47 am GMT
Without exception, leftists are degenerate filth.

But they won't be going to jail.

It's kabuki theater.

Art , April 21, 2018 at 5:21 am GMT
My god – who believes this woman?

Hillary says "they would never let me be president" – she is serious. She has gone bonkers with self-pity.

This is no longer laughable – it boarders on the pathological.

Art

WhiteWolf , April 21, 2018 at 5:39 am GMT
@Bennis Mardens

There has been some former high flyers going to jail recently. Sarkozy is facing a hard time at the moment. If it can happen to a former president of France it can happen to Hillary.

Stonehands , April 21, 2018 at 6:20 am GMT
@Twodees Partain

I still read ZH articles, but the commentariat has devolved to lockeroom towel-snapping, barely above YouTube chattering.

Stonehands , April 21, 2018 at 6:42 am GMT
@Ronald Thomas West

Ronald, thank-you for posting this Doug Coe sermon; l have never heard of him. BTW are you a Christian?

Stonehands , April 21, 2018 at 7:56 am GMT
@Ronald Thomas West

Ronald, thank-you for posting this Doug Coe sermon; l have never heard of him. BTW are you a Christian?

Twodees Partain , April 21, 2018 at 10:11 am GMT
@Culloden

Here's another about Mueller's involvement with the FBI's Whitey Bulger scandal.

https://saraacarter.com/questions-still-surround-robert-muellers-boston-past/

Mueller's past is so laden with misfeasance and malfeasance that he should have been disbarred a few decades ago.

Ronald Thomas West , Website April 21, 2018 at 1:14 pm GMT
@Stonehands

Am I a Christian? Well, no. I had some exposure to Christianity but it never took hold. On the other hand, I do believe there was a historical Jesus that was a remarkable man, but there is a world (or universe) of difference between the man and the mythology. Here's some of my thoughts on the matter:

https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2013/04/11/celebrating-the-anti-christ/

^ It doesn't necessarily go where the title might suggest (for many)

CIA in Charge , April 21, 2018 at 1:58 pm GMT
@Authenticjazzman

Nothing uncanny about it. There's a frenetic Democratic cottage industry inferring magical emotional charisma powers that explain the outsized influence of those three. The fact is very simple. All three are CIA nomenklatura.

(1.) Bill Clinton got recruited into CIA by Cord Meyer, who bragged of it himself in his cups.

(2.) Hillary cut her teeth on CIA's Watergate purge of Nixon. (If it's news to anyone that the Watergate cast of characters was straight out of CIA central casting, Russ Baker has conclusively tied the elaborate ratfeck to the intelligence community.)

(3.) Obama was son of spooks, grandson of spooks, greased in to Harvard by Alwaleed bin-Talal's bagman. While he was vocationally wet behind the ears he not only got into Pakistan, no mean feat at the time, but he went to a falconry outing with the future acting president of Pakistan. And is there anyone alive who wasn't flabbergasted at the instant universal acclaim for some empty suit who made a speech at the convention? Like Bill Clinton, successor to DCI Bush, Obama was blatantly, derisively installed in the president slot of the CIA org chart.

Authenticjazzman , April 21, 2018 at 6:06 pm GMT
@CIA in Charge

Excellent post and quite accurate information, however my point being that the irrational fear harbored by the individuals who could actually begin to rope these scumbags in, is just that : Irrational, as they seem to think or have been lead/brainwashed to believe that these dissolute turds are somehow endowed with supernatural, otherworldy powers and options, and that they are capable of unholy , merciless vengeance : VF, SR, etc.

And the truth is as soon as they finally start to go after them they, they will fall apart at the seams, such as with all cowards, and this is the bottom line : They, the BC/HC/BO clique, they are nothing more than consumate cowards, who can only operate in such perfidious manners when left unchallenged.

Authenticjazzman "Mensa" qualified since 1973, airborne trained US Army vet, and pro Jazz artist.

[Apr 13, 2018] The End of International Law by Thierry Meyssan

Notable quotes:
"... Bill Clinton attacked Yugoslavia, blithely violating Internal Law. George Bush Jr. did the same by attacking Iraq, and Barack Obama by attacking Libya and Syria. As for Donald Trump, he has never hidden his distrust of supra-national rules. ..."
"... " Globalisation ", in other words the " globalisation of Anglo-Saxon values ", has created a class society between states. ..."
"... " Communication ", a new name for " propaganda ", has become the imperative in international relations. From the US Secretary of State brandishing a phial of pseudo-anthrax to the British Minister for Foreign Affairs lying about the origin of Novitchok in the Salisbury affair, lies have become the substitute for respect, and cause general mistrust. ..."
"... Russia is wondering today about the possible desire of the Western powers to block the United Nations. If this is so, it would create an alternative institution, but there would no longer be a forum which would enable the two blocks to discuss matters. ..."
Apr 13, 2018 | www.voltairenet.org

o the Western powers hope to put an end to the constraints of International Law? That is the question asked by the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sergueï Lavrov, at the Moscow conference on International Security [ 1 ].

Over the last few years, Washington has been promoting the concept of " unilateralism ". International Law and the United Nations are supposed to bow to the power of the United States.

This concept of political life is born of the History of the United States - the colonists who came to the Americas intended to live as they chose and make a fortune there. Each community developed its own laws and refused the intervention of a central government in local affairs. The President and the Federal Congress are charged with Defense and Foreign Affairs, but like the citizens themselves, they refused to accept an authority above their own.

Bill Clinton attacked Yugoslavia, blithely violating Internal Law. George Bush Jr. did the same by attacking Iraq, and Barack Obama by attacking Libya and Syria. As for Donald Trump, he has never hidden his distrust of supra-national rules.

Making an allusion to the Cebrowski-Barnett doctrine [ 2 ], Sergueï Lavrov declared: " We have the clear impression that the United States seek to maintain a state of controlled chaos in this immense geopolitical area [the Near East], hoping to use it to justify the military presence of the USA in the region, without any time limit, in order to promote their own agenda ".

The United Kingdom also seem to feel quite comfortable with breaking the Law. Last month, it accused Moscow in the " Skripal affair ", without the slightest proof, and attempted to unite a majority of the General Assembly of the UN to exclude Russia from the Security Council. It would of course be easier for the Anglo-Saxons to unilaterally rewrite the Law without having to take notice of the opinions of their opponents.

Moscow does not believe that London took this initiative. It considers that Washington is calling the shots.

" Globalisation ", in other words the " globalisation of Anglo-Saxon values ", has created a class society between states. But we should not confuse this new problem with the existence of the right to a veto. Of course, the UNO, while it declares equality between states whatever their size, distinguishes, within the Security Council, five permanent members who have a veto. This Directorate, composed of the main victors of the Second World War, is a necessity for them to accept the principle of supra-national Law. However, when this Directorate fails to embody the Law, the General Assembly may take its place. At least in theory, because the smaller states which vote against a greater state are obliged to suffer retaliatory measures.

La " globalisation of Anglo-Saxon values " ignores honour and highlights profit, so that the weight of the propositions by any state will be measured only by the economic development of its country. However, over the years, three states have managed to gain an audience to the foundations of their propositions, and not in function of their economy – they are the Iran of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (today under house arrest in his own country), the Venezuela of Hugo Chávez, and the Holy See.

The confusion engendered by Anglo-Saxon values has led to the financing of intergovernmental organisations with private money. As one thing leads to another, the member states of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), for example, have progressively abandoned their propositional power to the profit of private telecom operators, who are united in a " consultative committee ".

" Communication ", a new name for " propaganda ", has become the imperative in international relations. From the US Secretary of State brandishing a phial of pseudo-anthrax to the British Minister for Foreign Affairs lying about the origin of Novitchok in the Salisbury affair, lies have become the substitute for respect, and cause general mistrust.

During the first years of its creation, the UNO attempted to forbid " war propaganda ", but today, it is the permanent members of the Security Council who indulge in it.

The worst occurred in 2012, when Washington managed to obtain the nomination of one of its worst war-hawks, Jeffrey Feltman, as the number 2 of the UNO [ 3 ]. From that date onward, wars have been orchestrated in New York by the very institution that is supposed to prevent them.

Russia is wondering today about the possible desire of the Western powers to block the United Nations. If this is so, it would create an alternative institution, but there would no longer be a forum which would enable the two blocks to discuss matters.

Just as a society which falls into chaos, where men are wolves for men when deprived of the Law, so the world will become a battle-field if it abandons International Law. Thierry Meyssan

[Apr 01, 2018] All the President s Women by Andrew Levine

This is probably the most vicious attack on Trump trangressions that i encountered so far...
Notable quotes:
"... The problem for Trump is that what his accusers are saying puts him in legal and political jeopardy. They are claiming, in effect, that he has committed a variety of unlawful and impeachable offenses – from obstruction of justice to violations of campaign finance laws. ..."
"... The Clinton-Lewinsky dalliance led to a series of events that prevented Clinton from doing even more harm to our feeble welfare state institutions than he would otherwise have done. ..."
"... Fire and Fury ..."
Apr 01, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org

There is no doubt about it: Stormy Daniels is a formidable woman. Karen McDougal is no slouch either, though she is hard to admire after that riff, in her Anderson Cooper interview, about how religious and Republican she is; she even said that she used to love the Donald. Stormy Daniels is better than that.

How wonderfully appropriate it would be if she were to become the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.

Even in a world as topsy-turvy as ours has become, there has to be a final straw.

To be sure, evidence of Trump's vileness, incompetence, and mental instability is accumulating at breakneck speed, and there are polls now that show support for him holding fast or even slightly rising. Trump's hardcore "base" seems more determined than ever to stand by their man.

But even people as benighted as they are bound to realize eventually that they have been had. Many of them already do, but don't care; they hate Clinton Democrats that much. This is understandable, but foolish; so foolish, in fact, that they can hardly keep it up indefinitely.

To think otherwise is to despair for the human race.

What, if anything, can bring them to their senses in time for the 2018 election?

Stormy Daniels says she only wants to tell her story, not bring Trump down. But her political instincts seem decent, and she is one shrewd lady. Therefore, I would not be the least surprised if that is not quite true. It hardly matters, though, what her intentions are; I'd put my money on her.

A recession might also do the trick. A recession is long overdue, and Trump's tax cut for the rich and his tariffs are sure to make its consequences worse when it happens.

To turn significant portions of Trump's base against him, a major military conflagration might also do -- not the kind Barack Obama favored, fought far away and out of public view, but a real war, televised on CNN, and waged against an enemy state like North Korea or Iran. It would have to go quickly and disastrously wrong, though, in ways that even willfully blind, terminally obtuse Trump supporters could not fail to see.

Or the gods could smile upon us, causing Trump's exercise regimen (sitting in golf carts) and his fat-ridden, cholesterol rich diet to catch up with him, as it would with most other sedentary septuagenarians. The only downside would be that a heart attack or stroke might elicit sympathy for the poor bastard. No sane person could or should hope for a calamitous economic downturn or for yet another devastating, pointless, and manifestly unjust war, especially one that could become a war to end all wars (along with everything else), on the off-chance that some good might come of it. And if the best we can do is hope that cheeseburgers with fries will save us, we are grasping at straws.

These are compelling reasons to hope that the accusations made by Daniels and McDougal and Summer Zervos – and other consensual and non-consensual Trump victims and "playmates" – gain traction. If the several defamation lawsuits now in the works can get the president deposed, this is not out of the question.

The problem for Trump is not that his accusers' revelations will cause his base to defect; no matter how salacious their stories and no matter how believable they may be. Trump's moral turpitude is taken for granted in their circles; and they do not care about the myriad ways his words and deeds offend the dignity of the office he holds or embarrass the country he purports to put "first." If any of that mattered to them, they would have jumped ship long ago.

Except perhaps for unreconstructed racists and certifiable sociopaths, white evangelicals are Trump's strongest supporters. What a despicable bunch of hypocrites they are! As long as Trump delivers on their agendas, his salacious escapades don't faze them at all. Godly folk have evidently changed a good deal since the Cotton Mather days.

What has not changed is their seemingly limitless ability to believe nonsense.

And in case light somehow does manage to shine through, Trump has shown them how to restore the darkness they crave. When cognitive dissonance threatens, all they need do is scream "fake news."

The problem for Trump is that what his accusers are saying puts him in legal and political jeopardy. They are claiming, in effect, that he has committed a variety of unlawful and impeachable offenses – from obstruction of justice to violations of campaign finance laws.

In this case as in so many others, it is the cover-up, not the underlying "crime," that could lead to his undoing – especially if the stories Daniels and the others are telling shed light upon or otherwise connect with or meld into Robert Mueller's investigation of (alleged) Russian "meddling" in the 2016 election.

Trump could and probably will survive their charges. His base is such a preternaturally obdurate lot that there may ultimately be no last straw for them. We may have no choice, in the end, but to despair for a sizeable chunk of the human race.

Stormy Daniels would not be any less admirable on that account. She took Trump on and came out on top. For all the world (minus the willfully blind) to see, she, the porn star, is a strong woman who has her life together, while he, the president, is a discombobulated sleaze ball who is leading himself and his country to ruin.

***

It was different with Monica Lewinsky, another presidential paramour who, almost two decades ago, also held the world's attention.

There was nothing sleazy or venal about Lewinsky's involvement with Bill Clinton; and, for all I know, unless chastity counts, she is as good and virtuous a person as can be. But personal qualities are not what made her affair with our forty-second president as historically significant as it turned out to be.

It would be fair to say that of all the women who have ever had intimate knowledge of that old horn dog's private parts, there is no one who did more good for her country. If only for that, if there were a heaven, there would be special place in it just for her.

The Clinton-Lewinsky dalliance led to a series of events that prevented Clinton from doing even more harm to our feeble welfare state institutions than he would otherwise have done.

Who knows how much progress he would have turned back had he and Monica never done the deed or at least not been found out. Building on groundwork laid down by Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush, he and his wife had already terminated Aid to Families With Dependent Children, one of the main government programs aimed at relieving poverty. This was to be just the first step in "ending welfare as we know it."

With their "donors" pushing for more austerity, those two neoliberal pioneers were itching to begin privatizing other, more widely supported social programs, including even Social Security, the so-called "third rail" of American politics.

The "Lewinsky matter" put the kybosh on that idea, leaving the American people forever in Monica's debt.

Back in the Kennedy days, Mel Brook's two-thousand year old man got it right when he said: presidents "gotta do it," to which he added – " because if they don't do it to their wives and girlfriends, they do it to the nation."

Stormy Daniels made much the same point ten years ago, while flirting with the idea of running against Louisiana Senator David Vitter. Vitter's political career had been almost ruined when his name turned up in the phone records of the infamous "DC Madam," Deborah Jeane Palfrey. Daniels told voters that, unlike Vitter, she would "screw (them) honestly."

What then are we to make of the fact that Trump screws both the nation and his wife (maybe) and his girlfriends (or whatever they are)?

Blame it on arrested development, on the fact that despite his more than seventy-one years, Trump still has the mind of a teenage boy, one with money and power enough to live out his fantasies.

The contrast with Bill Clinton is stark. Clinton is a philanderer with eclectic tastes, a charming rascal with a broad and mischievous mind. Honkytonk women from Arkansas appeal to him as much as zaftig MOTs from the 90210 area code.

Trump, on the other hand, goes for super-models, Playboy centerfolds, and aspiring beauty queens -- standard teenage fantasy fare.

He seems to have had little trouble living his dreams – not thanks to his magnetic face, form and figure, and certainly not to his refinement, wit or charm, but to his inherited and otherwise ill-gotten wealth.

It is money and the power that follows from it that draws women to his net.

Henry Kissinger understood; recall his musings on the aphrodisiacal properties of power. Even in his prime, that still unindicted war criminal (and later-day Hillary Clinton advisor) was even more repellent than Trump. But that never kept him from having to fight the ladies off.

This fact of life puts a heavy responsibility on the women with whom presidents hook up.

Consider Melania. She made a Faustian bargain when she agreed to become Trump's trophy bride; in return for riches and a soft life in a gilded tower, she sold her soul. She might have thought better of it had she taken the burdens she would incur as First Lady into account, but why would she? The prospect was too improbable.

She has, it seems, a very practical, old world view of marriage, and is therefore tolerant of her husband's womanizing. At the same time, as a mother and daughter, she is, like most immigrants, a strong proponent of old world "family values."

Too much of a proponent perhaps; insofar as her idea was to "chain migrate" her parents out of Slovenia and onto Easy Street, or to raise a kid who would never want for anything, there were less onerous ways of going about it. After all, there are plenty of rich Americans lusting after supermodels out there, and it is a good bet that many of them are less repellent than Trump.

She was irresponsible as well. She ought to have realized that the man she married had already spawned two idiot sons, along with other fruit from the poisonous tree, and that four bad apples in one generation are enough.

And so now she finds herself a single mother – not in theory, of course, but very definitely in practice. Unlike most women in that position, she is not wanting for resources. But it must be a hard slog, even so. To her credit, Melania seems to be handling the burden well. More power to her!

She also deserves credit for her body language when the Donald is around; the contempt she shows for him is wonderful to behold. Best of all is her sense of the absurd. The way she plagiarized from Michelle Obama had obvious comic validity, and making childhood bullying her First Lady cause – all First Ladies have causes -- was a stroke of genius.

On balance, therefore, it is hard not to feel sorry for her. Of all the women in Trump's ambit, she deserves humiliation the least.

The rumor mill has it that with all the publicity about Daniels and the others , she has finally had enough. This may be the case; the old world ethos requires discretion and a concern with appearances. That is not the Donald's way, however, and now she is paying the price.

What a magnificent humiliation it would be if she and Trump were to split up on that account. This could happen soon. I would expect, though, that through a combination of carrots and sticks, Trump and his fixers will find a way to minimize the political effects. More likely still, they will channel Joe Kennedy and Jackie O, and figure out a way to head the problem off.

Then there is poor forgotten Tiffany. Her Wikipedia entry lists her as both a law student and a "socialite." I hope her studious side wins out and that, despite the genes from her father's side, she is at least somewhat decent and smart.

I'd be more confident of that if she would do what Ronald Reagan's daughter, Patti, did: use her mother's, not her father's, name. Unless she is a sleaze ball too, a Trump in the Eric and Don Junior mold, that would be a fine way to make a political point.

It would also pay back over the years. With the Trump administration on its current trajectory, who, in a few years' time, would take a Tiffany Trump seriously? A Tiffany Maples would stand a better chance.

Her half-sister, the peerless Ivanka, the Great Blonde Hope, is, of course, her father's sweetie. Let's not go there, however. Her marriage to Jared Kushner is already enough to process.

What a pair those two make; and what a glorious day it will be when the law finally catches up with Jared, as it did with his Trump-like father, Charles. Perhaps he will take Ivanka down a notch or two with him. Despite an almost complete lack of qualifications, Trump made his son-in-law his minister of almost everything; a pretty good gig for a feckless, airhead rich kid. Among other things, Trump enabled him to become Benjamin Netanyahu's ace in the hole. Netanyahu is a Kushner family friend. Netanyahu has more than his share of legal troubles too. Let them all go down together!

Ivanka and Jared are well matched – they share a "business model." It has them exploiting their daddies' connections and money.

Jared peddles real estate; his efforts have gotten his family into serious debt, while putting him in solid with Russian and Eastern European oligarchs, Gulf state emirs, and Mohammad bin Salman – people in comparison with whom his father-in-law seems almost virtuous.

Ivanka sells trinkets and schmatas to people who think the Trump name is cool. There actually are such people; at two hundred grand a pop, Mar-a-Lago is full of them. Ivanka's demographic is made up mostly of their younger set.

Two other presidential women bare mention: Hope Hicks and Nikki Haley. Surely, they both have tales to tell, but it looks, for now, as if their stories would be of little or no prurient interest. Neither of them appear to have been propositioned or groped.

Even though Hicks is said to be like a daughter to the Donald – we know what that could mean! – it is a safe bet that there was nothing of a romantic nature going on between them. For one thing, Hicks seems too close to Ivanka; for another, she is known to have dallied with two Trump subordinates, Corey Lewandowski and Rob Porter. The don is hardly the type to let his underlings have at his women.

Haley had to quash a spate of rumors that flared up thanks to some suggestive remarks Michael Wolff made while hawking Fire and Fury . The rumor caught on because people who hadn't yet fully realized what a piece of work Trump is, imagined that something had to be awry inasmuch as her main qualification for representing the United States at the United Nations was an undergraduate degree in accounting. Abject servility to the Israel lobby also helped.

But the Trump administration is full of ambitious miscreants whose views on Israel and Palestine are as abject and servile as hers, and compared to many others in Trump's cabinet she is, if anything, over qualified. Think of neurosurgeon Ben Carson heading the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He is qualified because, as a child, he lived in public housing.

With the exception of Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, Summer Zervos and whoever else comes forward with a juicy and credible tale to tell, the women currently in the president's ambit, though good for gossip and interesting in the ways that characters on reality TV shows can be, are of little or no political consequence.

This could change if any of them decides to "go rogue," to use an expression from the Sarah Palin days. But, while neither Melania nor Tiffany can yet be judged hopeless, it would be foolish to expect much of anything good to come from either of them.

Stormy, Karen, Summer, and whoever else steps forward are a better bet. They are the only ones with any chance of doing as much for their country and the world as Monica Lewinsky did a generation ago.

Among the president's women, they are a breed apart. This is plainly the case with Stormy Daniels; it is already clear that she deserves what all Trump's money can never buy – honor and esteem. To the extent that the others turn out to be similarly courageous, they will too.

[Apr 01, 2018] Big American Money, Not Russia, Put Trump in the White House: Reflections on a Recent Report by Paul Street

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Running against what she (wrongly) perceived (along with most election prognosticators) as a doomed and feckless opponent and as the clear preferred candidate of Wall Street and the intimately related U.S foreign policy elite , including many leading Neoconservatives put off by Trump's isolationist and anti-interventionist rhetoric, the "lying neoliberal warmonger" Hillary Clinton arrogantly figured that she could garner enough votes to win without having to ruffle any ruling-class feathers. ..."
"... Smart Wall Street and K Street Democratic Party bankrollers have long understood that Democratic candidates have to cloak their dollar-drenched corporatism in the deceptive campaign discourse of progressive- and even populist-sounding policy promise to win elections. ..."
"... Trump trailed well behind Clinton in contributions from defense and aerospace – a lack of support extraordinary for a Republican presidential hopeful late in the race. ..."
"... one fateful consequence of trying to appeal to so many conservative business interests was strategic silence about most important matters of public policy. Given the candidate's steady lead in the polls, there seemed to be no point to rocking the boat with any more policy pronouncements than necessary ..."
"... Misgivings of major contributors who worried that the Clinton campaign message lacked real attractions for ordinary Americans were rebuffed. The campaign sought to capitalize on the angst within business by vigorously courting the doubtful and undecideds there, not in the electorate ..."
"... Of course, Bill and Hillary helped trail-blaze that plutocratic "New Democrat" turn in Arkansas during the late 1970s and 1980s. The rest, as they say, was history – an ugly corporate-neoliberal, imperial, and racist history that I and others have written about at great length. ..."
"... My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency ..."
"... Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton ..."
"... The Condemnation of Little B: New Age Racism in America ..."
"... Still, Trump's success was no less tied to big money than was Hillary's failure. Candidate Trump ran strangely outside the longstanding neoliberal Washington Consensus, as an economic nationalist and isolationist. His raucous rallies were laced with dripping denunciations of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, and globalization, mockery of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, rejection of the New Cold War with Russia, and pledges of allegiance to the "forgotten" American "working-class." He was no normal Republican One Percent candidate. ..."
"... Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache ..."
"... "In a frontal assault on the American establishment, the Republican standard bearer proclaimed 'America First.' Mocking the Bush administration's appeal to 'weapons of mass destruction' as a pretext for invading Iraq, he broke dramatically with two generations of GOP orthodoxy and spoke out in favor of more cooperation with Russia . He even criticized the 'carried interest' tax break beloved by high finance" (emphasis added). ..."
"... "What happened in the final weeks of the campaign was extraordinary. Firstly, a giant wave of dark money poured into Trump's own campaign – one that towered over anything in 2016 or even Mitt Romney's munificently financed 2012 effort – to say nothing of any Russian Facebook experiments [Then] another gigantic wave of money flowed in from alarmed business interests, including the Kochs and their allies Officially the money was for Senate races, but late-stage campaigning for down-ballot offices often spills over on to candidates for the party at large." ..."
"... "In a harbinger of things to come, additional money came from firms and industries that appear to have been attracted by Trump's talk of tariffs, including steel and companies making machinery of various types [a] vast wave of new money flowed into the campaign from some of America's biggest businesses and most famous investors. Sheldon Adelson and many others in the casino industry delivered in grand style for its old colleague. Adelson now delivered more than $11 million in his own name, while his wife and other employees of his Las Vegas Sands casino gave another $20 million. ..."
"... Peter Theil contributed more than a million dollars, while large sums also rolled in from other parts of Silicon Valley, including almost two million dollars from executives at Microsoft and just over two million from executives at Cisco Systems. ..."
"... Among those were Nelson Peltz and Carl Icahn (who had both contributed to Trump before, but now made much bigger new contributions). In the end, along with oil, chemicals, mining and a handful of other industries, large private equity firms would become one of the few segments of American business – and the only part of Wall Street – where support for Trump was truly heavy the sudden influx of money from private equity and hedge funds clearly began with the Convention but turned into a torrent " ..."
"... The critical late wave came after Trump moved to rescue his flagging campaign by handing its direction over to the clever, class-attuned, far-right white- and economic- nationalist "populist" and Breitbart executive Steve Bannon, who advocated what proved to be a winning, Koch brothers-approved "populist" strategy: appeal to economically and culturally frustrated working- and middle-class whites in key battleground states, where the bloodless neoliberal and professional class centrism and snooty metropolitan multiculturalism of the Obama presidency and Clinton campaign was certain to depress the Democratic "base" vote ..."
"... Neither turnout nor the partisan division of the vote at any level looks all that different from other recent elections 2016's alterations in voting behavior are so minute that the pattern is only barely differentiated from 2012." ..."
"... An interesting part of FJC's study (no quick or easy read) takes a close look at the pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Internet activism that the Democrats and their many corporate media allies are so insistently eager to blame on Russia and for Hillary's defeat. FJC find that Russian Internet interventions were of tiny significance compared to those of homegrown U.S. corporate and right-wing cyber forces: ..."
"... By 2016, the Republican right had developed internet outreach and political advertising into a fine art and on a massive scale quite on its own. ..."
"... Breitbart and other organizations were in fact going global, opening offices abroad and establishing contacts with like-minded groups elsewhere. Whatever the Russians were up to, they could hardly hope to add much value to the vast Made in America bombardment already underway. Nobody sows chaos like Breitbart or the Drudge Report ." ..."
"... no support from Big Business ..."
"... Sanders pushed Hillary the Goldman candidate to the wall, calling out the Democrats' capture by Wall Street, forcing her to rely on a rigged party, convention, and primary system to defeat him. The small-donor "socialist" Sanders challenge represented something Ferguson and his colleagues describe as "without precedent in American politics not just since the New Deal, but across virtually the whole of American history a major presidential candidate waging a strong, highly competitive campaign whose support from big business is essentially zero ." ..."
"... American Oligarchy ..."
"... teleSur English ..."
"... we had no great electoral democracy to subvert in 2016 ..."
"... Only candidates and positions that can be financed can be presented to voters. As a result, in countries like the US and, increasingly, Western Europe, political parties are first of all bank accounts . With certain qualifications, one must pay to play. Understanding any given election, therefore, requires a financial X-ray of the power blocs that dominate the major parties, with both inter- and intra- industrial analysis of their constituent elements." ..."
"... Elections alone are no guarantee of democracy, as U.S. policymakers and pundits know very well when they rip on rigged elections (often fixed with the assistance of U.S. government and private-sector agents and firms) in countries they don't like ..."
"... Majority opinion is regularly trumped by a deadly complex of forces in the U.S. ..."
"... Trump is a bit of an anomaly – a sign of an elections and party system in crisis and an empire in decline. He wasn't pre-approved or vetted by the usual U.S. " deep state " corporate, financial, and imperial gatekeepers. The ruling-class had been trying to figure out what the Hell to do with him ever since he shocked even himself (though not Steve Bannon) by pre-empting the coronation of the "Queen of Chaos." ..."
"... His lethally racist, sexist, nativist, nuclear-weapons-brandishing, and (last but not at all least) eco-cidal rise to the nominal CEO position atop the U.S.-imperial oligarchy is no less a reflection of the dominant role of big U.S. capitalist money and homegrown plutocracy in U.S. politics than a more classically establishment Hillary ascendancy would have been. It's got little to do with Russia, Russia, Russia – the great diversion that fills U.S. political airwaves and newsprint as the world careens ever closer to oligarchy-imposed geocide and to a thermonuclear conflagration that the RussiaGate gambit is recklessly encouraging. ..."
Mar 30, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org

"She Doesn't Have Any Policy Positions"

On the Friday after the Chicago Cubs won the World Series and prior to the Tuesday on which the vicious racist and sexist Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, Bernie Sanders spoke to a surprisingly small crowd in Iowa City on behalf of Hillary Clinton. As I learned months later, Sanders told one of his Iowa City friends that day that Mrs. Clinton was in trouble. The reason, Sanders reported, was that Hillary wasn't discussing issues or advancing real solutions. "She doesn't have any policy positions," Sanders said.

The first time I heard this, I found it hard to believe. How, I wondered, could anyone run seriously for the presidency without putting issues and policy front and center? Wouldn't any serious campaign want a strong set of issue and policy positions to attract voters and fall back on in case and times of adversity?

Sanders wasn't lying. As the esteemed political scientist and money-politics expert Thomas Ferguson and his colleagues Paul Jorgensen and Jie Chen note in an important study released by the Institute for New Economic Thinking two months ago, the Clinton campaign "emphasized candidate and personal issues and avoided policy discussions to a degree without precedent in any previous election for which measurements exist .it stressed candidate qualifications [and] deliberately deemphasized issues in favor of concentrating on what the campaign regarded as [Donald] Trump's obvious personal weaknesses as a candidate."

Strange as it might have seemed, the reality television star and presidential pre-apprentice Donald Trump had a lot more to say about policy than the former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a wonkish Yale Law graduate.

"Courting the Undecideds in Business, not in the Electorate"

What was that about? My first suspicion was that Hillary's policy silence was about the money. It must have reflected her success in building a Wall Street-filled campaign funding war-chest so daunting that she saw little reason to raise capitalist election investor concerns by giving voice to the standard fake-progressive "hope" and "change" campaign and policy rhetoric Democratic presidential contenders typically deploy against their One Percent Republican opponents. Running against what she (wrongly) perceived (along with most election prognosticators) as a doomed and feckless opponent and as the clear preferred candidate of Wall Street and the intimately related U.S foreign policy elite , including many leading Neoconservatives put off by Trump's isolationist and anti-interventionist rhetoric, the "lying neoliberal warmonger" Hillary Clinton arrogantly figured that she could garner enough votes to win without having to ruffle any ruling-class feathers. She would cruise into the White House with no hurt plutocrat feelings simply by playing up the ill-prepared awfulness of her Republican opponent.

If Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Chen (hereafter "JFC") are right, I was on to something but not the whole money and politics story. Smart Wall Street and K Street Democratic Party bankrollers have long understood that Democratic candidates have to cloak their dollar-drenched corporatism in the deceptive campaign discourse of progressive- and even populist-sounding policy promise to win elections. Sophisticated funders get it that the Democratic candidates' need to manipulate the electorate with phony pledges of democratic transformation. The big money backers know it's "just politics" on the part of candidates who can be trusted to serve elite interests (like Bill Clinton 1993-2001 and Barack Obama 2009-2017 ) after they gain office.

What stopped Hillary from playing the usual game – the "manipulation of populism by elitism" that Christopher Hitchens once called "the essence of American politics" – in 2016, a year when the electorate was in a particularly angry and populist mood? FJC's study is titled " Industrial Structure and Party Competition in an Age of Hunger Games : Donald Trump and the 2016 Presidential Election." It performs heroic empirical work with difficult campaign finance data to show that Hillary's campaign funding success went beyond her party's usual corporate and financial backers to include normally Republican-affiliated capitalist sectors less disposed than their more liberal counterparts to abide the standard progressive-sounding policy rhetoric of Democratic Party candidates. FJC hypothesize that (along with the determination that Trump was too weak to be taken all that seriously) Hillary's desire get and keep on board normally Republican election investors led her to keep quiet on issues and policy concerns that mattered to everyday people. As FJC note:

"Trump trailed well behind Clinton in contributions from defense and aerospace – a lack of support extraordinary for a Republican presidential hopeful late in the race. For Clinton's campaign the temptation was irresistible: Over time it slipped into a variant of the strategy [Democrat] Lyndon Johnson pursued in 1964 in the face of another [Republican] candidate [Barry Goldwater] who seemed too far out of the mainstream to win: Go for a grand coalition with most of big business . one fateful consequence of trying to appeal to so many conservative business interests was strategic silence about most important matters of public policy. Given the candidate's steady lead in the polls, there seemed to be no point to rocking the boat with any more policy pronouncements than necessary . Misgivings of major contributors who worried that the Clinton campaign message lacked real attractions for ordinary Americans were rebuffed. The campaign sought to capitalize on the angst within business by vigorously courting the doubtful and undecideds there, not in the electorate " (emphasis added). Hillary Happened

FJC may well be right that a wish not to antagonize off right-wing campaign funders is what led Hillary to muzzle herself on important policy matters, but who really knows? An alternative theory I would not rule out is that Mrs. Clinton's own deep inner conservatism was sufficient to spark her to gladly dispense with the usual progressive-sounding campaign boilerplate. Since FJC bring up the Johnson-Goldwater election, it is perhaps worth mentioning that 18-year old Hillary was a "Goldwater Girl" who worked for the arch-reactionary Republican presidential candidate in 1964. Asked about that episode on National Public Radio (NPR) in 1996 , then First Lady Hillary said "That's right. And I feel like my political beliefs are rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with. I don't recognize this new brand of Republicanism that is afoot now, which I consider to be very reactionary, not conservative in many respects. I am very proud that I was a Goldwater girl."

It was a revealing reflection. The right-wing Democrat Hillary acknowledged that her ideological world view was still rooted in the conservatism of her family of origin. Her problem with the reactionary Republicanism afoot in the U.S. during the middle 1990s was that it was "not conservative in many respects." Her problem with the far-right Republican Congressional leaders Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay was that they were betraying true conservatism – "the conservatism [Hillary] was raised with." This was worse even than the language of the Democratic Leadership Conference (DLC) – the right-wing Eisenhower Republican (at leftmost) tendency that worked to push the Democratic Party further to the Big Business-friendly right and away from its working-class and progressive base.

Of course, Bill and Hillary helped trail-blaze that plutocratic "New Democrat" turn in Arkansas during the late 1970s and 1980s. The rest, as they say, was history – an ugly corporate-neoliberal, imperial, and racist history that I and others have written about at great length. (I cannot reprise here the voluminous details of Mrs. Clinton's longstanding alignment with the corporate, financial, and imperial agendas of the rich and powerful. Two short and highly readable volumes are Doug Henwood, My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency [OR Books, 2015]; Diana Johnstone, Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton [CounterPunch Books, 2015]. On the stealth, virulent racism of the Clintons in power, see Elaine Brown's classic volume The Condemnation of Little B: New Age Racism in America [2003].)

What happened? Horrid corporate Hillary happened. And she's still happening. The "lying neoliberal warmonger" recently went to India to double down on her "progressive neoliberal" contempt for the "basket of deplorables" (more on that phrase below) that considers poor stupid and backwards middle America to be by saying this : "If you look at the map of the United States, there's all that red in the middle where Trump won. I win the coasts. But what the map doesn't show you is that I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's gross domestic product (GDP). So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward" (emphasis added).

That was Hillary Goldman Sachs-Council on Foreign Relations-Clinton saying "go to Hell" to working- and middle-class people in Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Indiana, and West Virginia. It was a raised middle and oligarchic finger from a super-wealthy arch-global-corporatist to all the supposedly pessimistic, slow-witted, and retrograde losers stuck between those glorious enclaves (led by Wall Street, Yale, and Harvard on the East coast and Silicon Valley and Hollywood on the West coast) of human progress and variety (and GDP!) on the imperial shorelines. Senate Minority Leader Dick Durbin had to go on television to say that Hillary was "wrong" to write off most of the nation as a festering cesspool of pathetic, ass-backwards, lottery-playing, and opioid-addicted white-trash has-beens. It's hard for the Inauthentic Opposition Party (as the late Sheldon Wolin reasonably called the Democrats ) to pose as an authentic opposition party when its' last big-money presidential candidate goes off-fake-progressive script with an openly elitist rant like that.

Historic Mistakes

Whatever the source of her strange policy silence in the 2016 campaign, that hush was "a miscalculation of historic proportion" (FJC). It was a critical mistake given what Ferguson and his colleagues call the "Hunger Games" misery and insecurity imposed on tens of millions of ordinary working- and middle-class middle-Americans by decades of neoliberal capitalist austerity , deeply exacerbated by the Wall Street-instigated Great Recession and the weak Obama recovery. The electorate was in a populist, anti-establishment mood – hardly a state of mind favorable to a wooden, richly globalist, Goldman-gilded candidate, a long-time Washington-Wall Street establishment ("swamp") creature like Hillary Clinton.

In the end, FJC note, the billionaire Trump's ironic, fake-populist "outreach to blue collar workers" would help him win "more than half of all voters with a high school education or less (including 61% of white women with no college), almost two thirds of those who believed life for the next generation of Americans would be worse than now, and seventy-seven percent of voters who reported their personal financial situation had worsened since four years ago."

Trump's popularity with "heartland" rural and working-class whites even provoked Hillary into a major campaign mistake: getting caught on video telling elite Manhattan election investors that half of Trump's supporters were a "basket of deplorables." There was a hauntingly strong parallel between Wall Street Hillary's "deplorables" blooper and the super-rich Republican candidate Mitt Romney's infamous 2012 gaffe : telling his own affluent backers saying that 47% of the population were a bunch of lazy welfare cheats. This time, though, it was the Democrat – with a campaign finance profile closer to Romney's than Obama's in 2012 – and not the Republican making the ugly plutocratic and establishment faux pas .

"A Frontal Assault on the American Establishment"

Still, Trump's success was no less tied to big money than was Hillary's failure. Candidate Trump ran strangely outside the longstanding neoliberal Washington Consensus, as an economic nationalist and isolationist. His raucous rallies were laced with dripping denunciations of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, and globalization, mockery of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, rejection of the New Cold War with Russia, and pledges of allegiance to the "forgotten" American "working-class." He was no normal Republican One Percent candidate. As FJC explain:

"In 2016 the Republicans nominated yet another super-rich candidate – indeed, someone on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans. Like legions of conservative Republicans before him, he trash-talked Hispanics, immigrants, and women virtually non-stop, though with a verve uniquely his own. He laced his campaign with barely coded racial appeals and in the final days, ran an ad widely denounced as subtly anti-Semitic. But in striking contrast to every other Republican presidential nominee since 1936, he attacked globalization, free trade, international financiers, Wall Street, and even Goldman Sachs. ' Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache . When subsidized foreign steel is dumped into our markets, threatening our factories, the politicians do nothing. For years, they watched on the sidelines as our jobs vanished and our communities were plunged into depression-level unemployment.'"

"In a frontal assault on the American establishment, the Republican standard bearer proclaimed 'America First.' Mocking the Bush administration's appeal to 'weapons of mass destruction' as a pretext for invading Iraq, he broke dramatically with two generations of GOP orthodoxy and spoke out in favor of more cooperation with Russia . He even criticized the 'carried interest' tax break beloved by high finance" (emphasis added).

Big Dark Money and Trump: His Own and Others'

This cost Trump much of the corporate and Wall Street financial support that Republican presidential candidates usually get. The thing was, however, that much of Trump's "populist" rhetoric was popular with a big part of the Republican electorate, thanks to the "Hunger Games" insecurity of the transparently bipartisan New Gilded Age. And Trump's personal fortune permitted him to tap that popular anger while leaping insultingly over the heads of his less wealthy if corporate and Wall Street-backed competitors ("low energy" Jeb Bush and "little Marco" Rubio most notably) in the crowded Republican primary race.

A Republican candidate dependent on the usual elite bankrollers would never have been able to get away with Trump's crowd-pleasing (and CNN and FOX News rating-boosting) antics. Thanks to his own wealth, the faux-populist anti-establishment Trump was ironically inoculated against pre-emption in the Republican primaries by the American campaign finance "wealth primary," which renders electorally unviable candidates who lack vast financial resources or access to them.

Things were different after Trump won the Republican nomination, however. He could no longer go it alone after the primaries. During the Republican National Convention and "then again in the late summer of 2016," FJC show, Trump's "solo campaign had to be rescued by major industries plainly hoping for tariff relief, waves of other billionaires from the far, far right of the already far right Republican Party, and the most disruption-exalting corners of Wall Street." By FJC's account:

"What happened in the final weeks of the campaign was extraordinary. Firstly, a giant wave of dark money poured into Trump's own campaign – one that towered over anything in 2016 or even Mitt Romney's munificently financed 2012 effort – to say nothing of any Russian Facebook experiments [Then] another gigantic wave of money flowed in from alarmed business interests, including the Kochs and their allies Officially the money was for Senate races, but late-stage campaigning for down-ballot offices often spills over on to candidates for the party at large."

"The run up to the Convention brought in substantial new money, including, for the first time, significant contributions from big business. Mining, especially coal mining; Big Pharma (which was certainly worried by tough talk from the Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, about regulating drug prices); tobacco, chemical companies, and oil (including substantial sums from executives at Chevron, Exxon, and many medium sized firms); and telecommunications (notably AT&T, which had a major merge merger pending) all weighed in. Money from executives at the big banks also began streaming in, including Bank of America, J. P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. Parts of Silicon Valley also started coming in from the cold."

"In a harbinger of things to come, additional money came from firms and industries that appear to have been attracted by Trump's talk of tariffs, including steel and companies making machinery of various types [a] vast wave of new money flowed into the campaign from some of America's biggest businesses and most famous investors. Sheldon Adelson and many others in the casino industry delivered in grand style for its old colleague. Adelson now delivered more than $11 million in his own name, while his wife and other employees of his Las Vegas Sands casino gave another $20 million.

Peter Theil contributed more than a million dollars, while large sums also rolled in from other parts of Silicon Valley, including almost two million dollars from executives at Microsoft and just over two million from executives at Cisco Systems. A wave of new money swept in from large private equity firms, the part of Wall Street which had long championed hostile takeovers as a way of disciplining what they mocked as bloated and inefficient 'big business.' Virtual pariahs to main-line firms in the Business Roundtable and the rest of Wall Street, some of these figures had actually gotten their start working with Drexel Burnham Lambert and that firm's dominant partner, Michael Milkin.

Among those were Nelson Peltz and Carl Icahn (who had both contributed to Trump before, but now made much bigger new contributions). In the end, along with oil, chemicals, mining and a handful of other industries, large private equity firms would become one of the few segments of American business – and the only part of Wall Street – where support for Trump was truly heavy the sudden influx of money from private equity and hedge funds clearly began with the Convention but turned into a torrent "

The critical late wave came after Trump moved to rescue his flagging campaign by handing its direction over to the clever, class-attuned, far-right white- and economic- nationalist "populist" and Breitbart executive Steve Bannon, who advocated what proved to be a winning, Koch brothers-approved "populist" strategy: appeal to economically and culturally frustrated working- and middle-class whites in key battleground states, where the bloodless neoliberal and professional class centrism and snooty metropolitan multiculturalism of the Obama presidency and Clinton campaign was certain to depress the Democratic "base" vote . Along with the racist voter suppression carried out by Republican state governments (JFC rightly chide Russia-obsessed political reporters and commentators for absurdly ignoring this important factor) and (JFC intriguingly suggest) major anti-union offensives conducted by employers in some battleground states, this major late-season influx of big right-wing political money tilted the election Trump's way.

The Myth of Potent Russian Cyber-Subversion

As FJC show, there is little empirical evidence to support the Clinton and corporate Democrats' self-interested and diversionary efforts to explain Mrs. Clinton's epic fail and Trump's jaw-dropping upset victory as the result of (i) Russian interference, (ii), then FBI Director James Comey's October Surprise revelation that his agency was not done investigating Hillary's emails, and/or (iii) some imagined big wave of white working-class racism, nativism, and sexism brought to the surface by the noxious Orange Hulk. The impacts of both (i) and (ii) were infinitesimal in comparison to the role that big campaign money played both in silencing Hillary and funding Trump.

The blame-the-deplorable-racist-white-working-class narrative is belied by basic underlying continuities in white working class voting patterns. As FJC note: " Neither turnout nor the partisan division of the vote at any level looks all that different from other recent elections 2016's alterations in voting behavior are so minute that the pattern is only barely differentiated from 2012." It was about the money – the big establishment money that the Clinton campaign took (as FJC at least plausibly argue) to recommend policy silence and the different, right-wing big money that approved Trump's comparative right-populist policy boisterousness.

An interesting part of FJC's study (no quick or easy read) takes a close look at the pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Internet activism that the Democrats and their many corporate media allies are so insistently eager to blame on Russia and for Hillary's defeat. FJC find that Russian Internet interventions were of tiny significance compared to those of homegrown U.S. corporate and right-wing cyber forces:

"The real masters of these black arts are American or Anglo-American firms. These compete directly with Silicon Valley and leading advertising firms for programmers and personnel. They rely almost entirely on data purchased from Google, Facebook, or other suppliers, not Russia . American regulators do next to nothing to protect the privacy of voters and citizens, and, as we have shown in several studies, leading telecom firms are major political actors and giant political contributors. As a result, data on the habits and preferences of individual internet users are commercially available in astounding detail and quantities for relatively modest prices – even details of individual credit card purchases. The American giants for sure harbor abundant data on the constellation of bots, I.P. addresses, and messages that streamed to the electorate "

" stories hyping 'the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and infiltrate U.S. political discourse while also seeking to heighten tensions between groups already wary of one another by the Russians miss the mark.' By 2016, the Republican right had developed internet outreach and political advertising into a fine art and on a massive scale quite on its own. Large numbers of conservative websites, including many that that tolerated or actively encouraged white supremacy and contempt for immigrants, African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews, or the aspirations of women had been hard at work for years stoking up 'tensions between groups already wary of one another.' Breitbart and other organizations were in fact going global, opening offices abroad and establishing contacts with like-minded groups elsewhere. Whatever the Russians were up to, they could hardly hope to add much value to the vast Made in America bombardment already underway. Nobody sows chaos like Breitbart or the Drudge Report ."

" the evidence revealed thus far does not support strong claims about the likely success of Russian efforts, though of course the public outrage at outside meddling is easy to understand. The speculative character of many accounts even in the mainstream media is obvious. Several, such as widely circulated declaration by the Department of Homeland Security that 21 state election systems had been hacked during the election, have collapsed within days of being put forward when state electoral officials strongly disputed them, though some mainstream press accounts continue to repeat them. Other tales about Macedonian troll factories churning out stories at the instigation of the Kremlin, are clearly exaggerated."

The Sanders Tease: "He Couldn't Have Done a Thing"

Perhaps the most remarkable finding in FJC's study is that Sanders came tantalizingly close to winning the Democratic presidential nomination against the corporately super-funded Clinton campaign with no support from Big Business . Running explicitly against the "Hunger Games" economy and the corporate-financial plutocracy that created it, Sanders pushed Hillary the Goldman candidate to the wall, calling out the Democrats' capture by Wall Street, forcing her to rely on a rigged party, convention, and primary system to defeat him. The small-donor "socialist" Sanders challenge represented something Ferguson and his colleagues describe as "without precedent in American politics not just since the New Deal, but across virtually the whole of American history a major presidential candidate waging a strong, highly competitive campaign whose support from big business is essentially zero ."

Sanders pulled this off, FJC might have added, by running in (imagine) accord with majority-progressive left-of-center U.S. public opinion. But for the Clintons' corrupt advance- control of the Democratic National Committee and convention delegates, Ferguson et al might further have noted, Sanders might well have been the Democratic presidential nominee, curiously enough in the arch-state-capitalist and oligarchic United States

Could Sanders have defeated the billionaire and right-wing billionaire-backed Trump in the general election? There's no way to know, of course. Sanders consistently out-performed Hillary Clinton in one-on-one match -up polls vis a vis Donald Trump during the primary season, but much of the big money (and, perhaps much of the corporate media) that backed Hillary would have gone over to Trump had the supposedly "radical" Sanders been the Democratic nominee.

Even if Sanders has been elected president, moreover, Noam Chomsky is certainly correct in his recent judgement that Sanders would have been able to achieve very little in the White House. As Chomsky told Lynn Parramore two weeks ago, in an interview conducted for the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the same think-tank that published FJC's remarkable study:

"His campaign [was] a break with over a century of American political history. No corporate support, no financial wealth, he was unknown, no media support. The media simply either ignored or denigrated him. And he came pretty close -- he probably could have won the nomination, maybe the election. But suppose he'd been elected? He couldn't have done a thing. Nobody in Congress, no governors, no legislatures, none of the big economic powers, which have an enormous effect on policy. All opposed to him. In order for him to do anything, he would have to have a substantial, functioning party apparatus, which would have to grow from the grass roots. It would have to be locally organized, it would have to operate at local levels, state levels, Congress, the bureaucracy -- you have to build the whole system from the bottom."

As Chomsky might have added, Sanders oligarchy-imposed "failures" would have been great fodder for the disparagement and smearing of "socialism" and progressive, majority-backed policy change. "See? We tried all that and it was a disaster!"

I would note further that the Sanders phenomenon's policy promise was plagued by its standard bearer's persistent loyalty to the giant and absurdly expensive U.S.-imperial Pentagon System, which each year eats up hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars required to implement the progressive, majority-supported policy agenda that Bernie F-35 Sanders ran on.

"A Very Destructive Ideology"

The Sanders challenge was equally afflicted by its candidate-centered electoralism. This diverted energy away from the real and more urgent politics of building people's movements – grassroots power to shake the society to its foundations and change policy from the bottom up (Dr. Martin Luther King's preferred strategy at the end of his life just barely short of 50 years ago, on April 4 th , 1968) – and into the narrow, rigidly time-staggered grooves of a party and spectacle-elections crafted by and for the wealthy Few and the American Oligarchy 's "permanent political class" (historian Ron Formisano). As Chomsky explained on the eve of the 2004 elections:

"Americans may be encouraged to vote, but not to participate more meaningfully in the political arena. Essentially the election is a method of marginalizing the population. A huge propaganda campaign is mounted to get people to focus on these personalized quadrennial extravaganzas and to think, 'That's politics.' But it isn't. It's only a small part of politics The urgency is for popular progressive groups to grow and become strong enough so that centers of power can't ignore them. Forces for change that have come up from the grass roots and shaken the society to its core include the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the peace movement, the women's movement and others, cultivated by steady, dedicated work at all levels, every day, not just once every four years sensible [electoral] choices have to be made. But they are secondary to serious political action."

"The only thing that's going to ever bring about any meaningful change," Chomsky told Abby Martin on teleSur English in the fall of 2015, "is ongoing, dedicated, popular movements that don't pay attention to the election cycle." Under the American religion of voting, Chomsky told Dan Falcone and Saul Isaacson in the spring of 2016, "Citizenship means every four years you put a mark somewhere and you go home and let other guys run the world. It's a very destructive ideology basically, a way of making people passive, submissive objects [we] ought to teach kids that elections take place but that's not politics."

For all his talk of standing atop a great "movement" for "revolution," Sanders was and remains all about this stunted and crippling definition of citizenship and politics as making some marks on ballots and then returning to our domiciles while rich people and their agents (not just any "other guys") "run [ruin?-P.S.] the world [into the ground-P.S.]."

It will take much more in the way of Dr. King's politics of "who' sitting in the streets," not "who's sitting in the White House" (to use Howard Zinn's excellent dichotomy ), to get us an elections and party system worthy of passionate citizen engagement. We don't have such a system in the U.S. today, which is why the number of eligible voters who passively boycotted the 2016 presidential election is larger than both the number who voted for big money Hillary and the number who voted for big money Trump.

(If U.S. progressives really want to consider undertaking the epic lift involved in passing a U.S. Constitutional Amendment, they might want to focus on this instead of calling for a repeal of the Second Amendment. I'd recommend starting with a positive Democracy Amendment that fundamentally overhauls the nation's political and elections set-up in accord with elementary principles and practices of popular sovereignty. Clauses would include but not be limited to full public financing of elections and the introduction of proportional representation for legislative races – not to mention the abolition of the Electoral College, Senate apportionment on the basis of total state population, and the outlawing of gerrymandering.)

Ecocide Trumped by Russia

Meanwhile, back in real history, we have the remarkable continuation of a bizarre right-wing, pre-fascist presidency not in normal ruling-class hands, subject to the weird whims and tweets of a malignant narcissist who doesn't read memorandums or intelligence briefings. Wild policy zig-zags and record-setting White House personnel turnover are par for the course under the dodgy reign of the orange-tinted beast's latest brain spasms. Orange Caligula spends his mornings getting his information from FOX News and his evenings complaining to and seeking advice from a small club of right-wing American oligarchs.

Trump poses grave environmental and nuclear risks to human survival. A consistent Trump belief is that climate change is not a problem and that it's perfectly fine – "great" and "amazing," in fact – for the White House to do everything it can to escalate the Greenhouse Gassing-to-Death of Life on Earth. The nuclear threat is rising now that he has appointed a frothing right-wing uber-warmonger – a longtime advocate of bombing Iran and North Korea who led the charge for the arch-criminal U.S. invasion of Iraq – as his top "National Security" adviser and as he been convinced to expel dozens of Russian diplomats. Thanks, liberal and other Democratic Party RussiaGaters!

The Clinton-Obama neoliberal Democrats have spent more than a year running with the preposterous narrative that Trump is a Kremlin puppet who owes his presence in the White House to Russia's subversion of our democratic elections. The climate crisis holds little for the Trump and Russia-obsessed corporate media. The fact that the world stands at the eve of the ecological self-destruction, with the Trump White House in the lead, elicits barely a whisper in the reigning commercial news media. Unlike Stormy Daniels, for example, that little story – the biggest issue of our or any time – is not good for television ratings and newspaper sales.

Sanders, by the way, is curiously invisible in the dominant commercial media, despite his quiet survey status as the nation's "most popular politician." That is precisely what you would expect in a corporate and financial oligarchy buttressed by a powerful corporate, so-called "mainstream" media oligopoly.

Political Parties as "Bank Accounts"

One of the many problems with the obsessive Blame-Russia narrative that a fair portion of the dominant U.S. media is running with is that we had no great electoral democracy to subvert in 2016 . Saying that Russia has "undermined [U.S.-] American democracy" is like me – middle-aged, five-foot nine, and unblessed with jumping ability – saying that the Brooklyn Nets' Russian-born center Timofy Mozgof subverted my career as a starting player in the National Basketball Association. In state-capitalist societies marked by the toxic and interrelated combination of weak popular organization, expensive politics, and highly concentrated wealth – all highly evident in the New Gilded Age United States – electoral contests and outcomes boil down above all and in the end to big investor class cash. As Thomas Ferguson and his colleagues explain:

"Where investment and organization by average citizens is weak, however, power passes by default to major investor groups, which can far more easily bear the costs of contending for control of the state. In most modern market-dominated societies (those celebrated recently as enjoying the 'end of History'), levels of effective popular organization are generally low, while the costs of political action, in terms of both information and transactional obstacles, are high. The result is that conflicts within the business community normally dominate contests within and between political parties – the exact opposite of what many earlier social theorists expected, who imagined 'business' and 'labor' confronting each other in separate parties Only candidates and positions that can be financed can be presented to voters. As a result, in countries like the US and, increasingly, Western Europe, political parties are first of all bank accounts . With certain qualifications, one must pay to play. Understanding any given election, therefore, requires a financial X-ray of the power blocs that dominate the major parties, with both inter- and intra- industrial analysis of their constituent elements."

Here Ferguson might have said "corporate-dominated" instead of "market-dominated" for the modern managerial corporations emerged as the "visible hand" master of the "free market" more than a century ago.

We get to vote? Big deal.

People get to vote in Rwanda, Russia, the Congo and countless other autocratic states as well. Elections alone are no guarantee of democracy, as U.S. policymakers and pundits know very well when they rip on rigged elections (often fixed with the assistance of U.S. government and private-sector agents and firms) in countries they don't like, which includes any country that dares to "question the basic principle that the United States effectively owns the world by right and is by definition a force for good" ( Chomsky, 2016 ).

Majority opinion is regularly trumped by a deadly complex of forces in the U.S. The list of interrelated and mutually reinforcing culprits behind this oligarchic defeat of popular sentiment in the U.S. is extensive. It includes but is not limited to: the campaign finance, candidate-selection, lobbying, and policy agenda-setting power of wealthy individuals, corporations, and interest groups; the special primary election influence of full-time party activists; the disproportionately affluent, white, and older composition of the active (voting) electorate; the manipulation of voter turnout; the widespread dissemination of false, confusing, distracting, and misleading information; absurdly and explicitly unrepresentative political institutions like the Electoral College, the unelected Supreme Court, the over-representation of the predominantly white rural population in the U.S. Senate; one-party rule in the House of "Representatives"; the fragmentation of authority in government; and corporate ownership of the reigning media, which frames current events in accord with the wishes and world view of the nation's real owners.

Yes, we get to vote. Super. Big deal. Mammon reigns nonetheless in the United States, where, as the leading liberal political scientists Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens find , "government policy reflects the wishes of those with money, not the wishes of the millions of ordinary citizens who turn out every two years to choose among the preapproved, money-vetted candidates for federal office."

Trump is a bit of an anomaly – a sign of an elections and party system in crisis and an empire in decline. He wasn't pre-approved or vetted by the usual U.S. " deep state " corporate, financial, and imperial gatekeepers. The ruling-class had been trying to figure out what the Hell to do with him ever since he shocked even himself (though not Steve Bannon) by pre-empting the coronation of the "Queen of Chaos."

He is a homegrown capitalist oligarch nonetheless, a real estate mogul of vast and parasitic wealth who is no more likely to fulfill his populist-sounding campaign pledges than any previous POTUS of the neoliberal era.

His lethally racist, sexist, nativist, nuclear-weapons-brandishing, and (last but not at all least) eco-cidal rise to the nominal CEO position atop the U.S.-imperial oligarchy is no less a reflection of the dominant role of big U.S. capitalist money and homegrown plutocracy in U.S. politics than a more classically establishment Hillary ascendancy would have been. It's got little to do with Russia, Russia, Russia – the great diversion that fills U.S. political airwaves and newsprint as the world careens ever closer to oligarchy-imposed geocide and to a thermonuclear conflagration that the RussiaGate gambit is recklessly encouraging.

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Paul Street's latest book is They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy (Paradigm, 2014)

[Mar 11, 2018] Is Trump the New Clinton by Musa al-Gharbi

Notable quotes:
"... If Mueller's probe drags on and fails to produce a "smoking gun," the whole affair may end up seeming so complex, muddy, and partisan that most of the public would prefer to move on, eager to talk about something else . ..."
"... In 1996, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole decided to take a hard line on China -- portraying the nation as a growing economic and geopolitical threat to the United States and a violator of international rules and norms. In response, China tried to leverage its extensive diplomatic , intelligence , and financial networks in the United States in order to sway the election in favor of Dole's rival, Democrat Bill Clinton. ..."
"... This is not a theory, it is historical fact: there was a major Congressional investigation . In the end, several prominent Democratic fundraisers, including close Clinton associates, were found to be complicit in the Chinese meddling efforts and pled guilty to various charges of violating campaign finance and disclosure laws (most notably James T. Riady , Johnny Chung , John Huang , and Charlie Trie ). Several others fled the country to escape U.S. jurisdiction as the probe got underway. The Democratic National Committee was forced to return millions of dollars in ill-gotten funds (although by that point, of course, their candidate had already won). ..."
"... Clinton authorized a series of controversial defense contracts with China as well -- despite Department of Justice objections . Federal investigators were concerned that the contractors seemed to be passing highly sensitive and classified information to the Chinese. And indeed, the companies in question were eventually found to have violated the law by giving cutting-edge missile technology to China, and paid unprecedented fines related to the Arms Export Control Act during the administration of George W. Bush. But they were inexplicably approved in the Bill Clinton years. ..."
Mar 11, 2018 | thebaffler.com

A president can be reelected despite corruption, foreign meddling, and sex scandals Bill Clinton was reelected with help from China. / The Baffler Imagine for a moment that special counsel Robert Mueller is unable to establish direct and intentional collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Or, suppose he proves collusion by a few former campaign aides but finds nothing directly implicating the president himself. In either event -- or in just about any other imaginable scenario -- it seems improbable that Congress will have the votes to impeach Trump or otherwise hold him accountable prior to 2020.

If Mueller's probe drags on and fails to produce a "smoking gun," the whole affair may end up seeming so complex, muddy, and partisan that most of the public would prefer to move on, eager to talk about something else .

In other words, Russiagate could well continue to distract and infuriate Trump without breaking his hold on power.

Is it shocking to think evidence of Russian chicanery could be shrugged off? Don't be shocked. After all, the last major case of foreign meddling and collusion in a U.S. presidential race didn't exactly end up rocking the republic.

In 1996, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole decided to take a hard line on China -- portraying the nation as a growing economic and geopolitical threat to the United States and a violator of international rules and norms. In response, China tried to leverage its extensive diplomatic , intelligence , and financial networks in the United States in order to sway the election in favor of Dole's rival, Democrat Bill Clinton.

This is not a theory, it is historical fact: there was a major Congressional investigation . In the end, several prominent Democratic fundraisers, including close Clinton associates, were found to be complicit in the Chinese meddling efforts and pled guilty to various charges of violating campaign finance and disclosure laws (most notably James T. Riady , Johnny Chung , John Huang , and Charlie Trie ). Several others fled the country to escape U.S. jurisdiction as the probe got underway. The Democratic National Committee was forced to return millions of dollars in ill-gotten funds (although by that point, of course, their candidate had already won).

It was a scandal that persisted after the election in no small part because many of Clinton's own policies in his second term seemed to lend credence to insinuations of collusion.

Several prominent Democratic fundraisers, including close Clinton associates, were found to be complicit in Chinese meddling efforts and pled guilty to campaign finance violations.

Rather than attempting to punish the meddling country for undermining the bedrock of our democracy, Bill Clinton worked to ease sanctions and normalize relations with Beijing -- even as the U.S. ratcheted up sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and Iraq. By the end of his term, he signed a series of sweeping trade deals that radically expanded China's economic and geopolitical clout -- even though some in his administration forecast that this would come at the expense of key American industries and U.S. manufacturing workers.

Clinton authorized a series of controversial defense contracts with China as well -- despite Department of Justice objections . Federal investigators were concerned that the contractors seemed to be passing highly sensitive and classified information to the Chinese. And indeed, the companies in question were eventually found to have violated the law by giving cutting-edge missile technology to China, and paid unprecedented fines related to the Arms Export Control Act during the administration of George W. Bush. But they were inexplicably approved in the Bill Clinton years.

For a while, polls showed that the public found the president's posture on China to be so disconcerting that most supported appointing an independent counsel (a la Mueller) to investigate whether the Clinton Administration had essentially been " bought ."

Law enforcement officials shared these concerns: FBI director Louis Freeh (whom Clinton could not get rid of, having just fired his predecessor ) publically called for the appointment of an independent counsel. So did the chief prosecutor charged with investigating Chinese meddling, Charles La Bella . However, they were blocked at every turn by Clinton's Attorney General, Janet Reno -- eventually leading La Bella to resign in protest of the AG's apparent obstruction.

The 1996 Chinese collusion story, much like the 2016 Russian collusion story, dragged on for nearly two years -- hounding Clinton at every turn. That is, until it was discovered that the president had been having an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

The 1996 Chinese collusion story dragged on for nearly two years -- hounding Clinton at every turn. That is, until the Monica Lewinsky scandal came along.

This was Bill Clinton's second known extra-marital affair with a subordinate : in the lead-up to his 1992 election it was also discovered that Clinton had been involved in a long-running affair with Gennifer Flowers -- an employee of the State of Arkansas during Bill's governorship there, appointed as a result of Clinton's intercession on her behalf.

The drama of the inquiry into Bill Clinton's myriad alleged sexual improprieties, the President's invocation of executive privilege to prevent his aides from having to testify against him, Clinton's perjury , subsequent impeachment by the House, acquittal in the Senate, and eventual plea-bargain deal -- these sucked the oxygen away from virtually all other stories related to the president.

Indeed, few today seem to remember that the Chinese meddling occurred at all. This despite continuing China-related financial improprieties involving both the Clintons and the DNC Chairman who presided over the 1996 debacle, Terry McAuliffe -- and despite the fact that the intended target of the current foreign meddling attempt just so happens to be married to the intended beneficiary of the last.

And the irony in this, of course, is that not only do we find ourselves reliving an apparently ill-fated collusion investigation, but the foreign meddling story is once again competing with a presidential sex scandal -- this time involving actual porn stars. (Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones both posed for Penthouse after their involvement with Clinton surfaced. Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal are well-established in the industry.)

Much like Bill Clinton, our current president has a long pattern of accusations of infidelity, sexual harassment and even assault. However all of Trump's alleged sexual misconduct incidents occurred before he'd assumed any public office. Therefore, although some Democrats hope to provide Trump's accusers an opportunity to testify before Congress if their party manages to retake the House in 2018, the legal impact of these accounts is likely to be nil. The political significance of such theater is likely being overestimated as well.


The danger for Democrats in all this is that they could get lulled into the notion that Trump's liabilities -- the Mueller probe, the alleged affairs, and whatever new scandals and outrages Trump generates in the next two years -- will be sufficient to energize and mobilize their base in 2020. Democratic insiders and fatcats are likely to think they can put forward the same sort of unpalatable candidate and platform they did last cycle -- only this time, they'll win! A strong showing in 2018 could even reinforce this sense of complacency -- leading to another debacle in the race for the White House in 2020.

Democrats consistently snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by believing they've got some kind of lock. Remember the " Emerging Democratic Majority " thesis? Remember Hillary Clinton's alleged 2016 " Electoral Firewall ?" What have the Democrats learned from 2016? The answer is, very little if they believe the essential problem was just James Comey and the Russians.

Here's one lesson Democrats would do well to internalize:

The party has won by running charismatic people against Republican cornflake candidates (see Clinton v. Bush I or Dole, or Obama v. McCain or Romney). Yet whenever Democrats find themselves squaring off against a faux-populist who plays to voters' base instincts, the party always make the same move: running a wonky technocrat with an impressive resume, detailed policy proposals, and little else.

Does it succeed in drawing a sharp contrast? Pretty much always. Does it succeed at winning the White House? Pretty much never: Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, and now Clinton.

Democrats could be headed for trouble if they are counting on the Mueller investigation to bring Trump down.

Democrats rely heavily on irregular voters to win elections; negative partisanship races tend to depress turnout for these constituents. More broadly, if left with a choice between a "lesser of two evils" the public tends to stick with the "devil they know." In short: precisely what Democrats don't need in 2020 is a negative partisanship race.

A referendum on Trump might not play out the way Democrats expect. Against all odds, it looks like the president will even have an actual record to run on . He should not be underestimated.

Clinton-style triangulation is also likely to backfire. Contemporary research suggests there just aren't a lot of " floating voters " up for grabs these days. Rather than winning over disaffected Republicans, this approach would likely just alienate the Democratic base.

The party's best bet is to instead focus on mobilizing the left by articulating a compelling positive message for why Americans should vote for them (rather than just against Trump). They will need to respond to Trump with a populist of their own -- someone who can credibly appeal to people in former Obama districts that Hillary Clinton lost . And they need to activate those who sat the last election out -- for instance by delivering for elements of their base that the party has largely taken for granted in recent cycles.

If the Democratic National Committee wants to spend its time talking about Russia and sex scandals instead of tending to these priorities, then we should all brace for another humiliating "black swan" defeat for the party in 2020.

But, you say, isn't Trump the least popular president ever after one year in office? Guess whose year-one (un)popularity is closest to Trump's? Ronald Reagan. He was under 50 percent in approval ratings at the end of his first year; but he went on to win reelection in an historic landslide. Barack Obama was barely breaking even after year one but won reelection comfortably. Bill Clinton was only slightly above 50 percent after his first year.

You know who else had the lowest approval rating in a quarter-century after Trump's first year in office? The Democratic Party.

Musa al-Gharbi is a Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in Sociology at Columbia University. Readers can connect to his research and social media via his website .

[Jan 20, 2018] What Is The Democratic Party ? by Lambert Strether

Highly recommended!
"Institutionally, the Democratic Party Is Not Democratic"
Very apt characterization "the Democratic Party is nothing more than a layer of indirection between the donor class and the Democratic consultants and the campaigns they run;" ... " after all, the Democratic Party -- in its current incarnation -- has important roles to play in not expanding its "own" electorate through voter registration, in the care and feeding of the intelligence community, in warmongering, in the continual buffing and polishing of neoliberal ideology, and in general keeping the Overton Window firmly nailed in place against policies that would convey universal concrete material benefits, especially to the working class"
Notable quotes:
"... That said, the revivification of the DNC lawsuit serves as a story hook for me to try to advance the story on the nature of political parties as such, the Democratic Party as an institution, and the function that the Democratic Party serves. I will meander through those three topics, then, and conclude. ..."
"... What sort of legal entity is ..."
"... Political parties were purely private organizations from the 1790s until the Civil War. Thus, "it was no more illegal to commit fraud in the party caucus or primary than it would be to do so in the election of officers of a drinking club." However, due to the efforts of Robert La Follette and the Progressives, states began to treat political parties as "public agencies" during the early 1890s and 1900s; by the 1920s "most states had adopted a succession of mandatory statutes regulating every major aspect of the parties' structures and operations. ..."
"... While 1787 delegates disagreed on when corruption might occur, they brought a general shared understanding of what political corruption meant. To the delegates, political corruption referred to self-serving use of public power for private ends, including, without limitation, bribery, public decisions to serve private wealth made because of dependent relationships, public decisions to serve executive power made because of dependent relationships, and use by public officials of their positions of power to become wealthy. ..."
"... Two features of the definitional framework of corruption at the time deserve special attention, because they are not frequently articulated by all modern academics or judges. The first feature is that corruption was defined in terms of an attitude toward public service, not in relation to a set of criminal laws. The second feature is that citizenship was understood to be a public office. The delegates believed that non-elected citizens wielding or attempting to influence public power can be corrupt and that elite corruption is a serious threat to a polity. ..."
"... You can see how a political party -- a strange, amphibious creature, public one moment, private the next -- is virtually optimized to create a phishing equilibrium for corruption. However, I didn't really answer my question, did I? I still don't know what sort of legal entity the Democratic Party is. However, I can say what the Democratic Party is not ..."
"... So the purpose of superdelegates is to veto a popular choice, if they decide the popular choice "can't govern." But this is circular. Do you think for a moment that the Clintonites would have tried to make sure President Sanders couldn't have governed? You bet they would have, and from Day One. ..."
"... More importantly, you can bet that the number of superdelegates retained is enough for the superdelegates, as a class, to maintain their death grip on the party. ..."
"... could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we're gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. ..."
"... That's exactly ..."
"... Functionally, the Democratic Party Is a Money Trough for Self-Dealing Consultants. Here once again is Nomiki Konst's amazing video, before the DNC: https://www.youtube.com/embed/EAvblBnXV-w Those millions! That's real money! ..."
"... Today, it is openly acknowledged by many members that the DNC and the Clinton campaign were running an operation together. In fact, it doesn't take much research beyond FEC filings to see that six of the top major consulting firms had simultaneous contracts with the DNC and HRC  --  collectively earning over $335 million since 2015 [this figure balloons in Konst's video because she got a look at the actual budget]. (This does not include SuperPACs.) ..."
"... One firm, GMMB earned $236.3 million from HFA and $5.3 from the DNC in 2016. Joel Benenson, a pollster and strategist who frequents cable news, collected $4.1m from HFA while simultaneously earning $3.3 million from the DNC. Perkins Coie law firm collected $3.8 million from the DNC, $481,979 from the Convention fund and $1.8 million from HFA in 2016. ..."
"... It gets worse. Not only do the DNC's favored consultants pick sides in the primaries, they serve on the DNC boards so they can give themselves donor money. ..."
"... These campaign consultants make a lot more money off of TV and mail than they do off of field efforts. Field efforts are long-term, labor-intensive, high overhead expenditures that do not have big margins from which the consultants can draw their payouts. They also don't allow the consultants to make money off of multiple campaigns all in the same cycle, while media and mail campaigns can be done from their DC office for dozens of clients all at the same time. They get paid whether campaigns win or lose, so effectiveness is irrelevant to them. ..."
"... the Democratic Party is nothing more than a layer of indirection between the donor class and the Democratic consultants and the campaigns they run; ..."
"... the Democratic Party -- in its current incarnation -- has important roles to play in not expanding its "own" electorate through voter registration, in the care and feeding of the intelligence community, in warmongering, in the continual buffing and polishing of neoliberal ideology, and in general keeping the Overton Window firmly nailed in place against policies that would convey universal concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. ..."
"... the bottom line is that if Democratic Party controls ballot access for the forseeable future, they have to be gone through ..."
"... In retrospect, despite Sanders evident appeal and the power of his list, I think it would have been best if their faction's pushback had been much stronger ..."
Jan 15, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

An alert reader who is a representative of the class that's suing the DNC Services Corporation for fraud in the 2016 Democratic primary -- WILDING et al. v. DNC SERVICES CORPORATION et al., a.k.a. the "DNC lawsuit" -- threw some interesting mail over the transom; it's from Elizabeth Beck of Beck & Lee, the firm that brought the case on behalf of the (putatively) defrauded class (and hence their lawyer). Beck's letter reads in relevant part:

... ... ...

[Jan 05, 2018] FBI launches new Clinton Foundation investigation

Jan 05, 2018 | thehill.com

The Justice Department has launched a new inquiry into whether the Clinton Foundation engaged in any pay-to-play politics or other illegal activities while Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State, law enforcement officials and a witness tells The Hill.

FBI agents from Little Rock, Ark., where the Foundation was started, have taken the lead in the investigation and have interviewed at least one witness in the last month, and law enforcement officials said additional activities are expected in coming weeks.

The officials, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the probe is examining whether the Clintons promised or performed any policy favors in return for largesse to their charitable efforts or whether donors made commitments of donations in hopes of securing government outcomes.

The probe may also examine whether any tax-exempt assets were converted for personal or political use and whether the Foundation complied with applicable tax laws, the officials said.

... ... ...

One challenge for any Clinton-era investigation is that the statute of limitations on most federal felonies is five years and Clinton left office in early 2013.

[Dec 12, 2017] Thoughts on Neoconservatism and Neoliberalism by Hugh

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... I got to thinking today about how neocon and neoliberal are becoming interchangeable terms. ..."
"... As neoconservatism developed, that is with Iraq and Afghanistan, the neocons even came to embrace nation building which had always been anathema to traditional conservatism. Neocons sold this primarily by casting nation building in military terms, the creation and training of police and security forces in the target country. ..."
"... 9/11 too was critical. It vastly increased the scope of the neocon project in spawning the Global War on Terror. It increased the stage of neocon operations to the entire planet. ..."
"... Politically, neoconservatism has become the bipartisan foreign policy consensus. Democrats are every bit as neocon in their views as Republicans. Only a few libertarians on the right and progressives on the left reject it. ..."
"... The roots of neoliberalism are the roots of kleptocracy. Both begin under Carter. Neoliberalism also known at various times and places as the Washington Consensus (under Clinton) and the Chicago School is the political expression for public consumption of the kleptocratic economic philosophy, just as libertarian and neoclassical economics (both fresh and salt water varieties) are its academic and governmental face. The central tenets of neoliberalism are deregulation, free markets, and free trade. If neoliberalism had a prophet or a patron saint, it was Milton Friedman. ..."
"... Again just as neoconservatism and kleptocracy or bipartisan so too is neoliberalism. There really is no daylight between Reaganism/supply side economics/trickledown on the Republican side and Clinton's Washington Consensus or Team Obama on the other. ..."
"... The distinctions between neoconservatism and neoliberalism are being increasingly lost, perhaps because most of our political classes are practitioners of both. ..."
"... At the same time, neoliberalism went from domestic to global, and here I am not just thinking about neoliberal experiments, like Pinochet's Chile or post-Soviet Russia, but the financialization of the world economy and the adoption of kleptocracy as the world economic model. ..."
"... I'm now under the opinion that you can't talk about any of the "neo-isms" without talking about the corporate state. ..."
"... With neocons, it manifests itself through the military-industrial complex (Boeing, Raytheon, etc.), and with neolibs it manifests itself through finance and industrial policy. ..."
"... But each leg has two components, a statist component and a corporate component. ..."
"... It also explains why economic/financial interests (neolib) are now considered national security interests (neocon). The viability of the state is now tied to the viability of the corporation. ..."
"... Corporate/statist (not sure "corporate" captures the looting/rentier aspect though). We see it everywhere, for example in the revolving door. ..."
"... I think you could also make the argument that Obama is perhaps the most ideal combination of neolib & neocon. ..."
"... A reading of the classical liberal economists puts some breaks on the markets, corporations, etc. Neoliberalism goes to the illogical extremes of market theory and iirc, has some influence from the Austrian school ... which gives up on any pretense of scientific exposition of economics or rationality at the micro level, assuming that irrationality will magically become rational behavior in aggregate. ..."
"... Therefore, US conservatives post Eisenhower but especially post Reagan are almost certainly economic neoliberals. Since Clinton, liberals/Democrats have been too (at least the elected ones). You nailed neoconservative and both parties are in foreign policy since at least Clinton ... though here lets not forget to go back as far as JFK and his extreme anti-Communism that led to all sorts of covert operations, The Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Remember, the Soviets put the missiles in Cuba because we put missiles in Turkey and they backed down from Cuba because we agreed to remove the missiles from Turkey; Nikita was nice enough not to talk about that so that Kennedy didn't lose face. ..."
"... Perhaps it should be pointed out that the Clintons became fabulously wealthy just after Bill left office, mostly on the strength of his speaking engagements for the financial sector that he'd just deregulated. ..."
"... The unfortunate fact of the matter is that at that level of politics, the levers of money and power work equally well on both party's nomenklatura. They flock to it like moths to porch light. ..."
"... "Don't believe them, don't fear them, don't ask anything of them" - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ..."
Aug 19, 2012 | Corrente

I got to thinking today about how neocon and neoliberal are becoming interchangeable terms. They did not start out that way. My understanding is they are ways of rationalizing breaks with traditional conservatism and liberalism. Standard conservatism was fairly isolationist. Conservatism's embrace of the Cold War put it at odds with this tendency. This was partially resolved by accepting the Cold War as a military necessity despite its international commitments but limiting civilian programs like foreign aid outside this context and rejecting the concept of nation building altogether.

With the end of the Cold War conservative internationalism needed a new rationale, and this was supplied by the neoconservatives. They advocated the adoption of conservatism's Cold War military centered internationalism as the model for America's post-Cold War international relations. After all, why drop a winning strategy? America had won the Cold War against a much more formidable opponent than any left on the planet. What could go wrong?

America's ability not simply to project but its willingness to use military power was equated with its power more generally. If America did not do this, it was weak and in decline. However, the frequent use of military power showed that America was great and remained the world's hegemon. In particular, the neocons focused on the Middle East. This sales pitch gained them the backing of both supporters of Israel (because neoconservatism was unabashedly pro-Israel) and the oil companies. The military industrial complex was also on board because the neocon agenda effectively countered calls to reduce military spending. But neoconservatism was not just confined to these groups. It appealed to both believers in American exceptionalism and backers of humanitarian interventions (of which I once was one).

As neoconservatism developed, that is with Iraq and Afghanistan, the neocons even came to embrace nation building which had always been anathema to traditional conservatism. Neocons sold this primarily by casting nation building in military terms, the creation and training of police and security forces in the target country.

9/11 too was critical. It vastly increased the scope of the neocon project in spawning the Global War on Terror. It increased the stage of neocon operations to the entire planet. It effectively erased the distinction between the use of military force against countries and individuals. Individuals more than countries became targets for military, not police, action. And unlike traditional wars or the Cold War itself, this one would never be over. Neoconservatism now had a permanent raison d'être.

Politically, neoconservatism has become the bipartisan foreign policy consensus. Democrats are every bit as neocon in their views as Republicans. Only a few libertarians on the right and progressives on the left reject it.

Neoliberalism, for its part, came about to address the concern of liberals, especially Democrats, that they were too anti-business and too pro-union, and that this was hurting them at the polls. It was sold to the rubiat as pragmatism.

The roots of neoliberalism are the roots of kleptocracy. Both begin under Carter. Neoliberalism also known at various times and places as the Washington Consensus (under Clinton) and the Chicago School is the political expression for public consumption of the kleptocratic economic philosophy, just as libertarian and neoclassical economics (both fresh and salt water varieties) are its academic and governmental face. The central tenets of neoliberalism are deregulation, free markets, and free trade. If neoliberalism had a prophet or a patron saint, it was Milton Friedman.

Again just as neoconservatism and kleptocracy or bipartisan so too is neoliberalism. There really is no daylight between Reaganism/supply side economics/trickledown on the Republican side and Clinton's Washington Consensus or Team Obama on the other.

And just as we saw with neoconservatism, neoliberalism expanded from its core premises and effortlessly transitioned into globalization, which can also be understood as global kleptocracy.

The distinctions between neoconservatism and neoliberalism are being increasingly lost, perhaps because most of our political classes are practitioners of both. But initially at least neoconservatism was focused on foreign policy and neoliberalism on domestic economic policy. As the War on Terror expanded, however, neoconservatism came back home with the creation and expansion of the surveillance state.

At the same time, neoliberalism went from domestic to global, and here I am not just thinking about neoliberal experiments, like Pinochet's Chile or post-Soviet Russia, but the financialization of the world economy and the adoption of kleptocracy as the world economic model.

jest on Mon, 08/20/2012 - 5:55am

I'm now under the opinion that you can't talk about any of the "neo-isms" without talking about the corporate state.

That's really the tie that binds the two things you are speaking of.

With neocons, it manifests itself through the military-industrial complex (Boeing, Raytheon, etc.), and with neolibs it manifests itself through finance and industrial policy.

For example, you need the US gov't to bomb Iraq (Raytheon) in order to secure oil (Halliburton), which is priced & financed in US dollars (Goldman Sachs). It's like a 3-legged stool; if you remove one of these legs, the whole thing comes down. But each leg has two components, a statist component and a corporate component.

The entity that enables all of this is the corporate state.

It also explains why economic/financial interests (neolib) are now considered national security interests (neocon). The viability of the state is now tied to the viability of the corporation.

lambert on Mon, 08/20/2012 - 9:18am

Corporate/statist (not sure "corporate" captures the looting/rentier aspect though). We see it everywhere, for example in the revolving door.

I think the stool has more legs and is also more dynamic; more like Ikea furniture. For example, the press is surely critical in organizing the war.

But the yin/yang of neo-lib/neo-con is nice: It's as if the neo-cons handle the kinetic aspects (guns, torture) and the neo-libs handle the mental aspects (money, mindfuckery) but both merge (like Negronponte being on the board of Americans Select) over time as margins fall and decorative aspects like democratic institutions and academic freedom get stripped away. The state and the corporation have always been tied to each other but now the ties are open and visible (for example, fines are just a cost of doing business, a rent on open corruption.)

And then there's the concept of "human resource," that abstracts all aspects of humanity away except those that are exploitable.

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi

jest on Mon, 08/20/2012 - 1:37pm

I like the term much better than Fascist, as it is 1) more accurate, 2) avoids the Godwin's law issue, and 3) makes them sound totalitarianist.

Yes, I would agree that additional legs make sense. The media aspect is essential, as it neutralizes the freedom of the press, without changing the constitution. It dovetails pretty well with the notion of Inverted Totalitarianism.

I think you could also make the argument that Obama is perhaps the most ideal combination of neolib & neocon. The two sides of him flow together so seamlessly, no one seems to notice. But that's in part because he is so corporate.

Lex on Mon, 08/20/2012 - 8:28am

Actually, neoliberalism is an economic term. An economic liberal in the UK and EU is for open markets, capitalism, etc. You're right that neoliberalism comes heavily from the University of Chicago, but it has little to do with American political liberalism.

A reading of the classical liberal economists puts some breaks on the markets, corporations, etc. Neoliberalism goes to the illogical extremes of market theory and iirc, has some influence from the Austrian school ... which gives up on any pretense of scientific exposition of economics or rationality at the micro level, assuming that irrationality will magically become rational behavior in aggregate.

Therefore, US conservatives post Eisenhower but especially post Reagan are almost certainly economic neoliberals. Since Clinton, liberals/Democrats have been too (at least the elected ones). You nailed neoconservative and both parties are in foreign policy since at least Clinton ... though here lets not forget to go back as far as JFK and his extreme anti-Communism that led to all sorts of covert operations, The Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Remember, the Soviets put the missiles in Cuba because we put missiles in Turkey and they backed down from Cuba because we agreed to remove the missiles from Turkey; Nikita was nice enough not to talk about that so that Kennedy didn't lose face.

"Don't believe them, don't fear them, don't ask anything of them" - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Hugh on Mon, 08/20/2012 - 3:57pm

I agree that neoconservatism and neoliberalism are two facets of corporatism/kleptocracy. I like the kinetic vs. white collar distinction.

The roots of neoliberalism go back to the 1940s and the Austrians, but in the US it really only comes into currency with Clinton as a deliberate shift of the Democratic/liberal platform away from labor and ordinary Americans to make it more accommodating to big business and big money. I had never heard of neoliberalism before Bill Clinton but it is easy to see how those tendencies were at work under Carter, but not under Johnson.

This was a rough and ready sketch. I guess I should also have mentioned PNAC or the Project to Find a New Mission for the MIC.

Hugh on Mon, 08/20/2012 - 10:44pm

I have never understood this love of Clinton that some Democrats have just as I have never understood the attraction of Reagan for Republicans. There is no Clinton faction. There is no Obama faction. Hillary Clinton is Obama's frigging Secretary of State. Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, both of whom served as Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary, were Obama's top financial and economic advisors. Timothy Geithner was their protégé. Leon Panetta Obama's Director of the CIA and current Secretary of Defense was Clinton's Director of OMB and then Chief of Staff.

The Democrats as a party are neoconservative and neoliberal as are Obama and the Clintons. As are Republicans.

What does corporations need regulation mean? It is rather like saying that the best way to deal with cancer is to find a cure for it. Sounds nice but there is no content to it. Worse in the real world, the rich own the corporations, the politicians, and the regulators. So even if you come up with good ideas for regulation they aren't going to happen.

What you are suggesting looks a whole lot another iteration of lesser evilism meets Einstein's definition of insanity. How is it any different from any other instance of Democratic tribalism?

Lex on Mon, 08/20/2012 - 11:49pm

Perhaps it should be pointed out that the Clintons became fabulously wealthy just after Bill left office, mostly on the strength of his speaking engagements for the financial sector that he'd just deregulated. Both he and Hillary hew to a pretty damned neoconservative foreign policy ... with that dash of "humanitarian interventionism" that makes war palatable to liberals.

But your deeper point is that there isn't enough of a difference between Obama and Bill Clinton to really draw a distinction, not in terms of ideology. What a theoretical Hillary Clinton presidency would have looked like is irrelevant, because both Bill and Obama talked a lot different than they walked. Any projection of a Hillary Clinton administration is just that and requires arguing that it would have been different than Bill's administration and policies.

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that at that level of politics, the levers of money and power work equally well on both party's nomenklatura. They flock to it like moths to porch light.

That the money chose Obama over Clinton doesn't say all that much, because there's no evidence suggesting that the money didn't like Clinton or that it would have chosen McCain over Clinton. It's not as if Clinton's campaign was driven into the ground by lack of funds.

Regardless, that to be a Democrat i would kind of have to chose between two factions that are utterly distasteful to me just proves that i have no business being a Democrat. And since i wouldn't vote for either of those names, i guess i'll just stick to third parties and exit the political tribalism loop for good.

"Don't believe them, don't fear them, don't ask anything of them" - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[Oct 24, 2017] The Blind Justice Lady is real

Oct 24, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

AlaricBalth -> Creepy_Azz_Crackaah , Oct 24, 2017 1:03 PM

"Our justice system is represented by a blind-folded woman holding a set of scales. Those scales do not tip to the right or the left; they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status. The impartiality of our justice system is the bedrock of our republic..."

Spewed coffee after reading this quote.

E.F. Mutton -> Gerry Fletcher , Oct 24, 2017 12:57 PM

The Blind Justice Lady is real, she just has a .45 at the back of her head held by Hillary

And don't even ask where Bill's finger is

[Sep 21, 2017] After 2.5 Years, A Lawsuit To Unseal Draft Whitewater Indictments Against Hillary Gets Its Day In Court

Sep 21, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

McClatchy points out, since March 2015 Judicial Watch has been engaged in a back and forth battle with the National Archives which argues that "the documents should be kept secret [to preserve] grand jury secrecy and Clinton's personal privacy."

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that files Freedom of Information Act requests, wants copies of the documents that the National Archives and Records Administration has declined to release. It filed a FOIA request for the documents in March 2015 and in October 2015 the group sued for the 238 pages of responsive records.

According to Judicial Watch: " The National Archives argues that the documents should be kept secret, citing grand jury secrecy and Clinton's personal privacy."

But Judicial Watch says that because so much about the Whitewater case has already been made public, "there is no secrecy or privacy left to protect."

The documents in question are alleged drafts of indictments written by Hickman Ewing, the chief deputy of Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel appointed to investigate Bill and Hillary Clinton's alleged involvement in fraudulent real estate dealings dating back to the 70's.

Ewing told investigators he drafted the indictments in April 1995. According to Judicial Watch, the documents pertain to allegations that Hillary Clinton provided false information and withheld information from those investigating the Whitewater scandal.

Meanwhile, for those who haven't been alive long enough to remember some of the original Clinton scandals dating back to the 1970's, the Whitewater scandal revolved around a series of shady real estate deals in the Ozarks, not to mention a couple of illegal, federally-insured loans, back when Bill was Governor of Arkansas.

Of course, like with all Clinton scandals, while several other people ended up in jail as a result of the FBI's Whitewater investigation, Bill and Hillary emerged unscathed. Wikipedia offers more details:

The Whitewater controversy, Whitewater scandal (or simply Whitewater), was an American political episode of the 1990s that began with an investigation into the real estate investments of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their associates, Jim McDougal and Susan McDougal, in the Whitewater Development Corporation, a failed business venture in the 1970s and 1980s.

A March 1992 New York Times article published during the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign reported that the Clintons, then governor and first lady of Arkansas, had invested and lost money in the Whitewater Development Corporation. The article stimulated the interest of L. Jean Lewis, a Resolution Trust Corporation investigator who was looking into the failure of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, also owned by Jim and Susan McDougal.

Lewis looked for connections between the savings and loan company and the Clintons, and on September 2, 1992, she submitted a criminal referral to the FBI naming Bill and Hillary Clinton as witnesses in the Madison Guaranty case. Little Rock U.S. Attorney Charles A. Banks and the FBI determined that the referral lacked merit, but Lewis continued to pursue the case. From 1992 to 1994, Lewis issued several additional referrals against the Clintons and repeatedly called the U.S. Attorney's Office in Little Rock and the Justice Department regarding the case. Her referrals eventually became public knowledge, and she testified before the Senate Whitewater Committee in 1995.

David Hale, the source of criminal allegations against the Clintons, claimed in November 1993 that Bill Clinton had pressured him into providing an illegal $300,000 loan to Susan McDougal, the Clintons' partner in the Whitewater land deal. The allegations were regarded as questionable because Hale had not mentioned Clinton in reference to this loan during the original FBI investigation of Madison Guaranty in 1989; only after coming under indictment himself in 1993, did Hale make allegations against the Clintons. A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation resulted in convictions against the McDougals for their role in the Whitewater project. Jim Guy Tucker, Bill Clinton's successor as governor, was convicted of fraud and sentenced to four years of probation for his role in the matter. Susan McDougal served 18 months in prison for contempt of court for refusing to answer questions relating to Whitewater.

Neither Bill Clinton nor Hillary were ever prosecuted, after three separate inquiries found insufficient evidence linking them with the criminal conduct of others related to the land deal.

Just more attempts to "criminalize behavior that is normal"...

jamesmmu , Sep 21, 2017 6:36 PM

Understanding The Battle Between The Deep State – And "One Nation Under God" – The Holy War Within The United States Of America.

http://investmentwatchblog.com/understanding-the-battle-between-the-deep...

knukles -> jamesmmu , Sep 21, 2017 7:00 PM

"National Security" Will Prevail Again. Hillary's health and mental condition are at risk.

Hillary/Diezapam 2020

Holy war? FFS people, this shit's straight out of the End of Days stories or numerous religious, spiritual and philosophical belief systems. Yes, the war between good and evil is real and evil has the upper hand at the moment. Greatly has the upper hand.

Edit and More Importantly, Andre Ward's announced his retirement from boxing Man was a thing of beauty in the ring....

Four chan -> knukles , Sep 21, 2017 7:27 PM

the first work the clintons did for the cia

booboo -> Four chan , Sep 21, 2017 8:22 PM

Didn't Sandy Berger get caught stealing Clinton related documents from the National Archives?

Wonder what else he make off in his socks?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16706-2005Mar31.html

Lumberjack -> Lumberjack , Sep 21, 2017 6:48 PM

Was Hillary Clinton Fired from the Nixon Impeachment Inquiry?

https://www.cato.org/blog/was-hillary-clinton-fired-nixon-impeachment-in...

In 1999, nine years before the Calabrese interview, Zeifman told the Scripps-Howard news agency: "If I had the power to fire her, I would have fired her." In a 2008 interview on "The Neal Boortz Show," Zeifman was asked directly whether he fired her. His answer: "Well, let me put it this way. I terminated her, along with some other staff members who were ! we no longer needed, and advised her that I would not ! could not recommend her for any further positions."

Blankenstein -> YourAverageJoe , Sep 21, 2017 8:29 PM

They owned the property of what was most likely a drug smuggling operation in Paron, Arkansas.

That property has ties with the Rose law firm in Little Rock , in which Hillary Rodham Clinton was formerly a partner. While some observers believe the property was intended as an additional presidential residence - the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, for example, reported it was rumored to be a "White House West"; and contractors who worked on it whimsically tagged it "Camp Chelsea" - there are strong indications something quite different might be taking place in Paron

Simultaneous with this, residents said there was an increase in low-flying airplanes over the property. Unlike the military aircraft that occasionally fly over the area, these were "small Cessna-like" aircraft, according to Hill. He said the planes typically fly through a pass in the Cockspur Mountains on Southeast's property, several miles from the main road.

"After the planes leave, 20 to 30 minutes will go by, and small trucks and Jeeps leave the property at two different entrances," said Hill. He added that neighbors, during a flurry of aircraft activity, had logged the details, which they then passed on to federal authorities

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/993980/posts

Blankenstein -> insanelysane , Sep 21, 2017 8:23 PM

The ones with Vince Foster's fingerprints on them?

" After nearly two years of searches and subpoenas, the White House said this evening that it had unexpectedly discovered copies of missing documents from Hillary Rodham Clinton's law firm that describe her work for a failing savings and loan association in the 1980's.

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/06/us/elusive-papers-of-law-firm-are-foun...

"The mysterious appearance of the billing records, which had been the specific subject of various nvestigative subpoenas for two year s, sparked intense interest about how they surfaced and where they had been"

"But Whitewater investigators believe that the billing records show significant representation. They argue that the records prove that Ms. Clinton was not only directly involved in the representation of Madison, but more specifically, in providing legal work on the fraudulent Castle Grande land deal."

"Investigators believe this suggests that, at some point, this copy was passed from Vince Foster to Hillary Clinton for her review.

In addition, investigators had the FBI conduct fingerprint analysis of the billing records. Of significance, the prints of Vince Foster and Hillary Clinton were found."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/arkansas/docs/recs.html

Rebelrebel7 , Sep 21, 2017 7:22 PM

It is extremely unfortunate that criminal behavior is now considered normal! The Clintons are responsible for that.

The Clintons were extremely guilty of Whitewater for profiteering on a failed real estate deal at Arkansas' residents expense, in addition to dozens of other crimes! I often wonder how life could be much better if the Clintons were never elected! The invasive and rampant corruption in virtually every sector of our society, has made this country 100% dysfunctional!

There had been criminal activity at the local level in government in some regions, but Clinton nationalized it, and legitimized it. Nixon was impeached, and resigned, giving people belief that nobody was above the law.

Now, Trump has not committed a single impeachable offense, and all that they ever talk about is impeachment!

I recall reading that Starr had DNC loyalties. My guess is that Republicans were more concerned with a President Gore, than a President Clinton.

Chippewa Partners , Sep 21, 2017 7:49 PM

The Rose Law Firm billings records? They were found sitting on her night stand next to her bed FFS...........

This is a great article on her prowess in cattle trading ......all of you wanna-be traders should try to emulate her ability!!!

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436066/hillary-clintons-cattle-fut...

Anunnaki , Sep 21, 2017 8:17 PM

The real scandal is how Hellary turned 1000$ into 100k in cattle futures. They said it would be like winning the lottery two days in a row

[Sep 21, 2017] Emails Hillary Clinton Sought Russian Officials For Pay-To-Play Scheme

Sep 21, 2017 | www.mintpressnews.com

Although Hillary Clinton has blamed numerous factors and people for her loss to Donald Trump in last year's election, no one has received as much blame as the Russian government. In an effort to avoid blaming the candidate herself by turning the election results into a national scandal, accusations of Kremlin-directed meddling soon surfaced. While such accusations have largely been discredited by both computer analysts and award-winning journalists like Seymour Hersh, they continue to be repeated as the investigation into Donald Trump's alleged collusion with the Russian government picks up steam.

However, newly released Clinton emails suggest that that the former secretary of state's disdain for the Russian government is a relatively new development. The emails, obtained by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, show that the Russian government was included in invitations to exclusive Clinton Foundation galas that began less than two months after Clinton became the top official at the U.S. State Department.

In March of 2009, Amitabh Desai, then-Clinton Foundation director of foreign policy, sent invitations to numerous world leaders, which included Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev. Desai's emails were cc'd to Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro and later forwarded to top Clinton aide Jake Sullivan.

The Clinton Foundation's activities during Hillary's tenure as secretary of state have been central to the accusations that the Clinton family used their "charitable" foundation as a means of enriching themselves via a massive "Pay to Play" scheme. Emails leaked by Wikileaks, particularly the Podesta emails , offered ample evidence connecting foreign donations to the Clintons and their foundation with preferential treatment by the U.S. State Department.

[Sep 11, 2017] Around 1970 corporate managers and professionals realized that they shared the same education, background and interests with capital owners and realigned themselves, abandoning working class and a large part of lower middle class (small business owners)

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... My observation is that the New Class (professionals, lobbyists, financiers, teachers, engineers, etc.) have ruled the country in recent decades. For much of the twentieth century this class was in some tension with corporations, and used their skills at influencing government policy to help develop and protect the welfare state, since they needed the working class as a counterweight to the natural influence of corporate money and power. However, somewhere around 1970 I think this tension collapsed, since corporate managers and professionals realized that they shared the same education, background and interests. ..."
"... This "peace treaty" between former rivals allowed the whole newly enlarged New Class to swing to the right, since they really didn't particularly need the working class politically anymore. And since it is the hallmark of this class to seek prestige, power and money while transferring risk away from themselves, the middle class and blue collar community has been the natural recipient. Free trade (well, for non-professionals, anyway), neoliberalism, ruthless private equity job cutting, etc., etc. all followed very naturally. The re-alignment of the Democratic Party towards the right was a natural part of this evolution. ..."
"... They also sense that organized politics in this country – being chiefly the province of the New Class – has left them with little leverage to change any of this. ..."
"... the New Class has very strong internal solidarity – and since somebody has to pay for these little mistakes, everyone outside that class is "fair game." ..."
"... So in that sense–to the extent that you define liberal as the ideology of the New Class (neoliberal, financial-capitalistic, big corporate-friendly but opposed to non-meritocratic biases like racism, sexism, etc.) is "liberalism", I think it is reasonable to say that it has bred resistance and anger among the "losers." As far as having "failed", well, we'll see: the New Class still controls almost all the levers of power. It has many strategies for channeling lower-class anger and I think under Trump we'll see those rolled out. ..."
"... Perhaps some evolution in "the means of production" or in how governments are influenced will ultimately develop to divide or downgrade the New Class, and break its lock on the corridors of power, but I don't see it on the horizon just yet. If anyone else does, I'd love to hear more about it. ..."
"... A little puzzled by the inclusion of teachers, alongside financiers and the like, in William Meyer's list of the New Class rulers. Enablers of those rulers, no doubt, but not visibly calling the shots. But then I'm probably just another liberal elitist failing to recognize my own hegemony, like Chris. ..."
"... I assume he meant certain professors [of economics]. Actually on @4, there's a good chapter on the topic in a Thomas Franks latest. ..."
Nov 14, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

William Meyer 11.13.16 at 9:40 pm 4

Obviously Mr. Deerin is, on its face, utilizing a very disputable definition of "liberal."

However, I think a stronger case could be made for something like Mr. Deerin's argument, although it doesn't necessarily get to the same conclusion.

My observation is that the New Class (professionals, lobbyists, financiers, teachers, engineers, etc.) have ruled the country in recent decades. For much of the twentieth century this class was in some tension with corporations, and used their skills at influencing government policy to help develop and protect the welfare state, since they needed the working class as a counterweight to the natural influence of corporate money and power. However, somewhere around 1970 I think this tension collapsed, since corporate managers and professionals realized that they shared the same education, background and interests.

Vive la meritocracy. This "peace treaty" between former rivals allowed the whole newly enlarged New Class to swing to the right, since they really didn't particularly need the working class politically anymore. And since it is the hallmark of this class to seek prestige, power and money while transferring risk away from themselves, the middle class and blue collar community has been the natural recipient. Free trade (well, for non-professionals, anyway), neoliberalism, ruthless private equity job cutting, etc., etc. all followed very naturally. The re-alignment of the Democratic Party towards the right was a natural part of this evolution.

I think the 90% or so of the community who are not included in this class are confused and bewildered and of course rather angry about it. They also sense that organized politics in this country – being chiefly the province of the New Class – has left them with little leverage to change any of this. Watching the bailouts and lack of prosecutions during the GFC made them dimly realize that the New Class has very strong internal solidarity – and since somebody has to pay for these little mistakes, everyone outside that class is "fair game."

So in that sense–to the extent that you define liberal as the ideology of the New Class (neoliberal, financial-capitalistic, big corporate-friendly but opposed to non-meritocratic biases like racism, sexism, etc.) is "liberalism", I think it is reasonable to say that it has bred resistance and anger among the "losers." As far as having "failed", well, we'll see: the New Class still controls almost all the levers of power. It has many strategies for channeling lower-class anger and I think under Trump we'll see those rolled out.

Let me be clear, I'm not saying Donald Trump is leading an insurgency against the New Class – but I think he tapped into something like one and is riding it for all he can, while not really having the slightest idea what he's doing.

Perhaps some evolution in "the means of production" or in how governments are influenced will ultimately develop to divide or downgrade the New Class, and break its lock on the corridors of power, but I don't see it on the horizon just yet. If anyone else does, I'd love to hear more about it.

Neville Morley 11.14.16 at 7:11 am ( 31 )

A little puzzled by the inclusion of teachers, alongside financiers and the like, in William Meyer's list of the New Class rulers. Enablers of those rulers, no doubt, but not visibly calling the shots. But then I'm probably just another liberal elitist failing to recognize my own hegemony, like Chris.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/14/are-you-a-sinister-filthy-elite-take-this-quiz-and-find-out-now?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chris S 11.14.16 at 7:31 am

@29,

I assume he meant certain professors [of economics]. Actually on @4, there's a good chapter on the topic in a Thomas Franks latest.

[Sep 11, 2017] Around 1970 corporate managers and professionals realized that they shared the same education, background and interests with capital owners and realigned themselves, abandoning working class and a large part of lower middle class (small business owners)

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... My observation is that the New Class (professionals, lobbyists, financiers, teachers, engineers, etc.) have ruled the country in recent decades. For much of the twentieth century this class was in some tension with corporations, and used their skills at influencing government policy to help develop and protect the welfare state, since they needed the working class as a counterweight to the natural influence of corporate money and power. However, somewhere around 1970 I think this tension collapsed, since corporate managers and professionals realized that they shared the same education, background and interests. ..."
"... This "peace treaty" between former rivals allowed the whole newly enlarged New Class to swing to the right, since they really didn't particularly need the working class politically anymore. And since it is the hallmark of this class to seek prestige, power and money while transferring risk away from themselves, the middle class and blue collar community has been the natural recipient. Free trade (well, for non-professionals, anyway), neoliberalism, ruthless private equity job cutting, etc., etc. all followed very naturally. The re-alignment of the Democratic Party towards the right was a natural part of this evolution. ..."
"... They also sense that organized politics in this country – being chiefly the province of the New Class – has left them with little leverage to change any of this. ..."
"... the New Class has very strong internal solidarity – and since somebody has to pay for these little mistakes, everyone outside that class is "fair game." ..."
"... So in that sense–to the extent that you define liberal as the ideology of the New Class (neoliberal, financial-capitalistic, big corporate-friendly but opposed to non-meritocratic biases like racism, sexism, etc.) is "liberalism", I think it is reasonable to say that it has bred resistance and anger among the "losers." As far as having "failed", well, we'll see: the New Class still controls almost all the levers of power. It has many strategies for channeling lower-class anger and I think under Trump we'll see those rolled out. ..."
"... Perhaps some evolution in "the means of production" or in how governments are influenced will ultimately develop to divide or downgrade the New Class, and break its lock on the corridors of power, but I don't see it on the horizon just yet. If anyone else does, I'd love to hear more about it. ..."
"... A little puzzled by the inclusion of teachers, alongside financiers and the like, in William Meyer's list of the New Class rulers. Enablers of those rulers, no doubt, but not visibly calling the shots. But then I'm probably just another liberal elitist failing to recognize my own hegemony, like Chris. ..."
"... I assume he meant certain professors [of economics]. Actually on @4, there's a good chapter on the topic in a Thomas Franks latest. ..."
Nov 14, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

William Meyer 11.13.16 at 9:40 pm 4

Obviously Mr. Deerin is, on its face, utilizing a very disputable definition of "liberal."

However, I think a stronger case could be made for something like Mr. Deerin's argument, although it doesn't necessarily get to the same conclusion.

My observation is that the New Class (professionals, lobbyists, financiers, teachers, engineers, etc.) have ruled the country in recent decades. For much of the twentieth century this class was in some tension with corporations, and used their skills at influencing government policy to help develop and protect the welfare state, since they needed the working class as a counterweight to the natural influence of corporate money and power. However, somewhere around 1970 I think this tension collapsed, since corporate managers and professionals realized that they shared the same education, background and interests.

Vive la meritocracy. This "peace treaty" between former rivals allowed the whole newly enlarged New Class to swing to the right, since they really didn't particularly need the working class politically anymore. And since it is the hallmark of this class to seek prestige, power and money while transferring risk away from themselves, the middle class and blue collar community has been the natural recipient. Free trade (well, for non-professionals, anyway), neoliberalism, ruthless private equity job cutting, etc., etc. all followed very naturally. The re-alignment of the Democratic Party towards the right was a natural part of this evolution.

I think the 90% or so of the community who are not included in this class are confused and bewildered and of course rather angry about it. They also sense that organized politics in this country – being chiefly the province of the New Class – has left them with little leverage to change any of this. Watching the bailouts and lack of prosecutions during the GFC made them dimly realize that the New Class has very strong internal solidarity – and since somebody has to pay for these little mistakes, everyone outside that class is "fair game."

So in that sense–to the extent that you define liberal as the ideology of the New Class (neoliberal, financial-capitalistic, big corporate-friendly but opposed to non-meritocratic biases like racism, sexism, etc.) is "liberalism", I think it is reasonable to say that it has bred resistance and anger among the "losers." As far as having "failed", well, we'll see: the New Class still controls almost all the levers of power. It has many strategies for channeling lower-class anger and I think under Trump we'll see those rolled out.

Let me be clear, I'm not saying Donald Trump is leading an insurgency against the New Class – but I think he tapped into something like one and is riding it for all he can, while not really having the slightest idea what he's doing.

Perhaps some evolution in "the means of production" or in how governments are influenced will ultimately develop to divide or downgrade the New Class, and break its lock on the corridors of power, but I don't see it on the horizon just yet. If anyone else does, I'd love to hear more about it.

Neville Morley 11.14.16 at 7:11 am ( 31 )

A little puzzled by the inclusion of teachers, alongside financiers and the like, in William Meyer's list of the New Class rulers. Enablers of those rulers, no doubt, but not visibly calling the shots. But then I'm probably just another liberal elitist failing to recognize my own hegemony, like Chris.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/14/are-you-a-sinister-filthy-elite-take-this-quiz-and-find-out-now?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chris S 11.14.16 at 7:31 am

@29,

I assume he meant certain professors [of economics]. Actually on @4, there's a good chapter on the topic in a Thomas Franks latest.

[Jul 13, 2017] Progressive Democrats Resist and Submit, Retreat and Surrender by James Petras

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "Have you ever met or talked to any Russian official or relative of any Russian banker, or any Russian or even read Gogol, now or in the past?" ..."
"... Progressives joined the FBI/CIA's 'Russian Bear' conspiracy: " Russia intervened and decided the Presidential election" – no matter that millions of workers and rural Americans had voted against Hillary Clinton, Wall Street's candidate and no matter that no evidence of direct interference was ever presented. Progressives could not accept that 'their constituents', the masses, had rejected Madame Clinton and preferred 'the Donald'. They attacked a shifty-eyed caricature of the repeatedly elected Russian President Putin as a subterfuge for attacking the disobedient 'white trash' electorate of 'Deploralandia'. ..."
"... Progressive demagogues embraced the coifed and manicured former 'Director Comey' of the FBI, and the Mr. Potato-headed Capo of the CIA and their forty thugs in making accusations without finger or footprints. ..."
"... Then Progressives turned increasingly Orwellian: Ignoring Obama's actual expulsion of over 2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump for promising to eventually expel 5 million more! ..."
"... Progressives, under Obama, supported seven brutal illegal wars and pressed for more, but complained when Trump continued the same wars and proposed adding a few new ones. At the same time, progressives out-militarized Trump by accusing him of being 'weak' on Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. They chided him for his lack support for Israel's suppression of the Palestinians. They lauded Trump's embrace of the Saudi war against Yemen as a stepping-stone for an assault against Iran, even as millions of destitute Yemenis were exposed to cholera. The Progressives had finally embraced a biological weapon of mass destruction, when US-supplied missiles destroyed the water systems of Yemen! ..."
"... Thank you for putting your finger on the main problem right there in the first paragraph. There were exceptions of course. I supported Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic Primary that gave us the first black etc. But I never voted for Obama. Throughout the Cheney Admin I pleaded with progressives to bolt the party. ..."
"... This is an excellent summary of the evolution of "progressives" into modern militarist fascists who tolerate identity politics diversity. There is little to add to Mr. Petras' commentary. ..."
"... Barak Obama is America's biggest con man who accomplished nothing "progressive" during eight years at the top, and didn't even try. (Obamacare is an insurance industry idea supported by most Republicans, which is why it recently survived.) Anyone who still likes Obama should read about his actions since he left office. Obama quickly signed a $65 million "book deal", which can only be a kickback since there is no way the publisher can sell enough books about his meaningless presidency to justify that sum. Obama doesn't get royalties based on sales, but gets the money up front for a book he has yet to write, and will have someone do that for him. (Book deals and speaking fees are legal forms of bribery in the USA.) ..."
"... Then Obama embarked on 100 days of ultra expensive foreign vacations with taxpayers covering the Secret Service protection costs. He didn't appear at charity fundraisers, didn't campaign for Democrats, and didn't help build homes for the poor like Jimmy Carter. He returns from vacation this week and his first speech will be at a Wall Street firm that will pay him $400,000, then he travels to Europe for more paid speeches. ..."
"... They chose power over principles. Nobel War Prize winner Obomber was a particularly egregious chameleon, hiding his sociopathy through two elections before unleashing his racist warmongering in full flower throughout his second term. ..."
"... Like a huge collective 'Monica Lewinsky' robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party bent over and swallowed Clinton's vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act ..."
Jul 10, 2017 | www.unz.com

Introduction

Over the past quarter century progressive writers, activists and academics have followed a trajectory from left to right – with each presidential campaign seeming to move them further to the right. Beginning in the 1990's progressives mobilized millions in opposition to wars, voicing demands for the transformation of the US's corporate for-profit medical system into a national 'Medicare For All' public program. They condemned the notorious Wall Street swindlers and denounced police state legislation and violence. But in the end, they always voted for Democratic Party Presidential candidates who pursued the exact opposite agenda.

Over time this political contrast between program and practice led to the transformation of the Progressives. And what we see today are US progressives embracing and promoting the politics of the far right.

To understand this transformation we will begin by identifying who and what the progressives are and describe their historical role. We will then proceed to identify their trajectory over the recent decades.

  • We will outline the contours of recent Presidential campaigns where Progressives were deeply involved.
  • We will focus on the dynamics of political regression: From resistance to submission, from retreat to surrender.
  • We will conclude by discussing the end result: The Progressives' large-scale, long-term embrace of far-right ideology and practice.

Progressives by Name and Posture

Progressives purport to embrace 'progress', the growth of the economy, the enrichment of society and freedom from arbitrary government. Central to the Progressive agenda was the end of elite corruption and good governance, based on democratic procedures.

Progressives prided themselves as appealing to 'reason, diplomacy and conciliation', not brute force and wars. They upheld the sovereignty of other nations and eschewed militarism and armed intervention.

Progressives proposed a vision of their fellow citizens pursuing incremental evolution toward the 'good society', free from the foreign entanglements, which had entrapped the people in unjust wars.

Progressives in Historical Perspective

In the early part of the 20th century, progressives favored political equality while opposing extra-parliamentary social transformations. They supported gender equality and environmental preservation while failing to give prominence to the struggles of workers and African Americans.

They denounced militarism 'in general' but supported a series of 'wars to end all wars' . Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embodied the dual policies of promoting peace at home and bloody imperial wars overseas. By the middle of the 20th century, different strands emerged under the progressive umbrella. Progressives split between traditional good government advocates and modernists who backed socio-economic reforms, civil liberties and rights.

Progressives supported legislation to regulate monopolies, encouraged collective bargaining and defended the Bill of Rights.

Progressives opposed wars and militarism in theory until their government went to war.

Lacking an effective third political party, progressives came to see themselves as the 'left wing' of the Democratic Party, allies of labor and civil rights movements and defenders of civil liberties.

Progressives joined civil rights leaders in marches, but mostly relied on legal and electoral means to advance African American rights.

Progressives played a pivotal role in fighting McCarthyism, though ultimately it was the Secretary of the Army and the military high command that brought Senator McCarthy to his knees.

Progressives provided legal defense when the social movements disrupted the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.

They popularized the legislative arguments that eventually outlawed segregation, but it was courageous Afro-American leaders heading mass movements that won the struggle for integration and civil rights.

In many ways the Progressives complemented the mass struggles, but their limits were defined by the constraints of their membership in the Democratic Party.

The alliance between Progressives and social movements peaked in the late sixties to mid-1970's when the Progressives followed the lead of dynamic and advancing social movements and community organizers especially in opposition to the wars in Indochina and the military draft.

The Retreat of the Progressives

By the late 1970's the Progressives had cut their anchor to the social movements, as the anti-war, civil rights and labor movements lost their impetus (and direction).

The numbers of progressives within the left wing of the Democratic Party increased through recruitment from earlier social movements. Paradoxically, while their 'numbers' were up, their caliber had declined, as they sought to 'fit in' with the pro-business, pro-war agenda of their President's party.

Without the pressure of the 'populist street' the 'Progressives-turned-Democrats' adapted to the corporate culture in the Party. The Progressives signed off on a fatal compromise: The corporate elite secured the electoral party while the Progressives were allowed to write enlightened manifestos about the candidates and their programs . . . which were quickly dismissed once the Democrats took office. Yet the ability to influence the 'electoral rhetoric' was seen by the Progressives as a sufficient justification for remaining inside the Democratic Party.

Moreover the Progressives argued that by strengthening their presence in the Democratic Party, (their self-proclaimed 'boring from within' strategy), they would capture the party membership, neutralize the pro-corporation, militarist elements that nominated the president and peacefully transform the party into a 'vehicle for progressive changes'.

Upon their successful 'deep penetration' the Progressives, now cut off from the increasingly disorganized mass social movements, coopted and bought out many prominent black, labor and civil liberty activists and leaders, while collaborating with what they dubbed the more malleable 'centrist' Democrats. These mythical creatures were really pro-corporate Democrats who condescended to occasionally converse with the Progressives while working for the Wall Street and Pentagon elite.

The Retreat of the Progressives: The Clinton Decade

Progressives adapted the 'crab strategy': Moving side-ways and then backwards but never forward.

Progressives mounted candidates in the Presidential primaries, which were predictably defeated by the corporate Party apparatus, and then submitted immediately to the outcome. The election of President 'Bill' Clinton launched a period of unrestrained financial plunder, major wars of aggression in Europe (Yugoslavia) and the Middle East (Iraq), a military intervention in Somalia and secured Israel's victory over any remnant of a secular Palestinian leadership as well as its destruction of Lebanon!

Like a huge collective 'Monica Lewinsky' robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party bent over and swallowed Clinton's vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act, thereby opening the floodgates for massive speculation on Wall Street through the previously regulated banking sector. When President Clinton gutted welfare programs, forcing single mothers to take minimum-wage jobs without provision for safe childcare, millions of poor white and minority women were forced to abandon their children to dangerous makeshift arrangements in order to retain any residual public support and access to minimal health care. Progressives looked the other way.

Progressives followed Clinton's deep throated thrust toward the far right, as he outsourced manufacturing jobs to Mexico (NAFTA) and re-appointed Federal Reserve's free market, Ayn Rand-fanatic, Alan Greenspan.

Progressives repeatedly kneeled before President Clinton marking their submission to the Democrats' 'hard right' policies.

The election of Republican President G. W. Bush (2001-2009) permitted Progressive's to temporarily trot out and burnish their anti-war, anti-Wall Street credentials. Out in the street, they protested Bush's savage invasion of Iraq (but not the destruction of Afghanistan). They protested the media reports of torture in Abu Ghraib under Bush, but not the massive bombing and starvation of millions of Iraqis that had occurred under Clinton. Progressives protested the expulsion of immigrants from Mexico and Central America, but were silent over the brutal uprooting of refugees resulting from US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the systematic destruction of their nations' infrastructure.

Progressives embraced Israel's bombing, jailing and torture of Palestinians by voting unanimously in favor of increasing the annual $3 billion dollar military handouts to the brutal Jewish State. They supported Israel's bombing and slaughter in Lebanon.

Progressives were in retreat, but retained a muffled voice and inconsequential vote in favor of peace, justice and civil liberties. They kept a certain distance from the worst of the police state decrees by the Republican Administration.

Progressives and Obama: From Retreat to Surrender

While Progressives maintained their tepid commitment to civil liberties, and their highly 'leveraged' hopes for peace in the Middle East, they jumped uncritically into the highly choreographed Democratic Party campaign for Barack Obama, 'Wall Street's First Black President'.

Progressives had given up their quest to 'realign' the Democratic Party 'from within': they turned from serious tourism to permanent residency. Progressives provided the foot soldiers for the election and re-election of the warmongering 'Peace Candidate' Obama. After the election, Progressives rushed to join the lower echelons of his Administration. Black and white politicos joined hands in their heroic struggle to erase the last vestiges of the Progressives' historical legacy.

Obama increased the number of Bush-era imperial wars to attacking seven weak nations under American's 'First Black' President's bombardment, while the Progressives ensured that the streets were quiet and empty.

When Obama provided trillions of dollars of public money to rescue Wall Street and the bankers, while sacrificing two million poor and middle class mortgage holders, the Progressives only criticized the bankers who received the bailout, but not Obama's Presidential decision to protect and reward the mega-swindlers.

Under the Obama regime social inequalities within the United States grew at an unprecedented rate. The Police State Patriot Act was massively extended to give President Obama the power to order the assassination of US citizens abroad without judicial process. The Progressives did not resign when Obama's 'kill orders' extended to the 'mistaken' murder of his target's children and other family member, as well as unidentified bystanders. The icon carriers still paraded their banner of the 'first black American President' when tens of thousands of black Libyans and immigrant workers were slaughtered in his regime-change war against President Gadhafi.

Obama surpassed the record of all previous Republican office holders in terms of the massive numbers of immigrant workers arrested and expelled – 2 million. Progressives applauded the Latino protestors while supporting the policies of their 'first black President'.

Progressive accepted that multiple wars, Wall Street bailouts and the extended police state were now the price they would pay to remain part of the "Democratic coalition' (sic).

The deeper the Progressives swilled at the Democratic Party trough, the more they embraced the Obama's free market agenda and the more they ignored the increasing impoverishment, exploitation and medical industry-led opioid addiction of American workers that was shortening their lives. Under Obama, the Progressives totally abandoned the historic American working class, accepting their degradation into what Madam Hillary Clinton curtly dismissed as the 'deplorables'.

With the Obama Presidency, the Progressive retreat turned into a rout, surrendering with one flaccid caveat: the Democratic Party 'Socialist' Bernie Sanders, who had voted 90% of the time with the Corporate Party, had revived a bastardized military-welfare state agenda.

Sander's Progressive demagogy shouted and rasped on the campaign trail, beguiling the young electorate. The 'Bernie' eventually 'sheep-dogged' his supporters into the pro-war Democratic Party corral. Sanders revived an illusion of the pre-1990 progressive agenda, promising resistance while demanding voter submission to Wall Street warlord Hillary Clinton. After Sanders' round up of the motley progressive herd, he staked them tightly to the far-right Wall Street war mongering Hillary Clinton. The Progressives not only embraced Madame Secretary Clinton's nuclear option and virulent anti-working class agenda, they embellished it by focusing on Republican billionaire Trump's demagogic, nationalist, working class rhetoric which was designed to agitate 'the deplorables'. They even turned on the working class voters, dismissing them as 'irredeemable' racists and illiterates or 'white trash' when they turned to support Trump in massive numbers in the 'fly-over' states of the central US.

Progressives, allied with the police state, the mass media and the war machine worked to defeat and impeach Trump. Progressives surrendered completely to the Democratic Party and started to advocate its far right agenda. Hysterical McCarthyism against anyone who questioned the Democrats' promotion of war with Russia, mass media lies and manipulation of street protest against Republican elected officials became the centerpieces of the Progressive agenda. The working class and farmers had disappeared from their bastardized 'identity-centered' ideology.

Guilt by association spread throughout Progressive politics. Progressives embraced J. Edgar Hoover's FBI tactics: "Have you ever met or talked to any Russian official or relative of any Russian banker, or any Russian or even read Gogol, now or in the past?" For progressives, 'Russia-gate' defined the real focus of contemporary political struggle in this huge, complex, nuclear-armed superpower.

Progressives joined the FBI/CIA's 'Russian Bear' conspiracy: "Russia intervened and decided the Presidential election" – no matter that millions of workers and rural Americans had voted against Hillary Clinton, Wall Street's candidate and no matter that no evidence of direct interference was ever presented. Progressives could not accept that 'their constituents', the masses, had rejected Madame Clinton and preferred 'the Donald'. They attacked a shifty-eyed caricature of the repeatedly elected Russian President Putin as a subterfuge for attacking the disobedient 'white trash' electorate of 'Deploralandia'.

Progressive demagogues embraced the coifed and manicured former 'Director Comey' of the FBI, and the Mr. Potato-headed Capo of the CIA and their forty thugs in making accusations without finger or footprints.

The Progressives' far right - turn earned them hours and space on the mass media as long as they breathlessly savaged and insulted President Trump and his family members. When they managed to provoke him into a blind rage . . . they added the newly invented charge of 'psychologically unfit to lead' – presenting cheap psychobabble as grounds for impeachment. Finally! American Progressives were on their way to achieving their first and only political transformation: a Presidential coup d'état on behalf of the Far Right!

Progressives loudly condemned Trump's overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as appeasement and betrayal!

In return, President Trump began to 'out-militarize' the Progressives by escalating US involvement in the Middle East and South China Sea. They swooned with joy when Trump ordered a missile strike against the Syrian government as Damascus engaged in a life and death struggle against mercenary terrorists. They dubbed the petulant release of Patriot missiles 'Presidential'.

Then Progressives turned increasingly Orwellian: Ignoring Obama's actual expulsion of over 2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump for promising to eventually expel 5 million more!

Progressives, under Obama, supported seven brutal illegal wars and pressed for more, but complained when Trump continued the same wars and proposed adding a few new ones. At the same time, progressives out-militarized Trump by accusing him of being 'weak' on Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. They chided him for his lack support for Israel's suppression of the Palestinians. They lauded Trump's embrace of the Saudi war against Yemen as a stepping-stone for an assault against Iran, even as millions of destitute Yemenis were exposed to cholera. The Progressives had finally embraced a biological weapon of mass destruction, when US-supplied missiles destroyed the water systems of Yemen!

Conclusion

Progressives turned full circle from supporting welfare to embracing Wall Street; from preaching peaceful co-existence to demanding a dozen wars; from recognizing the humanity and rights of undocumented immigrants to their expulsion under their 'First Black' President; from thoughtful mass media critics to servile media megaphones; from defenders of civil liberties to boosters for the police state; from staunch opponents of J. Edgar Hoover and his 'dirty tricks' to camp followers for the 'intelligence community' in its deep state campaign to overturn a national election.

Progressives moved from fighting and resisting the Right to submitting and retreating; from retreating to surrendering and finally embracing the far right.

Doing all that and more within the Democratic Party, Progressives retain and deepen their ties with the mass media, the security apparatus and the military machine, while occasionally digging up some Bernie Sanders-type demagogue to arouse an army of voters away from effective resistance to mindless collaboration.

(Republished from The James Petras Website by permission of author or representative)

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WorkingClass > , July 12, 2017 at 9:21 pm GMT

But in the end, they always voted for Democratic Party Presidential candidates who pursued the exact opposite agenda.

Thank you for putting your finger on the main problem right there in the first paragraph. There were exceptions of course. I supported Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic Primary that gave us the first black etc. But I never voted for Obama. Throughout the Cheney Admin I pleaded with progressives to bolt the party.

This piece accurately traces the path from Progressive to Maoist. It's a pity the Republican Party is also a piece of shit. I think it was Sara Palin who said "We have two parties. Pick one." This should be our collective epitaph.

exiled off mainstreet > , July 12, 2017 at 11:20 pm GMT

This is an excellent summary of the evolution of "progressives" into modern militarist fascists who tolerate identity politics diversity. There is little to add to Mr. Petras' commentary.

alan2102 > , July 13, 2017 at 2:04 am GMT

EXCELLENT.

Astuteobservor II > , July 13, 2017 at 5:17 am GMT

at this point, are they still progressives though? they are the new far right

CCZ > , July 13, 2017 at 5:30 am GMT

"Progressives loudly condemned Trump's overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as appeasement and betrayal!"

Perhaps the spirit of Senator Joseph McCarthy is joyously gloating as progressives (and democrats) take their place as his heirs and successors and the 21st century incarnation of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.

Carlton Meyer > , Website July 13, 2017 at 5:56 am GMT

The great Jimmy Dore is a big thorn for the Democrats. From my blog:

Apr 29, 2017 – Obama is Scum!

Barak Obama is America's biggest con man who accomplished nothing "progressive" during eight years at the top, and didn't even try. (Obamacare is an insurance industry idea supported by most Republicans, which is why it recently survived.) Anyone who still likes Obama should read about his actions since he left office. Obama quickly signed a $65 million "book deal", which can only be a kickback since there is no way the publisher can sell enough books about his meaningless presidency to justify that sum. Obama doesn't get royalties based on sales, but gets the money up front for a book he has yet to write, and will have someone do that for him. (Book deals and speaking fees are legal forms of bribery in the USA.)

Then Obama embarked on 100 days of ultra expensive foreign vacations with taxpayers covering the Secret Service protection costs. He didn't appear at charity fundraisers, didn't campaign for Democrats, and didn't help build homes for the poor like Jimmy Carter. He returns from vacation this week and his first speech will be at a Wall Street firm that will pay him $400,000, then he travels to Europe for more paid speeches.

Obama gets over $200,000 a year in retirement, just got a $65 million deal, so doesn't need more money. Why would a multi-millionaire ex-president fly around the globe collecting huge speaking fees from world corporations just after his political party was devastated in elections because Americans think the Democratic party represents Wall Street? The great Jimmy Dore expressed his outrage at Obama and the corrupt Democratic party in this great video.

jilles dykstra > , July 13, 2017 at 6:27 am GMT

Left in the good old days meant socialist, socialist meant that governments had the duty of redistributing income from rich to poor. Alas in Europe, after 'socialists' became pro EU and pro globalisation, they in fact became neoliberal. Both in France and the Netherlands 'socialist' parties virtually disappeared.
So what nowadays is left, does anyone know ?

Then the word 'progressive'. The word suggests improvement, but what is improvement, improvement for whom ? There are those who see the possibility for euthanasia as an improvement, there are thos who see euthanasia as a great sin.

Discussions about left and progressive are meaningless without properly defining the concepts.

Call me Deplorable > , July 13, 2017 at 12:06 pm GMT

They chose power over principles. Nobel War Prize winner Obomber was a particularly egregious chameleon, hiding his sociopathy through two elections before unleashing his racist warmongering in full flower throughout his second term. But, hey, the brother now has five mansions, collects half a mill per speech to the Chosen People on Wall Street, and parties for months at a time at exclusive resorts for billionaires only.

Obviously, he's got the world by the tail and you don't. Hope he comes to the same end as Gaddaffi and Ceaușescu. Maybe the survivors of nuclear Armageddon can hold a double necktie party with Killary as the second honored guest that day.

Seamus Padraig > , July 13, 2017 at 12:10 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra

Discussions about left and progressive are meaningless without properly defining the concepts.

Properly defining the concepts would impede the system's ability to keep you confused.

Seamus Padraig > , July 13, 2017 at 12:16 pm GMT

Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embodied the dual policies of promoting peace at home and bloody imperial wars overseas.

You left out the other Roosevelt.

Like a huge collective 'Monica Lewinsky' robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party bent over and swallowed Clinton's vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act

Hilarious!

Ignoring Obama's actual expulsion of over 2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump for promising to eventually expel 5 million more!

This is a huge myth. All that really happened is that the INS changed some of its internal terminology to make it sound as though they were deporting more people: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/21/lies-damned-lies-and-obamas-deportation-statistics/?utm_term=.7f964acd9b0d

Stephen Paul Foster > , Website July 13, 2017 at 1:28 pm GMT

The Progressives now, failing electorally, are moving on to physical violence.

See: http://fosterspeak.blogspot.com/2017/07/trumps-would-be-assassins.html

annamaria > , July 13, 2017 at 2:22 pm GMT

@Carlton Meyer Obama, a paragon of American scoundrel

Anonymous IV > , July 13, 2017 at 2:49 pm GMT

@Seamus Padraig Agree on the bit about Obama as "deporter in chief." Even the LA Times had to admit this was misleading

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-obama-deportations-20140402-story.html

so it's not just conservative conspiracy theory stuff as some might argue.

Still, the overall point of this essay isn't affected all that much. Open borders is still a "right wing" (in the sense this author uses the term) policy–pro-Wall Street, pro-Big Business. So Obama was still doing the bidding of the donor class in their quest for cheap labor.

I've seen pro-immigration types try to use the Obama-deportation thing to argue that we don't need more hardcore policies. After all, even the progressive Democrat Obama was on the ball when it came to policing our borders, right?! Who needed Trump?

Agent76 > , July 13, 2017 at 3:28 pm GMT

"Who controls the issuance of money controls the government!" Nathan Meyer Rothschild

June 13, 2016 Which Corporations Control The World?

A surprisingly small number of corporations control massive global market shares. How many of the brands below do you use?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44864.htm

"Control the oil, and you control nations. Control the food, and you control the people." Henry Kissenger

Alfa158 > , July 13, 2017 at 5:33 pm GMT

@Carlton Meyer If Jimmy keeps up these attacks on Wall Street, the Banksters, and rent-seekers he is going to get run out of the Progressive movement for dog-whistling virulent Anti-Semitism. Look at how the media screams at Trump every time he mentions Wall Street and the banks.

yeah > , July 13, 2017 at 5:46 pm GMT

Mr. Petra has penned an excellent and very astute piece. Allow me a little satire on our progressive friends, entitled "The path to hell is paved with good intentions".

The early socialist/progressive travellers were well-intentioned but naïve in their understanding of human nature and fanatical about their agenda. To move the human herd forward, they had no compulsions about resorting to harsher and harsher prodding and whipping. They felt entitled to employ these means because, so they were convinced, man has to be pushed to move forward and they, the "progressives", were the best qualified to lead the herd. Scoundrels, psychopaths, moral defectives, and sundry other rascals then joined in the whipping game, some out of the sheer joy of wielding the whip, others to better line their pockets.

So the "progressive" journey degenerates into a forced march. The march becomes the progress, becoming both the means and the end at the same time. Look at the so-called "progressive" today and you will see the fanatic and the whip-wielder, steadfast about the correctness of his beliefs. Tell him/her/it that you are a man or a woman and he retorts "No, you are free to choose, you are genderless". What if you decline such freedom? "Well, then you are a bigot, we will thrash you out of your bigotry", replies the progressive. "May I, dear Sir/Madam/Whatever, keep my hard-earned money in my pocket for my and my family's use" you ask. "No, you first have to pay for our peace-making wars, then pay for the upkeep of refugees, besides which you owe a lot of back taxes that are necessary to run this wonderful Big Government of ours that is leading you towards greener and greener pastures", shouts back the progressive.

Fed up, disgusted, and a little scared, you desperately seek a way out of this progress. "No way", scream the march leaders. "We will be forever in your ears, sometimes whispering, sometimes screaming; we will take over your brain to improve your mind; we will saturate you with images on the box 24/7 and employ all sorts of imagery to make you progress. And if it all fails, we will simply pack you and others like you in a basket of deplorables and forget about you at election time."

TheJester > , July 13, 2017 at 6:18 pm GMT

Knowing who is "progressive" and know who is "far-right" is like knowing who is "fascist" and who is not. For obvious historical reasons, the Russian like to throw the "fascist" slogan against anyone who is a non-Russian nationalist. However, I accept the eminent historian Carroll Quigley's definition of fascism as the incorporation of society and the state onto single entity on a permanent war footing. The state controls everything in a radically authoritarian social structure. As Quigley states, the Soviet Union was the most complete embodiment of fascism in WWII. In WWII Germany, on the other hand, industry retained its independence and in WWII Italy fascism was no more than an empty slogan.

Same for "progressives". Everyone wants to be "progressive", right? Who wants to be "anti-progressive"? However, at the end of the day, "progressive" through verbal slights of hand has been nothing more than a euphemism for "socialist" or, in the extreme, "communist" the verbal slight-of-hand because we don't tend to use the latter terms in American political discourse.

"Progressives" morphing into a new "far-right" in America is no more mysterious than the Soviet Union morphing from Leninism to Stalinism or, the Jewish (Trotskyite) globalists fleeing Stalinist nationalism and then morphing into, first, "Scoop" Jackson Democrats and then into Bushite Republicans.

As you might notice, the real issue is the authoritarian vs. the non-authoritarian state. In this context, an authoritarian government and social order (as in communism and neoconservatism) are practical pre-requisites necessity to force humanity to transition to their New World Order.

Again, the defining characteristic of fascism is the unitary state enforced via an authoritarian political and social structure. Ideological rigor is enforced via the police powers of the state along with judicial activism and political correctness. Ring a bell?

In the ongoing contest between Trump and the remnants of the American "progressive" movement, who are the populists and who the authoritarians? Who are the democrats and who are the fascists?

I would say that who lands where in this dichotomy is obvious.

RobinG > , July 13, 2017 at 6:19 pm GMT

@Alfa158 Is Jimmy Dore really a "Progressive?" (and what does that mean, anyway?) Isn't Jimmy's show hosted by the Young Turks Network, which is unabashedly Libertarian?

Anyway, what's so great about "the Progressive movement?" Seems to me, they're just pathetic sheepdogs for the war-crazed Dems. Jimmy should be supporting the #UNRIG movement ("Beyond Trump & Sanders") for ALL Americans:

On 1 May 2017 Cynthia McKinney, Ellen Brown, and Robert Steele launched

We the People – Unity for Integrity.

The User's Guide to the 2nd American Revolution.

Death to the Deep State.

https://www.unrig.net/manifesto/

Ben Banned > , July 13, 2017 at 9:13 pm GMT

Petras, for some reason, low balls the number of people ejected from assets when the mafia came to seize real estate in the name of the ruling class and their expensive wars, morality, the Constitution or whatever shit they could make up to fuck huge numbers of people over. Undoubtedly just like 9/11, the whole thing was planned in advance. Political whores are clearly useless when the system is at such extremes.

Banks like Capital One specialize in getting a signature and "giving" a car loan to someone they know won't be able to pay, but is simply being used, shaken down and repossessed for corporate gain. " No one held a gun to their head! " Get ready, the police state will in fact put a gun to your head.

Depending on the time period in question, which might be the case here, more than 20 million people were put out of homes and/or bankrupted with more to come. Clearly a bipartisan effort featuring widespread criminal conduct across the country – an attack on the population to sustain militarism.

peterAUS > , July 13, 2017 at 10:05 pm GMT

@yeah Nice.

If I may add:
"and you also have to dearly pay for you being white male heterosexual for oppressing all colored, all the women and all the sexually different through the history".

"And if it all fails, we will simply pack you and others like you in a basket of deplorables and forget about you at election time. If we see that you still don't get with the program we will reeducate you. Should you resist that in any way we'll incarcerate you. And, no, normal legal procedure does not work with racists/bigots/haters/whatever we don't like".

Reg Cæsar > , July 14, 2017 at 1:19 am GMT

@CCZ

"Progressives loudly condemned Trump's overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as appeasement and betrayal!"
Perhaps the spirit of Senator Joseph McCarthy is joyously gloating as progressives (and democrats) take their place as his heirs and successors and the 21st century incarnation of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.

take their place as his heirs and successors and the 21st century incarnation of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee

which itself was a progressive invention. There was no "right wing" anywhere in sight when it was estsblished in 1938.

[Jun 26, 2017] After the collapse of the USSR neoliberal vultures instantly circled the corpse and have had a feast. Geopolitical goals of the USA played important role in amplifying the scope of plunder of Russia

Notable quotes:
"... The reasoning was simple and is not hard to understand: Carthago delenda est. ..."
"... In a way McCain can be viewed now as a caricature of the Roman senator Cato the Elder, who is said to have used it as the conclusion to all his speeches. ..."
Jun 26, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

anne -> anne... , June 25, 2017 at 04:31 PM

1994

China's experience does not show that gradual reform is superior to the shock therapy undertaken in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union....

-- Jeffrey Sachs and Wing Thye Woo

[ Of course, China's experience had already showed and continues all these years after just the opposite. This is very, very important. ]

libezkova -> anne... , June 26, 2017 at 08:09 AM
Your discussion just again had shown that there is no economics, only a political economy.

And all those neoliberal perversions, which are sold as an economic science is just an apologetics for the financial oligarchy.

Apologetics of plunder in this particular case.

In a way the USSR with its discredited communist ideology, degenerated Bolshevik leadership (just look at who was at the Politburo of CPSU at the time; people much lower in abilities then Trump :-) and inept and politically naïve Mikhail Gorbachev at the helm had chosen the most inopportune time to collapse :-)

And neoliberal vultures instantly circled the corpse and have had a feast. Geopolitical goals of the USA also played important role in amplifying the scope of plunder.

No comparison of performance of Russia vs. China makes any sense if it ignores this fact.

Paine -> anne... , June 25, 2017 at 06:30 PM
Lesson for the week

Deng ?
yes

Sachs ?
Nyet

anne -> Paine ... , June 25, 2017 at 07:11 PM
While I would argue with the economic advice given the Russian government after 1988, I am simply trying to understand the reasoning behind the advice, no more than that.
libezkova -> anne... , June 26, 2017 at 08:15 AM
The reasoning was simple and is not hard to understand: Carthago delenda est.

In a way McCain can be viewed now as a caricature of the Roman senator Cato the Elder, who is said to have used it as the conclusion to all his speeches.

History repeats "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."

[Jun 26, 2017] After 1991 Eastern Europe and FSU were mercilessly looted. That was tremendous one time transfer of capital (and scientists and engineers) to Western Europe and the USA. Which helped to secure Clinton prosperity period

Notable quotes:
"... If America were a free and democratic country, with a free press and independent publishing houses (and assuming, of course, that Americans were a literate people), Williamson's book would topple the Clinton regime, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the rest of the criminal cabal that inhabits the world of modern corporate statism faster than you could say "Jonathan Hay." ..."
"... Hay, for those who need an introduction to the international financial buccaneers who control our lives, was the general director of the Harvard Institute of International Development (HIID) in Moscow (1992-1997), who facilitated the crippling of the Russian economy and the plundering of its industrial and manufacturing infrastructure with a strategy concocted by Larry Summers, Andre Schliefer (HIID's Cambridge-based manager), Jeffrey Sachs and his Swedish sidekick Anders Aslund, and a host of private players from banks and investment houses in Boston and New York - a plan approved and assisted by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. ..."
"... These third-generation Bolsheviks - led by former Pravda hack Yegor Gaidar, grandson of a Bolshevik who achieved prominence as the teenage mass murderer of White Army officers, now heads the Moscow-based Institute for Economies in Transition - became instant millionaires (or billionaires) and left the Russian workers virtual slaves of them and their new foreign investors. ..."
"... Ironically, when Harvard's Sachs and Hay started identifying Russians they could work with, they ignored - or shunned - the most capable talent at hand: those numerous Russian economists who for 20 years had been studying the Swiss economist Wilhelm von Roepke and his disciple, Ludwig Erhard, father of Germany's "economic miracle" in anticipation of the day when Communism would collapse. Somewhat sardonically, Williamson notes that one, probably unintended, benefit of Gorbachev's perestroika was the recruitment of these Russian economists by top U.S. universities. ..."
"... On another level, Contagion is about the workings of international finance, the consolidation of capital into fewer and fewer hands, and the ruthless, death-dealing policies it inflicts on its target countries through currency manipulation, inflation, depression, taxation and war - with emphasis on Russia but with attention also given to Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, the Balkans, and other countries, and how it uses its control over money to produce social chaos. ..."
"... Those who read Williamson's book will find particularly interesting her treatment of the Federal Reserve, and how this "bank" was designed to plunder the wealth of America through war, debt, and taxation, in order to maintain what is nothing more nor less than a giant pyramid scheme that depends on domination of the earth and its resources. ..."
"... The policies inflicted on Russia by the banks were cruel to the Nth degree; but the policy implementers - Williamson employs the derogatory Russian word m yakigolovy ("soft-headed ones") applied to the Americans - were a foppish lot, streaming into Russia by the thousands (the IMF, alone, with 150 staffers) with their outrageous salaries and per diem allowances, renting out the finest dachas, bringing in their exotic consumer goods, driving up prices for goods and rents, spurring a boom in the drug and prostitution businesses, and then watching, cold-heartedly, the declining fortunes of their hosts as they lost everything - including the artistic heritage of the country. ..."
"... Gore, who was raised to be President, has impeccable Russian connections. His father, of course, was Lenin financier Armand Hammer's pocket senator, and it was Hammer who paid for Al Jr.'s expensive St. Alban's Prep schooling; and, as Williamson reports, Al Jr.'s daughter married Andrew Schiff, grandson of Jacob, who, as a member of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., underwrote anti-czarist political agitation for two decades before Lenin's coup, and congratulated Lenin upon his successful revolution. ..."
"... By March 1999, Russia was now a financial basket case, and billions, if not tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer-backed loans had vanished into the secret bank accounts of both Russian and American gangster capitalists, and the news was starting to make little vibrations on Capitol Hill. "The U.S. administration's response to the debacle was repulsively similar to a typical Bill Clinton bimbo-eruption operation: Having ruined Russia by cosseting her in debt, meddling ignorantly in her internal affairs, and funding a drunken usurper, his agents denied all error and slandered ('slimed') her," writes Williamson. ..."
"... The cost to the American taxpayers of Clinton regime bailouts in a three-and-a-half-year period, Williamson notes, is more than $180 billion! The "new financial architecture" Clinton has erected, she writes, "isn't new at all, but rather something the international public lenders have been wanting for decades, i.e., an automatic bailout for their own bad practices." ..."
"... As the extent of the corruption of the Clinton-Yeltsin "reform" plan for Russia unfolded last year, with the attendant Bank of New York scandal, the mysterious death of super banker Edmond Safra in his Monte Carlo penthouse, the collapse of the Russian stock market, and the whiplash effect in Southeast Asia, Congress was pressed to hold hearings. ..."
"... What resulted, as Williamson accurately narrates it, was just a smoke screen, show hearings that barely rose above the seriousness of a Gilbert and Sullivan farce - though they did result in proposed new domestic banking laws that, if passed, will effectively make banks another federal police force responsible for reporting to the U.S. government the most minute financial transactions of U.S. citizens. ..."
"... In this regard, it is instructive to quote Williamson at length: "If the FBI, [Manhattan District Attorney] Robert Morgenthau, or Congress were serious about getting to the bottom of the plundering of Russia's assets and U.S. taxpayers' resources, they would show far more professional interest in exactly what was said and agreed in the private meetings [U.S. Treasury secretary] Larry Summers, Strobe Talbott, and [former Treasury Secretary] Robert Rubin conducted with Anatoly Chubais [former Russian finance minister, who oversaw the distribution and sale of Russian industries], and Sergie Vasiliev [Yeltsin's principal legal adviser, and a member of the Chubais clan], and later Chubais again in June and July of 1998. ..."
"... And why did Michel Camdessus [who left the presidency of the IMF earlier this year] announce his sudden retirement so soon after Moscow newspapers reported that a $200,000 payment was made to him from a secret Kremlin bank account? . . . ..."
"... You see, as this book explains, the Clinton's Russia policy did not just plunder Russians, leaving them destitute while creating a new and ruthless class of international capitalist gangsters at U.S. taxpayer expense; it had the double consequence of bringing all Americans deeper into the bankers' New World Order by increasing their debt load, decreasing their privacy, and restricting their civil rights. If only Americans cared. ..."
Jun 25, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

libezkova -> anne..., June 25, 2017 at 06:47 PM

After 1991 Eastern Europe and FSU were mercilessly looted. That was tremendous one time transfer of capital (and scientists and engineers) to Western Europe and the USA. Which helped to secure "Clinton prosperity period"

China were not plundered by the West. Russia and Eastern Europe were. That's the key difference.

For Russia this period was called by Anne Williamson in her testimony before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services of the United States House of Representatives "The economic rape of Russia"

http://thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-Doc-Economics&Finance/+Doc-Economics&Finance-GovernmentInfluence&Meddling/BankstersInRussiaAndGlobalEconomy.htm

Paul Likoudis has an interesting analysis of this event: https://paullikoudis.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/the-plunder-of-russia-in-the-1990s/

Sorry long quote

How Clinton & Company & The Bankers Plundered Russia by Paul Likoudis

May 4, 2000

The other day I was surprised to learn that Jeffrey Sachs, the creator of "shock therapy" capitalism, who participated in the looting of Russia in the 1990s, is now NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo's top adviser for health care. So we in NY will get shock therapy, much as the Russians did two decades ago. Here is a story I wrote for The Wanderer in 2000:

===

How Clinton & Company & The Bankers Plundered Russia

by Paul Likoudis

In an ordinary election year, Anne Williamson's Contagion would be political dynamite, a bombshell, a block-buster, a regime breaker.

If America were a free and democratic country, with a free press and independent publishing houses (and assuming, of course, that Americans were a literate people), Williamson's book would topple the Clinton regime, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the rest of the criminal cabal that inhabits the world of modern corporate statism faster than you could say "Jonathan Hay."

Hay, for those who need an introduction to the international financial buccaneers who control our lives, was the general director of the Harvard Institute of International Development (HIID) in Moscow (1992-1997), who facilitated the crippling of the Russian economy and the plundering of its industrial and manufacturing infrastructure with a strategy concocted by Larry Summers, Andre Schliefer (HIID's Cambridge-based manager), Jeffrey Sachs and his Swedish sidekick Anders Aslund, and a host of private players from banks and investment houses in Boston and New York - a plan approved and assisted by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Contagion can be read on many different levels.

At its simplest, it is a breezy, slightly cynical, highly entertaining narrative of Russian history from the last months of Gorbachev's rule to April 2000 - a period which saw Russia transformed from a decaying socialist economy (which despite its shortcomings, provided a modest standard of living to its citizens) to a "managed economy" where home-grown gangsters and socialist theoreticians from the West, like Hay and his fellow Harvardian Jeffrey Sachs, delivered 2,500% inflation and indescribable poverty, and transferred the ownership of Russian industry to Western financiers.

Williamson was an eyewitness who lived on and off in Russia for more than ten years, where she reported on all things Russian for The New York Times, Th e Wall Street Journal, and a host of other equally reputable publications. She knew and interviewed just about everybody involved in this gargantuan plundering scheme: Russian politicians and businessmen, the new "gangster" capitalists and their American sponsors from the IMF, the World Bank, USAID, Credit Suisse First Boston, the CIA, the KGB - all in all, hundreds of sources who spoke candidly, often ruthlessly, of their parts in this terrible human drama.

Her account is filled with quotations from interviews with top aides of Yeltsin and Clinton, all down through the ranks of the two hierarchical societies to the proliferating mass of Russian destitute, pornographers, pimps, drug dealers, and prostitutes. Some of the principal characters, of course, refused to talk to Williamson, such as Bill Clinton's longtime friend from Oxford, Strobe Talbott, now a deputy secretary of state and, Williamson suspects, a onetime KGB operative whose claim to fame is a deceitful translation of the Khrushchev Memoirs. (A KGB colonel refused to confirm or deny to Williamson that Clinton and Talbott visited North Vietnam together in 1971 - though he did confirm their contacts with the KGB for their protests against the U.S. war in Vietnam in Moscow. See especially footnote 1, page 210.)

The 546-page book (the best part of which is the footnotes) gives a nearly day-by-day report on what happened to Russia; left unstated, but implied on every page, is the assumption that those in the United States who think what happened in Russia "can't happen here" better realize it can happen here.

Once the Clinton regime and its lapdogs in the media defined Russian thug Boris Yeltsin as a "democrat," the wholesale looting of Russia began. According to the socialist theoreticians at Harvard, Russia needed to be brought into the New World Order in a hurry; and what better way to do it than Sachs' "shock therapy" - a plan that empowered the degenerate, third-generation descendants of the original Bolsheviks by assigning them the deeds of Russia's mightiest state-owned industries - including the giant gas, oil, electrical, and telecommunications industries, the world's largest paper, iron, and steel factories, the world's richest gold, silver, diamond, and platinum mines, automobile and airplane factories, etc. - who, in turn, sold some of their shares of the properties to Westerners for a song, and pocketed the cash, while retaining control of the companies.

These third-generation Bolsheviks - led by former Pravda hack Yegor Gaidar, grandson of a Bolshevik who achieved prominence as the teenage mass murderer of White Army officers, now heads the Moscow-based Institute for Economies in Transition - became instant millionaires (or billionaires) and left the Russian workers virtual slaves of them and their new foreign investors.

When Russian members of the Supreme Soviet openly criticized the looting of the national patrimony by these new gangsters early in the U.S.-driven "reform" program, in 1993, before all Soviet institutions were destroyed, Yeltsin bombed Parliament.

Ironically, when Harvard's Sachs and Hay started identifying Russians they could work with, they ignored - or shunned - the most capable talent at hand: those numerous Russian economists who for 20 years had been studying the Swiss economist Wilhelm von Roepke and his disciple, Ludwig Erhard, father of Germany's "economic miracle" in anticipation of the day when Communism would collapse. Somewhat sardonically, Williamson notes that one, probably unintended, benefit of Gorbachev's perestroika was the recruitment of these Russian economists by top U.S. universities.

In the new, emerging global economy, it's clear that Russia is the designated center for heavy manufacturing - just as Asia is for clothing and computers - with its nearly unlimited supply of hydroelectric power, iron and steel, timber, gold and other precious metals.

This helps explain why America's political elites don't give a fig about the closing down of American industries and mines. As Williamson observes, Russia is viewed as some kind of "closet."

What is important for Western readers to understand - as Williamson reports - is that when Western banks and corporations bought these companies at bargain basement prices, they bought more than just industrial equipment. In the Soviet model, every unit of industrial production included workers' housing, churches, opera houses, schools, hospitals, supermarkets, etc., and the whole kit-and-caboodle was included in the selling price. By buying large shares of these companies, Western corporations became, ipso facto, town managers.

Another Level

On another level, Contagion is about the workings of international finance, the consolidation of capital into fewer and fewer hands, and the ruthless, death-dealing policies it inflicts on its target countries through currency manipulation, inflation, depression, taxation and war - with emphasis on Russia but with attention also given to Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, the Balkans, and other countries, and how it uses its control over money to produce social chaos.

Those who read Williamson's book will find particularly interesting her treatment of the Federal Reserve, and how this "bank" was designed to plunder the wealth of America through war, debt, and taxation, in order to maintain what is nothing more nor less than a giant pyramid scheme that depends on domination of the earth and its resources.

Williamson is of that small but noble school of economics writers who believe that the academic field of economics is not some esoteric science that can only be comprehended by those with IQs in four digits, and she - drawing on such writers as Hayek and von Mises, Roepke and the late American Murray Rothbard - explains in layman's vocabulary the nuts and bolts of sound economic principles and the real-world effects of the Fed's policies on hapless Americans.

Contagion also serves up a severe indictment of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the other international "lending" agencies spawned by the Council on Foreign Relations and similar "councils" and "commissions" which are fronts for the big banks run by the Houses of Rockefeller, Morgan, Warburg, et al.

The policies inflicted on Russia by the banks were cruel to the Nth degree; but the policy implementers - Williamson employs the derogatory Russian word m yakigolovy ("soft-headed ones") applied to the Americans - were a foppish lot, streaming into Russia by the thousands (the IMF, alone, with 150 staffers) with their outrageous salaries and per diem allowances, renting out the finest dachas, bringing in their exotic consumer goods, driving up prices for goods and rents, spurring a boom in the drug and prostitution businesses, and then watching, cold-heartedly, the declining fortunes of their hosts as they lost everything - including the artistic heritage of the country.

Williamson describes brilliantly that heady atmosphere in Moscow in the early days of the IMF/USAID loan-scamming: a 24-hour party. There were bars like the Canadian-operated Hungry Duck, which lured Russian teenage girls into its bar with a male striptease and free drinks, "who, once thoroughly intoxicated, were then exposed to crowds of anxious young men the club admitted only late in the evening."

The Third Level

At a third and more intriguing level, Contagion is about America's criminal politics in the Clinton regime, and, inevitably, the reader will put Williamson's book down with the sense that Al Gore will be the next occupier of the White House.

Gore, who was raised to be President, has impeccable Russian connections. His father, of course, was Lenin financier Armand Hammer's pocket senator, and it was Hammer who paid for Al Jr.'s expensive St. Alban's Prep schooling; and, as Williamson reports, Al Jr.'s daughter married Andrew Schiff, grandson of Jacob, who, as a member of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., underwrote anti-czarist political agitation for two decades before Lenin's coup, and congratulated Lenin upon his successful revolution.

Williamson also documents Gore's intimate involvement with powerful Wall Street financial houses, and his New York breakfast meeting with multibillionaire George Soros (a key Russian player) just as the Russian collapse was underway.

Williamson tells an interesting story of Gore's response to the IMF/World Bank/USAID plunder of U.S. taxpayers for the purpose of hobbling Russia.

By March 1999, Russia was now a financial basket case, and billions, if not tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer-backed loans had vanished into the secret bank accounts of both Russian and American gangster capitalists, and the news was starting to make little vibrations on Capitol Hill. "The U.S. administration's response to the debacle was repulsively similar to a typical Bill Clinton bimbo-eruption operation: Having ruined Russia by cosseting her in debt, meddling ignorantly in her internal affairs, and funding a drunken usurper, his agents denied all error and slandered ('slimed') her," writes Williamson.

"Pundits and academics joined government officials in bemoaning Mother Russia's thieving ways, her bottomless corruption and constant chaos, all the while wringing their soft hands with a schoolmarm's exasperation. Russia's self-appointed democracy coach Strobe Talbott ('Pro-Consul Strobe' to the Russians) would get it right. An equally sanctimonious Albert Gore - the same Al Gore who'd been so quick to return the CIA's 1995 report detailing Viktor Chernomyrdin's and Anatoly Chubais' personal corruption with the single word 'Bullshit' scrawled across it - took the low road and sniffed that the Russians would just have to get their own economic house in order and cut their own deal with the IMF. . . ."

The cost to the American taxpayers of Clinton regime bailouts in a three-and-a-half-year period, Williamson notes, is more than $180 billion! The "new financial architecture" Clinton has erected, she writes, "isn't new at all, but rather something the international public lenders have been wanting for decades, i.e., an automatic bailout for their own bad practices."

As the extent of the corruption of the Clinton-Yeltsin "reform" plan for Russia unfolded last year, with the attendant Bank of New York scandal, the mysterious death of super banker Edmond Safra in his Monte Carlo penthouse, the collapse of the Russian stock market, and the whiplash effect in Southeast Asia, Congress was pressed to hold hearings.

What resulted, as Williamson accurately narrates it, was just a smoke screen, show hearings that barely rose above the seriousness of a Gilbert and Sullivan farce - though they did result in proposed new domestic banking laws that, if passed, will effectively make banks another federal police force responsible for reporting to the U.S. government the most minute financial transactions of U.S. citizens.

Double Effect

In this regard, it is instructive to quote Williamson at length: "If the FBI, [Manhattan District Attorney] Robert Morgenthau, or Congress were serious about getting to the bottom of the plundering of Russia's assets and U.S. taxpayers' resources, they would show far more professional interest in exactly what was said and agreed in the private meetings [U.S. Treasury secretary] Larry Summers, Strobe Talbott, and [former Treasury Secretary] Robert Rubin conducted with Anatoly Chubais [former Russian finance minister, who oversaw the distribution and sale of Russian industries], and Sergie Vasiliev [Yeltsin's principal legal adviser, and a member of the Chubais clan], and later Chubais again in June and July of 1998.

"Instead of allowing Larry Summers to ramble casually in response to questions at a banking committee hearing, the Treasury secretary should be asked exactly who suckered him - his Russian friends, his own boss [former Harvard associate Robert Rubin, his boss at Treasury who was once cochairman at Goldman Sachs], or private sector counterparts of the Working Committee on Financial Markets [a White House group whose membership is drawn from the country's main financial and market institutions: the Fed, Treasury, SEC, and the Commodities & Trading Commission]. . . . Or did he just bungle the entire matter on account of wishful thinking? Or was it gross incompetence?

"The FBI and Congress ought to be very interested in establishing for taxpayers the truth of any alleged 'national security' issues that justified allowing the Harvard Institute of International Development to privatize U.S. bilateral assistance. It too should be their brief to discover the relationship between the [Swedish wheeler-dealer and crony of Sachs, Anders] Aslund/Carnegie crowd and Treasury and exactly what influence that relationship may have had on the awarding of additional grants to Harvard without competition. On what basis did Team Clinton direct their financial donor, American International Group's (AIG) Maurice Greenberg (a man nearly as ubiquitous as any Russian oligarch in sweetheart public-funding deals), to Brunswick Brokerage when sniffing out a $300 million OPIC guarantee for a Russian investment fund. . . .

And why did Michel Camdessus [who left the presidency of the IMF earlier this year] announce his sudden retirement so soon after Moscow newspapers reported that a $200,000 payment was made to him from a secret Kremlin bank account? . . .

"American and Russian citizens can never be allowed to learn what really happened to the billions lent to Yeltsin's government; it would expose the unsavory and self-interested side of our political, financial, and media elites. . . . Instead, the [House] Banking Committee hearings will use the smoke screen of policing foreign assistance flows to pass legislation that will effectively end U.S. citizens' financial privacy while making them prisoners of their citizenship. . . . The Banking Committee will use the opportunity the Russian dirty money scandal presents to reanimate the domestic 'Know Your Customer' program, which charges domestic banks with monitoring and reporting on the financial transactions in which middle-class Americans engage. This data is collected and used by various government agencies, including the IRS; meaning that if a citizen sells the family's beat-up station wagon or their 'starter' home, the taxman is alerted immediately that the citizen's filing should reflect the greater tax obligation in that year of the sale. . . . Other data on citizens for which the government has long thirsted will also be collected by government's newest police force, the banks. . . ."

You see, as this book explains, the Clinton's Russia policy did not just plunder Russians, leaving them destitute while creating a new and ruthless class of international capitalist gangsters at U.S. taxpayer expense; it had the double consequence of bringing all Americans deeper into the bankers' New World Order by increasing their debt load, decreasing their privacy, and restricting their civil rights. If only Americans cared.

[Apr 17, 2017] Clinton was always a sleazy dealer on word of whom only fool can rely

Apr 17, 2017 | www.unz.com

Agent76 , April 16, 2017 at 3:19 pm GMT \n

October 18, 1994 Remarks on the Nuclear Agreement With North Korea William J. Clinton

Good afternoon. I am pleased that the United States and North Korea yesterday reached agreement on the text of a framework document on North Korea's nuclear program.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=49319

[Apr 12, 2017] April 12, 2017 at 07:30 AM

Notable quotes:
"... First. Robert Rubin was a main architect of the high dollar policy that led to the explosion of the trade deficit in the last decade. This led to the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs and decimating communities across the Midwest. Second, Rubin was a major advocate of financial deregulation during his years in the Clinton administration. Finally, Rubin was a direct beneficiary of deregulation, since he left the administration to take a top job at Citigroup. He made over $100 million in this position before he resigned in the financial crisis when bad loans had essentially put Citigroup into bankruptcy. (It was saved by government bailouts.) ..."
"... It is important to recognize that the Fed is currently dominated by people with close ties to the financial industry. The Fed Open Market Committee (FOMC) which determines interest rate policy has 19 members. While 7 are governors appointed by the president and approved by Congress (only 4 of the governor seats are currently filled), 12 are presidents of the district banks. These bank presidents are appointed through a process dominated by the banks in the district. (Only 5 of the 12 presidents have a vote at any one time, but all 12 participate in discussions.) ..."
Apr 12, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-rubin-who-made-a-fortune-on-the-housing-bubble-argues-for-preserving-wall-street-s-power-over-the-fed

April 12, 2017

Robert Rubin, Who Made a Fortune on the Housing Bubble, Argues for Preserving Wall Street's Power Over the Fed

The Federal Reserve Board has more direct control over the economy than any other institution in the country. When it decides to raise interest rates to slow the economy, it can ensure that millions of workers don't get jobs and prevent tens of millions more from getting the bargaining power they need to gain wage increases. For this reason, it is very important who is making the calls on interest rates and who they are listening to.

Robert Rubin, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, weighed in * today in the New York Times to argue for the status quo. There are a few important background points on Rubin that are worth mentioning before getting into the substance.

First. Robert Rubin was a main architect of the high dollar policy that led to the explosion of the trade deficit in the last decade. This led to the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs and decimating communities across the Midwest. Second, Rubin was a major advocate of financial deregulation during his years in the Clinton administration. Finally, Rubin was a direct beneficiary of deregulation, since he left the administration to take a top job at Citigroup. He made over $100 million in this position before he resigned in the financial crisis when bad loans had essentially put Citigroup into bankruptcy. (It was saved by government bailouts.)

Rubin touts the current apolitical nature of the Fed. He warns about:

"Efforts to denigrate the integrity of the Fed's work, and to inject groundless opinion, politics and ideology, must be rejected by the board - and that means governors and other members of the Federal Open Market Committee must be willing to withstand aggressive attacks."

It is important to recognize that the Fed is currently dominated by people with close ties to the financial industry. The Fed Open Market Committee (FOMC) which determines interest rate policy has 19 members. While 7 are governors appointed by the president and approved by Congress (only 4 of the governor seats are currently filled), 12 are presidents of the district banks. These bank presidents are appointed through a process dominated by the banks in the district. (Only 5 of the 12 presidents have a vote at any one time, but all 12 participate in discussions.)

It seems bizarre to describe this process as apolitical or imply there is great integrity here. Rubin's claim is particularly ironic in light of the fact that one of the bank presidents was just forced to resign ** after admitting to leaking confidential information on interest rate policy to a financial analyst.

There is good reason for the public to be unhappy about the Fed's excessive concern over inflation *** over the last four decades and inadequate attention to unemployment. This arguably reflects the interests of the financial industry, which often stands to lose from higher inflation and have little interest in the level of employment. It is understandable that someone who has made his fortune in the financial industry would want to protect the status quo with the Fed, but there is little reason for the rest of us to take him seriously.

* https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/opinion/dont-politicize-the-federal-reserve.html

** https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/business/lacker-leak-fed.html

*** http://cepr.net/documents/Getting-Back-to-Full-Employment_20131118.pdf

-- Dean Baker

[Feb 26, 2017] T>he code words like "pizza", "cheese", "hotdog", "pasta", etc. are from an FBI list of code words commonly used by pedophiles.

Feb 26, 2017 | kunstler.com
Pucker February 24, 2017 at 9:51 am # Apparently, the code words like "pizza", "cheese", "hotdog", "pasta", etc. are from an FBI list of code words commonly used by pedophiles. These words appear in the Podesta emails. They're not just found in the Podesta emails.

On page 20, it says that the strongest indicator of a pedophile is a person who collects child pornography. John Podesta's brother collected sexually bizarre and sadistic photos of young children.

ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/149252NCJRS.pdf

    • hmuller February 24, 2017 at 10:06 am # Good point, Pucker. All the pro-Podesta apologists can't explain away the code language. Especially, disturbing are remarks (I think by owner James Alefantis) about 4 sick pizzas left over from the last session on sale for $1000. Be sure and dispose of them properly."

      Then there's Laura Silsby rescued from a Haitian jail by the Clintons after being caught trafficking in children for prostitution.

      Either JHK can't believe that such blatant evil exists in the world or he's pimping for that well entrenched crowd.

      Log in to Reply
          • malthuss February 24, 2017 at 5:01 pm # I have pages of Word docs and have listened to too many facts,
            Start with

            You Tube, Titus Frost, especially hhis talk and display of sick 'art' on his PIZZA BRAIN –investigated.

            Why is Katy Perry and the other bimbo, Miley, wearing Pizza Costumes?

            and,

            WHAT IS PIZZAGATE
            CHILD SEX SLAVERY
            PEDOPHILE RING
            BILL CLINTON SEX SCANDAL
            BILL CLINTON PEDOPHILIA
            BILL CLINTON SEX SLAVE ISLAND
            BILL CLINTON ORGY ISLAND
            LAURA SILSBY HAITi CHILD TRAFFICKING
            MONICA PETERSON
            CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING
            CLINTON HAITI
            THE CLINTON FOUNDATION
            JEFFREY EPSTEIN
            LOLITA EXPRESS
            PEDOPHILE ISLAND
            ROGER CLINTON COCAINE
            ROGER CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL PARDON
            DAN LASATER
            DAN LASATER PRESIDENTIAL PARDON
            PIZZAGATE EVIDENCE
            PIZZAGATE PROOF
            PIZZAGATE DOCUMENTARY
            END TIMES NEWS REPORT
            JAKE MORPHONIOS
            JAMES ALEFANTIS
            JOHN PODESTA
            TONY PODESTA
            COMET PING PONG
            etc.

        • Janos Skorenzy February 24, 2017 at 3:26 pm # Most intellectuals hate Conspiracies for two reasons: one good and one bad. On the good side, there is just too much lunacy and crackpottery once conjecture and Freud's "primary process" (fantasy) get going. On the bad side, they hate not having full information or at least a partial store of consensus information from which to analyze. But Life is Conspiracy – and sometimes we have to go with what we have. In this regards, detectives are superior to intellectuals: they do it all the time. Ditto scientists. It's the inductive process. Once you get enough you form a hypothesis. Then you test it. That's all we're asking for in regards to this case. And I think we both agree: what they would find would bring down the System.

          And there are two reasons these people can get away with it: one because of the number of the Elite who are involved. And second because people think a priori that it's not possible that such evil exists or that they could get away with it. Because people think it can't exist and they couldn't get away it enables them to get away with it.

          • Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
          • Walter B February 24, 2017 at 7:47 pm # The utilization of "Conspiracy theorist" came about after the common man on the street started waking up to the fact that he was being screwed by those in power and lied to consistently. Did you know that during World War II, President Roosevelt, was onboard the battleship USS Iowa in route to North Africa when it was "accidently torpedoed" (the fish detonated in the ship's wake and did not actually impact the ship) by the US destroyer, the William D. Porter? Well it's the first I am hearing of it so I guess that these people are pretty good at keeping things quiet when they go wrong, especially REALLY wrong

            warhistoryonline.com/featured/fdr-torpedo-us-navy-destroyer.html

            I am reading the trilogy of the war by Rick Atkinson, and in the second book in the series, The Day of Battle, the revelation was detailed much to my surprise. If our own people can accidently fire a live torpedo at one of our own battleships, especially the one that happens to be transporting the standing President of the United States on it at the time, well there is no telling what supreme act of incompetence they will pull of next.

            Those who rule lie their asses off every damned day and cover up every damned screw up they create until enough time goes by so that those that are now in the general public don't give a damn anymore. You would have to be retarded or on their payroll to believe otherwise.

[Feb 21, 2017] Stockman Warns Trump Flynns Gone But They are Still Gunning For You, Donald by David Stockman

Notable quotes:
"... In any event, it was "intercepts" leaked from deep in the bowels of the CIA to the Washington Post and then amplified in a 24/7 campaign by the War Channel (CNN) that brought General Flynn down. ..."
"... But here's the thing. They were aiming at Donald J. Trump. And for all of his puffed up bluster about being the savviest negotiator on the planet, the Donald walked right into their trap, as we shall amplify momentarily. ..."
"... But let's first make the essence of the matter absolutely clear. The whole Flynn imbroglio is not about a violation of the Logan Act owing to the fact that the general engaged in diplomacy as a private citizen. ..."
"... It's about re-litigating the 2016 election based on the hideous lie that Trump stole it with the help of Vladimir Putin. In fact, Nancy Pelosi was quick to say just that: ..."
"... 'The American people deserve to know the full extent of Russia's financial, personal and political grip on President Trump and what that means for our national security,' House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a press release. ..."
"... And Senator Graham, the member of the boobsey twins who ran for President in 2016 while getting a GOP primary vote from virtually nobody, made clear that General Flynn's real sin was a potential peace overture to the Russians: ..."
"... We say good riddance to Flynn, of course, because he was a shrill anti-Iranian warmonger. But let's also not be fooled by the clinical term at the heart of the story. That is, "intercepts" mean that the Deep State taps the phone calls of the President's own closest advisors as a matter of course. ..."
"... As one writer for LawNewz noted regarding acting Attorney General Sally Yates' voyeuristic pre-occupation with Flynn's intercepted conversations, Nixon should be rolling in his grave with envy: ..."
"... Yes, that's the same career apparatchik of the permanent government that Obama left behind to continue the 2016 election by other means. And it's working. The Donald is being rapidly emasculated by the powers that be in the Imperial City due to what can only be described as an audacious and self-evident attack on Trump's Presidency by the Deep State. ..."
"... Indeed, the paper details an apparent effort by Yates to misuse her office to launch a full-scale secret investigation of her political opponents, including 'intercepting calls' of her political adversaries. ..."
"... Yet on the basis of the report's absolutely zero evidence and endless surmise, innuendo and "assessments", the Obama White House imposed another round of its silly school-boy sanctions on a handful of Putin's cronies. ..."
"... Of course, Flynn should have been telling the Russian Ambassador that this nonsense would be soon reversed! ..."
"... But here is the ultimate folly. The mainstream media talking heads are harrumphing loudly about the fact that the very day following Flynn's call -- Vladimir Putin announced that he would not retaliate against the new Obama sanctions as expected; and shortly thereafter, the Donald tweeted that Putin had shown admirable wisdom. ..."
"... That's right. Two reasonably adult statesman undertook what might be called the Christmas Truce of 2016. But like its namesake of 1914 on the bloody no man's land of the western front, the War Party has determined that the truce-makers shall not survive. ..."
"... The Donald has been warned. ..."
Feb 21, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Submitted via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

General Flynn's tenure in the White House was only slightly longer than that of President-elect William Henry Harrison in 1841. Actually, with just 24 days in the White House, General Flynn's tenure fell a tad short of old "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too". General Harrison actually lasted 31 days before getting felled by pneumonia.

And the circumstances were considerably more benign. It seems that General Harrison had a fondness for the same "firewater" that agitated the native Americans he slaughtered at the famous battle memorialized in his campaign slogan. In fact, during the campaign a leading Democrat newspaper skewered the old general, who at 68 was the oldest US President prior to Ronald Reagan, saying:

Give him a barrel of hard [alcoholic] cider, and a pension of two thousand [dollars] a year and he will sit the remainder of his days in his log cabin.

That might have been a good idea back then (or even now), but to prove he wasn't infirm, Harrison gave the longest inaugural address in US history (2 hours) in the midst of seriously inclement weather wearing neither hat nor coat.

That's how he got pneumonia! Call it foolhardy, but that was nothing compared to that exhibited by Donald Trump's former national security advisor.

General Flynn got the equivalent of political pneumonia by talking for hours during the transition to international leaders, including Russia's ambassador to the US, on phone lines which were bugged by the CIA Or more accurately, making calls which were "intercepted" by the very same NSA/FBI spy machinery that monitors every single phone call made in America.

Ironically, we learned what Flynn should have known about the Deep State's plenary surveillance from Edward Snowden. Alas, Flynn and Trump wanted the latter to be hung in the public square as a "traitor", but if that's the solution to intelligence community leaks, the Donald is now going to need his own rope factory to deal with the flood of traitorous disclosures directed against him.

In any event, it was "intercepts" leaked from deep in the bowels of the CIA to the Washington Post and then amplified in a 24/7 campaign by the War Channel (CNN) that brought General Flynn down.

But here's the thing. They were aiming at Donald J. Trump. And for all of his puffed up bluster about being the savviest negotiator on the planet, the Donald walked right into their trap, as we shall amplify momentarily.

But let's first make the essence of the matter absolutely clear. The whole Flynn imbroglio is not about a violation of the Logan Act owing to the fact that the general engaged in diplomacy as a private citizen.

It's about re-litigating the 2016 election based on the hideous lie that Trump stole it with the help of Vladimir Putin. In fact, Nancy Pelosi was quick to say just that:

'The American people deserve to know the full extent of Russia's financial, personal and political grip on President Trump and what that means for our national security,' House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a press release.

Yet, we should rephrase. The re-litigation aspect reaches back to the Republican primaries, too. The Senate GOP clowns who want a war with practically everybody, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, are already launching their own investigation from the Senate Armed Services committee.

And Senator Graham, the member of the boobsey twins who ran for President in 2016 while getting a GOP primary vote from virtually nobody, made clear that General Flynn's real sin was a potential peace overture to the Russians:

Sen. Lindsey Graham also said he wants an investigation into Flynn's conversations with a Russian ambassador about sanctions: "I think Congress needs to be informed of what actually Gen. Flynn said to the Russian ambassador about lifting sanctions," the South Carolina Republican told CNN's Kate Bolduan on "At This Hour. And I want to know, did Gen. Flynn do this by himself or was he directed by somebody to do it?"

We say good riddance to Flynn, of course, because he was a shrill anti-Iranian warmonger. But let's also not be fooled by the clinical term at the heart of the story. That is, "intercepts" mean that the Deep State taps the phone calls of the President's own closest advisors as a matter of course.

This is the real scandal as Trump himself has rightly asserted. The very idea that the already announced #1 national security advisor to a President-elect should be subject to old-fashion "bugging," albeit with modern day technology, overwhelmingly trumps the utterly specious Logan Act charge at the center of the case.

As one writer for LawNewz noted regarding acting Attorney General Sally Yates' voyeuristic pre-occupation with Flynn's intercepted conversations, Nixon should be rolling in his grave with envy:

Now, information leaks that Sally Yates knew about surveillance being conducted against potential members of the Trump administration, and disclosed that information to others. Even Richard Nixon didn't use the government agencies themselves to do his black bag surveillance operations. Sally Yates involvement with this surveillance on American political opponents, and possibly the leaking related thereto, smacks of a return to Hoover-style tactics. As writers at Bloomberg and The Week both noted, it wreaks of 'police-state' style tactics. But knowing dear Sally as I do, it comes as no surprise.

Yes, that's the same career apparatchik of the permanent government that Obama left behind to continue the 2016 election by other means. And it's working. The Donald is being rapidly emasculated by the powers that be in the Imperial City due to what can only be described as an audacious and self-evident attack on Trump's Presidency by the Deep State.

Indeed, it seems that the layers of intrigue have gotten so deep and convoluted that the nominal leadership of the permanent government machinery has lost track of who is spying on whom. Thus, we have the following curious utterance by none other than the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes:

'I expect for the FBI to tell me what is going on, and they better have a good answer,' he told The Washington Post. 'The big problem I see here is that you have an American citizen who had his phone calls recorded.'

Well, yes. That makes 324 million of us, Congressman.

But for crying out loud, surely the oh so self-important chairman of the House intelligence committee knows that everybody is bugged. But when it reaches the point that the spy state is essentially using its unconstitutional tools to engage in what amounts to "opposition research" with the aim of election nullification, then the Imperial City has become a clear and present danger to American democracy and the liberties of the American people.

As Robert Barnes of LawNewz further explained, Sally Yates, former CIA director John Brennan and a large slice of the Never Trumper intelligence community were systematically engaged in "opposition research" during the campaign and the transition:

According to published reports, someone was eavesdropping, and recording, the conversations of Michael Flynn, while Sally Yates was at the Department of Justice. Sally Yates knew about this eavesdropping, listened in herself (Pellicano-style for those who remember the infamous LA cases), and reported what she heard to others. For Yates to have such access means she herself must have been involved in authorizing its disclosure to political appointees, since she herself is such a political appointee. What justification was there for an Obama appointee to be spying on the conversations of a future Trump appointee?

Consider this little tidbit in The Washington Post . The paper, which once broke Watergate, is now propagating the benefits of Watergate-style surveillance in ways that do make Watergate look like a third-rate effort. (With the) FBI 'routinely' monitoring conversations of Americans...... Yates listened to 'the intercepted call,' even though Yates knew there was 'little chance' of any credible case being made for prosecution under a law 'that has never been used in a prosecution.'

And well it hasn't been. After all, the Logan Act was signed by President John Adams in 1799 in order to punish one of Thomas Jefferson's supporters for having peace discussions with the French government in Paris. That is, it amounted to pre-litigating the Presidential campaign of 1800 based on sheer political motivation.

According to the Washington Post itself, that is exactly what Yates and the Obama holdovers did day and night during the interregnum:

Indeed, the paper details an apparent effort by Yates to misuse her office to launch a full-scale secret investigation of her political opponents, including 'intercepting calls' of her political adversaries.

So all of the feigned outrage emanating from Democrats and the Washington establishment about Team Trump's trafficking with the Russians is a cover story. Surely anyone even vaguely familiar with recent history would have known there was absolutely nothing illegal or even untoward about Flynn's post-Christmas conversations with the Russian Ambassador.

Indeed, we recall from personal experience the thrilling moment on inauguration day in January 1981 when word came of the release of the American hostages in Tehran. Let us assure you, that did not happen by immaculate diplomatic conception -- nor was it a parting gift to the Gipper by the outgoing Carter Administration.

To the contrary, it was the fruit of secret negotiations with the Iranian government during the transition by private American citizens. As the history books would have it because it's true, the leader of that negotiation, in fact, was Ronald Reagan's national security council director-designate, Dick Allen.

As the real Washington Post later reported, under the by-line of a real reporter, Bob Woodward:

Reagan campaign aides met in a Washington DC hotel in early October, 1980, with a self-described 'Iranian exile' who offered, on behalf of the Iranian government, to release the hostages to Reagan, not Carter, in order to ensure Carter's defeat in the November 4, 1980 election.

The American participants were Richard Allen, subsequently Reagan's first national security adviser, Allen aide Laurence Silberman, and Robert McFarlane, another future national security adviser who in 1980 was on the staff of Senator John Tower (R-TX).

To this day we have not had occasion to visit our old friend Dick Allen in the US penitentiary because he's not there; the Logan Act was never invoked in what is surely the most blatant case ever of citizen diplomacy.

So let's get to the heart of the matter and be done with it. The Obama White House conducted a sour grapes campaign to delegitimize the election beginning November 9th and it was led by then CIA Director John Brennan.

That treacherous assault on the core constitutional matter of the election process culminated in the ridiculous Russian meddling report of the Obama White House in December. The latter, of course, was issued by serial liar James Clapper, as national intelligence director, and the clueless Democrat lawyer and bag-man, Jeh Johnson, who had been appointed head of the Homeland Security Department.

Yet on the basis of the report's absolutely zero evidence and endless surmise, innuendo and "assessments", the Obama White House imposed another round of its silly school-boy sanctions on a handful of Putin's cronies.

Of course, Flynn should have been telling the Russian Ambassador that this nonsense would be soon reversed!

But here is the ultimate folly. The mainstream media talking heads are harrumphing loudly about the fact that the very day following Flynn's call -- Vladimir Putin announced that he would not retaliate against the new Obama sanctions as expected; and shortly thereafter, the Donald tweeted that Putin had shown admirable wisdom.

That's right. Two reasonably adult statesman undertook what might be called the Christmas Truce of 2016. But like its namesake of 1914 on the bloody no man's land of the western front, the War Party has determined that the truce-makers shall not survive.

The Donald has been warned.

xythras , Feb 20, 2017 10:02 PM

Assange is about to face censorship from one LENIN Moreno (next Ecuadorian president)

Assange must Reduce "Meddling" in US Policies While in Ecuadorian Embassy

http://dailywesterner.com/news/2017-02-20/assange-must-reduce-meddling-i...

How ironic

Darktarra -> xythras , Feb 20, 2017 10:11 PM

We haven't had deep state (successfully) take out a President since JFK. I am sure they will literally be gunning for Donald Trump! His election screwed up the elite's world order plans ... poor Soros ... time for him to take a dirt knap!

Be careful Trump! They will try and kill you! The United States government is COMPLETELY corrupt. Draining the swamp means its either you or they die!

wanglee -> Darktarra , Feb 20, 2017 10:18 PM

Let us help Trump's presidency to make America (not globalist) great again.

Not only democrats rigged Primary to elect Clinton as presidential candidate last year even though she has poor judgement (violating government cyber security policy) and is incompetent (her email server was not secured) when she was the Secretary of State, and was revealed to be corrupt by Bernie Sanders during the Primary, but also democrats encourage illegal immigration, discourage work, and "conned" young voters with free college/food/housing/health care/Obama phone. Democratic government employees/politicians also committed crimes to leak classified information which caused former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn losing his job and undermined Trump's presidency.

However middle/working class used their common senses voting against Clinton last November. Although I am not a republican and didn't vote in primary but I voted for Trump and those Republicans who supported Trump in last November since I am not impressed with the "integrity" and "judgement" of democrats, Anti-Trump protesters, Anti-Trump republicans, and those media who endorsed Clinton during presidential election and they'll work for globalists, the super rich, who moved jobs/investment overseas for cheap labor/tax and demanded middle/working class to pay tax to support welfare of illegal aliens and refugees who will become globalist's illegal voters and anti-Trump protesters.

To prevent/detect voter fraud, "voter ID" and "no mailing ballots" must be enforced to reduce possible "voter frauds on a massive scale" committed by democratic/republic/independent party operatives. All the sanctuary counties need to be recounted and voided county votes if recount fails since the only county which was found to count one vote many times is the only "Sanctuary" county, Wayne county, in recount states (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) last year. The integrity of voting equipment and voting system need to be tested, protected and audited. There were no voting equipment stuck to Trump. Yet, many voting equipment were found to switch votes to Clinton last November. Voter databases need to be kept current. Encourage reporting of "voter fraud on a massive scale" committed by political party operatives with large reward.

Cashing in: Illegal immigrants get $1,261 more welfare than American families, $5,692 vs. $4,431 ( http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/cashing-in-illegal-immigrants-get-1261... ) DEA Report Shows Infiltration of Mexican Drug Cartels in Sanctuary Cities ( http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2015/09/08/dea-report-shows-infiltration-... ) Welfare Discourages Work( http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/04/27/the-science-is-settle... ) Hillary Clinton Says Bernie Sanders's "Free College" Tuition Plan Is All a Lie ( http://www.teenvogue.com/story/clinton-says-sanders-free-tuition-wont-wo... UC Berkeley Chancellor: Hillary Clinton 'Free' College Tuition Plan Won't Happen ( http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/09/30/uc-berkeley-chancello... ) Bill Clinton Impeachment Chief Investigator: I'm 'Terrified' of Hillary because we know that there were "People" who "Disappeared" ( http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/10/30/exclusive-bil... ) Former FBI Asst. Director Accuses Clintons Of Being A "Crime Family" ( http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-30/former-fbi-asst-director-accuse... ) FBI boss Comey's 7 most damning lines on Clinton ( http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/05/politics/fbi-clinton-email-server-comey-da... ). Aides claiming she "could not use a computer," and didn't know her email password– New FBI docs ( https://www.rt.com/usa/360528-obama-implicated-clinton-email/ ). 23 Shocking Revelations From The FBI's Clinton Email Report ( http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/02/23-shocking-revelations-from-the-fbis-... ) DOJ grants immunity to ex-Clinton staffer who set up her email server ( http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/02/politics/hillary-clinton-email-server-just... ) Former House Intelligence Chairman: I'm '100 Percent' Sure Hillary's Server Was Hacked ( http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/11/06/former-house-... ) Exclusive - Gen. Mike Flynn: Hillary Clinton's Email Setup Was 'Unbelievable Active Criminal Behavior' ( http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/11/06/exclusive-gen... ) Clinton directed her maid to print out classified materials ( http://nypost.com/2016/11/06/clinton-directed-her-maid-to-print-out-clas... ) Obama lied to the American people about his secret communications with Clinton( http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/president-barack-obama-hillary-email-... ) Former U.S. Attorney General, John Ashcroft: FBI didn't 'clear' Clinton ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFYQ3Cdp0zQ ) When the Clintons Loved Russia Enough to Sell Them Our Uranium ( http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/07/25/flashback-cli... ) Wikileaks: Clinton Foundation Chatter with State Dept on Uranium Deal with Russia ( http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/10/08/wikileaks-putting-on-... ) Russian officials donated $$$ to Clinton Foundation for Russian military research ( http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2016/12/16/schweizer-insecure-left-wants-... ) Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal ( https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-... ) HILLARY CAMPAIGN CHIEF LINKED TO MONEY-LAUNDERING IN RUSSIA ( HTTP://WWW.WND.COM/2016/10/HILLARY-CAMPAIGN-CHIEF-LINKED-TO-MONEY-LAUNDE... ) The largest source of Trump campaign funds is small donors giving under $200 ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-self-fund_us_57fd4556e4... ) How mega-donors helped raise $1 billion for Hillary Clinton ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-mega-donors-helped-raise-1-b... ) Final newspaper endorsement count: Clinton 57, Trump 2 ( http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/304606-final-news... ) Journalists shower Hillary Clinton with campaign cash ( https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/17/20330/journalists-shower-hill... ) Judicial Watch Planning to Sue FBI, NSA, CIA for Flynn Records ( http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/16/judicial-watch-planni... )

President Trump Vowed to Investigate Voter Fraud. Then Lawmakers Voted to "Eliminate" Election Commission Charged with Helping States Improve their Voting Systems ( http://time.com/4663250/house-committee-eliminates-election-commission-v... ) California's Recipe for Voter Fraud on a Massive Scale( http://www.breitbart.com/california/2017/01/27/voter-fraud/ ) California Republican Party Official Alleges Voter Fraud In California, a "Sanctuary" state ( http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/11/28/trump-among-those-saying-vot... ) BREAKING: Massive Voter Fraud Discovered In Mailing Ballots In Pennsylvania! See Huge Twist In Results! ( http://www.usapoliticstoday.com/massive-voter-fraud-pennsylvania/ ) "Voting Fraud" revealed during "Recount": Scanners were used to count one vote many times to favor Clinton in Wayne County, a "Sanctuary" county including Detroit and surrounding areas.( http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-06/michigan-republicans-file-emerg... ) Illegal Voters Tipping Election Scales ( http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/243947/illegal-voters-tipping-election-s... ) Voter Fraud: We've Got Proof It's Easy ( http://www.nationalreview.com/article/368234/voter-fraud-weve-got-proof-... ) Voter Fraud Is Real. Here's The Proof ( http://thefederalist.com/2016/10/13/voter-fraud-real-heres-proof/ ) Here's Why State Election Officials Think Voter Fraud Is a Serious Problem ( http://dailysignal.com/2017/02/17/heres-why-state-election-officials-thi... ) Documented Voter Fraud in US ( http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/ViewSubCategory.asp?id=2216 ) No, voter fraud isn't a myth: 10 cases where it's all too real ( http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/17/no-voter-fraud-isnt-myth... ) Non-US citizen gets eight years for voter fraud in Texas after "Sucessfully Illegally Voted for at least Five Times" in Dallas county, a "Sanctuary" county( http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/02/09/non-us-citizen-gets-eight-years-... ) Democratic party operatives tell us how to successfully commit voter fraud on a massive scale ( http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/10/james-okeefe-rigging-elections-d... ) Texas Rigged? Reports Of Voting Machines Switching Votes To Hillary In Texas( http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-25/texas-rigged-first-reports-voti... ) Voting Machine "Irregularities" Reported in Utah, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, & North Carolina ( http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-08/voting-machine-irregularities-r... ) Video: Machine Refuses to Allow Vote For Trump in Pennsylvania ( http://www.infowars.com/video-machine-refuses-to-allow-vote-for-trump-in... ) Electoral fraud ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud ) Voter fraud ( https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_fraud ) Sanctuary Cities Continue to Obstruct Enforcement, Threaten Public Safety( http://cis.org/Sanctuary-Cities-Map ) List of Sanctuary cities( http://www.apsanlaw.com/law-246.List-of-Sanctuary-cities.html ) Map Shows Sanctuary City Islands of Blue In Sea of Red ( http://www.infowars.com/map-shows-sanctuary-city-islands-of-blue-in-sea-... )

Chris Dakota -> wanglee , Feb 20, 2017 10:59 PM

I hit some long click bait about famous people IQ

Barack Obama 140

Donald Trump 156

Trump knows whats coming. Rush Limbaugh said "I've known Trump for a long time, he is a winner and I am sure none of this phases him at all. The media didn't create him, the media can't destroy him."

CheapBastard -> Darktarra , Feb 20, 2017 10:19 PM

Flynn has been there for several years. If he was such a threat why did they not take action sooner since Soweeto appointed him in 2012? It must be that Soweto Obama is his spy buddy then, both of them in league with the Russians since Obama has been with Flynn for a much longer time he had to know if something was up.

The entire Russian spy story is a complete Fake news rouse.

I am wondering what they'll say tomorrow to draw attention awya form the muslim riots in Sweden. If the news of Muslim riots in Sweden, then Trump will be even more vindicated and the MSM will look even more stupid and Fake.

Chupacabra-322 -> CheapBastard , Feb 20, 2017 10:54 PM

The Deep State has accentually lost control of the Intelligence Community via its Agents / Operatives & Presstitute Media vehicle's to Gas Light the Masses.

So what Criminals at large Obama, Clapper & Lynch have done 17 days prior to former CEO Criminal Obama leaving office was to Decentralize & weaken the NSA. As a result, Intel gathering was then regulated to the other 16 Intel Agencies.

Thus, taking Centuries Old Intelligence based on a vey stringent Centralized British Model, De Centralized it, filling the remaining 16 Intel Agenices with potential Spies and a Shadow Deep State Mirror Government.

All controlled from two blocks away at Pure Evil Criminal War Criminal Treasonous at large, former CEO Obama's Compound / Lair.

It's High Treason being conducted "Hidden In Plain View" by the Deep State.

It's the most Bizzare Transition of Power I've ever witnessed. Unprecedented.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-18/jay-sekulow-obama-should-be-hel ...

oncefired -> CheapBastard , Feb 20, 2017 11:07 PM

http://www.thomaswictor.com/leakers-beware/

Duc888 -> CheapBastard , Feb 20, 2017 11:11 PM

Flynn did not tell Pence that Pence's best friend was front and center on the Pizzagate list. That's what cost Flynn his job...it had fuck all do do with the elections.

[Feb 15, 2017] Proof of sexual misconduct accumulated by the deep state makes it possible to dictate the votes of Congress, decisions of judges and administrators

thesaker.is

Talks-to-Cats on February 14, 2017 , · at 5:51 pm UTC

Never mind their sex lives

@Greg Schofield -

Catastrophic mistake. Proof of sexual misconduct accumulated by the deep state makes it possible to dictate the votes &c. of Congress, decisions of judges and administrators, &c.

Without a one-time blanket amnesty - however morally revolting - deep state control of government will endure. If you want to end its control of the ship of state, you must remove its nuclear option : blackmail (threat of exposure/prosecution/bankruptcy/family impoverishment/dying in prison).

No way around this.

Ann on February 14, 2017 , · at 9:31 pm UTC
the whole Military Intelligence is rife with pedophilia and sodomy – I can't imagine how Flynn avoided it – the whole top ranking guys are involved – watch video interview of Kay Griggs –

Flynn was probably blackmailed

Greg Schofield on February 15, 2017 , · at 12:33 am UTC
Good point, but there are many types of amnesty. The first is the amnesty of tolerance, consenting adult sex mutual or professional, no matter how distasteful or strange, whether adulterous or not, should be considered private and off the table, but never kiddy-fiddling (actual rather than fictitious, in the real that is). Publication of tolerated sexual matters should be slammed, tolerance does not mean condoning, tolerance is what it says tolerating what is not condoned.

That is an amnesty that every civilised nation follows I can't see why the US should not adopt it as it use to be the case. In Australia we tolerate a lot of things, ex prime minister Bob Hawke was a notorious womaniser a faithless husband, and his antics were a national laugh.

I also agree blackmail is one of the main weapons and sexuality is one of its mainstays. Its an puritanical extension of identity politics, I believe toleration is the amnesty. I think your logic and argument is correct.

Look at the other way, a corrupt person, rips off this person and that, they are a public menace. A corrupt judge that cheats on taxes, runs fictions companies, uses legal fictions to launder wealth is defrauding the public as a whole - it is a worse crime. By extension accepting bribes, favours, preferential treatment, corporate support is to provide inequality before the law, negate the whole purpose of the judiciary and again is a worse crime than tax fraud - it is at best a serious conflict of interest (serious enough for removal), but is usually the accepted method of tilting the judicial system which is, with evidence, criminal. and all the evidence has to be is that judge has accepted favours and their judgements demonstrate his gratitude to the social network that provided the favour.

Against this a man whose marriage is happy, but sexually disaster, visits prostitutes or keeps a mistress, or has fathered a child, is as is nothing - if only it was tolerated whilst terrible crimes are tolerated instead. Flint's water poisoning is not a scandal it is a criminal conspiracy that stemmed from a criminal neglect. Banks that seize homes that they purposefully overvalued and over-lent of which we have a mountain of documents to show this was done purposefully - the banks are the ones that should suffer, not those desperate to own a house and were sent to them, by Real Estate agents and developer.

A sea change in attitude, on really simple stuff, has a disproportional effect. And today that is actually easier to achieve than ever before. My advice is to go to the local churches and argue that their fixation on sex is producing untold evils in the world and their moral righteousness is being misdirected. A direct confrontation on theological grounds etc.,

Sorry for the rant your point has been taken on board well and truly.

Talks-to-Cats on February 15, 2017 , · at 2:26 am UTC
The first is the amnesty of tolerance, consenting adult sex mutual or professional, no matter how distasteful or strange, whether adulterous or not, should be considered private and off the table, but never kiddy-fiddling (actual rather than fictitious, in the real that is).

@Greg -

No rant at all. IMO this is the real elephant in the political livingroom. People are coming to understand who the orcs are, how they operate and what their objective is. They can be mentioned now without everything melting down in a storm of terror.

But that they have the whole US government, industry and military (pardon the expression) "by the balls" is not known so well. Nor is it appreciated that no necessary change can be expected to gain political traction so long as this iron control continues.

The trial balloon figure of 30% compromised is probably a gross underestimate. And we are not talking about marital infidelities with secretaries or "escorts" but romping with adolescents (both sexes but apparently boys are their favorites -
http://educate-yourself.org/tg/franklincoverupexcerptwashtimesphoto.shtml
Franklin/Boys Town scandal, Sandusky/Penn State, pizzagate, et al.)

This may not be the place for it but, if not, where ? The "Age of Consent" to sexual relations in the early US varied, but was often put at 9 years of age (this when puberty occurred around age 17-18). I see this as no evidence of moral turpitude, but of hard-nosed realism. It was human nature (as you have the moral decency to note) that people were going to get up to stuff like that, and there was no need to make bigger issue of it than it was. If it stirred popular outrage, the perpetrator could expect to be lynched or, where I grew up, shot "in a tragic accident" during hunting season when he was in the woods. People took care of their own problems. And gravely mistrusted the judicial system where the ability of wealth and connections (business relationships and funny handshakes) all but guaranteed impunity.

We now take it for granted (see Goebbels on the power of simple repetition to create "public opinion") that sex between an adolescent and an adult is the single worst moral outrage imaginable. In reality (I came to understand it inside the criminal justice system during 20+ years of working in it), making this a criminal offense, with the age of consent raised to 18 (completely ridiculous with puberty now happening in elementary school and given the "sexualization" of children by the orc media) was a strategic coup by the prison-industrial complex. By legally re-defining this as RAPE (!) and the perpetrator as a RAPIST (!) - well, repeat this often enough in court with an adolescent well coached by the childrens' services caseworker to see herself as a VICTIM who was GROOMED by him (when the actual dynamics of the situation were often the other way around), and a conviction was a prosecutor's easiest victory in an average month. Not to mention that the threat of sentence piling (pioneered during the Nixon years - prosecuting the same offense as as many separate crimes as possible, with sentences running consecutively) all but guaranteed "plea bargains" without even the expense or inconvenience of a trial.

Prisons love(d) this, as (except for homosexual pederasts) "sex offenders" ( almost 100% White for some strange reason ) are the most easily managed demographic of all. If a state prison (or private one) could house 2,500 of them, it could operate with a staff of, probably,10 guards per 8-hour shift.

Now, with the MSM and academia having turned sex with adolescents into the new "forbidden fruit," the appeal of it to the idle imaginations of the susceptible is multiplied. The whole thing stinks to high heaven of rank hypocrisy, human exploitation and lives ruined by a system that exploits human frailties as profit & control opportunities.

Now I am ranting, so will stop here. Noting that there is a LOT more that needs to be said on this.

[Feb 13, 2017] Under Maestro Greenspan Fed as an institution became this sense not so dissimilar to such post WWII financial institutions as IMF and World Bank (which became the key instruments for implementing Washington consensus ). It became a very effective enforcer of the neoliberalization of the country.

Feb 13, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
llisa2u2, February 13, 2017 at 10:34 AM
Just finished reading a great little book, THE ECONOMIC PINCH, by C.A.Lindbergh, SR. Here's a link to it: https://archive.org/stream/nkooan_yahoo_Lind/Lind#page/n1/mode/2up

Yes, the writing style is a bit dated, but it gives the bottom-line in really clear, well-written English.

It's a GREAT little book, should be required reading with proof by some book report written by each economist, before their being allowed any public discussion about the FEDERAL RESERVE.

It's probably more relevant today for all U.S. citizens than it was back in the early 1900's.

Sanjait, February 13, 2017 at 11:10 AM
The Great Moderation era Fed has some good aspects but has fundamentally failed to understand how its obsession with keeping inflation from ever even thinking abut going up has suppressed wages and caused labor hysteresis.

I think they assume that all those problems just equilibriate away across the cycle but the reality is not that.

So definitely it could and should be better.

But .. that doesn't make every proposal to change it a good one, or even a coherent one. Nor does it justify the attitude that we should just blow everything up and hope something better happens. Those bad arguments are what got us Trump, and at no point should reasonable people pander to such bad arguments, or confuse the fact that bad arguments are widely held with the notion that they aren't bad.

libezkova : February 13, 2017 at 03:07 PM , 2017 at 03:07 PM
Fed independence was always a convenient fiction. This is an independence limited to implementing neoliberal policies.

http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_625.pdf

Which was done under "Maestro" Greenspan. This Ann Rand follower and staunch believer in unrestrained "free market" (which means the law of jungles) subverted the institution and pressured the Presidents who deviated from the "Party line" (and one time Bill Clinton tried). This is the extent he was a Maestro. Later, after 2008, Maestro turned into cornered rat, but this is quite another story.

Under Maestro Greenspan Fed as an institution became not so dissimilar to such post WWII financial institutions as IMF and World Bank (which became the key instruments for implementing "Washington consensus"). It became a very effective enforcer of the neoliberalization of the country.

http://www.mit.edu/~thistle/v13/2/imf.html

[Jan 29, 2017] How Obama Framed Trump with Faux Mortgage Insurance Rate Decrease

Notable quotes:
"... By Naked Capitalism reader aliteralmind, aka Jeff Epstein. Jeff, a progressive activist and journalist, was one of only around forty candidates in the county to be personally endorsed by Bernie Sanders, and was a pledged delegate for him at the DNC. Jeff is also currently starring in Feel The Bern-The Musical , which will very soon be performed in New York. Originally posted on Citizens' Media TV ..."
"... "to be in the tank is to be "lovingly enthralled; foolishly enraptured; passionately bedazzled"" ..."
"... Today, the President announced a major new step that his Administration is taking to make mortgages more affordable and accessible for creditworthy families. ..."
Jan 29, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Posted on January 28, 2017 by Yves Smith By Naked Capitalism reader aliteralmind, aka Jeff Epstein. Jeff, a progressive activist and journalist, was one of only around forty candidates in the county to be personally endorsed by Bernie Sanders, and was a pledged delegate for him at the DNC. Jeff is also currently starring in Feel The Bern-The Musical , which will very soon be performed in New York. Originally posted on Citizens' Media TV

(This is my first issue-opinion video. With thanks especially to Adryenn Ashley and Jimmy Dore for the inspiration. All sources and supporting evidence is below.) Within hours of becoming the 45th President of the United States , one of Donald Trump's first orders of business was to sign an executive order to " raise mortgage insurance rates " on millions of homeowners , by around $500 a year.

But while it is technically true that Trump did sign the order reversing the decrease, it is a misleading picture. This story is more a negative reflection on President Obama than it is on Trump.

A Brief Tutorial From Someone Who Is Learning the Subject Right Along With You

Generally speaking, if you are a first time homebuyer and purchase a house with a down payment of less than 20% of the home's worth, you are required to purchase mortgage insurance. This insurance is to protect the the lender in case you default on your payments.

Let's use the example of a $200,000 home with a $10,000 (5%) down payment. So you need to borrow $190,000.

$200,000 * .05 = $10,000
$200,000 - $10,000 = $190,000

Since January 2015 , the upfront MIP ( mortgage insurance premium ) has been 1.75%, with the annual premium at .8%. So when you sign the mortgage, you pay the upfront premium of $3,325.

$190,000 * .0175 = $3,325

And then every year, you pay the annual premium of $1,520.

$190,000 * .008 = $1,520

As you pay off your principal, this number goes down.

The Obama administration's reduction of the annual premium rate is .25 points (the upfront premium remains unchanged). So with the same loan above, your annual premium would instead be $1,045.

.008 - .0025 = .0055
$190,000 * .0055 = $1,045

That's a savings of $475 a year, or about $40 a month.

$1,520 - $1,045 = $475
$475 / 12 months = $39.59

Backlash Against Trump

The criticism of Trump for this move has been unrelenting and, at least in my internet bubble, unanimous. I have not seen any criticism of the Obama administration at all; including by, disappointingly, one of my primary sources of news, The Young Turks. (Can't find the video at the moment, but they briefly criticized Trump for the move, without looking further into the issue.)

As reported by USA Today :

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Friday that Trump's words in his inaugural speech "ring hollow" following the mortgage premium action.

"In one of his first acts as president, President Trump made it harder for Americans to afford a mortgage," he said. "What a terrible thing to do to homeowners. Actions speak louder than words."

As reported by Bloomberg :

"This action is completely out of alignment with President Trump's words about having the government work for the people," said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, through a spokesman. "Exactly how does raising the cost of buying a home help average people?"

Sarah Edelman, director of housing policy for the left-leaning Center for American Progress, in an e-mail wrote, "On Day 1, the president has turned his back on middle-class families - this decision effectively takes $500 out of the pocketbooks of families that were planning to buy a home in 2017. This is not the way to build a strong economy."

And one of the many strong criticisms as documented by Common Dreams :

"Donald Trump's inaugural speech proclaimed he will govern for the people, instead of the political elite," [Liz Ryan Murray, policy director for national grassroots advocacy group People's Action] said. "But minutes after giving this speech, he gave Wall Street a big gift at the expense of everyday people. Trump may talk a populist game, but policies like this make life better for hedge fund managers and big bankers like his nominee for Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, not for everyday people."

The Full Picture

To say that Trump took savings away from the neediest of homebuyers is not true, because homebuyers never had the savings to begin with. The rate reduction was not announced until January 9 of this year–11 days before the end of Obama's eight year term–and was not set to take effect until January 27, a full week after Trump was sworn in.

(Here's the PDF from the FHA, of Trump's suspension announcement .)

In addition, Obama's reduction decision seems to have been made without any advance notice or even a projection document justifying the decrease. As I understand it , both of these things are unusual with a change of this magnitude.

Finally, with the announcement made little more than a week before the new administration was to be sworn in, and despite Trump being entirely responsible for implementing this change, the incoming administration was not consulted.

Now that the timing is clear, Time Magazine's coverage is particularly misleading:

Trump, who claimed a populist mantle in his first speech as a president, signed the executive order less than an hour after leaving the inaugural stage. It reverses an Obama-era policy.

"Obama-era policy" implies the reduction was made long ago, and has been in force for much of that time.


(Rates can't be raised if they were never lowered.)

Conclusion: It Was a Set Up

Finally. After eight years of hard work and multiple requests, your boss approaches you on a Monday morning and says, "Good news! Starting in two weeks, I'm giving you a raise. Congratulations."

Two days later, you find out that he decided to leave the company months ago, and his final day is Friday. Your raise doesn't start until a week after that.

You ask him about your new boss. "Well, he's a pretty strict guy." He leans in, puts the back of his hand to the side of his mouth, lowers his voice, and continues, "Honesty, I hear he is a bit difficult to work with. Real penny pincher." He sits up, his voice back to its normal cadence, "But don't worry. I'm leaving a note on his desk telling him just how important this raise is to you and your family." He stands up and slaps you on the back as he walks away. "I'm sure he'll keep my word."

If that were me, I would be upset at my new boss, but I would be furious at my old one. He had eight years to do something.

This was nothing more than an opportunistic political maneuver by the outgoing president, to set the incoming president up for failure. All while pretending to care about American homeowners. If the President Obama really wanted to help Americans, he would've considered this move–or something similar–long ago. Instead, he told them he was giving them a gift and promised that it would be delivered by Trump, knowing full well that he would never follow through. Lower-income Americans were used as pawns in a cheap political game.

Further confirming my theory, here is what was said when the reduction was originally announced :

"The Trump administration would be accused on day one of raising mortgage costs for average Americans if it reverses the FHA move," analyst Jaret Seiberg, managing director at Cowen Group Inc., wrote in a note to clients. "Trump's career has been real estate. It would seem out of character for him to be aggressively negative on real estate in his first week in office." [ ]

"I have no reason to believe this will be scaled back," [HUD Secretary Julian] Castro told reporters. The premium cut "offers a good benefit to hardworking American families out there at a time when interest rates might well continue to go up."

It is not Trump's responsibility to keep the promises that Obama makes on his way out the door. It is Obama's responsibility to not promise what is not promiseable.

There are so many things for progressives to criticize Trump about. This is not one of them.

So Who Are We Fighting Anyway?

To paraphrase Jimmy Dore , "The way to oppose Trump is to agree with him when he's right, and to fight him when he's wrong. Anything else delegitimizes you, especially in the eyes of his supporters."

And again in another of his videos : "We don't need to unite against Trump. We need to unite against corruption and corporatism."

If Democrats do something wrong, we need to fight them. If Trump does something wrong, we need to fight him. If Trump does something right, we need to stand with him.

If we can't win with the truth, we don't deserve to win.

39 0 10 0 1 This entry was posted in Banana republic , Banking industry , Credit markets , Dubious statistics , Guest Post , Media watch , Real estate , Regulations and regulators on January 28, 2017 by Yves Smith . Subscribe to Post Comments 93 comments Lambert Strether , January 28, 2017 at 6:06 am

"If we can't win with the truth, we don't deserve to win."

Let's get that tatooed on our foreheads.

UserFriendly , January 28, 2017 at 7:21 am

I agree with the sentiment but after watching the D party protest war under Bush, never talk about it under Obama, and then cheerlead for it with Hillary I don't think they actually stand for anything except identity politics.

jgordon , January 28, 2017 at 7:47 am

Right, they traded support for real issues for identity politics. Identity politics which is lovingly celebrated on TYT every day by the way. I'm not sure how or why anyone would go to that rancid cesspool of biased disinformation for news, but ok.

Here is a litmus test: anyone who gave a pro forma endorsement of Hillary OK, understandable, and I can kind of tolerate that. But for the others who were in the tank for Hillary like TYT–all except for Jimmy Dore–those people are persona non grata from here out.

aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 8:35 am

Totally disagree that TYT was in the tank for Hillary. Have watched these guys every day since around May. They're all pro-Bernie. They clearly wanted Hillary over Trump during the general (and I did too, but that's waaaaaay not to say I'm pro-Hillary), but I don't think "in the tank for Hillary" is a fair characterization for any of them.

To me, the best evidence is that I have not witnessed Jimmy Dore being forced to tone his admittedly louder and more vehement anti-Hillary ranting down on any show, including the main show. They even gave him his own show around the end of the primaries where he gleefully goes off (Aggressive Progressives).

As an aside, The Jimmy Dore Show seems fresher than Aggressive Progressives, I believe because he rehearses the bits on own show first. On TJDS, he is frequently good, and consistently on fire.

Naked Cap, the entire TYT network, Glenn Greenwald, Le Show, and of course, Bernie Sanders, are among my most important truth tellers.

Jerry Denim , January 28, 2017 at 2:00 pm

Sorry for being so clueless, but "TYT", "TJDS" ?

Anyone care to fill me in on this nomenclature?

Thanks!

oh , January 28, 2017 at 2:26 pm

TYT – The Young Turks
TJDS – The Jimmy Dore Show

aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 2:27 pm

The Young Turks and The Jimmy Dore Show. YouTube shows.

oh , January 28, 2017 at 2:27 pm

If you voted for Hillary then you were in the tank for her. There's no such thing as the lesser of the two evils. Sorry! Same goes for TYT.

dcrane , January 28, 2017 at 3:04 pm

A relevant definition of "in the tank" from this NY Times Magazine article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-safire-t.html

"to be in the tank is to be "lovingly enthralled; foolishly enraptured; passionately bedazzled""

Yves Smith Post author , January 28, 2017 at 4:59 pm

It's not that clear cut. For instance, if you are a person of color, there was good reason to be plenty worried about Trump. Violence against immigrants picked up big time in the UK after Brexit, so there's a close parallel. And his appointment of Jeff Sessions as AG is hardly encouraging.

Brian Daly , January 28, 2017 at 7:43 pm

But if you're White, you have no good reason to be worried about Trump? That's a rather shabby way to think about folks of all colors.

Sorry to be snarky. It's just exasperating reading these attempts to define and claim moral purity. In a complex and compromised world.

integer , January 28, 2017 at 10:17 pm

Did you see their election day coverage? Here are the highlights: TYT meltdown .
My favorite part starts at 14m50s, when Kasparian rants about how she has no respect for women who didn't vote for Clinton and calls them "f@#king dumb". Solidarity!

skippy , January 28, 2017 at 3:30 pm

What the – ????? – like the right wing is not all about Identity Politics from an ethnic and religious foundations .. errrrrrr .

Now that the Democrats embraced free market neoliberalism and went off the reservation with non traditional views wrt whom could join the club, being the only thing separating the two, its a bit wobbly to make out like there is some massive schism between the two.

Disheveled . you can't have a "dominate" economic purview running the ship for 50ish years and then devolve into polemic political warfare ..

Teejay , January 28, 2017 at 4:42 pm

jgordon– Identity politics lovingly celebrated on that rancid cesspool of biased disinformation every day. Wow, takes my breath away. I've watched the TYT evening news for ~10 months virtually ever day and I'd guesstimate that I viewed 60 of their You Tube clips. Seems to me you're projecting. Given your strident certitude you should have no trouble provide any links that convinced you of your opinion, buttress your argument. The daily recurrences of "identity politics" put it out there. What convinced you they were "in the tank for Hillary"? It'd be hard to come up with a more inaccurate phrase. They full throatedly endorsed Sanders in the primaries. Cenk announced on the Monday (IIRC) before that he would be voting for HRC so how do you arrive at using "in the tank"? I found your remarks a "rancid cesspool of biased disinformation" long on emotion and very short on facts and evidence. That's why it seems like projection.

Donald , January 28, 2017 at 10:00 am

The US support for the Saudi war in Yemen is the most clearcut example of the moral worthlessness of many liberals. Actually, to their credit many Democrats and a few Republicans in Congress have opposed it, but it isn't a big cause because Obama was the one doing it. I imagine Trump will continue the policy, but don't expect anything to change– Trump can be opposed on other issues, so there will be no incentive to criticize him on an issue when the Trump people can say they are just continuing what Obama started.

It is infuriating to hear liberals mindlessly repeating how disgraceful it is to see Trump cozying up with a dictator who has blood on his hands. It is the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind with these people.

integer , January 28, 2017 at 10:33 pm

This tweet (which I found @ActualFlatticus ) sums up the dynamic you are referring to perfectly imo.

Jen , January 28, 2017 at 7:31 am

Hear, hear! Thanks to NC that Common Dreams piece set off my bs detector immediately. There's a larger framing question we can add as well: who benefits from PMI?

Using the example above, the home buyer pays an upfront premium of $3,300 which gives them no additional equity in their home, and somewhere between $1400 and $1500 a year for their premium, which also doesn't increase their equity. And, they continue to pay PMI until they achieve a loan to value ratio of 80%.

So you buy your 200K house and dutifully pay your mortgage and PMI, which, btw, is also not tax deductible. You finally get to the point where through a combination of paying down your mortgage and increasing home prices, you have 80% equity in your home. Then the housing market tanks, and your 200K home is worth 170K. Your house is worth less than you paid for it and you're stuck paying $1500 a year in fees that don't reduce the amount of your mortgage, that you can't deduct from your taxes, and that you can't get rid of until you have 80% equity in your house.

Sign me up!

So who benefits? Certainly not the middle class would be homeowner, who not only gets screwed on the finances, but thanks to inflation of home prices, is getting screwed on the finances so that they can spend 200K on a crappy little ranch that's a 40 minute commute to their job one way on a good day.

jgordon , January 28, 2017 at 7:56 am

I also read about this on the Neocon/Neolib pro-war propaganda and general disinformation site for women and manginas Huffington Post, and I have to say that they were spinning really hard to make this look like something horrible Trump had done. But even in the extremely biased article I read they surreptitiously had to admit that this was a rule the Obama regime had put in place the midnight before Obama departed and that Trump was just reversing it. I read this before I knew anything else about t he subject and already had a pretty good idea of what was going on. But the above post helped a lot.

Baby Gerald , January 28, 2017 at 8:45 am

'the Neocon/Neolib pro-war propaganda and general disinformation site for women and manginas '

Thank you, jgordon, for my first hearty laugh of the morning. I'm going to bookmark HuffPo just so I can re-title it this.

Thanks again to NC for giving me a good link to use against the uninformed masses with whom I frequently have to deal.

lyman alpha blob , January 28, 2017 at 1:12 pm

Finance benefits – they get to keep promoting unaffordable mortgages.

We refused to pay this BS insurance when purchasing our house, since it wan't insuring us against anything but rather we'd be paying for the bank's insurance against ourselves. Seems a lot more like a scam when you frame it that way, considering that the bank is lending you money they just created in the first place.

Instead we saved up for another year or two until we had the whole 20% down required to avoid the insurance. I do understand that not everyone can afford 20% down depending on their job and where they live however if enough people refused both PMI and to purchase because they couldn't afford 20% down on an overpriced house (and we are in another bubble already, at least in my area), prices would drop until people could really afford them.

Finance pretends they are just trying to make the American Dream available to everybody and too many have taken the bait to the point where finance as a percentage of GDP is near or at an all time high. The reality is that it's mostly just a scam to benefit finance and turn the population into debt slaves.

Marcer69 , January 28, 2017 at 2:03 pm

The home owner was able to purchase a home with less than 20% down. The PMI protects the lender during default, which is considerably higher when borrower has no skin in the game. Also, there are other options such as lender paid mi.

Marcer69 , January 28, 2017 at 2:11 pm

Additionally, most of you are confusing PMI – Private Mortgage Insurance- with FHA Upfront and MIP. With the latter being required regardless of the down payment. Secondly, the author was wrong on his facts. MIP is .85 @ 96.5% and .80 @ 30 years. 15 YR.terns offer reduced

koki , January 28, 2017 at 10:50 pm

PMI is another insurance company rip-off. Requiring people to escrow taxes with no interest paid to them by the banks using those funds is another rip-off.

Roger Smith , January 28, 2017 at 10:40 am

Agreed! Great article Jeff!

aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 1:24 pm

Thank you, Roger.

nonsense factory , January 28, 2017 at 3:12 pm

Trying to condense this whole article into a tweet is a challenge. . .

"Obama cuts mortg. ins. rate for <20% down by 25 pts ($500 on $200k home) 11days prior to exit in con artist act sure to be dropped by Trump resulting in bogus media claims about Dem support for working class homeowners."

Sondra , January 28, 2017 at 4:35 pm

I agree. If we Progressives are to make any fwd movement, we can't beat up on DJT on any and everything. I am also cautioning friends & family to do so too. If cry "foul" everyou time he acts, that delegitimizes us.

One recent example is the Trumps' arrivall @ wh b4 the inauguration. A snapshot shows DJT entering WH before the Obamas and Mrs. DJT. Once posted, goes viral and the talk is how ill-mannered, selfish is and how gracious the Obamas are for escorting the Mrs. after her "oafish" husband

What is not shown is that DJT stops, comes back, and ushers the trio ahead of him. (which you can see on CSPAN ).
When I saw the truth of what happened, after reading the negative comments, that worried me.

We REALLY need to be more dis corning and employ critical thinking.

Have to be careful not to be swayed by bullshit, no matter where it comes from.

Quiet , January 28, 2017 at 7:01 am

This explanation, while nice, only serves to make Trump look dumb. He jumped into an obvious trap. Rather than focus on how Obama tricked him, I'm a bit more concerned with what this portends for the future. See, if the president is unable, either for political or personal reasons, to avoid easy pitfalls like this, the odds of his success aren't very high.

By the way, this reads like one more zing at Obama after he's already left the building. He earned most of the criticism he got, definitely from this site, but I feel like this is overdoing it. Criticizing him for not doing it sooner? Totally valid. Criticizing him for tripping up his successor? Petty.

Pointing out the hypocrisy of Schumer and Kaine isn't part of that pettiness, though. That will be useful to remember as they cozy up to the Don and claim they're doing it to "help working families."

aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 8:13 am

I am admittedly a political newbie (Bernie woke me up never did anything before him but vote), and perhaps I am missing something, but I would be much less upset about it if he didn't screw middle class Americans in the process.

That this is considered petty, by which I believe you mean normal politics, is exactly the problem.

JTMcPhee , January 28, 2017 at 11:37 am

"Screw middle class Americans" exactly how?

The article makes it pretty clear, if I am reading it and the links and background right, that the screwing is principally in the form of requiring mortgage insurance to insure THE LENDER (or note holder or whoever MERS says gets paid on default). And that the "benefit" you may feel was (according to the spin) "taken away," was not even an "entitlement" because it would not have even been in effect until three weeks AFTER Obama (who has screwed the middle class and everyone else not in the Elite, nine ways from nowhere, for 8 years), and would not change the abuse that is PMI. And would not have "put dollars in the pockets of consumers" anyway for long after that. And how many homeowners are in the category?

And banksters and mortgage brokers and the rest, gee whiz, we mopes are supposed to be concerned about THEM? About people whose paydays come from commissions on the dollar amount of the loans they write? Where all the "incentives," backed by the Real Economy that undergirds the ability of the US Government to do its fiat money forkovers to lenders that connived to change the policies against prudential lending to inflate the bubble that crashed and burned so many, are all once again being pointed in the direction of making Realtors ™(c)(BS) and lenders even richer on flips and flops and dumb transactions and churning?

aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 12:08 pm

He screwed the middle class by teasing them with a rate reduction, knowing that Trump was going to never let it happen.

JTMcPhee , January 28, 2017 at 3:39 pm

Just to clarify, and please anyone correct me, this was not any kind of "rate reduction." Rate reductions are what is supposed to happen under the various homeowner "they let you live in their house as long as you pay the rent mortgage" relief programs that never happened except to transfer more money to the Banksters. As in "reduce the unaffordable interest rate on oppressive mortgages." And "mark to market." And PRINCIPAL reductions as a result. And I do know the nominal difference between "title" states and "equitable interest" states - in either, the note holder effectively owns the house and property until the last nickel is paid, and as seen in the foreclosure racket, often not even the. And the "homeowner" gets to pay the taxes and maintain and maybe improve the place, to protect the note holder's equity "Fee simple absolute" is a comforting myth.

As the article points out, the only potential reduction in money from borrower to lender/loan servicer (since the PMI underwriters seem to have such close financial ties to the insured note holder, there's but slim difference between the parts of the racket) might have been that tiny reduction in the insurance PREMIUM.

Niggling over terms, maybe, but that's what "the law" is made up of.

And apologies if I mistook the referent of "he" to be "Trump" rather than Obama and his clan - but nonetheless

hemeantwell , January 28, 2017 at 8:54 am

This excellent analytic walkthrough is a model for what must be done to ward off any form of "Obama 2!" as a political battle cry. It must be done relentlessly and without any consideration of being fair to that neoliberal schemer. The Clintonites will claw their way back from the edge of their political grave if they can draw on such sentiments.

nonsense factory , January 28, 2017 at 3:20 pm

Exactly, what we need is an FDR approach, which Bernie Sanders Democrats are far more likely to deliver. Instead of bailing out AIG and Goldman Sachs, FDR would have set up a Homeonwers Loan Corporation to buy up all the adjustable rate mortgages and convert them to fixed-rate mortgages, and instead of the zero-interest loans going to Wall Street from the Fed, they'd have gone to homeowners facing foreclosure, who could then stay in their homes and pay them off over time.

But when Obama came in, he brought in Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, who preached about "not returning to the failed policied of FDR." What a pack of con artists. I prefer your honest hustlers to those guys (i.e. Team Trump, American Hustle 2.0 at least you know what to expect.)

a different chris , January 28, 2017 at 2:20 pm

>See, if the president is unable, either for political or personal reasons, to avoid easy pitfalls like this

How is this a pitfall? Trump puts a hold on a "last minute Obama change", lets it sit for awhile, and then reinstates it or maybe even makes it better. Then Trump owns the reduction, not Obama.

This isn't even one-dimensional chess.

Jim Haygood , January 28, 2017 at 7:59 am

This essay focuses on timing and tactics. Not analyzed is the essential question of What is the appropriate premium for mortgage insurance?

It's an actuarial question based on prior loss experience. Real estate moves in long cycles. Each trough is different in depth.

Such questions aside, HUD's annual mortgage insurance premium of 0.8% was in the middle of the typical range of 0.5% to 1.0% charged by private mortgage insurers. Obama's short-lived cut to 0.55% would have put HUD's premium at the low end, on what probably are higher-risk loans.

Obama's action mirrors what's seen in other gov-sponsored insurance programs, such as pension benefit guarantee schemes which are chronically under-reserved. Cheap premiums look like a free benefit, until the guarantee fund goes bust in a down cycle, and taxpayers get hit with a bailout.

What's so stupendously silly about Obama's diktat is that it was too late to provide any electoral benefit. Whereas if HUD's mortgage insurance pool later went bust, it could have been blamed on Obama for cutting premiums without any actuarial analysis.

Perhaps HUD secretary Ben Carson will ask a more fundamental question: what is HUD doing in the mortgage insurance business, anyway? Obama's ham-handed tampering with premiums for political purposes shows why government is not well placed to be in the insurance business - it has skewed incentives. Ditch it, Ben!

aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 8:49 am

In researching this story (I have no financial background, and have never owned anything beyond a car), I had a theory that the reduction made no fiscal sense because the Feds raised rates for the first time in 2016, after hovering above near zero for eight years, to .5%. My thinking was that the move was to discourage new borrowers by making loans more expensive, therefore increasing the cost of mortgages and ultimately threatening the solvency of the FHA. I was wrong, which is disappointing because it would have made for a more dramatic ending, in that Trump's revoking the decrease would have been the "correct" thing to do.

Brian Lindholm , January 28, 2017 at 9:23 am

Jim,

Aye. You make an excellent point that essentially everybody in media has ignored. What should the mortgage insurance rate actually be? And the answer is simple: It should be high enough to cover losses incurred by mortgage defaults (plus operating expenses), but no higher.

I don't know what that rate should have actually been, but if it was 0.55%, then Obama and the FHA should have lowered the rate years ago to avoid overcharging people. And if 0.80% was the right rate, then Obama should never have lowered it at all, given that it would ultimately require a taxpayer bailout. Either way , Obama is incompetent.

If the only consideration is cost to customers, then the proper rate is 0%. Offer it for free!! But if you want to the program to actually be self-sustaining, so that it doesn't require continuous injection of taxpayer dollars and be a perpetual target for cancellation by Congress, then you have to charge enough to cover losses. Whether the average mortgage rate is 3.5% or 4.0% or 6.2% matters not a whit in this calculation.

Net conclusion: Obama is either a flaming incompetent who flat-out doesn't understand the concept of insurance, or this was a deliberate attempt to impose a political headache on Trump.

Jim Haygood , January 28, 2017 at 9:53 am

An analogy could be made to municipal bond insurance, which like mortgage insurance is intended to protect the lender against loss of principal:

Municipal bond insurance adds a layer of protection in the rare case of default. However, that protection is dependent on the insurance companies' credit quality.

Municipal bond insurance used to be commonplace; now it's quite rare. Why is that? As of 2008, nearly half of all newly issued municipal bonds carried some form of insurance. Today, the share is less than 7%.

The number of municipal bond insurers has also declined and their credit ratings have fallen.

A number of bond insurers went bust during the Great Recession. Plus, a large default by Puerto Rico has caused many municipal market participants to question the ability of insurance companies to pay on the bonds they insure.

http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/articles/How-the-Municipal-Bond-Insurance-Market-Has-Changed-Since-the-Great-Recession

Muni bond insurers were publicly traded, profit seeking companies. But they underpriced their insurance, probably because no one expected a 1930s-style crisis like 2008.

Obama had no more concept about how to price mortgage insurance than I do about how to perform brain surgery. He was just mindlessly handing out bennies at public expense in the dark of night, before skulking away into well-deserved obscurity.

shinola , January 28, 2017 at 1:35 pm

I dunno Jim – perhaps Obama DID know (or was advised) that the rate cut was actuarially unsound thus setting up his successor for problems down the road or bad optics upfront if the cut was reversed.

Cleverly devious?

Brian Lindholm , January 28, 2017 at 2:01 pm

Yep. To quote the White House press release, " Today, the President announced a major new step that his Administration is taking to make mortgages more affordable and accessible for creditworthy families. "

That's not a valid reason to lower PMI rates. PMI rates must cover losses, and higher interest rates on mortgages may very well mean higher default rates. If so, PMI rates would need to go up as well.

Now if the press release had talked about PMI overcharges by the FHA, then I might have have bought it. But they didn't. There was no mention of actuarial soundness at all .

Jack , January 28, 2017 at 10:12 am

For a good explanation of how mortgage insurance works and the impact of the discussed premium increase/decrease, check out David Dayen's (a frequent contributor to NC) article on the Intercept here . David goes more in depth on the actual numbers and what they mean.

Optic7 , January 28, 2017 at 12:26 pm

I did briefly hear some discussion in the news about the FHA mortgage insurance program having been underfunded in the recent past. This could have given an additional reason for Trump to block the lower rate until the numbers could be analyzed. I did a search and found a couple of articles from before either of these decisions that illustrate different perspectives on this issue:

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/232492-castro-grilled-over-lowering-mortgage-insurance-premiums

http://www.fhaloanpros.com/2009/01/is-the-fha-under-funded/

The latter article is from 2009 but includes some interesting details about significant amounts of money being transferred from the fund to the treasury department.

Oregoncharles , January 28, 2017 at 2:13 pm

From the first link, as of 2015: " his recent decision to lower mortgage insurance premiums despite the FHA falling short of its capital reserve requirement." So the fund was out of compliance with the law, and this was a long-running point of contention between the administration and the Republicans in Congress.

What we don't know yet is whether the fund reached its goal, which would justify lowing the premium. The Congress members were complaining about being lied to.

DarkMatters , January 28, 2017 at 12:38 pm

"What is the appropriate premium for mortgage insurance?"

"Such questions aside, HUD's annual mortgage insurance premium of 0.8% was in the middle of the typical range of 0.5% to 1.0% charged by private mortgage insurers. Obama's short-lived cut to 0.55% would have put HUD's premium at the low end, on what probably are higher-risk loans."

The argument here seems to be that what is typical is appropriate. By that argument, 0.55% which falls in that range would be ok. The argument that it's too low assumes that the range as it stands is somehow rationally defined, which is another assumption that itself bears scrutiny. To say that 0.5-1.0% is ok is an assumption, and should be examined in detail right along with the 0.55 and 0.8 HUD figures before firmer conclusions could be drawn. The results would give an informed answer to the rhetorical question " what is HUD doing in the mortgage insurance business, anyway?" Absent that, we're reduced to arguments, tainted on both sides by political inclinations. Jeff Epstein's clarification is exemplary.

oh , January 28, 2017 at 2:51 pm

" Whereas if HUD's mortgage insurance pool later went bust, it could have been blamed on Obama for cutting premiums without any actuarial analysis."

Oh Boy! That would really hurt Obama, when he'd be long gone and dancing with the stars!

Remember, whatever he did during his term he weighed and measured a thousand times.

flora , January 28, 2017 at 3:33 pm

"Cheap premiums look like a free benefit, until the guarantee fund goes bust in a down cycle, and taxpayers get hit with a bailout."

+1.

Domofdoom , January 28, 2017 at 8:18 am

Well said. What do you think would be more effective: trying to change the dems or giving up on them and setting up another party?

WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 3:33 pm

option 2

Vatch , January 28, 2017 at 4:37 pm

One may be more effective, but if it's not feasible, it doesn't matter how effective it would be in theory. See this comment by Martin from Canada a few days ago:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/bernie-sanders-nails-trumps-pick-health-human-services-directly-wall.html#comment-2747290

Here's the link that Martin pointed to:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/bernie-sanders-democratic-labor-party-ackerman/

Maybe a viable new progressive party can be created. But it sure won't be easy. If it weren't extremely difficult, don't you think that the Greens would have done it by now? For now, I think that people need to be actively looking for candidates to run in the 2018 Democratic primaries. In a few places, at the state level, this will be happening in 2017. See:

https://ballotpedia.org/State_legislative_elections,_2017

"Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia hold elections in odd-numbered years."

rjs , January 28, 2017 at 8:36 am

Obama came in off the golf course after Trump was elected and issued dozens of similar diktats i recall wondering at the time that if all those moves were so important, why didn't he make them in the 8 years he had

oho , January 28, 2017 at 9:39 am

EZ real issue for Democrats to embrace. Stop the sales tax of food at the state/muni level. Shift that burden (or as much as reasonably possible) to the top income brackets.

Oh wait, the places where Democrats can do this, always solidly vote D and there's no incentive.

J.P. Steele , January 28, 2017 at 9:51 am

There is an art to politics. As anyone who studies the subject knows, one has to be both "Lion & Fox." Lion .for the strength to drive policies, but also a Fox in order to avoid "Snares and Traps." Bannon, who actually has been writing these executive orders, stepped right into this Trap. Rookie mistake. This is what happens when you have ideologues attempting to actually govern. They "step in it." I believe that Jeff is a bit naive and thin skinned here as to "The Game." Obama did indeed set a snare ..but I am a bit more concerned by Steve's arrogance for boldly stepping in it and allowing the opposition a fine platform to grandstand on the issue. Rookie mistake. Arrogance & Stupidity.

integer , January 28, 2017 at 11:13 pm

Afaics there are two ways in which this game can be played:

A)
1: 0bama sets the trap.
2: Trump nullifies the reduction in rates while simultaneously denouncing 0bama for setting the trap.
3: MSMedia circus.

B)
1: 0bama sets the trap.
2: Trump nullifies the reduction in rates.
3: D-party denounces Trump.
4: MSMedia circus.
5: Trump/Bannon denounces 0bama for setting the trap.
6: MSMedia once again loses credibility, at least in the eyes of Trump supporters.

Why is option A better than B? Am I missing something here?

Yves Smith Post author , January 29, 2017 at 12:02 am

Trump and Bannon will never do 5 and 6. They never fight on the level of detail and timetables.

Horatio Parker , January 28, 2017 at 10:14 am

Simple question: why did Trump reverse the cut?

Craig , January 28, 2017 at 10:53 am

Excellent question, it has not been answered yet:). Lotsa words tho.

cm , January 28, 2017 at 2:39 pm

1. It raised financial risk to the govt.
2. As the article pointed out many times, it was a sleazy move on Obama's part

WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 3:41 pm

Same reason Bush 43 reversed the last-minute reductions to water regulations that Bill Clinton passed, and Obama had to deal with

Clinton to Bush : President Clinton Signs Midnight Regulations

Bush to Obama : Bush's Final FU: Last-Minute Regulations That Will Screw America for Years to Come

Obama to Trump: Mortgage rate (non-)"reduction", likely more to come

Wiki on "Midnight Regulations": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_regulations

WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 4:07 pm

Not a lot of archived stuff from 2001 and before on the nets, oddly. I regret posting the CNN link up there.

I washed my hands twice afterward.

ScottW , January 28, 2017 at 10:17 am

If everyone with less than 20% equity has PMI, why didn't it pay off after the crash and lessen the need for a bailout? Logic would dictate most of the foreclosures were on homes people bought most recently with less than 20% down. Did PMI pay any money during the crash and to whom and for what?

If it didn't do any good during the last crash to lessen the public bailout, what's the point of requiring it?

lyman alpha blob , January 28, 2017 at 1:00 pm

That is a very good question and I don't remember hearing anything about PMI paying out during the crash (but that could just be my memory). In fact it never even crossed my mind but yeah you'd think that should have mitigated some of the losses. Maybe any payout would only benefit the mortgage holder directly and wouldn't carry through to the mortgage-based securities? That seems odd though and if true would be a strong case for severely curtailing if not eliminating at least the more exotic bets.

Anybody know anything about this?

oh , January 28, 2017 at 2:55 pm

I often wondered about the same thing/

WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 4:01 pm

Because it's another BS fee they tack on for no good reason other than greed.

I was in the mortgage game in 2006-2008. Now matter how many showers I take I still don't feel clean.

bob , January 28, 2017 at 4:03 pm

"Logic would dictate most of the foreclosures were on homes people bought most recently with less than 20% down."

Not banker logic. They were foreclosing on houses with equity to steal. Those houses that were valued above what was mortgaged.

Jim F , January 28, 2017 at 10:29 am

What gets me is people who think "shame on Trump" for not recognizing and avoiding the trap. Every single one of those people I avoid like the plague.

Joel , January 28, 2017 at 10:42 am

Re: The Young Turks

I watched a few times until what's his name, the main turk, interrupted and talked over the female co-host too many times for my stomach. There are too many good choices to give clicks to that type of behavior. Hey this is the 21st century.

Oregoncharles , January 28, 2017 at 2:03 pm

Cenk Uygur – the only actual Turk on the show. It IS his show and network, but I see your point.

jake , January 28, 2017 at 10:42 am

I don't know . Obama made many policy changes after the election results came.

It's not as if government is a fast moving engine. This could have been in the works for years and got expedited for obvious reasons. It took years for Obama to start commuting drug sentences, also Chelsea Manning, and there was no political gain in it for him.

Unless the policy was itself a fraud, it's impossible to know whether it was implemented cynically.

Oregoncharles , January 28, 2017 at 2:01 pm

I made this point below, once it escapes moderation, but basically: 1) the article fails to tell us whether the new rate made sense; and 2) Clinton did the same thing – a bunch of last-minute progressive moves, designed to stroke his legacy and punk his Republican successor. Let's hope the clemency actions are less reversible than the policy moves.

WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 4:04 pm

"It took years for Obama to start commuting drug sentences, also Chelsea Manning, and there was no political gain in it for him."

It took years for Obama to start commuting drug sentences, also Chelsea Manning,*** BECAUSE*** there was no political gain in it for him.

There, I fixed it for you.

John , January 28, 2017 at 11:00 am

So Trump/Bannon got punked by Obama the first week in office. Looks like to me th e Repubs are realizing Obamacare may be a similar punkjob.

JamesG , January 28, 2017 at 11:02 am

"Simple question: why did Trump reverse the cut?"

To gain time.

To evaluate the numbers and come up with an accurate rate?

My simple question: Why did the Ds presume it was simply "to hurt the middle class?"

Horatio Parker , January 28, 2017 at 12:06 pm

Because it makes buying a house more expensive.

It seems that Obama's motives may safely assumed to be deceitful and petty, but we can conclude nothing at all about Trump or his motives.

I don't see how this "truth" advances any agenda.

DarkMatters , January 28, 2017 at 12:41 pm

Maybe Mnuchin protecting his faction? Just another hypothesis.

NotClairVoyant , January 28, 2017 at 12:12 pm

The MIP rate reduction was either an ill-advised reaction to the recent spike in mortgage rates or a simple set-up for the incoming administration. I suspect is was a combination of both, and likely designed more for political gain than anything.

It's hard to take a guy seriously when he professes to be concerned about home affordability when he spent the last 8 years "foaming the runway" for banks as millions of people were foreclosed on their homes, only to watch many of those same homes get gobbled up by Wall Street and rented back out to them.

Fewer underwater borrowers will at least curtail the path to feudalism in this new echo housing bubble.

winstonsmith , January 28, 2017 at 12:21 pm

Another issue is who would have actually benefited from the Obama rate cut. We are supposed to believe it would have been home buyers, but a uniform increase in the spending power of home buyers as a group is to a large extent offset by a corresponding increase in home prices. To that extent it would be sellers (including private equity) and not low income buyers who would benefit.

yan , January 28, 2017 at 1:14 pm

Also, as far as I'm concerned, if Obamamometer was serious about helping homeowners there are many more better ways to do it than "foaming the runway" for banks, or preempting any meaningful action through his statewide get out of jail free card settlement, or actually trying to stop his buddies from blowing asset bubble after asset bubble.
Moreover, if you can´t put up more than 20% up front to buy a house maybe the problem is that wages are shit compared to property prices and people can´t afford anything more than cheap meth or oxycontin to cope with their sorry lives.

WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 4:06 pm

+1

Oregoncharles , January 28, 2017 at 1:55 pm

Pardon if this is a duplication, but: Isn't there a very large omission here? Was the premium decrease justified, or not? It's supposed to be government insurance, so the premium should cover the costs. Did it? Would the proposed lower premium cover them? (Yeah, I know, MMT. But apparently the idea here was to have a self-supporting program, so it should be self-supporting unless you announce otherwise.)

That said: this is part of a pattern. Obama made a number of progressive policy moves at the very last minute, most of them reversible. This is nothing but legacy-stroking, as well as setting a trap for the next Pres. Clinton did the same thing, along with some questionable pardons.

"So why'd you wait so long?"

Oregoncharles , January 28, 2017 at 2:30 pm

Well, Haygood was the only one to beat me to it.

oh , January 28, 2017 at 2:21 pm

I noticed the false headlines on yahoo news (the bastion of fake and worthless news) and I immediately checked it to find that O'Liar had planted this landmine so that it could blow up in Trump's face. Sure enough, when Trump canceled it, he was the bad guy (even though it had never had gone into effect as this article points out). What a cynical move by O'Liar and how cynical can his sycophants be?

flora , January 28, 2017 at 3:11 pm

Great post! I saw the headlines when the story came out and instantly thought there was something "off", something a little too pat about the stories. But I wasn't sure what was wrong with the stories, and was left confused. This post of investigative reporting and facts informs me what was actually happening. Thank you.

aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 4:48 pm

Nice to hear this. Thanks.

jake , January 28, 2017 at 4:29 pm

The reaction here puzzles me to the point of confusion. Absent any argument that the policy didn't offer it's claimed benefits (cost savings for the middle-class), is the left so virtuous that it will reject and refuse to fight for any advance which isn't selflessly arrived at?

Compare this to "conservatives" who successfully campaigned in 2010 against supposed Medicare cuts related to Obamacare implementation, when they'd love nothing more than to kill the program outright.

We, by contrast, we won't even fight for what we claim to believe in, if it isn't wrapped in virtue.

Yves Smith Post author , January 28, 2017 at 5:06 pm

You are missing that this is insurance, and the cost of losses must be paid for somehow. From Bruce's comment above:

What should the mortgage insurance rate actually be? And the answer is simple: It should be high enough to cover losses incurred by mortgage defaults (plus operating expenses), but no higher.

I don't know what that rate should have actually been, but if it was 0.55%, then Obama and the FHA should have lowered the rate years ago to avoid overcharging people. And if 0.80% was the right rate, then Obama should never have lowered it at all, given that it would ultimately require a taxpayer bailout. Either way, Obama is incompetent.

If the only consideration is cost to customers, then the proper rate is 0%. Offer it for free!! But if you want to the program to actually be self-sustaining, so that it doesn't require continuous injection of taxpayer dollars and be a perpetual target for cancellation by Congress, then you have to charge enough to cover losses. Whether the average mortgage rate is 3.5% or 4.0% or 6.2% matters not a whit in this calculation.

Net conclusion: Obama is either a flaming incompetent who flat-out doesn't understand the concept of insurance, or this was a deliberate attempt to impose a political headache on Trump.

jake , January 28, 2017 at 6:56 pm

Granted, but nobody knows the facts. Bruce wants to damn Obama for not doing it before, or damn him now for doing it. But nothing he either did or didn't do will be deemed acceptable at this point, even if the reduction is fully warranted.

Have we never heard politics? Process? Delay? Your net conclusion may still prove to be the correct one, though I'm not sure that failure to implement change earlier, assuming it was warranted, could be justly laid at the feet of Obama. But we do know?

flora , January 28, 2017 at 7:55 pm

I'm not sure that failure to implement change earlier, assuming it was warranted, could be justly laid at the feet of Obama. But we do know?"

A Presidential Directive, aka an executive order or executive action, can be laid at the feet of the President. So, yes, we do know. He could have taken the action anytime in the past 8 years. Note the date on this action – Jan 7th, 2017.
http://www.housingwire.com/articles/32533-its-official-obama-to-direct-fha-to-cut-mortgage-insurance-premiums

centaur , January 28, 2017 at 5:03 pm

+1000, jake

witters , January 28, 2017 at 6:10 pm

So Obama almost nearly did something that might, maybe, have been a tiny bit useful, but then the US Constitution

[Jan 26, 2017] But Clintons negative effects were also related to the weakening the only countervailing force remaining on the way of the neoliberalism -- trade unionism. So he played the role of subversive agent in the Democratic Party. His betrayal of trade union political interests and his demoralizing role should be underestimated.

Notable quotes:
"... Most of the major changes he mentions are clearly and explicitly the consequence of policy changes, mostly by Republicans, starting with Reagan: deregulation, lower taxes on the wealthy, a lack of antitrust enforcement, and the like. ..."
Jan 26, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
DrDick, January 25, 2017 at 11:07 AM
This is frankly rather disingenuous. Most of the major changes he mentions are clearly and explicitly the consequence of policy changes, mostly by Republicans, starting with Reagan: deregulation, lower taxes on the wealthy, a lack of antitrust enforcement, and the like.

libezkova -> DrDick... January 25, 2017 at 09:29 PM

The first POTUS who cut tax rates was JFK.

sanjait -> DrDick... , January 25, 2017 at 11:20 AM
Read through the link and it's not nearly that simple, especially when you consider the fact that some trends, though plausibly or certainly reinforced through policy, aren't entirely or even primarily caused by policy.
DrDick -> sanjait... , January 25, 2017 at 01:45 PM
I did not say they were the *only* factors, but they are the primary causes. If you look at the timelines and data trends it is pretty clear. Reagan broke the power of the Unions and started deregulation (financialization is a consequence of this), which is the period when the big increases began. Automation plays a secondary role in this. what has happened is that the few industries which are most conducive to automation have remained here (like final assembly of automobiles), while the many, more labor intensive industries (automobile components manufacturing) have been offshored to low wage, not labor or environmental protections countries.
libezkova -> DrDick... , January 25, 2017 at 05:39 PM
Both parties participated in the conversion of the USA into neoliberal society. So it was a bipartisan move.

Clinton did a lot of dirty work in this direction and was later royally remunerated for his betrayal of the former constituency of the Democratic Party and conversion it into "yet another neoliberal party"

Obama actually continued Bush and Clinton work. He talked about 'change we can believe in' while saving Wall street and real estate speculators from jail they fully deserved.

DrDick -> libezkova... , January 25, 2017 at 07:40 PM
Clinton contributed, but the Republicans did all the real heavy lifting. I was in my late 20s and early 30s during Reagan.
libezkova -> DrDick... , January 25, 2017 at 09:25 PM
Very true. Republicans were in the vanguard and did most heavy lifting. That's undeniable.

But Clinton's negative effects were also related to the weakening the only countervailing force remaining on the way of the neoliberalism -- trade unionism. So he played the role of "subversive agent" in the Democratic Party. His betrayal of trade union political interests and his demoralizing role should be underestimated.

[Jan 20, 2017] The Clinton Foundation Is Dead - But The Case Against Hillary Isn't

Jan 19, 2017 | www.investors.com

hile everyone's been gearing up for President Trump's inauguration, the Clinton Foundation made a major announcement this week that went by with almost no notice: For all intents and purposes, it's closing its doors.

In a tax filing, the Clinton Global Initiative said it's firing 22 staffers and closing its offices, a result of the gusher of foreign money that kept the foundation afloat suddenly drying up after Hillary Clinton failed to win the presidency.

It proves what we've said all along: The Clinton Foundation was little more than an influence-peddling scheme to enrich the Clintons, and had little if anything to do with "charity," either overseas or in the U.S. That sound you heard starting in November was checkbooks being snapped shut in offices around the world by people who had hoped their donations would buy access to the next president of the United States.

And why not? There was a strong precedent for it in Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. While serving as the nation's top diplomat, the Clinton Foundation took money from at least seven foreign governments - a clear breach of Clinton's pledge on taking office that there would be total separation between her duties and the foundation.

Is there a smoking gun? Well, of the 154 private interests who either officially met or had scheduled phone talks with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state, at least 85 were donors to the Clinton Foundation or one of its programs.

... ... ...

Using the Freedom of Information Act, Judicial Watch in August obtained emails (that had been hidden from investigators) showing that Clinton's top State Department aide, Huma Abedin, had given "special expedited access to the secretary of state" for those who gave $25,000 to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. Many of those were facilitated by a former executive of the foundation, Doug Band, who headed Teneo, a shell company that managed the Clintons' affairs.

As part of this elaborate arrangement, Abedin was given special permission to work for the State Department, the Clinton Foundation and Teneo - another very clear conflict of interest.

As Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said at the time, "These new emails confirm that Hillary Clinton abused her office by selling favors to Clinton Foundation donors."

The seedy saga doesn't end there. Indeed, there are so many facets to it, some may never be known. But there is still at least one and possibly four active federal investigations into the Clintons' supposed charity.

Americans aren't willing to forgive and forget. Earlier this month, the IBD/TIPP Poll asked Americans whether they would like President Obama to pardon Hillary for any crimes she may have committed as secretary of state, including the illegal use of an unsecured homebrew email server. Of those queried, 57% said no. So if public sentiment is any guide, the Clintons' problems may just be beginning.

Writing in the Washington Post in August of 2016, Charles Krauthammer pretty much summed up the whole tawdry tale : "The foundation is a massive family enterprise disguised as a charity, an opaque and elaborate mechanism for sucking money from the rich and the tyrannous to be channeled to Clinton Inc.," he wrote. "Its purpose is to maintain the Clintons' lifestyle (offices, travel accommodations, etc.), secure profitable connections, produce favorable publicity and reliably employ a vast entourage of retainers, ready to serve today and at the coming Clinton Restoration."

Except, now there is no Clinton Restoration. So there's no reason for any donors to give money to the foundation. It lays bare the fiction of a massive "charitable organization," and shows it for what it was: a scam to sell for cash the waning influence of the Democrats' pre-eminent power couple. As far as the charity landscape goes, the Clinton Global Initiative won't be missed.

[Jan 18, 2017] It was the Left who defended Bill Clinton in the whole Monica Madness era (and before). Mainstream media and "centrist" Democrats, were falling all over themselves to condemn Bill Clinton and his nasty penis, Ken Starr was treated as the second coming of Jesus

Notable quotes:
"... So I found myself on the crazy left. I'm genuinely more "lefty" than I was 15 years ago, but even now I'm not exactly calling for full communism. I generally think that usually the best use of my efforts are to pull the party leftward (not that I think I have the superpowers required to do this), not just because I'm more lefty, but because the forces pulling them to the right continue to be powerful and well-funded. Also, if the "crazy" position is a minimum wage of $25 an hour, then $15 an hour doesn't look so crazy anymore (for example). If the best we can ever do is a compromise, then it's best not to start the negotiations with the compromise position. ..."
"... People get mad about criticizing Democrats these days in a way they never did before. People like Obama associates "the crazy left" with Bernie, blaming him (and therefore the crazy left) for Clinton's election problems. Maybe I'm wrong, but whatever horrors the Trump administration is going to unleash, the important thing is for the Democrats to draw distinctions, and not just hope for team R to step on enough rakes. "Not as evil as the other guys" just doesn't win elections, even when the other guys are really f!@#ing evil. ..."
Jan 18, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
Peter K. : January 15, 2017 at 08:38 AM http://www.eschatonblog.com/2017/01/changing-perspectives.html

SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 2017

Changing Perspectives
Short blog post means big generalizations, but...

Post-impeachment, post-Bush selection, post-9/11 was a weird time in American politics (I suppose a specific weird time, it's always a weird time). One thing people forget about the impeachment era was that it was basically The Left (sometimes actually The Left like The Nation magazine writers and sometimes people who found themselves being branded The Left because of this) who defended Bill Clinton in the whole Monica Madness era (and before). Mainstream media (hi New York Times!), columnists, cable news personalities, all the respectable prominent "centrist" Democrats, were falling all over themselves to condemn that nasty Bill Clinton and his nasty penis, and Ken Starr was treated as the second coming of Jesus in respectable DC circles. It was a weird time in which the crazy left were actually the biggest defenders of the Democratic party, much bigger defenders of it than the Democratic party itself. It was a time when you wouldn't have been surprised if you woke up one morning and half the party hadn't decided to switch teams and become Republicans. "I was a Democrat before Bill Clinton did nasty things with that woman, but now I don't think rich people should pay taxes anymore..."

And then the selection, and then Iraq, and then Bush's re-election, and the whole Social Security privatization nonsense... It was always the "crazy left" that was trying to make the Democratic party just, you know, be Democrats, and everybody else basically being like "Why can't a Democrat be more like a Republican." Being against the war or against Social Security privatization (the Dems finally woke up on that one, but it took a lot of yelling) wasn't exactly calling for full communism, and plenty of people who thought they were just standard squishy Democrats suddenly found themselves being lumped together with radicals.

So I found myself on the crazy left. I'm genuinely more "lefty" than I was 15 years ago, but even now I'm not exactly calling for full communism. I generally think that usually the best use of my efforts are to pull the party leftward (not that I think I have the superpowers required to do this), not just because I'm more lefty, but because the forces pulling them to the right continue to be powerful and well-funded. Also, if the "crazy" position is a minimum wage of $25 an hour, then $15 an hour doesn't look so crazy anymore (for example). If the best we can ever do is a compromise, then it's best not to start the negotiations with the compromise position.

People get mad about criticizing Democrats these days in a way they never did before. People like Obama associates "the crazy left" with Bernie, blaming him (and therefore the crazy left) for Clinton's election problems. Maybe I'm wrong, but whatever horrors the Trump administration is going to unleash, the important thing is for the Democrats to draw distinctions, and not just hope for team R to step on enough rakes. "Not as evil as the other guys" just doesn't win elections, even when the other guys are really f!@#ing evil.

by Atrios at 09:48

[Jan 11, 2017] What Is Rubin's Legacy?

Jan 11, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
Peter K. : January 10, 2017 at 06:55 AM , 2017 at 06:55 AM
http://economistsview.typepad.com/timduy/2011/01/what-is-rubins-legacy.html

Monday, January 03, 2011

What Is Rubin's Legacy?

by Tim Duy

As the candidates for the next NEC chair narrow, a debate has erupted regarding the suitability of candidates either too directly related to former US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin or Wall Street. Mark Thoma came out first:

I still think a break from the Wall Street connected side of the Clinton administration would have political value.

Brad DeLong subsequently declared his support for Gene Sperling. Next up was Felix Salmon, who, like Thoma, notes that the three leading candidates, Gene Sperling, Roger Altman, and Richard Levin, are all "multi-millionaires with close ties to Wall Street." He singles out Sperling for a particularly harsh criticism, first questioning the nature of Sperling's ties to Wall Street:

...there's Sperling, who in some ways is the worst of the three when it comes to grubbing money from Wall Street.

Salmon relies on Ezra Klein to paint a picture of Sperling as a low-class influence peddler, and then extends his attack to Sperling's competence:

Noam Scheiber does his best to defend Sperling, but is far from persuasive-the general picture he paints is of a man whose heart might be in the right place but who never seems to get anything done. The last time he was at the NEC he sat quietly by while Treasury pushed through various deregulatory measures; within the Obama administration his main claim to fame seems to be the bank tax, which never actually got enacted.

Finally, he echo's Thoma's concerns:

More generally, Sperling has done nothing to counter the general impression that he's one of many Rubinites in the administration, in the context of a political atmosphere where one of the few points of agreement between the right and left is that the departure of Summers can and should be taken as an opportunity to finally put as much distance between Obama and Rubin as possible.

This elicits a response from DeLong, who defines himself as a long-time Rubinite and launches into a spirited defense of Rubin:

Robert Rubin went to work for the Clinton Administration in 1993 with four goals: (1) to make the decision-making process work smoothly; (2) to match the tax revenues of the federal government to its spending commitments; (3) to make the tax and transfer system more progressive so that people like him paid more and America's working class paid less; and (4) to make the financial system work more smoothly and transparently and so diminish the rents earned because of market position and institutional connections by people like him.

(1), (2), and (3) were big successes. (4) was a failure--the belief that financial deregulation would diminish Wall Street payouts because organizations like Goldman Sachs would face new competition from deep-pocket commercial banks--turned out to be wrong. Why it was wrong I do not understand. But it was a failure. However, it was not a catastrophic failure--it was not the repeal of Glass-Steagall that caused our current downturn, but rather other and different regulatory failures long after Rubin had left office...

DeLong does acknowledge that Citigroup shareholders have a legitimate gripe, and so do the American people:

I think that if you are an American or a citizen of the world you have a beef with Rubin for believing--as I did--in the "Greenspanist" doctrine that the Federal Reserve had the tools to put a firewall between finance and employment and should thus regard bubbles principally with benign neglect.

What I find curious is that DeLong neglects to mention what I believe was a central element of the Rubin agenda, and an element that was in fact the most disastrous in the long run - the strong Dollar policy.

The strong Dollar policy takes shape in 1995. At that point, Rubin made it clear that the rest of the world was free to manipulate the value of the US Dollar to pursue their own mercantilist interests. This should have been more obvious at the time given that China was last named a currency manipulator in 1994, but the immensity of that decision was lost as the tech boom engulfed America.

Moreover, Rubin adds insult to injury in the Asian Financial Crisis, by using the IMF as a club to enact far reaching reforms on nations seeking aid. The lesson learned - never, ever run a current account deficit. Accumulating massive reserves is the absolute only way to guarantee you can always tell the nice men from the IMF and the US Treasury to get off your front porch.

In effect, Rubin encourages the US to unilaterally enact a new Plaza Accord on itself. Michael Pettis reminds us of what the Plaza Accord meant for Japan:

Not only did Tokyo wait way too long to begin the rebalancing process, but when the rest of the world (i.e. the US) refused to absorb its huge and expanding trade surplus and forced up the value of the yen, Tokyo made things worse – it counteracted the impact of the rising yen by expanding investment, expanding credit, and lowering interest rates. This accelerated Japan's structural imbalances, set off a further frenzied rise in asset prices and capacity, and worsened the eventual adjustment. This also seems to have happened after China began revaluing the RMB after July 2005.

This sounds like an eerily similar story. To counteract the impact of the rising trade deficit, US policymakers increasingly relied on asset bubbles to support domestic demand. It goes beyond benign neglect, which assumes you know acknowledge you have a bubble. US policymakers didn't even see the train wreck ahead. They simply enjoyed the fruits of the bubble thinking it reflected sound economic policy. Back to 2005:

Ben S. Bernanke does not think the national housing boom is a bubble that is about to burst, he indicated to Congress last week, just a few days before President Bush nominated him to become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.

U.S. house prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years, noted Bernanke, currently chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, in testimony to Congress's Joint Economic Committee. But these increases, he said, "largely reflect strong economic fundamentals," such as strong growth in jobs, incomes and the number of new households.

At least Japan had the excuse that they were forced into the Plaza Accord, perhaps justifiably given their expanding current account surplus of the time. Rubin has no such excuse - the strong dollar policy was entirely a self inflicted wound that goes far beyond simple "benign neglect" of bubbles. To be sure, Yves Smith argues in Econned that Asian central banks were threatening to sell Dollar assets, but adds that the main motivation was supporting Japan. Most importantly, Rubin entirely missed how Chinese policymakers would take advantage of America's newfound love for an artificially strong currency.

But did he really miss it? Wall Street was making money hand over foot intermediating the current account deficit, which raises the question that many of us still have: Was Rubin working for the American people or Wall Street? As far as I can tell, the greatest coup of the last two decades was how easily Wall Street managed to secure the support of Democrats, knowing of course they always had the support of Republicans.

And what has been the ultimate achievement then of the Rubin era? A lost decade for jobs and industrial production and a massively unbalanced global economy. The promised compensating job surge in other sectors has so far been absent. Ultimately, didn't Rubin simply lay the foundation for today's economy that is decried by DeLong?:

From here it does look like a two-tier, profit-driven recovery--no parking places within a quarter mile of Tiffanys and long lines at Williams and Sonoma and Sur la Table, with people buying $12 cans of almond paste, while some of my daughter's high school classmates are now being told they cannot afford to go to college next year.

And by the way, it is not clear that we did China any favors either by the strong Dollar policy, as they are now faced with a massive internal rebalancing act - there is no guarantee anymore that China is the future, nor that China will escape the fate of Japan.

I agree with DeLong that being associated with the Wall Street, the Clinton Administration in general and Rubin in particular should not alone disqualify one from serving in the Obama Administration. But we shouldn't give Rubin a free pass either. The strong dollar policy reinforced and entrenched massive and disruptive distortions to patterns of global consumption and production. Unwinding those disruptions is proving to be very costly. The long-term impact of the strong Dollar policy needs to be counted among Rubin's legacies.

Peter K. -> Peter K.... , January 10, 2017 at 06:59 AM
Staring down the barrel of a Trump presidency, how prophetic were Duy's words. Rubin helped give us Trump.

But for some reason certain progressive neoliberals want us to forget this. Wonder why.

JohnH -> Peter K.... , January 10, 2017 at 08:20 AM
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. The Wall Street banking cartel controls the Fed, Treasury, and the NEC...but it's only bad, according to 'liberal' economists when a Republican appoints these guys...Obama got shielded from criticism.
John San Vant -> JohnH... , January 10, 2017 at 11:48 AM
lol,wall street banking cartel has controlled everything from the 19th century commodity money to BW to the modern dollar standard every since Andrew Jackson gave them the power in the 1830's in the US. Of course New York replaced London in the 1930's.
John San Vant -> Peter K.... , January 10, 2017 at 11:49 AM
The the Trump Presidency ends with recession, what then when another Obama type takes office in 2021?

[Jan 11, 2017] Bill Clinton was way too accommodating the Reagan Consensus.

Jan 11, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
Fred C. Dobbs -> Peter K.... January 10, 2017 at 07:20 AM , 2017 at 07:20 AM
Bill Clinton and the Reagan Consensus https://spectator.org/35394_bill-clinton-and-reagan-consensus/
Jeffrey Lord - June 7, 2012

Bill Clinton is to Ronald Reagan as Dwight D. Eisenhower was to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And as the Wisconsin Recall recedes into history's rearview mirror, Barack Obama and the Stealth Socialism he represents is nowhere but in trouble.

Which is exactly why all of these stories about the sub rosa rivalry between ex-President Clinton and President Obama are so relevant, not to mention important to understand.

First, Ike and FDR.

Dwight D. Eisenhower famously rode into the White House in 1952 as a genuine American hero. While other presidents had distinguished war records, only a small handful had to that point entered the presidency celebrated for their military genius. ...

Ike was the man behind D-Day, indisputably one of the central events in ending World War II. He had a fabulous grin and a likeable personality - not for nothing his campaign's famous slogan, "I Like Ike."

But a political thinker Ike was not, nor did he pretend to be one.

In 1952, the Republican Party had been out of the White House for 20 years. In the space of those 20 years Americans had become convinced that the liberal theory of Big Government - aka the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt and the Fair Deal of Harry Truman - was the wave of the future. Modernity was here - and Big Government was its name.

In 1936, 1940, 1944 and 1948 the GOP had begun a conscious shift to acceptance of what Barry Goldwater would later scorn as the "dime store New Deal." The Big Government idea was accepted as political gospel - and GOP progressives or liberals believed that the route to political success for both the GOP and country was to simply swallow the concept whole. ...

Eisenhower was very much in the moderate Republican role. Not as a result of any thorough study of political philosophy - he was a student of matters military. But to the extent he had thought politics through, Ike was a thorough-going moderate. Like Hoover, Eisenhower too was a favorite of Democrats, many of whom wanted to draft him to replace Truman atop the 1948 Democratic ticket. By 1952 his biggest backers included Dewey and Massachusetts GOP liberal Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. His biggest opponent was famously Ohio's conservative "Mr. Republican" Senator Robert Taft. ...

Which brings us to Bill Clinton.

By the time Clinton took office as the first Democrat to succeed Ronald Reagan, the consensus over the role of Big Government had been irretrievably smashed. In its place stood the new consensus - the Reagan Consensus. An understanding that taxes must be kept low to encourage economic growth - and that spending had to be restrained.

No one was more acutely aware of this than Bill Clinton himself. He had in fact spent years positioning himself as a "centrist" or "New Democrat." Working with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, Clinton fought to give the Democrats a more moderate veneer after years of McGovern, Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis had left Americans with the realization that Liberalism was hopelessly captured by tax-and-spend special interests - with public employee unions at the top of the list.

Yet once elected president, Clinton plunged into the presidency as an activist Democrat in the mold of his hero JFK, With a bust of FDR on his desk, Clinton and wife Hillary spent two years fighting the Reagan Consensus with "HillaryCare" - a government-controlled health care system. They failed. According to aide George Stephanopoulos, the quickly frustrated President Clinton was grousing that he was being forced to behave as an "Eisenhower Republican."

He wasn't happy - but if he were going to win re-election Bill Clinton was determined to get on with accommodating the Reagan Consensus.

By 1995, with the 1994 Gingrich-led sweep of Congress on a Reaganesque platform now a fact, Clinton formally acknowledged the new consensus - the Reagan Consensus. "The era of Big Government is over," he proclaimed in his State of the Union message. ...

Peter K. -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 10, 2017 at 08:16 AM
"According to aide George Stephanopoulos, the quickly frustrated President Clinton was grousing that he was being forced to behave as an "Eisenhower Republican.""

This is the episode certain progressive neoliberals refuse to acknowledge.

Rubin and Greenspan convinced Clinton to drop his middle class spending bill campaign promise in favor of deficit reduction and bending to the wishes of the bond market.

James Carville mockingly quipped that now he wanted to be reincarnated as the bond market. "You can intimidate anybody."

Private sector investment over government spending with all sorts of academic economics as rationale.

Government debt would "crowd out' private investment. Krugman proclaims the Clinton era a Nirvana.

Peter K. : , January 10, 2017 at 06:58 AM
Dean Baker:

"Note that the dollar rose by more than 40 percent from the start of 1996 to its peak in 2002. That was the strong dollar policy of then Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. This also was when our trade deficit started to explode. Do folks remember all the people screaming against Rubin pushing a strong dollar because of the harm it would do to the countries in the developing world with dollar denominated debt? Yeah, I can't quite remember that either."

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/think-of-the-money-physicians-families-would-save-on-health-care-costs-if-we-ended-protectionism-for-doctors

pgl : , -1
Brad Setser directs out attention to our exports - which he notes are not growing in large part due to the dollar appreciation. OK, imports are growing which is not a surprise for two reasons - that dollar appreciation once again and the growth in overall US real GDP. Now if we can only get real GDP to grow and the dollar to devalue. But that ain't happening with Trump's proposed policies. Of course my last statement will likely upset the feelings of certain trolls here. So be it.

[Jan 01, 2017] The Death of Clintonism

Twenty-five years ago, Bill Clinton almost single-handedly sold the Democratic Party to Wall Street making it the second neoliberal party in the USA (soft neoliberals) and betaying interest of working class and middle class. The political base of the party became "neoliberal intelligencia" and minority groups, such as sexual minorities, feminists (with strong lesbian bent) deceived by neoliberals part of black community (that part that did not manage to get in jail yet ;-) , etc. Clintonism (aka "soft" neoliberalism) as an ideology was dead after 2007, but still exists in zombie stage. and even counterattacks in some countries.
The author is afraid using the term "neoliberalism" like most Us MSM. Which is a shame. In this sense defeat of Hillary Clinton was just the last nail in the coffin of "soft neoliberalism" (Third Way) ideology. Tony Blair was send to dustbin of history even earlier then that. Destruction of jobs turned many members of trade unions hostile to Democrats (so much for "they have nowhere to go" Bill Clinton dirty trick) and they became easy pray of far right. In this sense Bill Clinton is the godfather of far right in the USA and he bears full personal responsibility for Trump election.
In foreign policy Clinton was a regular bloodthirsty neocon persuing glibal neoliberal empire led by the USA, with Madeline Albright as the first (but not last) warmonger female Secretary of State
Notable quotes:
"... Twenty-five years ago, Bill Clinton almost single-handedly repositioned the Democratic Party for electoral success, co-opting and defusing Republican talking points ..."
"... "New Democrat" he'd once exemplified was now extinct, a victim first of Clinton's own successes, and then of the economic and social dislocations of the globalism whose inevitability he foresaw when he predicted that Americans would one day "change jobs four or five times in their lifetimes!" ..."
"... Bill Clinton's "Third Way" ideology was also undone by sheer geopolitical realities ..."
"... ..."People thought she'd been conceived in Goldman Sachs' trading desk," says one veteran Clinton aide ..."
"... his personal and sexual misconduct in office, and his and his wife's tendency toward legalistic corner-cutting-a point Sanders also drove home, even as he disavowed any interest in "her damn emails." ..."
Dec 30, 2016 | www.politico.com

their quarter-century project to build a mutual buy-one, get-one-free Clinton dynasty has ended in her defeat, and their joint departure from the center of the national political stage they had hoped to occupy for another eight years. Their exit amounts to a finale not just for themselves, but for Clintonism as a working political ideology and electoral strategy.

Twenty-five years ago, Bill Clinton almost single-handedly repositioned the Democratic Party for electoral success, co-opting and defusing Republican talking points and moving the party toward the center on issues like welfare and a balanced budget, in the process becoming the first presidential nominee of his party since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win two consecutive terms.

... ... ...

"New Democrat" he'd once exemplified was now extinct, a victim first of Clinton's own successes, and then of the economic and social dislocations of the globalism whose inevitability he foresaw when he predicted that Americans would one day "change jobs four or five times in their lifetimes!"

Bill Clinton's "Third Way" ideology was also undone by sheer geopolitical realities -- there are almost no Blue Dog Democrats left after a generation of redistricting, primary challenges and electoral defeats in the South

...while Hillary Clinton recognized the change intellectually, she seemed unable to catch up to the practical realities of its political implications for her campaign

..."People thought she'd been conceived in Goldman Sachs' trading desk," says one veteran Clinton aide

...Obama had not only largely overlooked the concerns of white working-class voters but, with his health care overhaul, had been seen as punishing them financially to provide new benefits to the poorest Americans. Fairly or not, he lost the public argument.

...Bill Clinton himself was far from an unalloyed asset in Hillary's campaign this year. The rosy glow that had come to surround much of his post presidency, and his charitable foundation's good works around the world, receded in the face of Trump's relentless reminders of his personal and sexual misconduct in office, and his and his wife's tendency toward legalistic corner-cutting-a point Sanders also drove home, even as he disavowed any interest in "her damn emails."

[Jan 01, 2017] The death of Clintonism may be a bit premature.

Jan 01, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Code Name D , December 31, 2016 at 6:25 pm

The death of Clintonism may be a bit premature.

It may come off as a shocker, but I found this piece to be too apologetic of the Clintons.

"By 2016, spurred by anger at Wall Street, and at Washington gridlock and business as usual, the Democratic Party had moved well to the left of the one Bill Clinton had inherited in 1992. And while Hillary Clinton recognized the change intellectually, she seemed unable to catch up to the practical realities of its political implications for her campaign."

I tend to see this sort of language peppered throughout the article. First is the choice of wording. "The Democratic Party had moved well to the left " The problem with this language is that it ignores the issues in place of an empty word "left". Voters did not "move to the left", but rather had new issues that needed redress that didn't exist then, or that morphed and evolved from past issues. At no point did the Clintons campaign ever talk about the issues beyond their platitudes and sound bites. Clinton's take on global warming is literally just, "investing in new technologies and renewable energy systems to wean our dependence off of foreign oil."

Second, the author declares several times that "Clinton understood this, but was unable to capitalize on it." As a general rule, I try not to pretend what people think or understand. I am not a mind reader and any claim to that effect will be nothing more than speculation. All I have to go on is what someone says and does. And when all that you say is little more than empty platitudes, the claim that she understands anything is rather hard to justify.

In regards to the authors specific claim that Clinton understood that the electorate "moved to the left of the party," I find this hard to accept, even from its own vapid context. If anything, Clinton seemed to have nothing but contempt for "the left", and certainly for Sander's supporters. Indeed, the Democratic narrative has always been that election are won "at the center" or just "left of center". If she understood that the party had "moved further to the left", then she also believed that the party had moved too far to the left and needed to be dragged back to the center in order to avoid losing to Trump.

"[The] Democratic Party that was seen as more sympathetic to criminals than to victims was not a Democratic Party that was going to win elections. Bill Clinton had to correct that, and he did, and by 2015 we just did not have that kind of violent crime any more," Kamarck says. The Clintons expressed regret for their 1990s posture, in light of declining crime rates, but Donald Trump still managed to paint the pair as somehow soft on crime,"

Here we come to one of the central tenants of "Clintionism", the issue of perception trumping reality. The problem: Republicans were painting Democrats as being too sympathetic to Criminals. Solution: Start beating on criminals until the image is repaired.

At no point is the question ever asked if the Dems really were "too soft on criminals" or even what that means? To Republicans, giving prisoners blankets and a pillow to sleep on is being "too soft." Today, being "soft" now includes a reluctance to torture, not embracing capital punishment, or insisting suspects get a fair trial. What's next? Would being "too soft" soon mean not shoveling coal fast enough into Trump's furnaces?

The proper response is to first reflect on the question. Are we, or are we not too soft on criminals? If the answer is yes, then admit to the mistake and effect change to your platform accordingly. If no, then stand up for your position and defend it. Or heaven forbid, call out the Republicans for their barbarity!

But this isn't a bug of Clintonism, but a feature. The question itself is irrelevant. Instead, you had the prison industrial complex turning a profit by how many heads were held behind bars. For the privet prisons to see profits, the courts needed to convict more black people, convicted them faster, and hold them for longer sentences. And of course, poor prison conditions were the inevitable consequence of cost cutting. Why give a black inmate a blanket and a pillow when the money would be better used on stock buy backs and corporate bonusses.

The importance of image is then only relevant for winning elections. Being "too soft on crime" had more to do with shaping the expectations of the electorate so that they would rubber stamp the policy incentives handed to them by the donors.

" Clintonism was always Bill Clinton himself, and his singular ability to speak to both the most elite audiences and the most everyday ones in ways that could move each "

This is the heart of Clintonism, moving both the elites and electorate. Back then, voters had no idea this was happening, and even trusted "Bubba" that he knew what he was doing. But even back then, Bill was duplicitous. I remember voting for Bill Clinton because he opposed NAFTA and campaigned against it. A necessary position in order to win support of the unions, who was the backbone of the Democratic Party at the time.

But it turned out this was his "public position". Once he got into office, he signed NAFTA into law, without any explanation as to why his position changed. This was his "privet position", more than likely reflected in the speeches he made to the elites at the time. So at the end of the day, Bill's "singular ability" was the power to lie to the voters in order to get elected and pass the donor's agenda.

Today, it's irrelevant if HRC understood this or not. The electorate has becoming increasingly aware of Democratic duplicity, and it turns out they do not appreciate being lied to. Nor is this a new lessen. This is largely why Obama beat Hillary eight years ago, by replacing Clinton style duplicity with an emotional appeal of "hope and change." Eight years later, she returned to the stage with the same playbook that failed her the last time.

Indeed, this seems to be the authors point. It worked for Bill – so it should have worked for Hillary twenty-five years later.

"Do I think it will hurt Bill Clinton in the long run?" Sperling asks. "No, because he will still be most remembered for helping to bring about eight of the best years of shared growth and peace our country has had."

This also seems to be the hallmark of Clintonism, self-aggrandizement. This is the Washington narrative that Bill oversaw the best years of shared growth. But both popular and academic perceptions of this period are changing, and not for the better of the legacy. Rather than overseeing massive shared economic growth, Bill is not seen as laying the foundation for the economic collapse that took place decades later.

The Clinton miracle was unsustainable. A fact that was already apparent even during Bill's administration as the various trade deals Bill passed ended up producing that great sucking sound of jobs leaving the nation. Today, we are surrounded by the ruins of Bill's legacy, factories abandoned in the 90's are now in such poor condition that they are caving in from their own weight. Production lines that once was the arsenal of freedom, has been to trees and shrubs piercing cement floors and reaching for gaps in the ceiling.

We couldn't rebuild now even if we were allowed to, not without first fully razing Bill's legacy to the ground.

And yet, the establishment continues to labor under the delusion that this is what works. Even as Obama surveyed the smoldering ruins of the housing markets originally created by Bill's deregulation, his first compulsion was to immediately begin re-inflating the housing market. Democrats have become like the robot arm trying to build a tower of blocks, unaware that the tower it has already build has collapsed in on itself. So now the Democratic Party keeps lofting up new blocks and dropping them into thin air, incapable of grasping that it has become an absurd parity of itself, incapable grasping the world around them, let alone self-reflection.

"Now Clinton's time as the party's Mr. Fix-It, and even as its "Explainer-in-Chief," as Obama famously styled him, has ended for good. It will be left for someone in the next generation to build a new New Democratic coalition, one that can somehow rise above prevailing identity politics (much as Clinton did) to forge an interracial coalition of working-class voters who can carry the big swing states in the heart of the country that count in the Electoral College "

Is it? This is the main question I am asking. Is Clintonism really, truly dead? The author seems to be lamenting the death of Clintonim, while I would say good riddance. But I fear that far from Clintonism being dead, it goes into hibernation.

Clintionism has already survived a long hibernation cycle. Indeed, the author actually noted that the majority of time under Clintonism, the Whitehouse was held by Republicans.

Clintonism is basically about influence pedaling. Your generous donations will almost always result in that mining lease, pipe line route, or pollution permit you always wanted. And the more offices you hold, the greater your ability to influence legislation, and the more "influence" you have to sell. So what happens when you lose an election, and start running out of influence?

Don't forget about the revolving door. Being voted out of office his hardly a political death these days, not when there is a limo waiting for you, ready to whisk you away to a lucrative career as a lobbyist, media commentator, or think tanks professor. As the saying goes, how can we ever miss you if you never go away.

[Dec 31, 2016] What Happened to Obamas Passion

This was written in 2011 but it summarizes Obama presidency pretty nicely, even today. Betrayer in chief, the master of bait and switch. That is the essence of Obama legacy. On "Great Democratic betrayal"... Obama always was a closet neoliberal and neocon. A stooge of neoliberal financial oligarchy, a puppet, if you want politically incorrect term. He just masked it well during hist first election campaigning as a progressive democrat... And he faced Romney in his second campaign, who was even worse, so after betraying American people once, he was reelected and did it twice. Much like Bush II. He like another former cocaine addict -- George W Bush has never any intention of helping American people, only oligarchy.
Notable quotes:
"... IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. ..."
"... We (yes, we) recognise that capitalism is the most efficient way to maximise overall prosperity and quality of life. But we also recognise that unfettered, it will ravage the environment, abuse labor, and expand income disparity until violence or tragedy (or both) ensues. ..."
"... These are the lessons we've learned since the industrial revolution, and they're the ones that we should be drawing from the past decade. We recognise that we need a strong federal government to check these tendencies, and to strike a stable, sustainable balance between prosperity, community, opportunity, wealth, justice, freedom. We need a voice to fill the moral vacuum that has allowed the Koch/Tea/Fox Party to emerge and grab power. ..."
"... Americans know this---including, of course, President Obama (see his April 13 speech at GW University). But as this article by Dr. Westen so effectively shows, Obama is incompetent to lead us back ..."
"... he is not competent to lead us back to a state of American morality, where government is the protector of those who work hard, and the provider of opportunity to all Americans. ..."
"... I've heard him called a mediator, a conciliator, a compromiser, etc. Those terms indicate someone who is bringing divergent views together and moving us along. That's part of what a leader does, though not all. Yet I don't think he's even lived up to his reputation as a mediator. ..."
"... Almost three years after I voted for Obama, I still don't know what he's doing other than trying to help the financial industry: the wealthy who benefit most from it and the technocrats who run it for them. But average working people, people like myself and my daughter and my grandson, have not been helped. We are worse off than before. And millions of unemployed and underemployed are even worse off than my family is. ..."
"... So whatever else he is (and that still remains a mystery to me), President Obama is not the leader I thought I was voting for. ..."
"... I knew that Obama was a charade early on when giving a speech about the banking failures to the nation, instead of giving the narrative Mr. Westen accurately recommended on the origins of the orgy of greed that just crippled our economy and caused suffering for millions of Americans ..."
"... He should have been condemning the craven, wanton, greed of nihilistic financial gangsters who hijacked our economy. Instead he seemed to be calling for all Americans not to hate rich people. That was not the point. Americans don't hate rich people, but they should hate rich people who acquire their wealth at the expense of the well being of an entire nation through irresponsible, avaricious, and in some instances illegal practices, and legally bribe politicians to enact laws which allow them to run amok over our economy without supervision or regulation. ..."
"... I knew then that Obama was either a political lemon, in over his head, an extremely conflict averse neurotic individual with a compulsive need for some delusional ideal of neutrality in political and social relations, or a political phony beholden to the same forces that almost destroyed the country as Republicans are. ..."
Aug 06, 2011 | nytimes.com

When Barack Obama rose to the lectern on Inauguration Day, the nation was in tatters. Americans were scared and angry. The economy was spinning in reverse. Three-quarters of a million people lost their jobs that month. Many had lost their homes, and with them the only nest eggs they had. Even the usually impervious upper middle class had seen a decade of stagnant or declining investment, with the stock market dropping in value with no end in sight. Hope was as scarce as credit.

In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and suffering, and that he would restore order and safety. What they were waiting for, in broad strokes, was a story something like this:

"I know you're scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn't work out. And it didn't work out 80 years ago, when the same people sold our grandparents the same bill of goods, with the same results. But we learned something from our grandparents about how to fix it, and we will draw on their wisdom. We will restore business confidence the old-fashioned way: by putting money back in the pockets of working Americans by putting them back to work, and by restoring integrity to our financial markets and demanding it of those who want to run them. I can't promise that we won't make mistakes along the way. But I can promise you that they will be honest mistakes, and that your government has your back again." A story isn't a policy. But that simple narrative - and the policies that would naturally have flowed from it - would have inoculated against much of what was to come in the intervening two and a half years of failed government, idled factories and idled hands. That story would have made clear that the president understood that the American people had given Democrats the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress to fix the mess the Republicans and Wall Street had made of the country, and that this would not be a power-sharing arrangement. It would have made clear that the problem wasn't tax-and-spend liberalism or the deficit - a deficit that didn't exist until George W. Bush gave nearly $2 trillion in tax breaks largely to the wealthiest Americans and squandered $1 trillion in two wars.

And perhaps most important, it would have offered a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant narrative of the right, that our problem is not due to spending on things like the pensions of firefighters, but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share for it.

But there was no story - and there has been none since.

In similar circumstances, Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a promise to use the power of his office to make their lives better and to keep trying until he got it right. Beginning in his first inaugural address, and in the fireside chats that followed, he explained how the crash had happened, and he minced no words about those who had caused it. He promised to do something no president had done before: to use the resources of the United States to put Americans directly to work, building the infrastructure we still rely on today. He swore to keep the people who had caused the crisis out of the halls of power, and he made good on that promise. In a 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden, he thundered, "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred."

When Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office, he stepped into a cycle of American history, best exemplified by F.D.R. and his distant cousin, Teddy. After a great technological revolution or a major economic transition, as when America changed from a nation of farmers to an urban industrial one, there is often a period of great concentration of wealth, and with it, a concentration of power in the wealthy. That's what we saw in 1928, and that's what we see today. At some point that power is exercised so injudiciously, and the lives of so many become so unbearable, that a period of reform ensues - and a charismatic reformer emerges to lead that renewal. In that sense, Teddy Roosevelt started the cycle of reform his cousin picked up 30 years later, as he began efforts to bust the trusts and regulate the railroads, exercise federal power over the banks and the nation's food supply, and protect America's land and wildlife, creating the modern environmental movement.

Those were the shoes - that was the historic role - that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill. The president is fond of referring to "the arc of history," paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous statement that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics - in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time - he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.

When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police dogs. He preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his true and repugnant face in public.

IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public - a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn't bend that far.

Michael August 7, 2011

Eloquently expressed and horrifically accurate, this excellent analysis articulates the frustration that so many of us have felt watching Mr...

Bill Levine August 7, 2011

Very well put. I know that I have been going through Kübler-Ross's stages of grief ever since the foxes (a.k.a. Geithner and Summers) were...

AnAverageAmerican August 7, 2011

"In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it,...

cdearman Santa Fe, NM August 7, 2011

Unfortunately, the Democratic Congress of 2008-2010, did not have the will to make the economic and social program decisions that would have improved the economic situation for the middle-class; and it is becoming more obvious that President Obama does not have the temperament to publicly push for programs and policies that he wants the congress to enact.
The American people have a problem: we reelect Obama and hope for the best; or we elect a Republican and expect the worst. There is no question that the Health Care law that was just passed would be reversed; Medicare and Medicare would be gutted; and who knows what would happen to Social Security. You can be sure, though, that business taxes and regulation reforms would not be in the cards and those regulations that have been enacted would be reversed. We have traveled this road before and we should be wise enough not to travel it again!

SP California August 7, 2011

Brilliant analysis - and I suspect that a very large number of those who voted for President Obama will recognize in this the thoughts that they have been trying to ignore, or have been trying not to say out loud. Later historians can complete this analysis and attempt to explain exactly why Mr. Obama has turned out the way he has - but right now, it may be time to ask a more relevant and urgent question.

If it is not too late, will a challenger emerge in time before the 2012 elections, or will we be doomed to hold our noses and endure another four years of this?

farospace san francisco August 7, 2011

Very eloquent and exactly to the point. Like many others, I was enthralled by the rhetoric of his story, making the leap of faith (or hope) that because he could tell his story so well, he could tell, as you put it, "the story the American people were waiting to hear."

Disappointment has darkened into disillusion, disillusion into a species of despair. Will I vote for Barack Obama again? What are the options?

Richard Katz American in Oxford, UK August 7, 2011

This is the most brilliant and tragic story I have read in a long time---in fact, precisely since I read when Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt. When will a leader emerge with a true moral vision for the federal government and for our country? Someone who sees government as a balance to capitalism, and a means to achieve the social and economic justice that we (yes, we) believe in? Will that leadership arrive before parts of America come to look like the dystopia of Johannesburg?

We (yes, we) recognise that capitalism is the most efficient way to maximise overall prosperity and quality of life. But we also recognise that unfettered, it will ravage the environment, abuse labor, and expand income disparity until violence or tragedy (or both) ensues.

These are the lessons we've learned since the industrial revolution, and they're the ones that we should be drawing from the past decade. We recognise that we need a strong federal government to check these tendencies, and to strike a stable, sustainable balance between prosperity, community, opportunity, wealth, justice, freedom. We need a voice to fill the moral vacuum that has allowed the Koch/Tea/Fox Party to emerge and grab power.

Americans know this---including, of course, President Obama (see his April 13 speech at GW University). But as this article by Dr. Westen so effectively shows, Obama is incompetent to lead us back to America's traditional position on the global economic/political spectrum. He's brilliant and eloquent. He's achieved personal success that is inspirational. He's done some good things as president. But he is not competent to lead us back to a state of American morality, where government is the protector of those who work hard, and the provider of opportunity to all Americans.

Taxes, subsidies, entitlements, laws... these are the tools we have available to achieve our national moral vision. But the vision has been muddled (hijacked?) and that is our biggest problem. -->

An Ordinary American Prague August 7, 2011

I voted for Obama. I thought then, and still think, he's a decent person, a smart person, a person who wants to do the best he can for others. When I voted for him, I was thinking he's a centrist who will find a way to unite our increasingly polarized and ugly politics in the USA. Or if not unite us, at least forge a way to get some important things done despite the ugly polarization.

And I must confess, I have been disappointed. Deeply so. He has not united us. He has not forged a way to accomplish what needs to be done. He has not been a leader.

I've heard him called a mediator, a conciliator, a compromiser, etc. Those terms indicate someone who is bringing divergent views together and moving us along. That's part of what a leader does, though not all. Yet I don't think he's even lived up to his reputation as a mediator.

Almost three years after I voted for Obama, I still don't know what he's doing other than trying to help the financial industry: the wealthy who benefit most from it and the technocrats who run it for them. But average working people, people like myself and my daughter and my grandson, have not been helped. We are worse off than before. And millions of unemployed and underemployed are even worse off than my family is.

So whatever else he is (and that still remains a mystery to me), President Obama is not the leader I thought I was voting for. Which leaves me feeling confused and close to apathetic about what to do as a voter in 2012. More of the same isn't worth voting for. Yet I don't see anyone out there who offers the possibility of doing better.

martin Portland, Oregon August 7, 2011

This was an extraordinarily well written, eloquent and comprehensive indictment of the failure of the Obama presidency.

If a credible primary challenger to Obama ever could arise, the positions and analysis in this column would be all he or she would need to justify the Democratic party's need to seek new leadership.

I knew that Obama was a charade early on when giving a speech about the banking failures to the nation, instead of giving the narrative Mr. Westen accurately recommended on the origins of the orgy of greed that just crippled our economy and caused suffering for millions of Americans, he said "we don't disparage wealth in America." I was dumbfounded.

He should have been condemning the craven, wanton, greed of nihilistic financial gangsters who hijacked our economy. Instead he seemed to be calling for all Americans not to hate rich people. That was not the point. Americans don't hate rich people, but they should hate rich people who acquire their wealth at the expense of the well being of an entire nation through irresponsible, avaricious, and in some instances illegal practices, and legally bribe politicians to enact laws which allow them to run amok over our economy without supervision or regulation.

I knew then that Obama was either a political lemon, in over his head, an extremely conflict averse neurotic individual with a compulsive need for some delusional ideal of neutrality in political and social relations, or a political phony beholden to the same forces that almost destroyed the country as Republicans are.

Perhaps all of these are true.

[Dec 31, 2016] What Happened to Obamas Passion

This was written in 2011 but it summarizes Obama presidency pretty nicely, even today. Betrayer in chief, the master of bait and switch. That is the essence of Obama legacy. On "Great Democratic betrayal"... Obama always was a closet neoliberal and neocon. A stooge of neoliberal financial oligarchy, a puppet, if you want politically incorrect term. He just masked it well during hist first election campaigning as a progressive democrat... And he faced Romney in his second campaign, who was even worse, so after betraying American people once, he was reelected and did it twice. Much like Bush II. He like another former cocaine addict -- George W Bush has never any intention of helping American people, only oligarchy.
Notable quotes:
"... IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. ..."
"... We (yes, we) recognise that capitalism is the most efficient way to maximise overall prosperity and quality of life. But we also recognise that unfettered, it will ravage the environment, abuse labor, and expand income disparity until violence or tragedy (or both) ensues. ..."
"... These are the lessons we've learned since the industrial revolution, and they're the ones that we should be drawing from the past decade. We recognise that we need a strong federal government to check these tendencies, and to strike a stable, sustainable balance between prosperity, community, opportunity, wealth, justice, freedom. We need a voice to fill the moral vacuum that has allowed the Koch/Tea/Fox Party to emerge and grab power. ..."
"... Americans know this---including, of course, President Obama (see his April 13 speech at GW University). But as this article by Dr. Westen so effectively shows, Obama is incompetent to lead us back ..."
"... he is not competent to lead us back to a state of American morality, where government is the protector of those who work hard, and the provider of opportunity to all Americans. ..."
"... I've heard him called a mediator, a conciliator, a compromiser, etc. Those terms indicate someone who is bringing divergent views together and moving us along. That's part of what a leader does, though not all. Yet I don't think he's even lived up to his reputation as a mediator. ..."
"... Almost three years after I voted for Obama, I still don't know what he's doing other than trying to help the financial industry: the wealthy who benefit most from it and the technocrats who run it for them. But average working people, people like myself and my daughter and my grandson, have not been helped. We are worse off than before. And millions of unemployed and underemployed are even worse off than my family is. ..."
"... So whatever else he is (and that still remains a mystery to me), President Obama is not the leader I thought I was voting for. ..."
"... I knew that Obama was a charade early on when giving a speech about the banking failures to the nation, instead of giving the narrative Mr. Westen accurately recommended on the origins of the orgy of greed that just crippled our economy and caused suffering for millions of Americans ..."
"... He should have been condemning the craven, wanton, greed of nihilistic financial gangsters who hijacked our economy. Instead he seemed to be calling for all Americans not to hate rich people. That was not the point. Americans don't hate rich people, but they should hate rich people who acquire their wealth at the expense of the well being of an entire nation through irresponsible, avaricious, and in some instances illegal practices, and legally bribe politicians to enact laws which allow them to run amok over our economy without supervision or regulation. ..."
"... I knew then that Obama was either a political lemon, in over his head, an extremely conflict averse neurotic individual with a compulsive need for some delusional ideal of neutrality in political and social relations, or a political phony beholden to the same forces that almost destroyed the country as Republicans are. ..."
Aug 06, 2011 | nytimes.com

When Barack Obama rose to the lectern on Inauguration Day, the nation was in tatters. Americans were scared and angry. The economy was spinning in reverse. Three-quarters of a million people lost their jobs that month. Many had lost their homes, and with them the only nest eggs they had. Even the usually impervious upper middle class had seen a decade of stagnant or declining investment, with the stock market dropping in value with no end in sight. Hope was as scarce as credit.

In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and suffering, and that he would restore order and safety. What they were waiting for, in broad strokes, was a story something like this:

"I know you're scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn't work out. And it didn't work out 80 years ago, when the same people sold our grandparents the same bill of goods, with the same results. But we learned something from our grandparents about how to fix it, and we will draw on their wisdom. We will restore business confidence the old-fashioned way: by putting money back in the pockets of working Americans by putting them back to work, and by restoring integrity to our financial markets and demanding it of those who want to run them. I can't promise that we won't make mistakes along the way. But I can promise you that they will be honest mistakes, and that your government has your back again." A story isn't a policy. But that simple narrative - and the policies that would naturally have flowed from it - would have inoculated against much of what was to come in the intervening two and a half years of failed government, idled factories and idled hands. That story would have made clear that the president understood that the American people had given Democrats the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress to fix the mess the Republicans and Wall Street had made of the country, and that this would not be a power-sharing arrangement. It would have made clear that the problem wasn't tax-and-spend liberalism or the deficit - a deficit that didn't exist until George W. Bush gave nearly $2 trillion in tax breaks largely to the wealthiest Americans and squandered $1 trillion in two wars.

And perhaps most important, it would have offered a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant narrative of the right, that our problem is not due to spending on things like the pensions of firefighters, but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share for it.

But there was no story - and there has been none since.

In similar circumstances, Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a promise to use the power of his office to make their lives better and to keep trying until he got it right. Beginning in his first inaugural address, and in the fireside chats that followed, he explained how the crash had happened, and he minced no words about those who had caused it. He promised to do something no president had done before: to use the resources of the United States to put Americans directly to work, building the infrastructure we still rely on today. He swore to keep the people who had caused the crisis out of the halls of power, and he made good on that promise. In a 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden, he thundered, "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred."

When Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office, he stepped into a cycle of American history, best exemplified by F.D.R. and his distant cousin, Teddy. After a great technological revolution or a major economic transition, as when America changed from a nation of farmers to an urban industrial one, there is often a period of great concentration of wealth, and with it, a concentration of power in the wealthy. That's what we saw in 1928, and that's what we see today. At some point that power is exercised so injudiciously, and the lives of so many become so unbearable, that a period of reform ensues - and a charismatic reformer emerges to lead that renewal. In that sense, Teddy Roosevelt started the cycle of reform his cousin picked up 30 years later, as he began efforts to bust the trusts and regulate the railroads, exercise federal power over the banks and the nation's food supply, and protect America's land and wildlife, creating the modern environmental movement.

Those were the shoes - that was the historic role - that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill. The president is fond of referring to "the arc of history," paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous statement that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics - in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time - he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.

When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police dogs. He preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his true and repugnant face in public.

IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public - a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn't bend that far.

Michael August 7, 2011

Eloquently expressed and horrifically accurate, this excellent analysis articulates the frustration that so many of us have felt watching Mr...

Bill Levine August 7, 2011

Very well put. I know that I have been going through Kübler-Ross's stages of grief ever since the foxes (a.k.a. Geithner and Summers) were...

AnAverageAmerican August 7, 2011

"In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it,...

cdearman Santa Fe, NM August 7, 2011

Unfortunately, the Democratic Congress of 2008-2010, did not have the will to make the economic and social program decisions that would have improved the economic situation for the middle-class; and it is becoming more obvious that President Obama does not have the temperament to publicly push for programs and policies that he wants the congress to enact.
The American people have a problem: we reelect Obama and hope for the best; or we elect a Republican and expect the worst. There is no question that the Health Care law that was just passed would be reversed; Medicare and Medicare would be gutted; and who knows what would happen to Social Security. You can be sure, though, that business taxes and regulation reforms would not be in the cards and those regulations that have been enacted would be reversed. We have traveled this road before and we should be wise enough not to travel it again!

SP California August 7, 2011

Brilliant analysis - and I suspect that a very large number of those who voted for President Obama will recognize in this the thoughts that they have been trying to ignore, or have been trying not to say out loud. Later historians can complete this analysis and attempt to explain exactly why Mr. Obama has turned out the way he has - but right now, it may be time to ask a more relevant and urgent question.

If it is not too late, will a challenger emerge in time before the 2012 elections, or will we be doomed to hold our noses and endure another four years of this?

farospace san francisco August 7, 2011

Very eloquent and exactly to the point. Like many others, I was enthralled by the rhetoric of his story, making the leap of faith (or hope) that because he could tell his story so well, he could tell, as you put it, "the story the American people were waiting to hear."

Disappointment has darkened into disillusion, disillusion into a species of despair. Will I vote for Barack Obama again? What are the options?

Richard Katz American in Oxford, UK August 7, 2011

This is the most brilliant and tragic story I have read in a long time---in fact, precisely since I read when Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt. When will a leader emerge with a true moral vision for the federal government and for our country? Someone who sees government as a balance to capitalism, and a means to achieve the social and economic justice that we (yes, we) believe in? Will that leadership arrive before parts of America come to look like the dystopia of Johannesburg?

We (yes, we) recognise that capitalism is the most efficient way to maximise overall prosperity and quality of life. But we also recognise that unfettered, it will ravage the environment, abuse labor, and expand income disparity until violence or tragedy (or both) ensues.

These are the lessons we've learned since the industrial revolution, and they're the ones that we should be drawing from the past decade. We recognise that we need a strong federal government to check these tendencies, and to strike a stable, sustainable balance between prosperity, community, opportunity, wealth, justice, freedom. We need a voice to fill the moral vacuum that has allowed the Koch/Tea/Fox Party to emerge and grab power.

Americans know this---including, of course, President Obama (see his April 13 speech at GW University). But as this article by Dr. Westen so effectively shows, Obama is incompetent to lead us back to America's traditional position on the global economic/political spectrum. He's brilliant and eloquent. He's achieved personal success that is inspirational. He's done some good things as president. But he is not competent to lead us back to a state of American morality, where government is the protector of those who work hard, and the provider of opportunity to all Americans.

Taxes, subsidies, entitlements, laws... these are the tools we have available to achieve our national moral vision. But the vision has been muddled (hijacked?) and that is our biggest problem. -->

An Ordinary American Prague August 7, 2011

I voted for Obama. I thought then, and still think, he's a decent person, a smart person, a person who wants to do the best he can for others. When I voted for him, I was thinking he's a centrist who will find a way to unite our increasingly polarized and ugly politics in the USA. Or if not unite us, at least forge a way to get some important things done despite the ugly polarization.

And I must confess, I have been disappointed. Deeply so. He has not united us. He has not forged a way to accomplish what needs to be done. He has not been a leader.

I've heard him called a mediator, a conciliator, a compromiser, etc. Those terms indicate someone who is bringing divergent views together and moving us along. That's part of what a leader does, though not all. Yet I don't think he's even lived up to his reputation as a mediator.

Almost three years after I voted for Obama, I still don't know what he's doing other than trying to help the financial industry: the wealthy who benefit most from it and the technocrats who run it for them. But average working people, people like myself and my daughter and my grandson, have not been helped. We are worse off than before. And millions of unemployed and underemployed are even worse off than my family is.

So whatever else he is (and that still remains a mystery to me), President Obama is not the leader I thought I was voting for. Which leaves me feeling confused and close to apathetic about what to do as a voter in 2012. More of the same isn't worth voting for. Yet I don't see anyone out there who offers the possibility of doing better.

martin Portland, Oregon August 7, 2011

This was an extraordinarily well written, eloquent and comprehensive indictment of the failure of the Obama presidency.

If a credible primary challenger to Obama ever could arise, the positions and analysis in this column would be all he or she would need to justify the Democratic party's need to seek new leadership.

I knew that Obama was a charade early on when giving a speech about the banking failures to the nation, instead of giving the narrative Mr. Westen accurately recommended on the origins of the orgy of greed that just crippled our economy and caused suffering for millions of Americans, he said "we don't disparage wealth in America." I was dumbfounded.

He should have been condemning the craven, wanton, greed of nihilistic financial gangsters who hijacked our economy. Instead he seemed to be calling for all Americans not to hate rich people. That was not the point. Americans don't hate rich people, but they should hate rich people who acquire their wealth at the expense of the well being of an entire nation through irresponsible, avaricious, and in some instances illegal practices, and legally bribe politicians to enact laws which allow them to run amok over our economy without supervision or regulation.

I knew then that Obama was either a political lemon, in over his head, an extremely conflict averse neurotic individual with a compulsive need for some delusional ideal of neutrality in political and social relations, or a political phony beholden to the same forces that almost destroyed the country as Republicans are.

Perhaps all of these are true.

[Dec 26, 2016] The Democratic Party as a Party (Sanders was an outlier) has nothing to do with fair and equal play for all. This is a party of soft neoliberals and it adheres to Washington

Notable quotes:
"... The Democratic Party as a Party (Sanders was an outlier) has nothing to do with "fair and equal play for all". This is a party of soft neoliberals and it adheres to Washington consensus no less then Republicans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Consensus ..."
"... If you read the key postulates it is clear that that they essentially behaved like an occupier in this country. In this sense "Occupy Wall street" movement should actually be called "Liberation from Wall Street occupation" movement. ..."
"... Bill Clinton realized that he can betray working class with impunity as "they have nowhere to go" and will vote for Democrat anyway. In this sense Bill Clinton is a godfather of the right wing nationalism in the USA. He sowed the "Teeth's of Dragon" and now we have, what we have. ..."
Dec 26, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
EMichael : December 26, 2016 at 12:47 PM , 2016 at 12:47 PM
You guys should wake up and smell what country you live in. Here is a good place to start.

"Campaigning for president in 1980, Ronald Reagan told stories of Cadillac-driving "welfare queens" and "strapping young bucks" buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. In trumpeting these tales of welfare run amok, Reagan never needed to mention race, because he was blowing a dog whistle: sending a message about racial minorities inaudible on one level, but clearly heard on another. In doing so, he tapped into a long political tradition that started with George Wallace and Richard Nixon, and is more relevant than ever in the age of the Tea Party and the first black president.

In Dog Whistle Politics, Ian Haney L?pez offers a sweeping account of how politicians and plutocrats deploy veiled racial appeals to persuade white voters to support policies that favor the extremely rich yet threaten their own interests. Dog whistle appeals generate middle-class enthusiasm for political candidates who promise to crack down on crime, curb undocumented immigration, and protect the heartland against Islamic infiltration, but ultimately vote to slash taxes for the rich, give corporations regulatory control over industry and financial markets, and aggressively curtail social services. White voters, convinced by powerful interests that minorities are their true enemies, fail to see the connection between the political agendas they support and the surging wealth inequality that takes an increasing toll on their lives. The tactic continues at full force, with the Republican Party using racial provocations to drum up enthusiasm for weakening unions and public pensions, defunding public schools, and opposing health care reform.

Rejecting any simple story of malevolent and obvious racism, Haney L?pez links as never before the two central themes that dominate American politics today: the decline of the middle class and the Republican Party's increasing reliance on white voters. Dog Whistle Politics will generate a lively and much-needed debate about how racial politics has destabilized the American middle class -- white and nonwhite members alike."

https://www.amazon.com/Dog-Whistle-Politics-Appeals-Reinvented-ebook/dp/B00GHJNSMU

im1dc : , December 26, 2016 at 01:51 PM
Reading the above posts I am reminded that in November there was ONE Election with TWO Results:

Electoral Vote for Donald Trump by the margin of 3 formerly Democratic Voting states Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania

Popular Vote for Hillary Clinton by over 2.8 Million

The Democratic Party and its Candidates OBVIOUSLY need to get more votes in the Electoral States that they lost in 2016, not change what they stand for, the principles of fair and equal play for all.

And, in the 3 States that turned the Electoral Vote in Trump's favor and against Hillary, all that is needed are 125,000 or more votes, probably fewer, and the DEMS win the Electoral vote big too.

It is not any more complex than that.

So how does the Democratic Party get more votes in those States?

PANDER to their voters by delivering on KISS, not talking about it.

That is create living wage jobs and not taking them away as the Republican Party of 'Free Trade' and the Clinton Democratic Party 'Free Trade' Elites did.

Understand this: It is not the responsibility of the USA, or in its best interests, to create jobs in other nations (Mexico, Japan, China, Canada, Israel, etc.) that do not create jobs in the USA equivalently, especially if the gain is offset by costly overseas confrontations and involvements that would not otherwise exist.

likbez : December 26, 2016 at 02:49 PM , 2016 at 02:49 PM
You are dreaming:

"The Democratic Party and its Candidates OBVIOUSLY need to get more votes in the Electoral States that they lost in 2016, not change what they stand for, the principles of fair and equal play for all. "

The Democratic Party as a Party (Sanders was an outlier) has nothing to do with "fair and equal play for all". This is a party of soft neoliberals and it adheres to Washington consensus no less then Republicans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Consensus

If you read the key postulates it is clear that that they essentially behaved like an occupier in this country. In this sense "Occupy Wall street" movement should actually be called "Liberation from Wall Street occupation" movement.

Bill Clinton realized that he can betray working class with impunity as "they have nowhere to go" and will vote for Democrat anyway. In this sense Bill Clinton is a godfather of the right wing nationalism in the USA. He sowed the "Teeth's of Dragon" and now we have, what we have.

[Dec 05, 2016] The Democratic Party Presidential Platform of 1996 – On Immigration

Blast from the past. Bill Clinton position on illegal immegtation.
Notable quotes:
"... Today's Democratic Party also believes we must remain a nation of laws. We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it. For years before Bill Clinton became President, Washington talked tough but failed to act. In 1992, our borders might as well not have existed. The border was under-patrolled, and what patrols there were, were under-equipped. Drugs flowed freely. Illegal immigration was rampant. Criminal immigrants, deported after committing crimes in America, returned the very next day to commit crimes again. ..."
"... President Clinton is making our border a place where the law is respected and drugs and illegal immigrants are turned away. We have increased the Border Patrol by over 40 percent; in El Paso, our Border Patrol agents are so close together they can see each other. Last year alone, the Clinton Administration removed thousands of illegal workers from jobs across the country. Just since January of 1995, we have arrested more than 1,700 criminal aliens and prosecuted them on federal felony charges because they returned to America after having been deported. ..."
"... However, as we work to stop illegal immigration, we call on all Americans to avoid the temptation to use this issue to divide people from each other. We deplore those who use the need to stop illegal immigration as a pretext for discrimination . And we applaud the wisdom of Republicans like Mayor Giuliani and Senator Domenici who oppose the mean-spirited and short-sighted effort of Republicans in Congress to bar the children of illegal immigrants from schools - it is wrong, and forcing children onto the streets is an invitation for them to join gangs and turn to crime. ..."
Nov 30, 2016 | angrybearblog.com

What follows is from Today's Democratic Party: Meeting America's Challenges, Protecting America's Values , a.k.a., the 1996 Democratic Party Platform. This is the section on immigration. I took the liberty of bolding pieces I found interesting.

Democrats remember that we are a nation of immigrants. We recognize the extraordinary contribution of immigrants to America throughout our history. We welcome legal immigrants to America. We support a legal immigration policy that is pro-family, pro-work, pro-responsibility, and pro-citizenship , and we deplore those who blame immigrants for economic and social problems.

We know that citizenship is the cornerstone of full participation in American life. We are proud that the President launched Citizenship USA to help eligible immigrants become United States citizens. The Immigration and Naturalization Service is streamlining procedures, cutting red tape, and using new technology to make it easier for legal immigrants to accept the responsibilities of citizenship and truly call America their home.

Today's Democratic Party also believes we must remain a nation of laws. We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it. For years before Bill Clinton became President, Washington talked tough but failed to act. In 1992, our borders might as well not have existed. The border was under-patrolled, and what patrols there were, were under-equipped. Drugs flowed freely. Illegal immigration was rampant. Criminal immigrants, deported after committing crimes in America, returned the very next day to commit crimes again.

President Clinton is making our border a place where the law is respected and drugs and illegal immigrants are turned away. We have increased the Border Patrol by over 40 percent; in El Paso, our Border Patrol agents are so close together they can see each other. Last year alone, the Clinton Administration removed thousands of illegal workers from jobs across the country. Just since January of 1995, we have arrested more than 1,700 criminal aliens and prosecuted them on federal felony charges because they returned to America after having been deported.

However, as we work to stop illegal immigration, we call on all Americans to avoid the temptation to use this issue to divide people from each other. We deplore those who use the need to stop illegal immigration as a pretext for discrimination . And we applaud the wisdom of Republicans like Mayor Giuliani and Senator Domenici who oppose the mean-spirited and short-sighted effort of Republicans in Congress to bar the children of illegal immigrants from schools - it is wrong, and forcing children onto the streets is an invitation for them to join gangs and turn to crime.

Democrats want to protect American jobs by increasing criminal and civil sanctions against employers who hire illegal workers , but Republicans continue to favor inflammatory rhetoric over real action. We will continue to enforce labor standards to protect workers in vulnerable industries. We continue to firmly oppose welfare benefits for illegal immigrants. We believe family members who sponsor immigrants into this country should take financial responsibility for them, and be held legally responsible for supporting them.

[Dec 04, 2016] There is a vengeful, spiteful ugliness that some women have for other women. Hillary is just one of those women

This is from Daily Mail. The later is a British daily conservative, middle-market tabloid. You are warned !
I wonder whether when the Dems --or I should say if the Dems --select an "establishment" nominee they might consider Elizabeth Warren. She's very popular & not as far out there as Bernie. I could live with that. B ut is considered to be a menace to the Wall Street. In realty not much, but due to this perception chances for this happening are slim. Dems are corrupt to the core and are now the party of Wall Street ("republicans light") , thanks to this neoliberal stooge Bill Clinton who sold the party for 20 silver coins (sorry, millions in annual speeches). And as the neoliberals the last thing they need is have Warren as their (temporary) leader. Warren is probably acceptable to neocons as she is war hawk "light" do I would say that her chances are single digits.
An interesting combination would be to have her as VP to boost Hillary changes and then force Hillary to resign. But this is a conspiracy theory.
Funny, Republicans start digging the dirt on Bill Clinton again and it looks like he enjoyed himself not only with Monica during his time at White House. There were also unnamed receptionist, his female jogger companions, and even Eleanor Mondale, the daughter of former US Vice President Walter Mondale. Of course those are rumors but they are 'well substantiated rumors" (http://www.dailymail.co.uk )
Now it is quite clear that both Clintons have a really sociopathic sense of entitlement. A lack of concern for feelings, needs, or suffering of others; lack of remorse after hurting or mistreating another; use of seduction, charm, glibness.' That's why "Anyone by Clinton" movement is so strong. Reportedly around a half of Bernie supporters decided never vote for Hillary.
Notable quotes:
"... 'There is a vengeful, spiteful ugliness that some women have for other women. Hillary is just one of those women.' For the latest on Hillary and Bill Clinton visit www.dailymail.co.uk/hillary ..."
"... Their clandestine meetings typically included Bill goofing around and playing his sax while Miller, a trained singer and musician, accompanied him on her piano. He would sometimes unwind by smoking a marijuana cigarette. Miller claims that she saw Clinton produce a pouch of white powder on several occasions and snort lines off her coffee table. 'I don't do drugs and I don't smoke. But if you come into my house and say "gosh I've had a bad day" I wouldn't know how to stop you,' said Miller. ..."
"... Their affair would remain a secret for nearly a decade until she went public on the Sally Jesse Raphael show in July 1992, a day after Clinton had been formally named by the Democratic Party as its Presidential candidate. ..."
Feb 16, 2016 | dailymail.co.uk

'There is a vengeful, spiteful ugliness that some women have for other women. Hillary is just one of those women.' For the latest on Hillary and Bill Clinton visit www.dailymail.co.uk/hillary

====

...The book promises to recall a series of unguarded conversations in which she claims Bill revealed his wife's preference for female lovers. As far-fetched as her accusations may appear, she remains convinced that Hillary Clinton is behind a plot to silence her ahead of the November election. But it will also lay bare what Miller, describes as a decades-long Democrat campaign to discredit and harass her that began when she first revealed the affair in 1992, a campaign she claims has now reached such perverse depths that she actually fears for her life.

The twice-divorced 77-year-old took to social media in recent weeks to post an extraordinary warning that if she dies by 'suicide' no-one should believe it. When Daily Mail Online visited Miller at her Arkansas home she insisted she had been stalked, spied upon and plagued by anonymous phone calls since word of her memoir leaked out.

... ... ...

It was a very different scenario in August 1983, when a 44-year-old Miller left her back door ajar so her seven-years' younger paramour Bill could be chauffeured to the rear of the property before slipping inside unnoticed.

The pair had met a decade earlier at parties and political functions when Miller was a senate aide at the Arkansas State Capitol and Clinton was preparing for his unsuccessful 1974 run for the House of Representatives.

So when she needed help getting a vintage steam train project off the ground, she sought out her former friend, by now in his second stint as Governor. 'I left my number with his secretary,' recalled Miller. 'He was playing golf but within three hours he'd called me. 'He said "I'm going to be leaving here in a little while, why don't I just drop by and let's see each other for old times' sake."

'We decided because of the positioning of the condo it might be better if he didn't come by the front door, there are some prominent people that live across by me. 'He never drove himself, it was a state trooper or someone on his staff. He parked in the park behind my house. I had a gate on the patio but he just had to lift the latch. 'The first night I just played the piano while he sang. He's not noted as someone who has a trained voice but we laughed, it was just kind of fun. 'Finally he said ''we didn't talk about what I came to talk about, so we're going to have to do this again sometime''. I had all my notes and pictures, all my ideas, all he had to do was call his parks and tourism gal and get her on this. Bill is not the most handsome man. But he makes you feel like you have an incredible body and on top of all that you're beautiful. There are not many men that can make a woman feel that way. 'But we dragged it out for about three months. And yes, we did go upstairs where the bedrooms were.'

Their clandestine meetings typically included Bill goofing around and playing his sax while Miller, a trained singer and musician, accompanied him on her piano. He would sometimes unwind by smoking a marijuana cigarette. Miller claims that she saw Clinton produce a pouch of white powder on several occasions and snort lines off her coffee table. 'I don't do drugs and I don't smoke. But if you come into my house and say "gosh I've had a bad day" I wouldn't know how to stop you,' said Miller.

'Bill is not the most handsome man. But he makes you feel like your breasts are the right size, your legs are the perfect length, you have an incredible body and on top of all that you're beautiful. There are not many men that can make a woman feel that way. 'Do I make it a point to have affairs with married men, no. But most everyone in Arkansas assumed that their marriage was a business arrangement. 'Bill never sounded like he was in love or locked into a loyal arrangement.'

Their affair would remain a secret for nearly a decade until she went public on the Sally Jesse Raphael show in July 1992, a day after Clinton had been formally named by the Democratic Party as its Presidential candidate. But while the future president was a born entertainer and charismatic companion, the sex itself failed to inspire. 'It wasn't that memorable. It was no big deal - think about that,' chuckled Miller. 'That's probably why he didn't have any confidence as a lover. 'He reminded me of a what a little boy would say to his momma. 'Is it OK if I put my hand there? Can I touch you here?' I've always preferred younger men but I've never had one who asked permission.' She claims the affair ended abruptly in late 1983 when Miller revealed her intention to stand for mayor of her hometown, Pine Bluffs, as a Republican.

It would remain a secret for nearly a decade until she went public on the Sally Jesse Raphael show in July 1992, a day after Clinton had been formally named by the Democratic Party as its Presidential candidate.

.... ...

BILL'S WOMEN WHO HAUNT HILLARY

  • Kathleen Willey, a former White House volunteer who says Bill Clinton groped her in an Oval Office hallway in 1993 when she came to him seeking a paid job, says she has agreed to become a paid national spokeswoman for an anti-Clinton group being created by operative Roger Stone
  • Paula Jones, the former state employee whose allegations of sexual harassment dogged President Bill Clinton throughout his administration, was photographed appearing at a rally for presidential candidate Donald Trump in Little Rock.
  • Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky's confidante and who worked as a White House staffer says that Hillary Clinton not only knew about her husband's exploits, 'She made it her personal mission to disseminate information and destroy the women with whom he dallied.'
  • Juanita Broaddrick, who claims that she was raped by Bill Clinton in an Arkansas hotel 38 years ago, says that she was cornered by Hillary as she was helping at a Clinton fundraiser and was given a thinly-veiled warning to keep her mouth shut.
  • Maria Crider, who worked on Bill Clinton's first political campaign, said power-hungry Hillary torpedoed the torrid affair that threatened to destroy her master plan to become president with anonymous phone calls, fears of stalking and veiled threats.

SF94123, San Francisco, United States, 3 months ago

She probably fears her because it's all a bunch of lies.

Not_Surprised, Walton County, United Kingdom, 3 months ago

Don't believe this mess!

Barney Fife, St Paul, United States, 4 months ago

And this is news? It has been rumored for many years Hillary swings both ways. As for Billy, that has been known, too.

mememememe, Glasgow, 4 months ago

So what? Sad old woman reliving her youth

du Vallon, Midwest, United States, 4 months ago

So this woman admits that she freely threw her cat at a married man, and now she is bragging about it, and all the bible pounding, family values, right wing Christian fundamentalists want us to believe that she is the caliber of woman who we should all believe. Making it worse, she has so little regret at the hurt she caused that she is now passing around some completely unsupported and foul whispers about the wife of the man that she dragged into bed. Then has the gall to whine that Hillary isn't very nice to her. I should think not. She is a sodden dox of a woman with no morals whatsoever. I have no use for her and don't believe a word she says.

peanutmom, SFBay, United States, 4 months ago

Meh. Who the Clintons get busy with, and how, is of no consequence. Hillary could do the entire USC football team, and I wouldn't care, just so long as the job she does is done right. It was ridiculous that Bill got impeached over a dalliance with an intern. It's not like Lewinsky interfered with how the country was being run.

[Nov 21, 2016] Belgiums Dutroux Pedophile, Child Rape Affair A Road Map for Deep-State Criminality

Nov 20, 2016 | www.newnationalist.net
Strong, credible allegations of high-level criminal activity can bring down a government. When the government lacks an effective, fact-based defense, other techniques must be employed. The success of these techniques depends heavily upon a cooperative, controlled press and a mere token opposition party.

1. Dummy up . If it's not reported, if it's not news, it didn't happen.

2. Wax indignant . This is also known as the "how dare you" gambit.

3. Characterize the charges as "rumors" or, better yet, "wild rumors." If, in spite of the news blackout, the public is still able to learn about the suspicious facts, it can only be through "rumors."

4. Knock down straw men . Deal only with the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Even better, create your own straw men. Make up wild rumors and give them lead play when you appear to debunk all the charges, real and fanciful alike.

5. Call the skeptics names like "conspiracy theorist," "nut," "ranter," "kook," "crackpot" and, of course, "rumor monger." You must then carefully avoid fair and open debate with any of the people you have thus maligned.

6. Impugn motives . Attempt to marginalize the critics by suggesting strongly that they are not really interested in the truth but are simply pursuing a partisan political agenda or are out to make money.

7. Invoke authority . Here the controlled press and the sham opposition can be very useful.

8. Dismiss the charges as "old news."

9. Come half-clean . This is also known as "confession and avoidance" or "taking the limited hang-out route." This way, you create the impression of candor and honesty while you admit only to relatively harmless, less-than-criminal "mistakes." This stratagem often requires the embrace of a fall-back position quite different from the one originally taken.

10. Characterize the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as ultimately unknowable.

11. Reason backward , using the deductive method with a vengeance. With thoroughly rigorous deduction, troublesome evidence is irrelevant. For example: We have a completely free press. If they know of evidence that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) had prior knowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing they would have reported it. They haven't reported it, so there was no prior knowledge by the BATF. Another variation on this theme involves the likelihood of a conspiracy leaker and a press that would report it.

12. Require the skeptics to solve the crime completely.

13. Change the subject . This technique includes creating and/or reporting a distraction.

[Nov 18, 2016] The statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for economic performance and outcomes by Bruce Wilder

Notable quotes:
"... The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and disable their dominance. ..."
"... It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments. In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle. ..."
"... When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well. Simon Johnson called it a coup. ..."
"... Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980 drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. ..."
"... It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that just happened, in a meteorological economics. ..."
"... This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting constraints. ..."
"... No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational clarity or coherence. ..."
"... If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying. ..."
"... Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference. ..."
Nov 18, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

bruce wilder 11.16.16 at 10:07 pm 30

At the center of Great Depression politics was a political struggle over the distribution of income, a struggle that was only decisively resolved during the War, by the Great Compression. It was at center of farm policy where policymakers struggled to find ways to support farm incomes. It was at the center of industrial relations politics, where rapidly expanding unions were seeking higher industrial wages. It was at the center of banking policy, where predatory financial practices were under attack. It was at the center of efforts to regulate electric utility rates and establish public power projects. And, everywhere, the clear subtext was a struggle between rich and poor, the economic royalists as FDR once called them and everyone else.

FDR, an unmistakeable patrician in manner and pedigree, was leading a not-quite-revolutionary politics, which was nevertheless hostile to and suspicious of business elites, as a source of economic pathology. The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and disable their dominance.

It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments. In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle.

In retrospect, though the New Deal did use direct employment as a means of relief to good effect economically and politically, it never undertook anything like a Keynesian stimulus on a Keynesian scale - at least until the War.

Where the New Deal witnessed the institution of an elaborate system of financial repression, accomplished in large part by imposing on the financial sector an explicitly mandated structure, with types of firms and effective limits on firm size and scope, a series of regulatory reforms and financial crises beginning with Carter and Reagan served to wipe this structure away.

When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well. Simon Johnson called it a coup.

I don't know what considerations guided Obama in choosing the size of the stimulus or its composition (as spending and tax cuts). Larry Summers was identified at the time as a voice of caution, not "gambling", but not much is known about his detailed reasoning in severely trimming Christina Romer's entirely conventional calculations. (One consideration might well have been worldwide resource shortages, which had made themselves felt in 2007-8 as an inflationary spike in commodity prices.) I do not see a case for connecting stimulus size policy to the health care reform. At the time the stimulus was proposed, the Administration had also been considering whether various big banks and other financial institutions should be nationalized, forced to insolvency or otherwise restructured as part of a regulatory reform.

Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980 drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. Accelerating the financialization of the economy from 1999 on made New York and Washington rich, but the same economic policies and process were devastating the Rust Belt as de-industrialization. They were two aspects of the same complex of economic trends and policies. The rise of China as a manufacturing center was, in critical respects, a financial operation within the context of globalized trade that made investment in new manufacturing plant in China, as part of globalized supply chains and global brand management, (arguably artificially) low-risk and high-profit, while reinvestment in manufacturing in the American mid-west became unattractive, except as a game of extracting tax subsidies or ripping off workers.

It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that just happened, in a meteorological economics.

It is conceding too many good intentions to the Obama Administration to tie an inadequate stimulus to a Rube Goldberg health care reform as the origin story for the final debacle of Democratic neoliberal politics. There was a delicate balancing act going on, but they were not balancing the recovery of the economy in general so much as they were balancing the recovery from insolvency of a highly inefficient and arguably predatory financial sector, which was also not incidentally financing the institutional core of the Democratic Party and staffing many key positions in the Administration and in the regulatory apparatus.

This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting constraints.

No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational clarity or coherence.

bruce wilder 11.16.16 at 10:33 pm ( 31 )

The short version of my thinking on the Obama stimulus is this: Keynesian stimulus spending is a free lunch; it doesn't really matter what you spend money on up to a very generous point, so it seems ready-made for legislative log-rolling. If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying.

Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.

likbez 11.18.16 at 4:48 pm 121

bruce wilder 11.16.16 at 10:07 pm 30

Great comment. Simply great. Hat tip to the author !

Notable quotes:

"… The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and disable their dominance. …"

"… It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments. In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle. …"

"… When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well. Simon Johnson called it a coup. … "

"… Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980 drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. …"

"… It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that just happened, in a meteorological economics. …"

"… This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting constraints. …"

"… No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational clarity or coherence. …"

"… If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying. …"

"… Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference. …"

[Nov 14, 2016] The First Reality-Show Presidency by Telly Davidson

Notable quotes:
"... Along with some neoliberal young guns in the press (like Michael Kinsley, Joe Klein, and Sidney Blumenthal), Clinton was the first to notice that the drugs/sex/rock-'n'-roll hippies of the late '60s and early '70s had become the concerned suburban parents of the '80s and early '90s. ..."
"... Bill Clinton's number-one priority in 1992 was to create a media contrast between his energetic, handsome, Elvis-like self and 68-year-old, grandfatherly, Eastern-elitist Bush Senior. ..."
"... But could Tricky Dick pull off staring the camera soulfully right in the eyes and telling Americans that "I feel yer pain?" the way Bill Clinton famously did (to a gay AIDS activist, no less) in 1992? Just try to imagine Mondale, Dukakis, or Cuomo going on The Arsenio Hall Show in sunglasses and saxophone-jamming "Heartbreak Hotel" with a bunch of twentysomething black and Latino studio musicians. Or Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter telling a young woman whether they wore "boxers or briefs" on MTV Live . With every savvy new media move, Bill Clinton was redefining what it was to run for president in the modern era. ..."
"... seeing a white Southern candidate for president playing rock and jazz on an urban black man's young-skewing late-night show was a positively thrilling moment for voters of color, particularly young ones. ..."
"... Bill Clinton wanted to "ROCK the Vote!" And he did. Clinton won young voters in 1992 by over 12 points, and by an almost 20-point margin in 1996. ..."
"... Indeed, Bill Clinton was the first president (or candidate for president) who could truly be called sexy since his idol JFK had died in 1963. Clinton "was alive from the waist down," approved feminist icon Erica Jong. His closest comparison, handsome and youthful Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, had seen his 1980s presidential ambitions crushed when it was revealed he had a longtime mistress, Donna Rice. But even on that score, Clinton changed the game. ..."
"... In early 1992, with the occurrence of several "bimbo eruptions"-the leaking of his affairs with longtime companions like Gennifer Flowers and Marla Crider-many people thought that Bill Clinton's campaign would be over before it had even begun. Instead, 17 years before the premiere of The Good Wife, Hillary went on 60 Minutes and famously stood by her man, transforming the narrative from one involving a cheating husband to one about an intact marriage that could survive anything. ..."
"... Clinton's campaign and administration also coincided with a perfect storm of more hyped-up true-crime and scandal-driven media offerings than had even been imaginable before. ..."
"... This tabloid metastasis began to infect even the most prestigious bastions of "serious" journalism. In the ACT UP era of AIDS activism, radical queer journos like Michelangelo Signorile and Armistead Maupin began "outing" closeted Hollywood or political icons like Rock Hudson, Raymond Burr, Anthony Perkins, Richard Chamberlain, Ed Koch, and Merv Griffin-as well as any new sports, music, or political stars they had reason to suspect. ..."
"... Above all else, the Clinton presidency also saw the birth of the 24/7 spin cycle, what was then and now rightly called the "permanent campaign." No other president from the Great Society to Barack Obama attempted so many domestic-policy game changes as Bill Clinton did in his frenzied first term. ..."
"... When Bill Clinton ran for reelection in fall 1996, with a recovering economy, unemployment cut in half from its 1992–94 levels, a shrinking deficit, and lower crime rates and class sizes-against a 73-year-old "unelectable throwback to the past" (as Arianna Huffington once described Bob Dole) and 66-year-old returning gadfly Ross Perot-well, let's just say you didn't have to be a member of the Psychic Friends Network to guess the outcome. ..."
"... This meant that neither the Clinton administration nor the American public would ever get a minute's peace. We had now entered the era of politics as gladiator sport. ..."
"... While Bill and Hillary Clinton suffered the most from the scandal-of-the-month-club atmosphere of '90s media, many Republican politicians also needed an extra big box of Band-Aids, and would only need more. ..."
"... When all was said and done, Clinton still lost the popular vote and his failure to take note cost his his party control of the Congress. It is hope that The Don doesn't make the same mistake. ..."
Nov 11, 2016 | www.theamericanconservative.com
It began a quarter-century ago.

During the past 12 months, the most-watched reality-show competition has been Who Wants to Succeed Barack Obama? And one of the biggest concerns of our media pundits has been the danger of "normalizing" the often-violent and tasteless rantings of Donald Trump. We must constantly remind our readers, the pundits proclaim, of just how sui generis , just how different and threatening and unprecedented this non-politician, this tabloid superstar, this reality-TV king is as a candidate for the highest and most serious office in the land.

Well, as it turns out, not quite .

The narrative through-line that Donald Trump used to beat his rivals was written almost 25 years earlier. It was a made-for-TV miniseries starring an "undignified," barrier-breaking candidate who shunned old media gatekeepers, who forever blurred the line between light entertainment and hard news, who catered to groups of voters being ignored by the establishment, and who made shameless emotional appeals.

And the media's normalization of what was in 1992 a game-changing, even shocking approach to running for the presidency (and governing thereafter) did more to pave the way for the Trumpocalypse than almost anything else.

♦♦♦

When Bill Clinton first ran for president in 1991 and '92, the Democratic Party was coming off of three consecutive pounding defeats. The economy was finally souring (with the first wave of Roger and Me post-industrialization, plus a 2008-like real estate collapse on both coasts following the S&L failures of 1989 and '90), accompanied by record-breaking, crack-inspired, drive-by-shooting crime. Yet most older and seasoned Democrats still assumed that sitting President George H.W. Bush was a shoo-in for reelection that year. The Berlin Wall had finally been torn down in November of 1989. And with that, plus victory in Operation Desert Storm, by early 1991 Bush's approval ratings had touched the 90 percent mark. Not even St. Ronnie's had soared that high.

When New York governor and Democratic icon Mario Cuomo famously decided in December of 1991 to go back to Albany to dither over a state budget rather than launch his campaign for the most powerful office in the world, the message was clear: no Democrat stood a real chance of beating Bush that year. But a nervy young small-state Southern governor named Bill Clinton and his "radical feminist" wife Hillary hadn't gotten the memo.

Along with some neoliberal young guns in the press (like Michael Kinsley, Joe Klein, and Sidney Blumenthal), Clinton was the first to notice that the drugs/sex/rock-'n'-roll hippies of the late '60s and early '70s had become the concerned suburban parents of the '80s and early '90s. And the "Generation Jones" middle children between the baby boomers and their Gen-X offspring-the Alex P. Keatons and Bud Foxes-just wanted to get rich and make money in the first place. Despite fielding a nearly 70-year-old icon from Old Hollywood in 1980, the same candidate again in 1984, and a nearly 65-year-old WWII veteran in 1988, the Republicans actually won younger voters those years. And why shouldn't they have won the youth, whose only alternatives were dreary, gray-haired, out-of-touch fiftysomethings like Cuomo, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis?

Bill Clinton's number-one priority in 1992 was to create a media contrast between his energetic, handsome, Elvis-like self and 68-year-old, grandfatherly, Eastern-elitist Bush Senior. Of all major political candidates from either party in 1992, only Bill and Hillary Clinton cut a convincing figure of the baby boomers' journey from hippie to yuppie. Not then-Vice President Dan Quayle, a conservative Christian who loyally served in the Vietnam National Guard; not self-righteous borderline silent-generationers like Newt Gingrich, Joe Lieberman, Pat Buchanan, or Dick Cheney; and not reactionary Southern Strategists like Lee Atwater, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, and Karl Rove. And absolutely not tired, didactic, haranguing New Deal leftovers like Mondale, Dukakis, and Cuomo.

When Richard Nixon went on Laugh-In in 1968 for one "quickie" guest shot (saying "Sock it to ME??"), it made world headlines. Back then, world leaders simply didn't "do" variety or celebrity game shows, or even most talk shows. But could Tricky Dick pull off staring the camera soulfully right in the eyes and telling Americans that "I feel yer pain?" the way Bill Clinton famously did (to a gay AIDS activist, no less) in 1992? Just try to imagine Mondale, Dukakis, or Cuomo going on The Arsenio Hall Show in sunglasses and saxophone-jamming "Heartbreak Hotel" with a bunch of twentysomething black and Latino studio musicians. Or Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter telling a young woman whether they wore "boxers or briefs" on MTV Live . With every savvy new media move, Bill Clinton was redefining what it was to run for president in the modern era.

Instead of trying to carve up the same tired political pie, Bill Clinton had decided to bake an entirely new pie altogether. As cheesy as it might seem in today's era of Shonda, Tyler, Oprah, Spike, and Barack, in 1992, seeing a white Southern candidate for president playing rock and jazz on an urban black man's young-skewing late-night show was a positively thrilling moment for voters of color, particularly young ones.

More than one minority commentator said it was as if Clinton was saying he was "one of us" -- it was so outside the political grammar of any of the old, 1950s-style candidates we'd had up until then. No wonder Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison took notice of Clinton, whom they would later christen (before anyone had heard of Obama) the "first black president." And these were blatant shout-outs to America's youth that no candidate had made from either side since George McGovern in 1972. As MTV said itself, Bill Clinton wanted to "ROCK the Vote!" And he did. Clinton won young voters in 1992 by over 12 points, and by an almost 20-point margin in 1996.

Indeed, Bill Clinton was the first president (or candidate for president) who could truly be called sexy since his idol JFK had died in 1963. Clinton "was alive from the waist down," approved feminist icon Erica Jong. His closest comparison, handsome and youthful Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, had seen his 1980s presidential ambitions crushed when it was revealed he had a longtime mistress, Donna Rice. But even on that score, Clinton changed the game.

In early 1992, with the occurrence of several "bimbo eruptions"-the leaking of his affairs with longtime companions like Gennifer Flowers and Marla Crider-many people thought that Bill Clinton's campaign would be over before it had even begun. Instead, 17 years before the premiere of The Good Wife, Hillary went on 60 Minutes and famously stood by her man, transforming the narrative from one involving a cheating husband to one about an intact marriage that could survive anything.

The Republicans, meanwhile, were now bending over so far to satisfy a frustrated religious right-seen in campaigns against women's-libby TV heroines like Murphy Brown and Roseanne, Pat Buchanan's infamous "culture war" speech at the '92 Republican convention, and people telling Hillary she should have given up her law practice to "submit unto" her husband and "bake cookies" -- that Clinton could now rope-a-dope the sordid revelations about his swinging sex life into assets rather than liabilities, especially among educated professional voters. He wasn't going to go around pouring hellfire and brimstone on "liberated" women or divorced dads, after all.

♦♦♦

Clinton's campaign and administration also coincided with a perfect storm of more hyped-up true-crime and scandal-driven media offerings than had even been imaginable before. In 1985, only two TV "newsmagazines" existed in primetime: CBS's league-leading 60 Minutes and ABC's Barbara Walters/Hugh Downs stalwart, 20/20. From 1988 to '94, they were suddenly joined by the likes of 48 Hours , PrimeTime Live , Turning Point , West 57th , Person to Person With Connie Chung , Top Cops , Street Stories , and Dateline NBC -the last of which would run not once a week, but three times a week, by 1999.

In the 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. "prime access" slot immediately following the Big Three's "serious" newscasts, Entertainment Tonight was the gold standard. It would now be joined by Inside Edition (starring future Fox News royalty Bill O'Reilly), A Current Affair , Access Hollywood , EXTRA! , American Journal , and Hard Copy . All these ET ripoffs premiered between 1987 and 1996, and each one of them required a new headline scandal or sensation five nights a week, 52 weeks a year, with no reruns. Then came the daytime TV "trash talk" shows-pioneered by Geraldo Rivera and Morton Downey Jr. in the late '80s and segueing into Ricki Lake , Jenny Jones , Maury , and of course The Jerry Springer Show by the Clinton administration.

This tabloid metastasis began to infect even the most prestigious bastions of "serious" journalism. In the ACT UP era of AIDS activism, radical queer journos like Michelangelo Signorile and Armistead Maupin began "outing" closeted Hollywood or political icons like Rock Hudson, Raymond Burr, Anthony Perkins, Richard Chamberlain, Ed Koch, and Merv Griffin-as well as any new sports, music, or political stars they had reason to suspect.

This kind of "journalism" used to be the exclusive province of sleazy, Confidential magazine types and the McCarthy era. (Can you imagine Edward R. Murrow, Ben Bradlee, or Walter Cronkite discussing tragic eating disorders, or sitcom stars who had been molested or who got booked into rehab this week?) But now that there was a pseudo-political patina to overlay it-of "raising awareness" of dread diseases and/or bigotry-the "right to privacy" that had used to be the supreme bulwark protecting gay rights and abortion was now reduced to a borderline-bigoted dog whistle. Suddenly, public figures' most private lives were considered fair game, not just by the National Enquirer and Weekly World News , but by NBC Nightly News and the New York Times as well .

Above all else, the Clinton presidency also saw the birth of the 24/7 spin cycle, what was then and now rightly called the "permanent campaign." No other president from the Great Society to Barack Obama attempted so many domestic-policy game changes as Bill Clinton did in his frenzied first term. From 1993 to '96, there was defense of marriage, gays in the military, gun control, crime, family and medical leave, the 1993 tax increase, and a Tea Party-style government shutdown over the holidays. And then there were the big guns: NAFTA, welfare reform, and the first stab at national health care.

This round-the-clock activism on such inflammatory topics guaranteed that the printing presses and TV cameras would be running overtime. Yet perhaps no Clintonomic game-change had as much long term importance as his deregulation of the media. That, combined with the launch of not one but two 24-hour cable networks (Fox News and MSNBC) now turned every political decision into a long-running "crisis" and turned every campaign into a nail-biting "horse race."

When Bill Clinton ran for reelection in fall 1996, with a recovering economy, unemployment cut in half from its 1992–94 levels, a shrinking deficit, and lower crime rates and class sizes-against a 73-year-old "unelectable throwback to the past" (as Arianna Huffington once described Bob Dole) and 66-year-old returning gadfly Ross Perot-well, let's just say you didn't have to be a member of the Psychic Friends Network to guess the outcome. But the TV news shows-now a profit center rather than a loss-leader for their networks and studios-and the magazines and newspapers (which were feeling the first pinches of the internet) depended on hyping every last second into a pulse-pounder that would go right down to the wire. "Tree it, bag it, defoliate the forest for it, destroy the village for it," wrote a contemptuous Joan Didion: from now on, print and TV journalists would arm-wrestle every fact into a suspenseful running "narrative," with any and all inconvenient truths to be left on the cutting-room floor.

This meant that neither the Clinton administration nor the American public would ever get a minute's peace. We had now entered the era of politics as gladiator sport. The 1987 Robert Bork and 1991 Clarence Thomas Supreme Court hearings had ensured that every high-level judicial or cabinet appointment would now become a Springer- style freak show. And every trumped-up scandal that could be used to pump up the ratings and the circulation-Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, Vince Foster's suicide-was milked for maximum echo-chamber impact.

While Bill and Hillary Clinton suffered the most from the scandal-of-the-month-club atmosphere of '90s media, many Republican politicians also needed an extra big box of Band-Aids, and would only need more. As Oliver Darcy wrote in his Business Insider feature "Donald Trump Broke the Conservative Media," the "roots of the conservative news media-industrial complex came in the 1990s, with the rise of three key forces: Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Matt Drudge." (He might have also included high-profile bestsellers like Ann Coulter's anti-Clinton High Crimes and Misdemeanors .) To appease this ravenous, Internet-powered red-meat machine, "a Republican would have to take a hardline conservative position on nearly every issue ," said Darcy. If a Republican were "to hold conservative positions on 90% of the issues, the conservative press would focus on the 10% where there was disagreement." Ten years before Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, the roots of the Tea Party were being fertilized with the blood of the sacrificial RINOs of the Republican Revolutionary 1990s.

The final piece of the puzzle came in June of 1994, when O.J. Simpson dropped by his ex-wife Nicole's condo for the last time. Perhaps the most famous African-American male alive at the time (besides Michael Jackson, who certainly had more than his own share of problems), the "Juice" was accused of viciously murdering his blonde wife and the handsome young white dude who may or may not have been her lover. It was as if the entire case had been designed by a central-casting office of ugly racial stereotypes.

With the memories of 1988's Willie Horton ad, 1991's Rodney King beating, and the 1992 LA riots still fresh, this whodunit touched on every racial and gendered raw nerve in the book. The case drew higher ratings and sold more papers and magazines than any other story in 1994–95-the equal of the November 1994 "Republican Revolution" and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and far surpassing any other economic, gang, or foreign-policy situation that year, including even the Bosnian genocide. Whether you were Time magazine or a supermarket tabloid, there was simply no way to avoid covering it, even if you wanted to. It was one of the first stories to be tabloid trash and hard news in equal parts, but it wouldn't be the last.

♦♦♦

When Bill Clinton looked the world's TV cameras in the eye, pointed his finger, and said "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," only for Miss Lewinsky to bring her stained dress out of the closet, what would have ordinarily been a sleazy back-of-the-book sex scandal became a top-rated constitutional crisis. During the summer and fall of 1998, it was all Monica, all the time, with serious journalists slavering over the political pornography that was the Starr report and pundits writing reams of dime-store psychology on the soapy twists and turns of Bill and Hillary's marriage.

Noting Bill Clinton's record popularity with African-American (and Latino) voters, Toni Morrison branded the impeachment as a coded racial attack on people of color, comparing the attack on Clinton's "unpoliced sexuality" to a black man being frisked and body-searched by racist cops. Embarrassed teachers and grandparents had to explain to curious kids why adults were laughing like middle-schoolers in a locker room whenever the word "cigar" was uttered, and whether or not the role model in chief had ever "worn" somebody's dress. Standup comics never had it so good. World events like Osama bin Laden's bombings of two American embassies went on the back burner. And tellingly, Osama chose to appear on a prime-time TV newsmagazine, 20/20 , to announce his "fatwa" and "jihad" against America in the spring of 1998.

The fallout from Hurricane Monica was even more important than the 1998–99 impeachment effort itself. If being "alive from the waist down" and exuding "unpoliced sexuality" was now the gold standard for being president, then how would a seemingly "on the spectrum," uncharismatic, Mondale-Dukakis-Cuomo policy wonk-like Clinton's own vice president, Al Gore-fare?

Just before his big nominating speech at the 2000 Democratic Convention, Gore grabbed his wife Tipper and bent her over into an open-mouthed tongue kiss on live TV-a Big Brother or Behind the Music moment if ever there was one, to demonstrate that his marriage was alive and well (unlike the famously open Clinton marriage), and that he wasn't quite as robotic as he seemed. (Ironically, it was Al and Tipper who would separate a decade later, while Bill and Hillary's relationship seems stronger than ever.) Adding another dose of backstabbing House of Cards- style drama, Gore went out of his way to insult Bill and Hillary to their faces in his nomination speech, angrily proclaiming that his election would not be "a reward for past performance" under Bill and Hill, and that he was running as his "own man!" And instead of choosing a pro-Clinton progressive Democrat (like Barbara Boxer, Russ Feingold, Paul Wellstone, Barbara Mikulski, Carl Levin, or Chuck Schumer, who were all available that year), Gore chose William F. Buckley's favorite Democrat-conservative Clinton critic "Joe-mentum" Lieberman-as his vice-presidential nominee. Aaron Sorkin couldn't have written it better for sweeps month. Why, you'd think an immunity idol was at stake.

While Al Gore ran as far as his legs could take him from Clinton, his archrival, Texas governor (and presidential son) George W. Bush plagiarized the winning media playbook Clinton had used against Poppy in 1992. Candidate Bush played the media like Clinton's saxophone. Bush fed them gourmet food and designer water on the buses and planes, hung out with them in the back benches, and gave them affectionate nicknames like "Dulce" and "Panchito." He even mouthed a playful "I love you, man!" to an openly gay young reporter covering him.

Al Gore, meanwhile, treated the press like an angry Judge Judy. Gore 2000 staffer Carter Eskew told Vanity Fair 's Evgenia Peretz in 2007 that he used a "whip and a chair" with the media. When Gore finally deigned to go on MTV, instead of taking the opportunity to knock some starch out of his image and present a friendly face to Generation X, he chauvinistically picked a fight with a dreadlocked African-American, angrily whitesplaining to the young man about the immorality and sinfulness of gangsta rap and hip-hop culture.

Despite being credited by Steve Jobs, Vinton Cerf, and even Newt Gingrich as having (from a legal and government-funding point of view) "invented the Internet," the famously stiff Gore was at a loss for how to handle the brave new media world he now found himself trapped in. In spite (or perhaps because) of his own earlier training as a journalist, Gore couldn't believe just how far the profession had fallen. Despite being the progressive candidate, he clearly craved a return to the old-fashioned, "dignified" Don Draper era of political campaigns.

And if Al Gore hated the media, then the feeling was mutual. Openly lesbian feminist Camille Paglia said that Gore's "Little Lord Fauntleroy" entitlement and snobbery were so outrageous they "bordered on the epicene." Maureen Dowd said that Gore acted like a straight-up "loser." "Positively Nixonian in his naked longing," wrote the brilliant liberal critic John Powers in his 2004 recap Sore Winners , Gore had a sense of entitlement "the size of a cruise liner" and "fairly reeked of insider privilege." Kennedy/Obama Democrat Chris Matthews thought Gore was someone who would probably "lick the bathroom floor to be president," and Matthews said flat-out that he was voting for Bush in 2000. Lefty celebs like Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Eddie Vedder, and Michael Moore lent their star power … to campaign for Ralph Nader.

The mirror finally cracked during Gore's first two debates with Bush, when a stressed-out Gore got up in Bush's face and began eye-rolling, sighing, and shaking his head on camera when Bush spoke. Gore's body language evoked Alexis Colby or Cruella de Vil. White working-class voters (including many women) were revolted. Whether Gore won on the issues was forgotten, or more likely beside the point.

The atmosphere only got crazier after the election was held and the five-week-long recount battle began. The Wicked Witch of the West flew over the Florida supreme court, advising Democrats to "Surrender, Gore-thy!" while a grown man dressed as a big baby (symbolizing Gore) threw a temper tantrum outside of a news conference. Black voters went to the barricades with tape over their mouths, to symbolize their voices having been silenced. Control of Florida's electoral votes bounced between fundamentalist Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (complete with her Tonya Harding-like makeup and hair sense) and then-Gov. Jeb Bush, to the lower trial courts, to the overwhelmingly Democratic and partisan Florida supreme court. Each one ruled and then overruled the other so often it was like watching setups and punchlines fly on Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond. The election had now been reduced to the atmosphere of Survivor and American Idol .

And contrary to the Reagan-era belief that it was senior citizens who controlled elections-those AARP members, WWII and Korea veterans, and retired grandmothers who always showed up to do their civic duty with plenty of time on their hands-Election 2000 proved once and for all that just like prime-time TV and the movies, politics was all about the 18–34 demographic. Seniors voted roughly 50/50 for Bush and Gore (even Florida's famed New York Jewish seniors voted nearly one-third for Bush, and that was after accounting for the controversy over Pat Buchanan and the infamous "butterfly ballot"). But fatefully, first- and second-time young voters also broke evenly for Bush and Gore, in a 47-47 tie (with Nader winning the rest), a break from the youth advantage that delivered the White House to Clinton in 1992 and '96 and would return to ensure Barack Obama's triumphs in 2008 and 2012. If Gore had won young voters by 20 or 30 points like Clinton and Obama, not only Florida but likely Nevada and New Hampshire-and maybe even Ohio-would have been in the bag for him.

In other words, Gore was now on a fast track to losing this election because he had almost lost hip, diverse young people. It was a mistake no Democrat would ever want to make again. Just look at the threat the overwhelmingly millennial "Bernie Bros" posed to what was supposed to be Hillary Clinton's coronation.

Like the judge on a reality show, or those big 11 o'clock climaxes on Law & Order , on December 12, 2000, the Supreme Court gave America the final decision, siding with Bush over Gore. Cue the dark camera filters and the Hans Zimmer underscore.

♦♦♦

"Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you got till it's gone?" said Joni Mitchell in her signature song, Big Yellow Taxi. Twenty years after Joni sang, the Bill Clinton years proved to be the era when (as Ezra Klein rightly recalled in in 2007) "the media just lost its mind for eight years, went crazy with class hatred and status envy, groupthink and scandal-mongering." It was the time when Washington, DC, movers and shakers like Sally Quinn and David Gergen began referring to Washington as "This Town" like some kind of Sue Mengers, Lin Bolen, or Julia Phillips power-woman in 1970s New Hollywood protecting her turf from wannabes and outsiders. It was when the Iron Curtain between trash talk and serious news, between talk-radio ranting and highbrow gatekeeping, was torn down. And it was when politicians truly became TV personalities, colorful supporting characters in the latest Whatevergate, the next scandal before Scandal. It was the decade when the real world turned into The Real World. We didn't know what we had until it was gone.

Looking back, the reality TV-ization of politics that billionaire businessman Donald Trump capitalized on and rode to victory seems not only natural but inevitable. How can Donald Trump himself not be "normalized" as a presidential candidate when the mainstream media, and in particular the media-savvy husband of Trump's general-election opponent, spent a full quarter-century normalizing tabloidism, reality-TV techniques, and media-whoring, showing that the royal road to 1600 Pennsylvania was paved by Letterman and Leno, Stewart and SNL, MTV and Maureen Dowd? Really, is having the star of The Apprentice as Mister President that far a leap?

It is a delicious irony indeed that the wife of the man who did more to postmodernize the presidency than any other politician before him lost the White House to a candidate who took note of all the media tricks and treats the Clintons largely invented and blew them up to their unnatural extreme. But the lesson of both the Clinton-era beginnings of the postmodern presidency and Donald Trump's current commando raid on respectability centers on one immovable fact. Whether you're right wing or left, black or white, old or young, it all comes down to one thing. As the late Marshall McLuhan might have put it, had he lived another decade or two, It's the media, stupid.

Telly Davidson is the author of a new book on the politics and pop culture of the '90s, Culture War . He has written on culture for FrumForum , All About Jazz , FilmStew , and Guitar Player , and worked the Emmy-nominated PBS series Pioneers of Television.

Fran Macadam , says: November 11, 2016 at 6:32 am
Glib, yes, but true? Is superficiality the key, or have events finally been driven by an underlying reality? Ironically, this is the election where the circumstances of millions of actual middle American lives broke through the glam manufacture and demanded redress from the celebitchy Davos privileged political class.
connecticut farmer , says: November 11, 2016 at 9:29 am
In a WST op-ed, Peggy Noonan points out that, the hoopla notwithstandin, among Clinton, Johnson and Stein, about 52% of the popular vote went against Trump. It is useful to keep this in mind because in '92 between Bush Sr. and Perot, 57 % of the popular vote went AGAINST Bill Clinton. Clinton for all his vaunted political skills, didn't pay heed. Thereafter, bang went Hillary Health Care! Bang went the US Congress in '94 with the Republican Party winning back not only the Senate but the House (the latter for the first time since 1954).

When all was said and done, Clinton still lost the popular vote and his failure to take note cost his his party control of the Congress. It is hope that The Don doesn't make the same mistake.

[Nov 14, 2016] Clinton betrayal and the future of Democratic Party

Nov 14, 2016 | discussion.theguardian.com
weejonnie Intheround 11h ago ...In the last 8 years the Democrat party.

Lost control of the Senate
Lost control of the House of Representatives
Lost control of dozens of state legislatures and Governorships.
The Republicans control 36 States of America - One more and they could in theory amend the Constitution.

In Wisconsin (notionally Democrat) the Legislature and Governor are both Republican controlled. And Clinton didn't even campaign there when it was pretty obvious the State was not trending towards her.

[Nov 11, 2016] Clinton And The Neocons Huffington Post

Notable quotes:
"... Prioritizing foreign over domestic policy, Jackson's former aides Richard Perle , Douglas Feith , and Elliott Abrams - along with some fellow travelers like Paul Wolfowitz - eventually shifted their allegiance to the right-wing Republican Ronald Reagan. They formed an important pro-Israel, "peace through strength" nucleus within the new president's foreign policy team. ..."
Nov 08, 2016 | www.huffingtonpost.com
John Feffer Director, Foreign Policy In Focus and Editor, LobeLog Much has been made of the swing in political allegiances of neoconservatives in favor of Hillary Clinton.

As a group, Washington's neocons are generally terrified of Trump's unpredictability and his flirtation with the alt-right. They also support Clinton's more assertive foreign policy (not to mention her closer relationship to Israel). Perhaps, too, after eight long years in the wilderness, they're daydreaming of an appointment or two in a Clinton administration.

This group of previously staunch Republicans, who believe in using American military power to promote democracy, build nations, and secure U.S. interests abroad, have defected in surprising numbers. Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan , the Wall Street Journal 's Bret Stephens , and the Foreign Policy Initiative 's James Kirchick have all endorsed Clinton. Other prominent neocons like The National Review 's William Kristol , the Wall Street Journal 's Max Boot , and SAIS's Eliot Cohen have rejected Trump but not quite taken the leap to supporting Clinton.

A not particularly large or well-defined group, neoconservatives have attracted a disproportionate amount of attention in this election. For the Trump camp, these Republican defectors merely prove that the elite is out to get their candidate, thus reinforcing his outsider credentials (never mind that Trump initially wooed neocons like Kristol). For the left , the neocons are flocking to support a bird of their feather, at least when it comes to foreign policy, which reflects badly on Clinton. The mainstream media, meanwhile, is attracted to the man-bites-dog aspect of the story (news flash: members of the vast right-wing conspiracy support Clinton!).

As we come to the end of the election campaign, which has been more a clash of personalities than of ideologies, the neocon defections offer a much more interesting storyline. As the Republican Party potentially coalesces around a more populist center, the neocons are the canary in the coal mine. Their squawking suggests that the American political scene is about to suffer a cataclysm. What will that mean for U.S. foreign policy?

A History of Defection

The neoconservative movement began within the Democratic Party. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democrat from Washington State, carved out a new position in the party with his liberal domestic policies and hardline Cold War stance. He was a strong booster of civil rights and environmental legislation. At the same time, he favored military build-up and a stronger relationship with Israel. He was also dismayed with the Nixon administration's détente with the Soviet Union.

Prioritizing foreign over domestic policy, Jackson's former aides Richard Perle , Douglas Feith , and Elliott Abrams - along with some fellow travelers like Paul Wolfowitz - eventually shifted their allegiance to the right-wing Republican Ronald Reagan. They formed an important pro-Israel, "peace through strength" nucleus within the new president's foreign policy team.

At the end of the Reagan era, their commitment to such policies as regime change in the Middle East, confrontation with Russia, and opposition to multilateral institutions like the United Nations brought them into conflict with realists in the George H.W. Bush administration. So many of them defected once again to support Bill Clinton. Writes Jim Lobe:

A small but not insignificant number of them, repelled by George H.W. Bush's realpolitik, and more specifically his Middle East policy and pressure on then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to join the Madrid peace conference after the first Gulf War, deserted the party in 1992 and publicly endorsed Bill Clinton. Richard Schifter, Morris Amitay of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Angier Biddle Duke, Rita Freedman of the Social Democrats USA, neocon union leaders John Joyce and Al Shanker, Penn Kemble of the Institute for Religion and Democracy, James Woolsey, Marty Peretz of The New Republic, and Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute all signed a much-noted ad in The New York Times in August 1992 endorsing Clinton's candidacy. Their hopes of thus being rewarded with top positions in a Clinton administration were crushed.

The flirtation with Clinton's Democratic Party was short-lived. Woolsey, Schifter, and Kemble received appointments in the Clinton administration, but the neocons in general were unhappy with their limited influence, Clinton's (albeit inconsistent) multilateralism, and the administration's reluctance to intervene militarily in Rwanda, Somalia, and Bosnia. Disenchantment turned to anger and then to organizing. In 1997, many of the same people who worked for Scoop Jackson and embraced Ronald Reagan put together the Project for the New American Century in an effort to preserve and expand America's post-Cold War unilateral power.

A handful of votes in Florida in 2000 and the attacks on September 11 the following year combined to give the neocons a second chance at transforming U.S. foreign policy. Dick Cheney became perhaps the most powerful vice president in modern American history, with Scooter Libby as his national security adviser. Donald Rumsfeld became secretary of defense, with Paul Wolfowitz as his deputy and Feith as head of the policy office. Elliott Abrams joined the National Security Council, and so on. Under their guidance, George W. Bush abandoned all pretense of charting a more modest foreign policy and went on a militarist bender.

The foreign policy disasters of the Bush era should have killed the careers of everyone involved. Unfortunately, there are plenty of think tanks and universities that value access over intelligence (or ethics) - and even the most incompetent and craven administration officials after leaving office retain their contacts (and their arrogance).

Those who worry that the neocons will be rewarded for their third major defection - to Reagan, to Bill Clinton, and now to Hillary Clinton - should probably focus elsewhere. After all, the Democratic nominee this year doesn't have to go all the way over to the far right for advice on how to construct a more muscular foreign policy. Plenty of mainstream think tanks - from the Center for a New American Security on the center-right to the leftish Center for American Progress - are offering their advice on how to "restore balance" in how the United States relates to the world. Many of these positions - how to push back against Russia, take a harder line against Iran, and ratchet up pressure on Assad in Syria - are not very different from neocon talking points.

But the defections do herald a possible sea change in party alignment. And that will influence the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy.

The Walking Dead

The Republican Party has been hemorrhaging for nearly a decade. The Tea Party dispatched many party centrists - Jim Leach, Richard Lugar - who once could achieve a measure of bipartisanship in Congress. The overwhelming whiteness of the party, even before the ascendance of Trump, made it very difficult to recruit African Americans and Latinos in large numbers. And now Trump has driven away many of the professionals who have served in past Republican administrations, including the small clique of neoconservatives.

What remains is enough to win state and local elections in certain areas of the country. But it's not enough to win nationally. Going forward, with the further demographic shift away from white voters, this Republican base will get older and smaller. Moreover, on foreign policy, the Trumpistas are leading the party in a nationalist, apocalyptic direction that challenges the party leadership (in emphasis if not in content).

It's enough to throw dedicated Republicans into despair. Avik Roy, who was an advisor to the presidential campaigns of Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry, told This American Life :

I think the Republican Party is a lost cause. I don't think the Republican Party is capable of fixing itself, because the people who are most passionate about voting Republican today are the Trump voters. And what politician is going to want to throw those voters away to attract some unknown coalition of the future?

One of his Republican compatriots, Rob Long, had this to say on the podcast about how anti-Trump survivors who stick with the party will navigate the post-election landscape:

It'll be like The Walking Dead, right? We're going to try to come up with bands of people and walk across the country. And let's not get ourselves killed or eaten and hook up with people we think are not insane or horrible or in some way murderous.

Coming out of this week's elections, here's my guess of what will happen. The Republican Party will continue to be torn apart by three factions: a dwindling number of moderates like Susan Collins (R-ME), right-wing fiscal conservatives like Paul Ryan (R-WI), and burn-the-house-down Trumpsters like Jeff Sessions (R-AL). Foreign policy won't be much of an issue for the party because it will be shut out of the White House for 12 years running and will focus instead on primarily domestic questions. Perhaps the latter two categories will find a way to repair their breach; perhaps the party will split in two; perhaps Trump supporters will engineer a hostile takeover.

The Democratic Party, meanwhile, may suffer as a result of its success. After all, how can a single party play host to both Bernie Sanders and Robert Kagan ? How can the party promote both guns and butter? How can Hillary Clinton preserve Obama's diplomatic successes - the Iran deal, the Cuba détente, the efforts to contain climate change - and be more assertive militarily? Whatever unity the party managed during the elections will quickly fall apart when it comes to governing.

In one sense, Clinton may well resurrect the neocon legacy by embracing a more or less progressive domestic policy (which would satisfy the Sanderistas) and a more hawkish foreign policy (which would satisfy all the foreign policy mandarins from both parties who supported her candidacy).

At the same time, a new political axis is emerging: internationalists vs. insularists, with the former gathering together in the Democratic Party and the latter seeking shelter in a leaky Republican Party. But this categorization conceals the tensions within each project. Internationalists include both fans of the UN and proponents of unilateral U.S. military engagement overseas. Insularists, who have not turned their back on the world quite as thoroughly as isolationists, include both xenophobic nationalists and those who want to spend war dollars at home.

The trick of it for progressives is to somehow steal back the Democratic Party from the aggressive globalists and recapture those Trump voters who are tired of supporting war and wealthy transnational corporations. Or, perhaps in the wake of the Republican Party's collapse, progressives could create a new party that challenges Clinton and the neocons.

One thing is for certain, however. With a highly unpopular president about to take office and one of the major political parties on life support, the current political moment is highly unstable. Something truly remarkable could emerge. Or voters in 2020 might face something even more monstrous than what has haunted this election cycle.

Crossposted with Foreign Policy In Focus .

[Nov 11, 2016] Chelsea Clinton was not paid $600 k from the Clinton Foundation. Chelsea Clinton was paid $600 k per year from 2011 by NBC for work as a special correspondent, whilst also pocketing $300 k per year plus stock options as a board member of IAC. Chelseas speaking fees were a mere 65 thousand dollars

Nov 11, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

kidneystones 11.10.16 at 10:39 am 161

... .. ...

@138 The woman is wrong. Chelsea Clinton was not paid $600 k from the Clinton Foundation. Chelsea Clinton was paid $600 k per year from 2011 by NBC for 'work' as a special correspondent, whilst also pocketing $300 k per year plus stock options as a 'board member' of IAC. Chelsea's speaking fees were a mere $65 k per.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/chelsea-clinton-press-213596

The NYT offers a more severe critique of the IAC board deal readable by clicking through the links. There will be those who see nothing improper about a fifth-estate firm paying a 31 year-old graduate student $600 k, or awarding her a board seat and stock options at $300k. Others may disagree, and perhaps with some good reason.

The defeat of the democratic candidate by a rodeo clown is a slap in the face. Contra Manta @71 I do not believe that anything less than a slap in the face of this order would be enough to jar the successful and well-fed out of their state of complacency and indifference to the plight of both the blacks and whites left behind by 8 years of Democratic rule, and far longer when we're talking about urban African-Americans.

As noted, I believe the Republican candidate to be far and away the more sober, safer choice both on domestic and foreign policy. Now we'll find out.

Thanks for the kind words to Rich, Bruce, T, bob mc, and others.

Best to you all.

[Nov 11, 2016] Obama can pardon Clinton Foundation players without specified which crimes they committed

Nov 11, 2016 | www.moonofalabama.org
Ken Nari | Nov 11, 2016 2:51:53 PM | 55
Susan Sunflower @ 48

Disgusting as it is, yes, my understanding is Obama can do exactly that. My guess is, want to or not, he probably will come under so much pressure he will have to pass out plenty of pardons. Or maybe Lynch will give everyone involved in the Clinton Foundation immunity to testify and then seal the testimony -- or never bother to get any testimony. So many games.

For Obama, it might not even take all that much pressure. From about his second day in office, from his body language, he's always looked like he was scared.

Instead of keeping his mouth shut, which he would do, being the lawyer he is, Giuliani has been screaming for the Clintons' scalps. That's exactly what a sharp lawyer would do if he was trying to force Obama to pardon them. If he really meant to get them he would be agreeing with the FBI, saying there doesn't seem to be any evidence of wrong doing, and then change his mind once (if) he's AG and it's too late for deals.

With so many lawyers, Obama, the Clintons, Lynch, Giuliani, Comey, no justice is likely to come out of this.

h | Nov 11, 2016 2:53:37 PM | 56
Maybe I saw the question about a 9/11 investigation on the other thread, but someone here asked if this is true. Well, it appears to be on a burner -

http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/trump-reopening-911-reversing-rome-in-bid-to-be-greatest-american-steward/

jdmckay | Nov 11, 2016 2:58:20 PM | 57
Ken Nari @ 55

From what I've read, prez pardon comes with explicit admission of guilt. Highly questionable either (or both) Clintons would accept that.

Mina | Nov 11, 2016 3:03:16 PM | 58
Simply brilliant
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-ongoing-dangerous-refusal-to-learn-the-lesson-of-brexit/
(it could be on the other thread, sorry)

Susan Sunflower | Nov 11, 2016 3:12:12 PM | 59
@ Posted by: Ken Nari | Nov 11, 2016 2:51:53 PM | 55

I heard a podcast on Batchelor with Charles Ortel which explained some things -- even if there are no obvious likely criminal smoking guns -- given that foundations get away with a lot of "leniency" because they are charities, incomplete financial statements and chartering documents, as I recall. I was most interested in his description of the number of jurisdictions the Foundation was operating under, some of whom, like New York were already investigating; and others, foreign who might or might be, who also have very serious regulations, opening the possibility that if the Feds drop their investigation, New York (with very very strict law) might proceed, and that they might well be investigated (prosecuted/banned??) in Europe.

The most recent leak wrt internal practices was just damning ... it sounded like a playground of favors and sinecures ... no human resources department, no written policies on many practices ...

This was an internal audit and OLD (2008, called "the Gibson Review") so corrective action may have been taken, but I thought was damning enough to deter many donors (even before Hillary's loss removed that incentive) particularly on top of the Band (2011) memo. Unprofessional to the extreme.

It's part of my vast relief that Clinton lost and will not be in our lives 24/7/365 for the next 4 years. (I think Trump is an unprincipled horror, but that's as may be, I'm not looking for a fight). After the mess Clinton made of Haiti (and the accusations/recriminations) I somehow thought they'd have been more careful with their "legacy" -- given that it was founded in 1997, 2008 is a very long time to be operating without written procedures wrt donations, employment

from 11/08/2016, Batchelor segment page

[Nov 11, 2016] Clinton raised $154 million in September for her campaign and the party. And people "getting the resources they needed"? Seems odd.

Nov 11, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

oho November 10, 2016 at 7:06 pm

". Clinton raised $154 million in September for her campaign and the party. And people "getting the resources they needed"? Seems odd."

smells like the allegations thrown at the Clinton Foundation--insiders directing very generous contracts to other insiders. with competence or efficacy secondary.

Nothing to see of course.

Carolinian November 10, 2016 at 7:25 pm

How Podesta may have caused Clinton to weaken her position on Wall Street. New Wikileak shows he pushed her to show "love" for Obama rather than criticism of BHO's handling of reform

The next day, an OpEd under the byline of Hillary Clinton appeared at Bloomberg News. Obama's name was mentioned four separate times in a highly favorable light. Clinton said Obama had signed into law "important new rules" after the 2008 financial crash; she was going to "build on the progress we've made under President Obama"; "thanks to President Obama's leadership" the economy is now on "sounder footing"; and the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation that Obama signed into law had "made important reforms, but there's more to do."

Since Bloomberg News is heavily read by people on Wall Street, this was a signal to them that Hillary Clinton would leave the bulk of her husband's cash cow deregulation in place by following in the footsteps of Obama. What Obama's administration had done in 2010 was to create the illusion of regulating Wall Street by proposing hundreds of vaguely worded rules in the Dodd-Frank legislation, then putting crony Wall Street regulators in charge at the SEC and U.S. Treasury to be sure the rules were never actually implemented in any meaningful way. (Under Dodd-Frank, the U.S. Treasury Secretary now sits atop a new financial stability body known as the Financial Stability Oversight Council. The crony Federal Reserve, which failed to see the crisis coming, was given enhanced supervisory powers over the largest Wall Street bank holding companies.) Obama even ignored one of his own rules in Dodd-Frank. It called for Obama to appoint a Vice Chairman for Supervision at the Federal Reserve to police Wall Street.[…]

There is another telling fact in the email. Hillary Clinton seems to have had very little to do with actually fashioning her policies. Another Clinton adviser, Dan Schwerin, indicates that WJC (William Jefferson Clinton, i.e. Bill Clinton) had edited the OpEd with "further refinements from policy team," but there is no mention that Hillary Clinton was involved in her own OpEd that would bear her byline.

So not just by Podesta but victimized by her philandering husband one last time? Awhile back Pat Lang suggested it was really Bill who pushed her into running. The impeach-ee needed his legacy redeemed.

http://wallstreetonparade.com/2016/11/new-wikileaks-email-podesta-may-have-cost-democrats-the-election-with-push-for-obama-legacy/

Tom November 10, 2016 at 7:53 pm

Regarding this part of the excerpt:

Hillary Clinton seems to have had very little to do with actually fashioning her policies.

This is a point that has irked me ever since I waded into the Podesta emails - how even the smallest public statement or even just a Tweet required numerous rounds of revisions, feedback, vetting and tweaking from the Clinton insiders.

It seemed that Clinton rarely had a fire in the belly on any particular position. It was whatever her team determined was the most politcally advantageous at the moment.

Maybe this is how most presidential candidates function, but it made me see Clinton as Presidential Robot Version 2016, programmed by her team to simulate the appearance of a person with convictions.

I'm sure she has some real convictions and I'm sure she has done real good in the world. But maybe Assange is right - she has been consumed by power and greed and was seduced by the possibility of more.

[Nov 08, 2016] Hillary's World How Clinton's Foreign Policy Has Destabilized Nearly Every Corner of the Globe - Breitbart

Nov 08, 2016 | www.breitbart.com

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton – as senator, secretary of state, and active partner in the Clinton Foundation – has had the privilege of influencing major players in governments across the globe.

The result of her efforts has largely been the unfettered consolidation of autocratic power, instability (when not total collapse) in vulnerable states, and a global jihadist movement with its own Caliphate infiltrating some of the world's most strategic locations.

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The above map shows the nations of the world Clinton's policies have destabilized and, below, an explanation of why each is labeled the way it is. This is meant to be a comprehensive list, though by no means complete: there are few nations in which an American secretary of state has no influence whatsoever.

Emboldened Autocrats

China

As secretary of state, Clinton presided over a policy known as the " pivot to Asia ," meant to increase American visibility in the continent and, in particular, bring China and the United States closer together. Clinton publicly supported the " one-China policy " – China's way of imposing itself on the Republic of China (Taiwan), Tibet, Hong Kong, and the western Xinjiang region – and encouraged China to buy up U.S. debt .

Following her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton expressed support for incoming president Xi Jinping in private. In a 2013 private speech now public, thanks to the organization WikiLeaks, Clinton said it was "good news" that Xi was "doing much more to try to assert his authority" than his predecessor, Hu Jintao.

Since then, Xi has declared himself the " core " leader, comparable to Mao Zedong ; colonized the maritime territory of six nations in the South China Sea; used state violence to crack down on the nation's skyrocketing Christian population; and engaged in multiple Communist Party purges, citing unspecified " corruption ."

Cuba

Hillary Clinton has loudly supported President Obama's policy to "normalize" relations with Cuba, and her associates maintain close ties to the Washington, D.C., community that benefits from relations with the Castro regime. President Obama's "normalization" has triggered a boom in violent arbitrary arrests of political dissidents and a new wave of refugees seeking to leave the communist dictatorship before the United States changes its mind about treating them as political refugees.

Iran

Hillary Clinton's work to embolden the Iranian Islamic dictatorship began early in her term as secretary of state. During Clinton's tenure, the Obama administration all but ignored the Iranian Green Revolution, a series of protests against then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Clinton's State Department rejected requests for funding from groups doing the work on the grounds of documenting Khamenei's rampant human rights abuses against unarmed protesters.

The Obama administration's crowning achievement in securing the Shiite Caliphate's rule came years later, of course, in the form of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the Iran nuclear deal. While the parties signed the deal long after her departure from State, Clinton was responsible for "naming the negotiators for the nuclear talks and approving two major U.S. concessions to Iran in 2011 – guaranteeing Iran the right to enrich uranium and agreeing to close the IAEA's investigation of Iran's past nuclear weapons work," according to Fred Fleitz of the Center for Security Policy .

Malaysia

Under Prime Minister Najib Razak, Malaysia has become a hotbed of corruption and, increasingly, radical Islamic sentiment . The Obama administration has, nonetheless, cozied up to Kuala Lumpur, including improving its human rights ratings to make it an eligible partner in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Among the allies Clinton world feared would challenge Clinton, the presidential candidate, on Malaysia were labor leader Richard Trumka and George Soros.

As Secretary of State, Clinton was the first in her office in more than a decade to visit Malaysia as part of President Obama's "Asia pivot" strategy.

North Korea

Secretary of State Clinton approached North Korea with a policy known as " strategic patience ," which one expert described as "sitting back and watching while North Korea continued to build up its nuclear weapons program." North Korea has detonated two nuclear weapons since Clinton has been out of office, in part emboldened by "strategic patience" and in part, many argued after the fourth of five tests, emboldened by the Iranian nuclear deal .

Russia

Clinton has attempted to convince the American people that her arch-rival in the presidential election is Russian President Vladimir Putin, but long before it was politically expedient for her to do so, Clinton was the face of President Obama's "Russian reset" – the one that preceded the collapse of Ukraine – and bragged privately to big-money donors of her close ties to Putin. The strongman trusted her so much, she once boasted, that he invited her to his " inner sanctum ."

Turkey

In her memoir, Hard Choices , Clinton reserved praise from President (then-Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan that sounded not unlike her optimistic profiling of Xi Jinping. Erdogan, she said , was "an ambitious, forceful, devout and effective politician." Of his government, she said Erdogan was correct to seek "zero problems with neighbors." WikiLeaks-released emails have since revealed that Erdogan sought to buy influence through campaign donations to the Clintons.

During his tenure as president, Erdogan has advanced the cause of Islamism in Turkey to unprecedented levels since the rule of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, going so far as to allow Islamic prayers in the Hagia Sophia, an iconic Christian landmark. He has also conducted mass arrests of political enemies and shut down numerous media outlets who dare challenge his government . Last Friday, Erdogan's government arrested the leaders of the People's Democratic Party (HDP) – a pro-Kurdish, pro-Christian center-left party – in a midnight raid on dubious "terrorism" charges.

Venezuela

Clinton served as secretary of state during the tail end of the tenure of socialist dictator Hugo Chávez, who died shortly after she departed. Chávez presided over a bleak time in Venezuelan history: nationalizing private industries, cozying up to enabling autocrats in Cuba, Iran, and China, and using violence to suppress anti-socialist opposition.

In 2009, Clinton defended negotiating with Chávez and fostering diplomacy with him, telling a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that the U.S. should dismiss Chávez's ties to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and communist China because "we've isolated him, so he's gone elsewhere. I mean, he's a very sociable guy."

Venezuela's economy is now in free fall as dozens of prisoners of conscience languish in prison under Chávez's hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro. Maduro's management of his own government has been so abysmal that, with Clinton gone, President Obama has declared Venezuela a national security threat .

Emboldened Corruption

Algeria

The government of Algeria is involved in one of the most egregious corruption schemes of the Clinton Foundation: offering the Clintons a $500,000 check. "The donation reportedly coincided with an intense effort by Algeria to lobby Mrs Clinton's State Department over US criticism of its human rights record," The Telegraph notes .

Brazil

Earlier this year, Brazil impeached and ousted its socialist President Dilma Rousseff for a variety of fiscal improprieties, including the misrepresentation of government funds to lure investors. Triggering protests that numbered in the millions, however, was Rousseff's deep involvement in something known as "Operation Car Wash," a sprawling corruption scheme in which dozens of government officials took millions in kickbacks from projects commissioned by the state-run oil company Petrobras.

As secretary of state, Clinton had longtime ties to Rousseff and praised "her commitment to openness, transparency," stating that "her fight against corruption is setting a global standard" in 2012.

Haiti

The Clinton Foundation's exploitation of Haiti's poverty and the damage caused by a 2010 earthquake has left many of those nation's leaders disgusted enough to speak up about the corruption. An operation to aid earthquake victims run by the Clintons was also found to have " played a role " in an unprecedented cholera outbreak in that country.

Kazakhstan

Among the more alarming deals Clinton cut at the State Department was the nuclear deal that handed one-fifth of America's uranium production capacity to Russia. While Russia usurped control of the Uranium One corporation, the Clinton Foundations coffers filled with Russian money.

In addition to Uranium One control, the New York Times reports that Russia gained control of "mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world."

Morocco

A more recent WikiLeaks reveal shows that the Clinton Foundation received a $12 million donation from the King of Morocco in exchange for Hillary Clinton's presence at a Foundation summit. At the last minute, she did not attend .

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has enjoyed longstanding ties to the Clinton family and donated at least $50 million to the Clinton Foundation. These ties persisted even as Clinton privately admitted she had evidence that Saudi Arabia provided "clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region."

United States

While the Clinton Foundation often served as a laundry service for foreign donations , Clinton fostered questionable ties with plenty of domestic entities, as well. Clinton has raked in millions in donations from big business in America, donors to which she privately promised " open borders ." Clinton's ties to Department of Justice officials in the wake of an investigation into her use of an illicit private server for state business has also raised many questions regarding cronyism and corruption within our own country.

Jihadist Boom

Afghanistan

President Obama famously declared that the war in Afghanistan was over for American soldiers in 2014. The policies that led to that point only exacerbated the damage a vacuum of American power in the nation wrought following the announcement.

Under Clinton, the State Department largely ignored a sprawling corruption problem that left Afghanistan with few resources to combat the Taliban or al-Qaeda. Clinton policies elsewhere in the world also led to the development of an Islamic State presence in the nation.

Currently, U.S. officials warn that the Taliban is stronger than it has been since September 11, 2001.

Indonesia

One of Clinton's first stops as secretary of state was Indonesia, where she proclaimed, "If you want to know whether Islam, democracy, modernity and women's rights can co-exist, go to Indonesia." At the time (2009), her visit was met with chants of "Allahu akbar" and an inauspicious shoe-throwing protest against her.

Since then, Clinton's foreign policy greatly contributed to the creation of the Islamic State, a jihadist group actively courting Indonesian recruits . "Between 300 and 700 Indonesians are believed to have joined the group in Syria and Iraq over the past two years," the BBC reported in July, adding that 30 Indonesian groups had pledged allegiance to Islamic State "Caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Iraq

Unlike Syria, the collapse of which followed violent acts of oppression by a ruthless tyrant, Iraq's collapse is more closely tied to American foreign policy due to the nation's longtime occupation there. An American presence on the ground in Iraq did more to subdue jihadist elements there than any action to routinely fleeing Iraqi military and its corrupt leadership took.

While Clinton was in office, President Obama withdrew most of America's troops from Iraq, leaving a power vacuum rapidly filled by the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and Iran-backed Shiite militias. Military experts have agreed that a prolonged American presence in the country would have contributed to stability and withdrawing left the nation vulnerable to Islamist colonization.

Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon

The nations surrounding Lake Chad continue to struggle with the rise of Boko Haram, a jihadist group founded in 2002 but active throughout the 2010s in northeast Borno state, Nigeria. Boko Haram is currently the deadliest wing of the Islamic State and responsible for killing an estimated 15,000 and displacing millions. The group rose to international prominence following the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls from a secondary school in the Borno region in 2014. Most of these girls remain in captivity, "married" off to Boko Haram jihadists for use as sex slaves.

As secretary of state, Clinton refused to designate Boko Haram, at the time affiliated with al-Qaeda, a Foreign Terrorist Organization. The move severely hindered the Nigerian government's ability to target and neutralize the group, as they could not seek U.S. aid for the mission.

Somalia, Kenya

Clinton traveled to Somalia personally in 2009 t0 offer support against al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group. Following that visit, al-Shabaab made its ties to al-Qaeda public and went on two high-profile rampages against civilians in Kenya: the Westgate Mall massacre in 2013 and the Garissa University attack of 2015. It has since then become a popular enough jihadist group to have found itself the object of courtship of both its al-Qaeda overlords and the Islamic State.

Al-Shabaab has also expanded into Libya now that Libya is a failed state.

The United States did little in those in-between years to subdue al-Shabaab, including a " Yemen-like " drone policy to target leadership and an embarrassing failed raid on an al-Shabaab camp in 2013. Clinton herself merely implored the terrorists to allow humanitarian aid.

Collapse of State

Libya

Clinton's role in the death of Americans, including a U.S. Ambassador, in the September 11, 2012, siege of Benghazi is now well-known. She had a major role in pushing for the decision to support Libya's uprising against dictator Muammar Gadhafi, as well, however – a move President Obama followed up with little strategy to ensure that a stable, secular government would replace Gadhafi. The collapse of the Gadhafi dictatorship has left Libya a failed state, at first governed by two rival parties , but now partially governed by the Islamic State , al-Qaeda , and a variety of Islamist tribal militias.

Clinton has called the collapse of Libya " smart power at its best " and claimed there were " very few civilian casualties " in the fall of Gadhafi.

Syria

The Syrian Civil War began in 2011, during Clinton's stewardship of the State Department. The Secretary reportedly pushed President Obama to arm Sunni Arab Syrian rebels, armed militias that included a high number of jihadist elements, many of whom would move on to fight for the Islamic State. The President reportedly did not heed Clinton's advice , though he failed to do much of anything else, either.

In 2011, however, Clinton referred to dictator Bashar al-Assad as " a reformer " by reputation, whose nascent rule was cause for optimism, casting some doubt on how adamantly she pushed President Obama to arm the Syrian rebels.

Today, Syria remains a land mass governed piecemeal by the Islamic State, Kurdish militias, al-Qaeda linked armed Sunni groups, and the Iranian-Russian-Assad alliance. Assad claimed in an interview earlier this month that Syria is now "much better off" than before the civil war.

Sudan/South Sudan

The creation of South Sudan, the world's youngest nation, was a direct product of Clinton's foreign policy. Years of civil war in Sudan between the northern Muslim population and the Christian south gave way to secession and a war between two nations, not one. By the time Clinton visited in 2012, the Washington Post referred to the refugee crisis there as one of the worst in the world (soon to be eclipsed by the Syrian crisis).

The State Department persisted in aiding the South Sudanese government, even continuing to provide funding after evidence surfaced that the government employed child soldiers . Subsequent reports unveiled that Clinton-related firms received money from the South Sudanese government, as well.

Clinton's State Department support appears to have done little to stabilize South Sudan. Report of mass rape at UN camps are common, and the country is now facing a famine .

Ukraine/Georgia

The Obama administration's tepid responses to Russian colonization of former Soviet states have left Ukraine without its Crimea region and its eastern provinces in collapse. In Georgia, the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia , invaded in 2008, remain under pseudo-Russian control.

Hillary Clinton presided over a "Russian reset" policy meant to dissuade Vladimir Putin from pillaging his neighbors. Clinton even gave her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov a literal "reset button" as a gift, leaving him baffled . The reset succeeded in keeping Russia from obstructing the negotiation of the Iran nuclear deal and the invasion of Libya , but did little to convince Putin to change his foreign policy.

Subsequent revelations showed the Clintons taking money from both sides of the Ukraine conflict and being careful of making too tough a stand against Putin's aggression.

Yemen

As secretary of state, Clinton made the first visit as America's top diplomat to Yemen since 1990. There, she told Ali Abdullah Saleh that she would support a program to return al-Qaeda terrorists imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to Yemen, while also acknowledging that Yemen was a hotbed of al-Qaeda activity. Saleh is now an ally of the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, which have launched a civil war against current President Abd Rabbo Mansur Hadi. Al-Qaeda is possibly the most stable entity in a nation where 80 percent of civilians live off of humanitarian aid, quadrupling its presence in the nation in a year . Yemen is a failed state torn apart by an emboldened Iran and Saudi Arabia, both major beneficiaries of the Clinton State Department's policies.

The Migrant Crisis

Austria, Belgium, the Balkan nations, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Turkey, Sweden, the UK

The Obama administration's Syria and Libya policies (See above.), executed while Clinton was secretary of state, have triggered a flood of nearly five million displaced Syrians and more than one million Libyans seeking refuge in Europe and the Middle East. Refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistan, sub-Saharan Africa, and other volatile regions have added to the masses seeking a new home, rejected in countries like Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia who have criticized the West for being unwelcoming.

[Nov 07, 2016] Slavoj Zizek Says He'd Vote Trump: Hillary Clinton 'Is the Real Danger'

Nov 07, 2016 | www.legitgov.org

November 7, 2016 by legitgov

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Slavoj Žižek Says He'd Vote Trump: Hillary Clinton 'Is the Real Danger' | 04 Nov 2016 | Slovenian-born philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek said a Hillary Clinton presidency is a greater danger to the nation than a President Donald Trump. Žižek explained that while he is "horrified" by Trump, he believes a Trump presidency could result in a "big awakening" that could set into motion the formation of "new political processes." By contrast, Žižek said he sees Clinton as "the true danger"--pointing specifically to her insincerity, her ties to the Wall Street banks, and her dedication to the "absolute inertia" of our established political system.

[Nov 06, 2016] Trump vs. the REAL Nuts -- the GOP Uniparty Establishment

Notable quotes:
"... An awful lot of people out there think we live in a one-party state-that we're ruled by what is coming to be called the "Uniparty." ..."
"... There is a dawning realization, ever more widespread among ordinary Americans, that our national politics is not Left versus Right or Republican versus Democrat; it's we the people versus the politicians. ..."
"... Donald Trump is no nut. If he were a nut, he would not have amassed the fortune he has, nor nurtured the capable and affectionate family he has. ..."
"... To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. ..."
"... Trump has all the right instincts. And he's had the guts and courage-and, just as important, the money -to do a thing that has badly needed doing for twenty years: to smash the power of the real nuts in the GOP Establishment. ..."
Oct 29, 2016 | www.unz.com
54 Comments Credit: VDare.com.

A couple of remarks in Professor Susan McWillams' recent Modern Age piece celebrating the 25th anniversary of Christopher Lasch's 1991 book The True and Only Heaven , which analyzed the cult of progress in its American manifestation, have stuck in my mind. Here's the first one:

In the most recent American National Election Studies survey, only 19 percent of Americans agreed with the idea that the government, "is run for the benefit of all the people." [ The True and Only Lasch: On The True and Only Heaven, 25 Years Later , Fall 2016]

McWilliams adds a footnote to that: The 19 percent figure is from 2012, she says. Then she tells us that in 1964, 64 percent of Americans agreed with the same statement.

Wow. You have to think that those two numbers, from 64 percent down to 19 percent in two generations, tell us something important and disturbing about our political life.

Second McWilliams quote:

In 2016 if you type the words "Democrats and Republicans" or "Republicans and Democrats" into Google, the algorithms predict your next words will be "are the same".

I just tried this, and she's right. These guesses are of course based on the frequency with which complete sentences show up all over the internet. An awful lot of people out there think we live in a one-party state-that we're ruled by what is coming to be called the "Uniparty."

There is a dawning realization, ever more widespread among ordinary Americans, that our national politics is not Left versus Right or Republican versus Democrat; it's we the people versus the politicians.

Which leads me to a different lady commentator: Peggy Noonan, in her October 20th Wall Street Journal column.

The title of Peggy's piece was: Imagine a Sane Donald Trump . [ Alternate link ]Its gravamen: Donald Trump has shown up the Republican Party Establishment as totally out of touch with their base, which is good; but that he's bat-poop crazy, which is bad. If a sane Donald Trump had done the good thing, the showing-up, we'd be on course to a major beneficial correction in our national politics.

It's a good clever piece. A couple of months ago on Radio Derb I offered up one and a half cheers for Peggy, who gets a lot right in spite of being a longtime Establishment Insider. So it was here. Sample of what she got right last week:

Mr. Trump's great historical role was to reveal to the Republican Party what half of its own base really thinks about the big issues. The party's leaders didn't know! They were shocked, so much that they indulged in sheer denial and made believe it wasn't happening.

The party's leaders accept more or less open borders and like big trade deals. Half the base does not! It is longtime GOP doctrine to cut entitlement spending. Half the base doesn't want to, not right now! Republican leaders have what might be called assertive foreign-policy impulses. When Mr. Trump insulted George W. Bush and nation-building and said he'd opposed the Iraq invasion, the crowds, taking him at his word, cheered. He was, as they say, declaring that he didn't want to invade the world and invite the world. Not only did half the base cheer him, at least half the remaining half joined in when the primaries ended.

I'll just pause to note Peggy's use of Steve Sailer' s great encapsulation of Bush-style NeoConnery: "Invade the world, invite the world." Either Peggy's been reading Steve on the sly, or she's read my book We Are Doomed , which borrows that phrase. I credited Steve with it, though, so in either case she knows its provenance, and should likewise have credited Steve.

End of pause. OK, so Peggy got some things right there. She got a lot wrong, though

Start with the notion that Trump is crazy. He's a nut, she says, five times. His brain is "a TV funhouse."

Well, Trump has some colorful quirks of personality, to be sure, as we all do. But he's no nut. A nut can't be as successful in business as Trump has been.

I spent 32 years as an employee or contractor, mostly in private businesses but for two years in a government department. Private businesses are intensely rational, as human affairs go-much more rational than government departments. The price of irrationality in business is immediate and plainly financial. Sanity-wise, Trump is a better bet than most people in high government positions.

Sure, politicians talk a good rational game. They present as sober and thoughtful on the Sunday morning shows.

Look at the stuff they believe, though. Was it rational to respond to the collapse of the U.S.S.R. by moving NATO right up to Russia's borders? Was it rational to expect that post-Saddam Iraq would turn into a constitutional democracy? Was it rational to order insurance companies to sell healthcare policies to people who are already sick? Was the Vietnam War a rational enterprise? Was it rational to respond to the 9/11 attacks by massively increasing Muslim immigration?

Make your own list.

Donald Trump displays good healthy patriotic instincts. I'll take that, with the personality quirks and all, over some earnest, careful, sober-sided guy whose head contains fantasies of putting the world to rights, or flooding our country with unassimilable foreigners.

I'd add the point, made by many commentators, that belongs under the general heading: "You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps." If Donald Trump was not so very different from run-of-the-mill politicians-which I suspect is a big part of what Peggy means by calling him a nut-would he have entered into the political adventure he's on?

Thor Heyerdahl sailed across the Pacific on a hand-built wooden raft to prove a point, which is not the kind of thing your average ethnographer would do. Was he crazy? No, he wasn't. It was only that some feature of his personality drove him to use that way to prove the point he hoped to prove.

And then there is Peggy's assertion that the Republican Party's leaders didn't know that half the party's base were at odds with them.

Did they really not? Didn't they get a clue when the GOP lost in 2012, mainly because millions of Republican voters didn't turn out for Mitt Romney? Didn't they, come to think of it, get the glimmering of a clue back in 1996, when Pat Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary?

Pat Buchanan is in fact a living counter-argument to Peggy's thesis-the "sane Donald Trump" that she claims would win the hearts of GOP managers. Pat is Trump without the personality quirks. How has the Republican Party treated him ?

Our own Brad Griffin , here at VDARE.com on October 24th, offered a couple more "sane Donald Trumps": Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee. How did they fare with the GOP Establishment?

Donald Trump is no nut. If he were a nut, he would not have amassed the fortune he has, nor nurtured the capable and affectionate family he has. Probably he's less well-informed about the world than the average pol. I doubt he could tell you what the capital of Burkina Faso is. That's secondary, though. A President has people to look up that stuff for him. The question that's been asked more than any other about Donald Trump is not, pace Peggy Noonan, "Is he nuts?" but, " Is he conservative? "

I'm sure he is. But my definition of "conservative" is temperamental, not political. My touchstone here is the sketch of the conservative temperament given to us by the English political philosopher Michael Oakeshott :

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.

Rationalism in Politics and other essays (1962)

That fits Trump better than it fits any liberal you can think of-better also than many senior Republicans.

For example, it was one of George W. Bush's senior associates-probably Karl Rove-who scoffed at opponents of Bush's delusional foreign policy as "the reality-based community." It would be hard to think of a more un -Oakeshottian turn of phrase.

Trump has all the right instincts. And he's had the guts and courage-and, just as important, the money -to do a thing that has badly needed doing for twenty years: to smash the power of the real nuts in the GOP Establishment.

I thank him for that, and look forward to his Presidency.

[Nov 05, 2016] Economists View Paul Krugman Who Broke Politics

Notable quotes:
"... I'll be interested to see how much Hillary tries to "work with Republicans" when it comes to foreign or domestic policy, as she's promising on the campaign trail. ..."
"... In a recent interview Biden was talking about how his "friends" in the Senate like McCain, Lindsy Graham, etc. - the sane ones who hate Trump - have to come out in support of the Republican plan to block Clinton from nominating a Supreme Court judge, because of if they don't, the Koch brothers will primary them. ..."
"... While I agree that the Republican party has been interested in whatever argument will win elections and benefit their donor class, doesn't the Democratic Party also have a donor class? Haven't Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton had a close relationship with some business interests? Did anyone go to jail after the asset bubble? Did welfare reform work or simply shift the problem out of view? How complicit are the Democrats in the great risk shift? ..."
"... I would think the scorched earth politics of the neoliberals required Democrats to shift to the right if they ever hoped to win an election, again. That is what it has looked like to me. The American equivalent of New Labor in Britain. So, we have a more moderate business-interest group of Democrats and a radical business-interest group of Republicans during the past 40 years. I think Kevin Phillips has made this argument. ..."
"... Our grand experimental shift back to classical theory involved supply side tax cuts, deregulation based on the magic of new finance theory, and monetarist pro-financial monetary policy. All of which gave us the masquerade of a great moderation that ended in the mother of all asset bubbles. While we shredded the safety net. ..."
"... Now the population is learning the arguments about free trade magically lifting all boats up into the capitalist paradise has blown up. We've shifted the risk onto the working population and they couldn't bear it. ..."
"... Economists lied to the American people about trade and continue to lie about the issue day in and day out. Brainwashing kids with a silly model called comparative advantage. ..."
Nov 05, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
Peter K. : November 04, 2016 at 08:51 AM , 2016 at 08:51 AM
This is all true but Krugman always fails to tell the other side of the story.

I'll be interested to see how much Hillary tries to "work with Republicans" when it comes to foreign or domestic policy, as she's promising on the campaign trail.

The centrists always do this to push through centrist, neoliberal "solutions" which anger the left.

In a recent interview Biden was talking about how his "friends" in the Senate like McCain, Lindsy Graham, etc. - the sane ones who hate Trump - have to come out in support of the Republican plan to block Clinton from nominating a Supreme Court judge, because of if they don't, the Koch brothers will primary them.

Let's hope Hillary does something about campaign finance reform and Citizen United and takes a harder line against obstructionist Republicans.

Eric : November 04, 2016 at 09:28 AM

While I agree that the Republican party has been interested in whatever argument will win elections and benefit their donor class, doesn't the Democratic Party also have a donor class? Haven't Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton had a close relationship with some business interests? Did anyone go to jail after the asset bubble? Did welfare reform work or simply shift the problem out of view? How complicit are the Democrats in the great risk shift?

I would think the scorched earth politics of the neoliberals required Democrats to shift to the right if they ever hoped to win an election, again. That is what it has looked like to me. The American equivalent of New Labor in Britain. So, we have a more moderate business-interest group of Democrats and a radical business-interest group of Republicans during the past 40 years. I think Kevin Phillips has made this argument.

Our grand experimental shift back to classical theory involved supply side tax cuts, deregulation based on the magic of new finance theory, and monetarist pro-financial monetary policy. All of which gave us the masquerade of a great moderation that ended in the mother of all asset bubbles. While we shredded the safety net.

Now the population is learning the arguments about free trade magically lifting all boats up into the capitalist paradise has blown up. We've shifted the risk onto the working population and they couldn't bear it.

Perhaps the less partisan take-way would be - is it possible for any political candidate to get elected in this environment without bowing to the proper interests? How close did Bernie get? And, how do we fix it without first admitting that the policies of both political parties have not really addressed the social adjustments necessary to capture the benefits of globalization? We need an evolution of both political parties - not just the Republicans. If we don't get it, we can expect the Trump argument to take even deeper root.

America was rich when it had tariff walls - now it's becoming poor - Thanks economists! : November 04, 2016 at 09:43 PM
Economists lied to the American people about trade and continue to lie about the issue day in and day out. Brainwashing kids with a silly model called comparative advantage. East Asian economists including Ha Joon Chang among others debunked comparative advantage and Ricardianism long ago.

Manufacturing is everything. It is all that matters. We needed tariffs yesterday. Without them the country is lost.

[Nov 03, 2016] "Hillary Clinton Economic Team Planned Secret Meeting With Wall Street Mogul Pushing To Shift Retiree Savings To Financial Firms"

Nov 03, 2016 | www.ibtimes.com

[David Sirota, International Business Times ]. And Sirota is a busy lad–

[Nov 03, 2016] Prof. Michael Hudson on Hillary Clinton and the US Elections

Great interview. Very worthwhile to listen in full...
Notable quotes:
"... you're in the age of globalism, where a select few uber rich control everything and no one can do anything about it. ..."
"... She is every bit as banal and myopic as tRump. It is not about merit----it is about surrogates and political clans supported by gangster capitalists. ..."
therealnews.com

hipocampelofantocame • a day ago

Michael Hudson just sits there and details the exact situation and the real truth, as he has been doing for a long time now. Remember this video in six months.

HarryObrian > NilbogResident

No, you're in the age of globalism, where a select few uber rich control everything and no one can do anything about it. Everyone was warned about this over 30 years ago but there wasn't enough exposure to the facts for enough people to care or do anything about it. Now that the facts and reality have hit you have all these lazy alarmists like Hudson who prey on the fear of a few who really can't do anything about it but who haven't realized it yet. Oh well, whine on.

sufferingsuccatash > NilbogResident

Hillary is not a qualified leader either. She is every bit as banal and myopic as tRump. It is not about merit----it is about surrogates and political clans supported by gangster capitalists.

0040 • a day ago

Another great video from Mr Hudson. Von Clausewitz's axiom that "War is politics by other means" has never been made clearer.

NormDP

Hudson is right on. Trump is the lesser of two evils. Under Trump, checks and balances will remain strong and active. Under Hillary, they will disappear.

[Nov 03, 2016] Clinton will have a unique opportunity to cut grand austerity deals with all the "big elements" of Simpson-Bowles, to renege on her corporate trade promises, and to wage war with great gusto in the name of a "united" country.

Nov 03, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Carolinian November 3, 2016 at 9:07 pm

Glen Ford says Hillary Grand Bargain on the way (should she win).

But in the interim, Clinton will have a unique opportunity to cut grand austerity deals with all the "big elements" of Simpson-Bowles, to renege on her corporate trade promises, and to wage war with great gusto in the name of a "united" country. Ever since the Democratic National Convention it has been clear that the Clintonites are encouraged to consider everyone outside of their grand circle to be suspect, subversive, or depraved. Their inclusive rhetoric is really an invocation of a ruling class consensus, now that Trump has supposedly brought the ruling class together under one banner. In Hillary's tent, the boardrooms are always in session.

http://blackagendareport.com/hillary_big_tent_grand_bargain

[Nov 03, 2016] Report Indictment likely in FBIs Clinton Foundation probe

Nov 03, 2016 | www.thehill.com
Two sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI's investigations told Fox News Wednesday that a probe of the Clinton Foundation is likely to lead to an indictment.

Fox News's Bret Baier said Wednesday that the FBI probe into a possible pay-to-play scheme between Democratic presidential nominee and the Clinton Foundation has been going on for over a year. Sources told the news network that the investigation, which is conducted by the White Collar Crime division of the FBI, is a "very high priority."

One source further stated that the bureau collected "a lot of" evidence, adding that "there is an avalanche of new information coming every day." Baier also said that the Clinton Foundation probe is more expansive than previously thought, and that many individuals have been interviewed several times throughout the course of the investigation. Sources said that they are "actively and aggressively pursuing this case" and that investigations are likely to continue. Baier added that when he pressed the sources about the details of both probes, they told him that they are likely to lead to an indictment. Additionally, Baier reported that according to Fox News's sources, Clinton's private email server had been breached by at least five foreign intelligence hackers. FBI Director James Comey said in July that he could not say definitively whether her server had been breached.

[Nov 03, 2016] Secret Recordings Fueled Mutinous FBI Investigation of Clintons Despite DOJ Orders To Stand Down

Nov 03, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com
It's looking increasingly like there is an ongoing mutiny underway within the FBI as the Wall Street Journal is reporting that, according to "officials at multiple agencies", FBI agents felt they had adequate evidence, including "secret recordings of a suspect talking about the Clinton Foundation" , to pursue an investigation of the Clinton Foundation but were repeatedly obstructed by officials at the Department of Justice.

Secret recordings of a suspect talking about the Clinton Foundation fueled an internal battle between FBI agents who wanted to pursue the case and corruption prosecutors who viewed the statements as worthless hearsay, people familiar with the matter said.

The roots of the dispute lie in a disagreement over the strength of the case, these people said, which broadly centered on whether Clinton Foundation contributors received favorable treatment from the State Department under Hillary Clinton.

Senior officials in the Justice Department and the FBI didn't think much of the evidence, while investigators believed they had promising leads their bosses wouldn't let them pursue , they said.

Despite clear signals from the Justice Department to abandon the Clinton Foundation inquiries, many FBI agents refused to stand down. Then, earlier this year in February 2016, the FBI presented initial evidence at a meeting with Leslie Caldwell, the head of the DOJ's criminal division, after which agents were delivered a clear message that "we're done here." But, as the WSJ points out, DOJ became increasing frustrated with FBI agents that were " disregarding or disobeying their instructions" which subsequently prompted an emphatic "stand down" message from the DOJ to "all the offices involved."

As 2015 came to a close, the FBI and Justice Department had a general understanding that neither side would take major action on Clinton Foundation matters without meeting and discussing it first. In February, a meeting was held in Washington among FBI officials, public-integrity prosecutors and Leslie Caldwell, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division. Prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York-Mr. Capers' office-didn't attend, these people said.

The public-integrity prosecutors weren't impressed with the FBI presentation, people familiar with the discussion said. "The message was, 'We're done here,' " a person familiar with the matter said.

Justice Department officials became increasingly frustrated that the agents seemed to be disregarding or disobeying their instructions.

Following the February meeting, officials at Justice Department headquarters sent a message to all the offices involved to " stand down ,'' a person familiar with the matter said.

The FBI had secretly recorded conversations of a suspect in a public-corruption case talking about alleged deals the Clintons made , these people said. The agents listening to the recordings couldn't tell from the conversations if what the suspect was describing was accurate, but it was, they thought, worth checking out.

[Nov 03, 2016] Former UK Army Chief Trump Might Make The World Safer

www.breitbart.com
In an interview with House magazine, Lord Richards of Herstmonceux – the former Chief of the Defence staff – said Mr. Trump is "wise enough to get good people round him and probably knows that he's got to listen to them and therefore I think we should not automatically think it will be less safe".

He added: "It's non-state actors like Isis that are the biggest threat to our security. If countries and states could coalesce better to deal with these people – and I think Trump's instinct is to go down that route – then I think there's the case for saying that the world certainly won't be any less safe.

"It's that lack of understanding and empathy with each other as big power players that is a risk to us all at the moment.

"Therefore I think he would reinvigorate big power relationships, which might make the world ironically safer."

During the interview Lord Richards also discussed the somewhat controversial view that the West should partner with Russia and Bashar al-Assad to take back the Syrian city of Aleppo.

He said: "If the humanitarian situation in Syria is our major concern, which it should be – millions of lives have been ruined, hundreds of thousands have been killed – I believe there is a strong case for allowing Assad to get in there and take the city back.

"The opposition groups – many of whom are not friends of ours, they're extremists – are now intermingled with the original good opposition groups, are fighting from amongst the people. The only quick way of solving it is to allow Assad to win. There's no way the opposition groups are going to win."

Lord Richards added: "We want the humanitarian horror of Aleppo to come to a rapid halt. The best and quickest way of doing that is to encourage the opposition groups to leave. The Russians are undoubtedly using their weapons indiscriminately. If they're going to attack those groups then there is inevitably going to be civilian casualties.

"The alternative is for the West to declare a no-fly zone and that means you've got to be prepared to go to war with Russia ultimately. I see no appetite for that and nor, frankly, do I see much sense in it. It sticks in my throat to say it because I have no love for Assad.

"The fact is, the only way to get it to stop now is to allow Assad to win and win quickly and then turn on Isis with the Russians."

[Nov 03, 2016] FBI Sources Tell Fox News An Indictment Is Likely In Clinton Foundation Case Video

www.realclearpolitics.com

RealClearPolitics

Fox News Channel's Bret Baier reports the latest news about the Clinton Foundation investigation from two sources inside the FBI. He reveals five important new pieces of information in these two short clips:

[Nov 03, 2016] Podesta is also the appointed Congressional lobbyist for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Nov 03, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com
. . . _ _ _ . . . Nov 3, 2016 9:24 AM ,
" Podesta is also the appointed Congressional lobbyist for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – for the modest amount of $200,000 per month."

[Nov 03, 2016] The Lords of Capital Sic Crazy Hillary on the World Black Agenda Report

Nov 03, 2016 | blackagendareport.com
By virtually every measurement, the United States is in deep crisis, as both a society and as the headquarters of global capitalism. We can roughly measure the severity of some aspects of the crisis with the tools of economic analysis. Such an analysis is quite useful in explaining why Washington is so eager to risk war with Russia and China, whether in Syria or the South China Sea or along the ever expanding borders of NATO. To put it simply, the U.S. and western Europe become smaller, in terms of their economic influence, with every passing day, and cannot possibly maintain their political dominance in the world except by military force, coercion and terror. Those are the only cards the imperialists have left to play. The ruling circles in the U.S. are aware that time is not on their side, and it makes them crazy -- or crazier than usual.

The ruling class's own analysts tell them that the center of the world economy is moving inexorably to the East and the South; that this trend will continue for the foreseeable future; and that the U.S. is already number two by some economic measures -- and dropping. The Lords of Capital know there is no future for them in a world where the dollar is not supreme and where Wall Street's stocks, bonds and derivatives are not backed by the full weight of unchallenged empire. Put another way, U.S. imperialism is at an inflection point, with all the indicators pointing downward and no hope of reversing the trend by peaceful means.

Now, that's actually not such a bad prognosis for the United States, as a country. The U.S. is a big country, with an abundance of human and natural resources, and would do just fine in a world among equals. But, the fate of the Lords of Capital is tied to the ongoing existence of empire. They create nothing, but seek to monetize and turn a profit on everything. They cannot succeed in trade unless it is rigged, and have placed bets in their casinos that are nominally seven times more valuable than the total economic activity of planet Earth. In short, the Lords of Capital are creatures of U.S. imperial dominance; they go out of business when the empire does.

Beat the Clock

The rulers are looking class death in the face -- and it terrifies them. And when the Lords of Capital become frightened, they order their servants in politics and the war industries and the vast national security networks to take care of the problem, by any means necessary. That means militarily encircling Russia and China; arming and mobilizing tens of thousands of jihadist terrorists in Syria, in an attempt to repeat the regime change in Libya; waging a war of economic sanctions and low-level armed aggression against Iran; occupying most of the African continent through subversion of African militaries; escalating subversion in Latin America; and spying on everyone on earth with a digital connection. All this, to stop the clock that is ticking on U.S. and European world economic dominance.

Left political analysts that I greatly respect argue that Hillary Clinton and the mob she will come in with in January will pull back from apocalyptic confrontation with Russia in Syria -- that they're not really that crazy. But, I'm not at all convinced. The ruling class isn't just imagining that their days are numbered; it's really true. And rulers do get crazy when their class is standing at death's door.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

[Nov 03, 2016] The FBIs White Collar Crime Unit Is Probing The Clinton Foundation

Notable quotes:
"... In the latest update from Fox's Bret Baier , we learn that the Clinton Foundation investigation has now taken a "very high priority," perhaps courtesy of new documents revealed by Wikileaks which expressed not only a collusive element between Teneo, the Clinton Foundation and the "charitable foundation's" donors, which included the use of funds for personal gain, but also revealed deep reservations by people within the foundation about ongoing conflicts of interest. ..."
"... FBI agents are "actively and aggressively pursuing this case," and will be going back and interviewing the same people again, some for the third time, Baier's sources said. Agents also are going through what Clinton and top aides have said in previous interviews as well as the FBI 302 documents, which agents use to report interviews they conduct, to make sure notes line up, according to sources. ..."
"... As expected, the Clinton Foundation denied everything, and Foundation spokesman, Craig Minassian, told Fox news a statement: "We're not aware of any investigation into the Foundation by the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, or any United States Attorney's Office and we have not received a subpoena from any of those agencies." ..."
"... Now that details of the infighting between the DOJ and FBI regarding the Foundation probe have been made public, Loretta Lynch may have no choice but to launch an official probe, including subpoeans. ..."
"... The information follows a report over the weekend by The Wall Street Journal that four FBI field offices have been collecting information about the foundation. The probes – in addition to the revived email investigation – have fueled renewed warnings from Republicans that if Clinton is elected next week, she could take office under a cloud of investigations. ..."
"... Separately, Fox News reports that authorities also are virtually certain, i.e., "there is about a 99 percent chance", that up to five foreign intelligence agencies may have accessed and taken emails from Hillary Clinton's private server, two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations told Fox News. If so, it would suggest that the original FBI probe - which found no evidence of breach - was either incomplete or tampered with. ..."
"... In other words, Anthony Weiner may be ultimately responsible not only for the downfall of Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy, but also the collapse of the entire Clinton Foundation... which incidentally is just what Donald Trump warned could happen over a year ago. ..."
Zero Hedge
Now that thanks to first the WSJ, and then Fox News, the public is aware that a probe into the Clinton Foundation is not only a hot topic for both the FBI and the DOJ (and has managed to split the law enforcement organizations along ideological party lines), but is also actively ongoing despite the DOJ's attempts to squash it.

In the latest update from Fox's Bret Baier, we learn that the Clinton Foundation investigation has now taken a "very high priority," perhaps courtesy of new documents revealed by Wikileaks which expressed not only a collusive element between Teneo, the Clinton Foundation and the "charitable foundation's" donors, which included the use of funds for personal gain, but also revealed deep reservations by people within the foundation about ongoing conflicts of interest.

As Baier also notes, the Clinton Foundation probe has been proceeding for more than a year, led by the White-Collar Crime division.

Fox adds that even before the WikiLeaks dumps of alleged emails linked to the Clinton campaign, FBI agents had collected a great deal of evidence, and FBI agents have interviewed and re-interviewed multiple people regarding the case.

"There is an avalanche of new information coming in every day," one source told Fox News, adding some of the new information is coming from the WikiLeaks documents and new emails.

FBI agents are "actively and aggressively pursuing this case," and will be going back and interviewing the same people again, some for the third time, Baier's sources said. Agents also are going through what Clinton and top aides have said in previous interviews as well as the FBI 302 documents, which agents use to report interviews they conduct, to make sure notes line up, according to sources.

As expected, the Clinton Foundation denied everything, and Foundation spokesman, Craig Minassian, told Fox news a statement: "We're not aware of any investigation into the Foundation by the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, or any United States Attorney's Office and we have not received a subpoena from any of those agencies."

Now that details of the infighting between the DOJ and FBI regarding the Foundation probe have been made public, Loretta Lynch may have no choice but to launch an official probe, including subpoeans.

The information follows a report over the weekend by The Wall Street Journal that four FBI field offices have been collecting information about the foundation. The probes – in addition to the revived email investigation – have fueled renewed warnings from Republicans that if Clinton is elected next week, she could take office under a cloud of investigations.

"This is not just going to go away … if she ends up winning the election," Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" earlier this week.

Donald Trump has referenced this scenario, repeatedly saying on the stump this past week that her election could trigger a "crisis."

Separately, Fox News reports that authorities also are virtually certain, i.e., "there is about a 99 percent chance", that up to five foreign intelligence agencies may have accessed and taken emails from Hillary Clinton's private server, two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations told Fox News. If so, it would suggest that the original FBI probe - which found no evidence of breach - was either incomplete or tampered with.

The revelation led House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul to describe Clinton's handling of her email system during her tenure as secretary of state as "treason."

"She exposed [information] to our enemies," McCaul said on "Fox & Friends" Thursday morning. "Our adversaries have this very sensitive information. … In my opinion, quite frankly, it's treason."

McCaul, R-Texas, said that FBI Director James Comey told him previously that foreign adversaries likely had gotten into her server. When Comey publicly discussed the Clinton email case back in July, he also said that while there was no evidence hostile actors breached the server, it was "possible" they had gained access.

Clinton herself later pushed back, saying the director was merely "speculating."

But sources told Fox News that Comey should have said at the time there is an "almost certainty" that several foreign intelligence agencies hacked into the server.

The claims come as Comey's FBI not only revisits the email investigation following the discovery of additional emails on the laptop of ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner – the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin – but is proceeding in its investigation of the Clinton Foundation.

In other words, Anthony Weiner may be ultimately responsible not only for the downfall of Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy, but also the collapse of the entire Clinton Foundation... which incidentally is just what Donald Trump warned could happen over a year ago.

A summary of Baier's latest reporting is in the clip below...

[Nov 03, 2016] The FBI suddenly discloses dismissed Bill Clinton case

speisa.com

The FBI has unexpectedly published papers from an over ten-year-old investigation of former president Bill Clinton's controversial pardon of a financier, reports NTB.

The case against Clinton was dismissed without charges in 2005, and several Democrats therefore question why the 129-page report of the investigation is published right now, a few days before the election, in which Bill Clinton's wife Hillary Clinton is trying to become president.

The rage against the FBI is already great in the Democratic Party after the federal police last week announced they will investigate new emails relating to Hillary Clinton.

Financier Marc Rich was indicted for tax fraud and lived in exile in Switzerland when Bill Clinton pardoned him on his last day as president on January 20, 2001. Several reacted to the pardon, especially since Rich's ex-wife was a major donor to the Democratic Party.

The FBI started to investigate the pardon the year after.

[Nov 03, 2016] Trillions of dollars at stake as multinationals want Hillary to be elected

Notable quotes:
"... So no mention of the Department of Justice tipping off the Clinton campaign Guardian? Surely that it a pretty damning new revelation. Corrupt to the core. No of course not, ignoring wikileaks and shilling more of the same old wall to wall Anti Trump scaremongering. ..."
"... We get it, Trump is a jerk. Hillary Clinton is systemically corrupt. ..."
"... And here I was thinking the Guardian was progressive… but you'll stoop to anything to get your chosen corporatist candidate over the line eh? ..."
"... Obama changed his tone. The Dems are in desperate mode. Kinda nice to see them on the defense. However they will never change their globalist agenda to sell off the rest of middle class. ..."
"... Trump against the entire establishment with unlimited funds. They sent out their top politicians/celebrities in full force and still can't flip Florida. If he wins with only popular support it will be the best upset in modern history. ..."
"... Obama has destroyed the nation with his identity politics, his lies, his elitist BS, his lack of awareness of the constitution, his constant pronouncing of guilt or innocence from the WH, his inviting key players in the BLM movement and the various idiot celebs like Jay-Z and Beyonce, to the WH, his arrogance, etc. ..."
"... As the above LA Times poll shows, Trump now has a monstrous 5.4% lead. His supporters are growing on a daily basis, as he continues to attract African-American supporters and Democrats in record-breaking numbers for a Republican candidate. ..."
"... Obama is a master of calling people racists without actually coming out with it. He is also a master of playing on people's fears. He has been such a disappointment. Instead of uniting the country he has kept it divided. ..."
"... The Obamas are hypocrites of the highest order,In 2007/8 they said the Clintons were toxic and Hillary should not be allowed anywhere near the White House. The Obamas cronyism for the powerful and elite makes my blood boil ..."
"... The Obamas swept into the White House on a dream ticket provided in the main by the black vote, With the first 2 yrs of hobnobbing with the rich, powerful and famous he was slow to do a thing for the voter and all of 8 yrs on he still hasn't and we all know he never will ? ..."
"... The condescending Obamas are now out rallying for the very same woman they denounced 8 yrs earlier. They are in essence expecting the voter to forget everything that went on before and vote the impeached X President and his caustic wife ..."
"... Sure... He's all that. But he said he doesn't want a nuclear war with Russia. Hillary on the other hand is really keen on the idea. All her MIC backers agree. ..."
"... And clinton has the official endorsement of all the republican neocons who wrote and implemented the project for the new American century which embarked your country on a series of illegal wars in the middle east, millions of people dead, and created international terrorism. Oh and your national debt rose to trillions and your country's Infrastructure is falling apart and you have absolutely nothing tangible to show for it. Good luck with Hillary guys. ..."
"... "But it was Hillary Clinton, in an interview with Tom Brokaw, who quote 'paid tribute' to Ronald Reagan's economic and foreign policy. She championed NAFTA - even though it has cost South Carolina thousands of jobs. And worst of all, it was Hillary Clinton who voted for George Bush's war in Iraq. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton. She'll say anything, and change nothing. It's time to turn the page. ..."
"... Shouldn't it be illegal, for Obama, a government official, to attempt to influence the election? The Guardian already reported that Obama has been campaigning more than any sitting president before him. ..."
"... And besides, is that what he does on taxpayers' dime? Shouldn't he in general be addressing important issues of the country? ..."
Nov 03, 2016 | www.theguardian.com

fedback 6h ago

Trillions of dollars at stake.

Massive multi billion dollar corporate entities and financial conglomerates who have a vested self interest in the election will throw everything they have got into the system. No effort too extreme, nothing out of bounds.


65jangle 6h ago

So no mention of the Department of Justice tipping off the Clinton campaign Guardian? Surely that it a pretty damning new revelation. Corrupt to the core. No of course not, ignoring wikileaks and shilling more of the same old wall to wall Anti Trump scaremongering.

We get it, Trump is a jerk. Hillary Clinton is systemically corrupt.

And here I was thinking the Guardian was progressive… but you'll stoop to anything to get your chosen corporatist candidate over the line eh?

BlueberryCompote -> ByzantiumNovum 6h ago
The lunatic Russophobia of the US State Department makes your intervention unnecessary as Obama probably was the last bulwark against insanity.

Rigobertus 7h ago

Let's not forget the dead:
America Betrayed - Bush Administration, FBI Complicity In 911:
http://www.rense.com/general25/fb.htm

Juillette 7h ago

Obama changed his tone. The Dems are in desperate mode. Kinda nice to see them on the defense. However they will never change their globalist agenda to sell off the rest of middle class.

Trump against the entire establishment with unlimited funds. They sent out their top politicians/celebrities in full force and still can't flip Florida. If he wins with only popular support it will be the best upset in modern history.


aldebaranredstar 8h ago

Obama has destroyed the nation with his identity politics, his lies, his elitist BS, his lack of awareness of the constitution, his constant pronouncing of guilt or innocence from the WH, his inviting key players in the BLM movement and the various idiot celebs like Jay-Z and Beyonce, to the WH, his arrogance, etc.

He has not only destroyed the Dem Party--which is weaker than it has ever been--but the entire nation with his Executive orders that got overturned by the SCOTUS--the man is pure hell. A bad leader is a bad leader, no matter the color. People are disgusted with his actions as POTUS and that is the bottom line cause of the rise of DT. Obama has waged war in his own nation--not only overseas. Peace Prize--HAHAHA.


Flugler 8h ago

Walkover;

As the above LA Times poll shows, Trump now has a monstrous 5.4% lead. His supporters are growing on a daily basis, as he continues to attract African-American supporters and Democrats in record-breaking numbers for a Republican candidate.


In addition to this, the polls may be horribly off, as Trump has what many are calling the "monster vote" waiting in the wings. This is in reference to the stunning amount of previously unregistered voters who have never voted in their life but plan on showing up to the polls to support Donald Trump, as internal polling is showing.

Further supporting how strong his momentum is across all categories is the fact that Donald Trump now has the majority of support across ALL age categories. A huge development, considering that he has been struggling with young voters throughout much of his campaign.

rocjoc43rd 8h ago

Obama is a master of calling people racists without actually coming out with it. He is also a master of playing on people's fears. He has been such a disappointment. Instead of uniting the country he has kept it divided. I wonder if he is keeping the country safe while he spends the next week campaigning for his replacement.

mandyjeancole 8h ago

The Obamas are hypocrites of the highest order,In 2007/8 they said the Clintons were toxic and Hillary should not be allowed anywhere near the White House. The Obamas cronyism for the powerful and elite makes my blood boil

The Obamas swept into the White House on a dream ticket provided in the main by the black vote, With the first 2 yrs of hobnobbing with the rich, powerful and famous he was slow to do a thing for the voter and all of 8 yrs on he still hasn't and we all know he never will ?

The condescending Obamas are now out rallying for the very same woman they denounced 8 yrs earlier. They are in essence expecting the voter to forget everything that went on before and vote the impeached X President and his caustic wife another bite of the proverbial cherry, Donald Trumps somewhat blundering campaign has been mired in his apparent misogyny and he has come in for the most horrendous criticism by the world's press while Mrs. Clintons lies and, deceit up until now were considered acceptable for a 30 yr veteran of politics.

Mr. Trump maybe an all-American dreamer, he may not always come across as the most coherent, but he loves his Country. and he wants what's best for it.....If America is looking for mistakes made look no further than Europe, The powers that be.. have made the most catastrophic decisions that have in turn left the once proud cultures of Europe in the grip of Islamic fundamentalist whose barbaric in doctoring wants to take us back a 1000 yrs. Give Mr. Trump 4 yrs.. its not too long..He just might surprise you. MJC

Meep_Meep 8h ago

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump decried Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as "the candidate of yesterday," calling himself and his supporters "the movement of the future."

Yeah...the future!

DeAngelOfPi -> Brighton181 8h ago

Sure... He's all that. But he said he doesn't want a nuclear war with Russia. Hillary on the other hand is really keen on the idea. All her MIC backers agree.

SoloLoMejor -> PostTrotskyite 9h ago

And clinton has the official endorsement of all the republican neocons who wrote and implemented the project for the new American century which embarked your country on a series of illegal wars in the middle east, millions of people dead, and created international terrorism. Oh and your national debt rose to trillions and your country's Infrastructure is falling apart and you have absolutely nothing tangible to show for it. Good luck with Hillary guys.

RememberRemember 9h ago

2016 Obama, perhaps you would like a word with 2008 Obama.

Obama: "I'm Barack Obama, running for president and I approve this message."

Announcer: "It's what's wrong with politics today. Hillary Clinton will say anything to get elected. Now she's making false attacks on Barack Obama.

"The Washington Post says Clinton isn't telling the truth. Obama 'did not say that he liked the ideas of Republicans.' In fact, Obama's led the fight to raise the minimum wage, close corporate tax loopholes and cut taxes for the middle class.

"But it was Hillary Clinton, in an interview with Tom Brokaw, who quote 'paid tribute' to Ronald Reagan's economic and foreign policy. She championed NAFTA - even though it has cost South Carolina thousands of jobs. And worst of all, it was Hillary Clinton who voted for George Bush's war in Iraq.

"Hillary Clinton. She'll say anything, and change nothing. It's time to turn the page. Paid for by Obama for America."


calderonparalapaz 9h ago

A Hillary ad should be about Clinton Inc as the american dream. Thanks Teneo!

"Until the Friday blockbuster news that the FBI was reopening its probe into the Hillary email server, the biggest overhang facing the Clinton Campaign was the escalating scandal involving the Clinton Foundation, Doug Band's consultancy firm Teneo, and Bill Clinton who as a result of a leaked memo emerged was generously compensated for potential political favors by prominent corporate clients using Teneo as a pass-thru vehicle for purchasing influence.

In a section of the memo entitled "Leveraging Teneo For The Foundation," Band spelled out all of the donations he solicited from Teneo "clients" for the Clinton Foundation. In all, there are roughly $14mm of donations listed with the largest contributors being Coca-Cola, Barclays, The Rockefeller Foundation and Laureate International Universities. Some of these are shown below (the full details can be found in "Leaked Memo Exposes Shady Dealings Between Clinton Foundation Donors And Bill's "For-Profit" Activities")"

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-30/doug-band-john-podesta-if-story-gets-out-we-are-screwed

hadeze242 9h ago

the more the media hush up on Huma Abedin, the more there is to know. it was her & criminally accused Weiner's PC which (in a folder innocuously labelled) had 650,000 emails. Abedin comments "she did not now how the 650,000 emails got there" (sic). the US media continues to cover up this aspect of the Trio story: Abedin-Clinton-Weiner... the fact that Weiner is buddy with Israel's Netanyahu simply adds to this intertwined messy cover-up.

BoSelecta 9h ago

The Clintonite corruption spreads in to the Justice Department:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/02/justice-department-official-gave-clinton-camp-heads-up-about-testimony.html

vr13vr 9h ago

Shouldn't it be illegal, for Obama, a government official, to attempt to influence the election? The Guardian already reported that Obama has been campaigning more than any sitting president before him.

And besides, is that what he does on taxpayers' dime? Shouldn't he in general be addressing important issues of the country?

ALostIguana -> vr13vr 9h ago

Hatch Act explicitly excludes the President and Vice-President. They can take part in political campaigning. Most other members of the executive are constrained by the Hatch Act.


[Nov 03, 2016] FBI investigating Clinton Foundation pay for play scheme

Notable quotes:
"... FBI agents have interviewed and re-interviewed multiple people on the foundation case, which is looking into possible pay for play interaction between then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. The FBI's White Collar Crime Division is handling the investigation. ..."
"... Even before the WikiLeaks dumps of alleged emails linked to the Clinton campaign, FBI agents had collected a great deal of evidence, law enforcement sources tell Fox News. ..."
"... "There is an avalanche of new information coming in every day," one source told Fox News, who added some of the new information is coming from the WikiLeaks documents and new emails. ..."
Nov 03, 2016 | speisa.com

A second FBI investigation involving Hillary Clinton is ongoing. The investigation to uncover corruption by the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton, is given high priority and now runs parallel with the reopened FBI case of her using a private email server to avoid the Federal Records Act.

The FBI's investigation into the Clinton Foundation that has been going on for more than a year has now taken a "very high priority," separate sources with intimate knowledge of the probe tell Fox News .

FBI agents have interviewed and re-interviewed multiple people on the foundation case, which is looking into possible pay for play interaction between then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. The FBI's White Collar Crime Division is handling the investigation.

Even before the WikiLeaks dumps of alleged emails linked to the Clinton campaign, FBI agents had collected a great deal of evidence, law enforcement sources tell Fox News.

"There is an avalanche of new information coming in every day," one source told Fox News, who added some of the new information is coming from the WikiLeaks documents and new emails.

FBI agents are "actively and aggressively pursuing this case," and will be going back and interviewing the same people again, some for the third time, sources said.

Agents are also going through what Clinton and top aides have said in previous interviews and the FBI 302, documents agents use to report interviews they conduct, to make sure notes line up, according to sources.

[Oct 31, 2016] The Perilous Middle Ground That Clinton Represents

Oct 31, 2016 | www.theamericanconservative.com
notices the dubious "middle ground" rhetoric that is being used to justify Clinton's foreign policy in advance:

All of this loses sight of how much the framing effects have skewed this entire discussion. Bush's signature use of military force and the defining initiative of his presidency-the invasion of Iraq-was an unusually extreme act as measured either by past U.S. foreign policy or standards of international conduct that the United States expects of others.

One of the many flaws in the idea that the U.S. should seek a "middle ground" between Bush and Obama is that it treats their respective records as offering equally damaging and extreme alternatives. Of course, the cost to the U.S. from the two presidencies is drastically different. Bush's legacy was to launch wars that have cost trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives, while Obama's has been his failure to extricate the U.S. from them at a significant but much reduced cost. Obama has certainly made some very serious and even indefensible mistakes (supporting the war on Yemen being among the worst), but in terms of the damage done to U.S. interests the costs have been much lower.

To believe that the U.S. needs to "moderate" between Bush's disasters and Obama's failures is to believe that the U.S. needs a foreign policy that will be even more costly in American lives and money than the one we have right now.

That is not only not a "moderate" position to take, but it is also a highly ideological one that insists on the necessity of U.S. "leadership" no matter how much it costs us.

The 'middle ground" that Clinton offers is no middle ground at all, but rather represents moving the U.S. in the direction of one of the worst foreign policy records in our history. Obama's great foreign policy failure was that he could not or would not move the U.S. away from the disastrous policies of the Bush era, and under Clinton there won't even be the pretense that the U.S. should try to do this.

[Oct 31, 2016] As Hillary Clintons Campaign Falters, Progressive Presidential Nominee Jill Stein Has Opening to Rise - Breitbart

Oct 31, 2016 | www.breitbart.com
Jill Stein to win over the hearts of some progressives and jump start her far-left " people-powered " movement.

"This is Jill Stein's moment," said longtime Democratic pollster and Fox News contributor Pat Caddell.

"There are many Clinton voters who would rather vote their conscience than vote for a major party. According to the latest Breitbart/Gravis poll, when given the choice of whether you should vote for a major party candidate or vote your conscience, 44% of Clinton voters said you should vote your conscience," Caddell explained.

Even before the FBI director's dramatic announcement on Friday, the ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll indicated that "loosely affiliated or reluctant Clinton supporters"- which includes white women and young voters under the age of 30- seem to be floating off and "look less likely to vote."

Caddell explained that the polling data suggests "there are many people who are ambivalent about Clinton who don't want to vote for Trump. Given these new revelations from WikiLeaks and the re-intensity of the concern regarding the corruption of her emails, these ambivalent voters need a place to go and Jill Stein-being not only a progressive woman, but an honest progressive woman-is the obvious choice for so many of these voters, particularly for those who supported Bernie Sanders."

Indeed, nearly 60 percent of voters- including 43 percent of Democrats- believe America needs a third major political party, according to a Gallup poll released late last month.

As one former Bernie Sanders supporter told Breitbart News, "It's come to this: voting for Hillary Clinton is voting for the lesser of two evils. But voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil, and I'm tired of voting for evil. That's why I'm voting for Jill Stein. "

This sentiment has been echoed by Stein herself who has argued, "it's time to reject the lesser of two evils and stand up for the greater good."

Stein seems ready to capitalize on the FBI's announcement as well as the steady stream of WikiLeaks revelations that have exposed, what Stein has characterized as, the Clinton camp's "hostility" to progressives.

"The FBI has re-opened the Clinton investigation. Will the American people rise up and vote for honest change?" Stein asked on Friday, via Twitter.

... ... ...

Clinton's strained relationship with progressives has been well documented and could present Stein– who has demonstrated a remarkable ability to articulately prosecute the progressive case against Clinton– with an opening, especially as polling reveals a significant chunk of Clinton voters believe voting their conscience ought to trump voting for a major political party.

As Politico reported in a piece titled "WikiLeaks poisons Hillary's relationship with left" :

Some of the left's most influential voices and groups are taking offense at the way they and their causes were discussed behind their backs by Clinton and some of her closest advisers in the emails, which swipe liberal heroes and causes as "puritanical," "pompous", "naive", "radical" and "dumb," calling some "freaks," who need to "get a life." […] among progressive operatives, goodwill for Clinton - and confidence in key advisers featured in the emails including John Podesta, Neera Tanden and Jake Sullivan - is eroding…

Even before the FBI's announcement, many noted that it was becoming increasingly difficult to view a vote for Clinton as anything other than a vote to continue the worst aspects of political corruption.

As columnist Kim Strassel recently wrote , the one thing in this election of which one can be certain is that "a Hillary Clinton presidency will be built, from the ground up, on self-dealing, crony favors, and an utter disregard for the law." As such, "anyone who pulls the lever for Mrs. Clinton takes responsibility for setting up the nation for all the blatant corruption that will follow," Strassel concludes . "She just doesn't have a whole lot of integrity," said far-left progressive Cornel West.

West endorsed Stein over Clinton explaining Stein is "the only progressive woman in the race."

"The Clinton train- [of] Wall Street, security surveillance, militaristic- is not going in the same direction I'm going," West told Bill Maher earlier this year.

She's a neoliberal… [I] believe neoliberalism is a disaster when it comes to poor people and when it comes to people in other parts of the world dealing with U.S. foreign policy and militarism. Oh, absolutely. Ask the people in Libya about that. Ask the people in the West Bank about that.

West has separately explained that Clinton's "militarism makes the world a less safe place" and that her globalist agenda created the "right-wing populism" that has fueled Trump's rise.

Clinton policies of the 1990s generated inequality, mass incarceration, privatization of schools and Wall Street domination. There is also a sense that the Clinton policies helped produce the right-wing populism that we're seeing now in the country. And we think she's going to come to the rescue? That's not going to happen.

"It's too easy to view him [Trump] as an isolated individual and bash him," West told Maher. "He's speaking to the pain in the country because white, working class brothers have been overlooked by globalization, by these trade deals"– trade deals which Stein also opposes.

Stein has railed against the passage of TPP, which she and her party have described as "NAFTA on steroids" that would "enrich wealthy corporations by exporting jobs and pushing down wages." They have argued that the deal essentially amounts to a "global corporate coup" that "would give corporations more power than nations" by letting them "challenge our laws".

#ImVoting4JillBecause she is the only positive choice for our children's future #votegreen #Election2016 #JillStein @DrJillStein pic.twitter.com/ui1RsqQyrz

- Beebz the Squirrel (@SquirrelBeebz) October 25, 2016

Stein is against the "massive expanding wars," "the meltdown of the climate," "the massive Wall Street bailouts," and "the offshoring of our jobs."

Pointing to Clinton's "dangerous and immoral" militarism, Stein has warned that "a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for war" and has explained how under a Clinton presidency, "we could very quickly slide into nuclear war" or could start an air-war with Russia.

"No matter how her staff tries to rebrand her" Clinton is "not a progressive," Stein has said -rather Clinton is a "corporatist hawk" that " surrounds herself with people who are hostile progressives" such as Debbie Wasserman Schultz "after she sabotaged Bernie [Sanders]." Stein has warned progressives that the role of corporate Democrats like Clinton is to "prevent progressives from defying corporate rule."

#ImVoting4JillBecause pic.twitter.com/bg05RTdHI9

- Canary Coalminer (@BigTinyBird) October 23, 2016

Stein has made a point to highlight the fact that "we're now seeing many Republican leaders join Hillary Clinton in a neoliberal uni-party that will fuel right-wing extremism," by continuing to push its "neoliberal agenda [of] globalization, privatization, deregulation, [and] austerity for the rest of us."

In contrast to Clinton's corporatist "uni-party", Stein and her party have explained that their campaign represents a "people's party with a populist progressive agenda" that-unlike Democrats and Republicans- is not "funded by big corporate interests including Wall St. Banks, fossil fuel giants, & war profiteer."

Stein is a Harvard Medical School graduate, a mother to two sons, and a practicing physician, who became an environmental-health activist and organizer in the late 1990s. As the Green Party's 2012 presidential candidate, Stein already holds the record for the most votes ever received by a female candidate for president in a general election.

In Jill Stein, her party writes, "progressives have a peace candidate not beholden to the billionaire class."

[Oct 30, 2016] FBI Investigation Into Bribery With Clinton Foundation Spans Nation, Multiple Field Offices, Says WSJ

Notable quotes:
"... It appears there was rift between the FBI and the DOJ with how to move forward with the investigation. Agents in the Washington office were directed to focus on a separate issue relating to the actions of former Virginia Governor and Clinton Foundation Board Member Terry McAuliffe. Agents inside the FBI believed they could build a stronger case if the investigation of McAuliffe and the foundation were combined. ..."
"... FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe seemed to be caught in the middle of the fight between DOJ officials who appeared to want to slow down or shut down the investigation and FBI agents who were eager to pour more resources into the investigation. ..."
"... The story gets more complicated when you factor in that McCabe's wife, Dr. Jill McCabe had received a $467,500 campaign contribution in 2015 for a state senate race from McAuliffe . ..."
"... CNN also reported that multiple field offices were "in agreement a public corruption investigation should be launched" with Clinton Foundation officials as a target. The cable news network reported the investigation would have looked at "conflicts of interest by foreign donors and official acts by Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. ..."
Oct 30, 2016 | www.breitbart.com
FBI investigators from across the country have been following leads into reports of bribery involving the Clinton Foundation. Multiple field offices have been involved in the investigation.

A report in Sunday's Wall Street Journal (WSJ) by Devlin Barrett revealed that agents assigned to the New York field office have been carrying the bulk of the work in investigating the Clinton Foundations. They have received assistance from the FBI field office in Little Rock according to "people familiar with the matter, the WSJ reported. Other offices, including Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., have been collecting evidence to regarding "financial crimes or influence-peddling."

As far back as February 2016, FBI agents made presentation to the Department of Justice (DOJ), the WSJ's sources stated. "The meeting didn't go well," they wrote. While some sources said the FBI's evidence was not strong enough, others believed the DOJ had no intention from the start of going any further. Barrett wrote that the DOJ officials were "stern, icy and dismissive of the case."

Barrett wrote, "'That was one of the weirdest meetings I've ever been to,' one participant told others afterward, according to people familiar with the matter."

It appears there was rift between the FBI and the DOJ with how to move forward with the investigation. Agents in the Washington office were directed to focus on a separate issue relating to the actions of former Virginia Governor and Clinton Foundation Board Member Terry McAuliffe. Agents inside the FBI believed they could build a stronger case if the investigation of McAuliffe and the foundation were combined.

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe seemed to be caught in the middle of the fight between DOJ officials who appeared to want to slow down or shut down the investigation and FBI agents who were eager to pour more resources into the investigation.

Barrett wrote, "'Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?' Mr. McCabe asked, according to people familiar with the conversation. After a pause, the official replied, 'Of course not,' these people said."

Some of the WSJ sources told Barrett that a "stand down" order had been given to the FBI agents by McCabe. Others denied that no such order was given.

Preet Bharara, an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, appears to have taken in interest in moving forward from the DOJ side, the Daily Caller's Richard Pollock reported in August.

Pollock wrote:

The New York-based probe is being led by Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Bharara's prosecutorial aggressiveness has resulted in a large number of convictions of banks, hedge funds and Wall Street insiders.

He said prosecutorial support could come from multiple U.S. Attorneys Offices and stated this was a major departure from other "centralized FBI investigations."

The story gets more complicated when you factor in that McCabe's wife, Dr. Jill McCabe had received a $467,500 campaign contribution in 2015 for a state senate race from McAuliffe .

CNN also reported that multiple field offices were "in agreement a public corruption investigation should be launched" with Clinton Foundation officials as a target. The cable news network reported the investigation would have looked at "conflicts of interest by foreign donors and official acts by Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

[Oct 30, 2016] Former FBI Official Calls Bill, Hillary Clinton a Crime Family

Notable quotes:
"... "The problem here is this investigation was never a real investigation," he said. "That's the problem. They never had a grand jury empanelled, and the reason they never had a grand jury empanelled, I'm sure, is Loretta Lynch would not go along with that." ..."
"... Kallstrom blamed the FBI leadership under FBI Director James Comey as the reason the investigation was held back, but not the rest of the bureau. ..."
"... "The agents are furious with what's going on, I know that for a fact," he said. ..."
Oct 30, 2016 | www.breitbart.com
A former FBI official said Sunday that Bill and Hillary Clinton are part of a "crime family" and added that top officials impeded the investigation into Clinton's email server while she was secretary of state.

Former assistant FBI director James Kallstrom praised Donald Trump before he offered a take down of the Clintons in a radio interview with John Catsimatidis, The Hill reported.

"The Clintons, that's a crime family, basically," Kallstrom said. "It's like organized crime. I mean the Clinton Foundation is a cesspool."

Kallstrom, best known for spearheading the investigation into the explosion of TWA flight 800 in the late '90s, called Clinton a "pathological liar" and blamed Attorney General Loretta Lynch for botching the Clinton email server investigation.

"The problem here is this investigation was never a real investigation," he said. "That's the problem. They never had a grand jury empanelled, and the reason they never had a grand jury empanelled, I'm sure, is Loretta Lynch would not go along with that."

"God forbid we put someone like that in the White House," he added of Clinton.

Kallstrom blamed the FBI leadership under FBI Director James Comey as the reason the investigation was held back, but not the rest of the bureau.

"The agents are furious with what's going on, I know that for a fact," he said.

[Oct 30, 2016] Clinton Foundation FBI Investigation Confirmed By Former Assistant FBI Director

Oct 30, 2016 | www.breitbart.com
Saturday on CNN while discussing the FBI reopening the investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's use of a private unsecured email server during her tenure as secretary of state, former Assistant Director of the FBI Thomas Fuentes said, "The FBI has an intensive investigation ongoing into the Clinton Foundation."

He added, "The FBI made the determination that the investigation would go forward as a comprehensive unified case and be coordinated, so that investigation is ongoing and Huma Abedin and her role and activities concerning secretary of state in the nature of the foundation and possible pay to play, that's still being looked at and now."

[Oct 29, 2016] Was Bill Clinton stoned yesterday in Arizona

Oct 29, 2016 | www.fireandreamitchell.com
March 21, 2016

What is wrong with Bill Clinton? He just doesn't look right these days. Is he just stoned, or is whatever is left of the rapist's brain drying up? Check out Bill Clinton yesterday in Arizona where they forced Gabby Giffords to stumble through a speech for Hillary Clinton. Something about BJ just doesn't seem right.

Something isn't right with Bill Clinton. Did he pick up some sort of disease from one of his trips to Jeffrey Epstein's Pedo Island? He looked like he was about to pass out. You ALMOST want to feel sorry for the old fogey, but I don't. dance...dancetotheradio 7 months ago

Late stage syphilis?
Ed Grafke 7 months ago
Slick Willie may be Sick Willy,

Never met a skirt he didn't hike in the Crooked Wagg'in Finger Days of Yore. Firing blanks.. he won't have wedlock problems of Pal Webster Hubbell.

Nor will a poor little baby suffer with the horrible affliction. 2 out of 3, It's more positive, than negative. Bill has Great Health Care...He'll be Fine.

[Oct 29, 2016] Top donors to Hillary campaign

www.moonofalabama.org
Killary PAC | Oct 28, 2016 1:31:52 PM | 20

The Top 10

Rank Name Donations
1 Tom Steyer $38 million
2 Donald Sussman $23.4 million
3 Miriam & Sheldon Adelson $21.5 million
4 Robert Mercer $20.2 million
5 Michael Bloomberg $20.1 million
6 Fred Eychaner $20 million
7 Paul Singer $17.3 million
8 George Soros $16.5 million
9 Maurice "Hank" Greenberg $15.1 million
10 Elizabeth & Richard Uihlein $14 million

[Oct 29, 2016] Sharon Day Rescind your Clinton Endorsement

Notable quotes:
"... After weeks of revealing information behind the Clinton Foundation and their self-motivated fundraising tactics, there is no other word to describe the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. She's engaged in behavior that is disqualifying to be a candidate for the highest office, and yet dozens of American legislators, leaders and even media outlets have endorsed her candidacy. ..."
"... She's swindled countries out of donations, she's swindled corporate America with her lofty promises and she's swindled the American people – over and over and over again. ..."
"... So why now, after the knowledge that top-tier corporations and other wealthy supporters paid to meet with both the former president and the now Democratic presidential nominee should we believe that she would change her behavior to act in the best interest of the country? In fact, one could argue that this information is a window into how Clinton would rule the land. She'd have an eye out for only herself and her family, while leaving the American people - who so desperately want a change - with the same old Clinton-first approach. ..."
"... Beyond her blatant disregard for the American public, Clinton's cavalier approach to national security has come into question from a myriad of angles. From the secret server in her home basement that received hundreds of confidential email communications, to the lack of response she paid to the Congress when asked about the issue, to the suggestion that she made promises to the FBI that would cause them to "look the other way" when ruling on the secret email server. And then how about the millions of dollars the Clinton Foundation took from countries that are of disrepute, not to mention those that show little concern for women's rights. ..."
Oct 29, 2016 | www.breitbart.com
It was 25 years ago that Martin Scorsese delighted audiences with his movie rendition of the Jim Thompson novel, "The Grifters."

The story is an ingenious tale of deception and betrayal. By definition a grifter is someone who has made money dishonestly, in a swindle or a confidence game.

After weeks of revealing information behind the Clinton Foundation and their self-motivated fundraising tactics, there is no other word to describe the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. She's engaged in behavior that is disqualifying to be a candidate for the highest office, and yet dozens of American legislators, leaders and even media outlets have endorsed her candidacy.

She's swindled countries out of donations, she's swindled corporate America with her lofty promises and she's swindled the American people – over and over and over again.

So why now, after the knowledge that top-tier corporations and other wealthy supporters paid to meet with both the former president and the now Democratic presidential nominee should we believe that she would change her behavior to act in the best interest of the country? In fact, one could argue that this information is a window into how Clinton would rule the land. She'd have an eye out for only herself and her family, while leaving the American people - who so desperately want a change - with the same old Clinton-first approach.

Beyond her blatant disregard for the American public, Clinton's cavalier approach to national security has come into question from a myriad of angles. From the secret server in her home basement that received hundreds of confidential email communications, to the lack of response she paid to the Congress when asked about the issue, to the suggestion that she made promises to the FBI that would cause them to "look the other way" when ruling on the secret email server. And then how about the millions of dollars the Clinton Foundation took from countries that are of disrepute, not to mention those that show little concern for women's rights.

The most recent set of Clinton emails that have come to light are of such great concern to national security that the FBI has announced they will conduct a new investigation of Clinton's emails. This is just ELEVEN days before the country goes to the polls and decides on our next president.

Where has the leadership gone in this country? Since when do reputable news outlets stand behind candidates who have proven themselves over and over to be out for themselves and dangerous, even? It used to be that newspapers and legislators and leaders who speak from a platform would find themselves offering wisdom. Wisdom about which candidate was best for the job – based on the facts. Instead we find ourselves sifting through the list of endorsements for Clinton with little or no mention of her disregard for the law, her lack of concern for those she serves, and the careless nature in which she has proven herself to lead.

Now that the newspapers know better and have written about the truth in their own words, how can the media and elected officials stand by their decision to endorse her? They need to rescind their endorsement. That includes President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

In a quote from his book Thompson describes one of the characters, "Anyone who deprived her of something she wanted, deserved what he got."

Sounds all too familiar to the Democratic nominee for grifter-in-chief. If she's not changed by now, who is to say she'd be any different when she was the most powerful elected official in the United States. Once a grifter, always a grifter.

Sharon Day is the Republican National Committee Co-Chair.

[Oct 29, 2016] Hallelujah! here it guys! the internal Clinton Foundation attachment that connects the shady dots!

Notable quotes:
"... Wow, they clearly state Bill Clinton uses golfing to establish communication with donors ..."
"... "People with knowledge of the call in both camps said it was one of many that Clinton and Trump have had over the years, whether about golf or donations to the Clinton Foundation. But the call in May was considered especially sensitive, coming soon after Hillary Rodham Clinton had declared her own presidential run the month before." - source ..."
"... In total, The Wall Street Journal reports, two dozen companies and groups, plus the Abu Dhabi government, gave Bill more than $8 million for speeches, even as they were hoping for favorable treatment from Hillary's bureaucracy. And 15 of them also gave at least $5 million total to the foundation. ..."
"... Can someone help me see the shadiness, what am I missing? unless the "foundation donors require significant maintenance to keep them engaged and supportive of the foundation" means they are giving them political favors then it just looks like the clinton foundation is accepting donations and that is it. ..."
"... so pro-clinton sources have been propping up the Clinton Foundation for years as the pinnacle of charity while not really being able to explain where all the money goes; ..."
"... This shows that they require 20 million a year to operate with 8 employees. It shows they have to raid the Clinton Global Initiative for $6M to $11M every year to cover that budget hole... ..."
"... This is useful information that is probably not reflected on tax returns. Most importantly it shows that when Bill was offered a shady $8 million dollar over 2 year deal that would appear to be a conflict of interest while Hillary was Sect of State, Podesta and Band suggested hiding the money as payment for speeches. This boosts the accusation that the speeches are payments for quid pro quo. ..."
"... Does any of it contradict the MOU she signed when appointed Sec State? https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/34993 ..."
Oct 29, 2016 | www.reddit.com

Wow, they clearly state Bill Clinton uses golfing to establish communication with donors

beccairene 2 points 3 points 4 points 9 hours ago (1 child)

Wait, isn't golfing what Loretta Lynch claimed to have discussed with WJC on the plane?

robaloie 2 points 3 points 4 points 8 hours ago * (0 children)

He also said they were talking about golf when he called Donald trump last year before trump decided to run.

"People with knowledge of the call in both camps said it was one of many that Clinton and Trump have had over the years, whether about golf or donations to the Clinton Foundation. But the call in May was considered especially sensitive, coming soon after Hillary Rodham Clinton had declared her own presidential run the month before." - source

Not_a_Fake 8 points 9 points 10 points 18 hours ago (0 children)

Question-Are we to assume that any OTHER speaking engagements that WJC did were not because of the foundation, but from when his wife was SOS?

In total, The Wall Street Journal reports, two dozen companies and groups, plus the Abu Dhabi government, gave Bill more than $8 million for speeches, even as they were hoping for favorable treatment from Hillary's bureaucracy. And 15 of them also gave at least $5 million total to the foundation.

soupy_scoopy 113 points 114 points 115 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Has this been cleared by CNN for me to view?

BigLizardz 2 points 3 points 4 points 19 hours ago (0 children)

Lol I'm actually too scared to click in wikileak/dikileak links. #1984?

OldDirtyPlastered 14 points 15 points 16 points 22 hours ago (0 children)

Good question. I don't want to do anything illegal.

Uncle_Touchy_ 17 points 18 points 19 points 1 day ago (0 children)

You'll have to ask Downy McDaterape or whatever that anchor's name is. You know the one.

moreoverhereafter 4 points 5 points 6 points 1 day ago * (5 children)

Can someone help me see the shadiness, what am I missing? unless the "foundation donors require significant maintenance to keep them engaged and supportive of the foundation" means they are giving them political favors then it just looks like the clinton foundation is accepting donations and that is it.

5pointlight [ S ] 81 points 82 points 83 points 1 day ago * (4 children)

so pro-clinton sources have been propping up the Clinton Foundation for years as the pinnacle of charity while not really being able to explain where all the money goes; because it sure doesn't seem to be going to Haiti or many other charities.

This shows that they require 20 million a year to operate with 8 employees. It shows they have to raid the Clinton Global Initiative for $6M to $11M every year to cover that budget hole... so this gives credence to the suspicion that the CF is hiding money somewhere (laundering money to Clintons and friends). Also this document shows how teneo made Bill Clinton " more than $50 million in for-profit activity we have personally helped to secure for President Clinton to date or the $66 million in future contracts" as of 2011.

This is useful information that is probably not reflected on tax returns. Most importantly it shows that when Bill was offered a shady $8 million dollar over 2 year deal that would appear to be a conflict of interest while Hillary was Sect of State, Podesta and Band suggested hiding the money as payment for speeches. This boosts the accusation that the speeches are payments for quid pro quo.

Fake_Unicron comment score below threshold -12 points -11 points -10 points 16 hours ago (0 children)

Any sources on that, like the foundation spending?

How have you compared their spending reports to those from other charities?

In contrast to your unsourced allegations:

https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=2284

How would the charity donations allow the CF to launder money for the donors? Any evidence or is this just guesswork auditing?

Why do you think this is "probably not reflected on tax returns"?

driusan 10 points 11 points 12 points 23 hours ago (0 children)

Does any of it contradict the MOU she signed when appointed Sec State? https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/34993

[Oct 29, 2016] The Nuclear Option - Wikileaks Reveals Even Hillarys Own Staff Knows Truth Shes Psychotic

Notable quotes:
"... Remember back when President Bill Clinton got into all that trouble molesting the young intern in his Oral Office? Remember the first thing the lying, conniving, dissembling commander-in-cheek did? ..."
"... In the latest batch of leaked emails, one top Democratic operative is still grappling with "WJC Issues." "How is what Bill Clinton did different from what Bill Cosby did?" Ron Klain asks in a list of questions worth posing to Mrs. Clinton. "You said every woman should be believed. Why not the women who accused him?" And, perhaps the best: "Will you apologize to the women who were wrongly smeared by your husband and his allies?" ..."
"... Never apologize. Never admit. And always keep lying. ..."
"... That is the very heart of the ethos of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Lie about everything. Lie all the time. ..."
"... Lie about emails. Lie about servers. Lie about national security. Lie about who knew what when. Lie about spilling classified secrets. Lie about dead soldiers. ..."
Oct 29, 2016 | www.breitbart.com
...l each batch of stolen emails is worse than the last.

Hillary Clinton is a liar. She has terrible instincts. She doesn't believe in anything. Her head is broken. She doesn't know why she should be president. She is pathological. And she is psychotic.

Just ask everybody who works for her. Just ask campaign chairman John Podesta. Just ask the people working the hardest to get her elected president.

I mean, in her most rabid streak of attacks on Donald Trump's alleged unfitness for office, Mrs. Clinton doesn't call him "psychotic."

Psychotic! That is what her campaign chairman called her.

Remember back when President Bill Clinton got into all that trouble molesting the young intern in his Oral Office? Remember the first thing the lying, conniving, dissembling commander-in-cheek did?

Take a poll. And he found out that he could skate by on even this - even this! But first - the poll told him - he had to stall for time. He had to lie about it for as long as he possibly could before coming clean.

And that was exactly what he did. And he survived.

And good thing he survived so he could go on to haunt America another 15 years later.

In the latest batch of leaked emails, one top Democratic operative is still grappling with "WJC Issues." "How is what Bill Clinton did different from what Bill Cosby did?" Ron Klain asks in a list of questions worth posing to Mrs. Clinton. "You said every woman should be believed. Why not the women who accused him?" And, perhaps the best: "Will you apologize to the women who were wrongly smeared by your husband and his allies?"

Answer: Not likely.

Never apologize. Never admit. And always keep lying.

That is the very heart of the ethos of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Lie about everything. Lie all the time.

Lie about emails. Lie about servers. Lie about national security. Lie about who knew what when. Lie about spilling classified secrets. Lie about dead soldiers.

Exhaust the people with lies. And then, very flippantly, after months or years of lying, say whatever you have to say to make the press go away.

"I am sorry you were confused."

"I have already said I wish I had done it differently."

"What difference, at this point, does it make?"

It is all so shameless and dirty and befuddling that it would make Niccolo Machiavelli blush.

Charles Hurt can be reached at [email protected]; follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt .

[Oct 28, 2016] Tom Haydens Haunting by Jim Kavanagh

Oct 28, 2016 | www.counterpunch.org
As an old SDS-er, I found it hard to see Tom Hayden go. However meandering his path, he was at the heart of radical history in the 60s, an erstwhile companion, if not always a comrade, on the route of every boomer lefty.

One of his finer moments for me, which I've never seen mentioned (including among this week's encomia) since he wrote it, was his 2006 article , published on CounterPunch with an introduction by Alexander Cockburn, in which he apologized for a "descent into moral ambiguity and realpolitick that still haunts me today." It would be respectful of Hayden's admirers and critics, on the occasion of his passing, to remember which of his actions "haunted" him the most.

The title of the article says it clearly: "I Was Israel's Dupe." In the essay, Hayden apologizes for his support of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which was for him that "descent into moral ambiguity" More importantly, he explains why he did it, in a detailed narrative that everyone should read.

Hayden sold out, as he tells it, because, in order to run as a Democratic candidate for the California State Assembly, he had get the approval of the influential Democratic congressman Howard Berman. Berman is a guy who, when he became Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was proud to tell the Forward that he took the job because of his "interest in the Jewish state" and that: "Even before I was a Democrat, I was a Zionist."

Hayden had to meet with Howard's brother Michael, who, acting as "the gatekeeper protecting Los Angeles' Westside for Israel's political interests," told Hayden: "I represent the Israeli Defense Forces"-a sentence that could serve as the motto of most American congress critters today. The "Berman-Waxman machine," Hayden was told, would deign to "rent" him the Assembly seat on the "one condition: that I always be a 'good friend of Israel.'"

But American congressmen were not the only "gatekeepers" through whose hands Hayden had to pass before being allowed to run for Congress. Other "certifiers" included "the elites, beginning with rabbis and heads of the multiple mainstream Jewish organizations, the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), [and].. Israeli ambassadors, counsels general and other officials."

In fact, Hayden had to, in his words, be "declared 'kosher' by the ultimate source, the region's representative of the state of Israel," Benjamin Navon, Israel's Counsul-general in Los Angeles.

In other words, in this article Hayden was describing, in an unusually concrete way, how the state of Israel, through its state officials and their compliant American partners, was effectively managing-exercising veto power over Democratic Party candidates, at the very least-American elections down to the level of State Assembly . In any constituency "attuned to the question of Israel, even in local and state elections," Hayden knew he "had to be certified 'kosher,' not once but over and over again."

This experience prompted Hayden to express a "fear that the 'Israeli lobby' is working overtime to influence American public opinion on behalf of Israel's military effort to 'roll back the clock' and 'change the map' of the region." Hayden warned of the "trepidation and confusion among rank-and-file voters and activists, and the paralysis of politicians, especially Democrats," over support of Israel. He vowed to "not make the same mistake again," and said: "Most important, Americans must not be timid in speaking up, as I was 25 years ago."

Whatever else he did-and he was never particularly radical about Palestine-this article was a genuinely honest and unusual intervention, and it deserves a lot more notice-as a moment in Tom Hayden's history and that of the American left-than it has got. Looking back and regretfully acknowledging that one had been duped and morally compromised by what seemed the least troublesome path 25 years earlier, saying "I woulda, shoulda, coulda done the right thing," is a haunting moment for anyone. Doing it in a way that exposes in detail how a foreign country constantly manipulates American elections over decades is worthy of everyone's notice.

I doubt Hillary and her Democratic supporters will have anything to say about this "interference "in American elections, even local and state. But I do hope many of those who are touched by the loss of Tom Hayden heed these words from him, and don't wait another 25 years to overcome their "fear and confusion" about saying and doing the right thing regarding the crimes of Israel, troublesome as that might be.

[Oct 26, 2016] There are some countervailing forces in action and the Triumphal march of neoliberalism with the USA as the hegemon of the new neoliberal order is either over, or soon will be over

Notable quotes:
"... Any analysis that starts with the assumption reactionaries still has a great deal to its agenda to achieve, such as promoting regressive taxation; privatization of Social Security; limiting Medicare; privatization of education; expansion of the police state; using the military to support the dollar, banking, world markets, etc., rather than Corey Robin's belief that "the Right" has won is in my view an improvement on the OP. ..."
"... In the end, Putin will be done in by his oligarchs, despite the care he has taken to give them their share if they just refrain from wrecking everything with their excesses. Again, no need for NGOs. ..."
Oct 26, 2016 | crookedtimber.org
stevenjohnson

@58

This is a very good analyses. But I am less pessimistic: the blowback against neoliberal globalization is real and it is difficult to swipe it under the carpet.

There are some signs of the "revolutionary situation" in the USA in a sense that the neoliberal elite lost control and their propaganda loss effectiveness, despite dusting off the "Red scare" trick with "Reds in each computer" instead of "Reds under each bed". With Putin as a very convenient bogeyman.

As somebody here said Trump might be a reaction of secular stagnation, kind of trump card put into play by some part of the elite, because with continued secular stagnation, the social stability in the USA is under real threat.

But it looks like newly formed shadow "Committee for Saving [neo]Liberal Order" (with participation of three latter agencies, just read the recent "Red scare" memorandum ( https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/215-press-releases-2016/1423-joint-dhs-odni-election-security-statement ) want Hillary to be the POTUS.

But the problem is that Hillary with her failing health is our of her prime and with a bunch of neocons in key positions in her administration, she really represents a huge threat to world peace. She might not last long as the level of stress inherent in POTUS job make it a killing ground for anybody with advanced stage of Parkinson or similar degenerative neurological disease. But that might make her more impulsive and more aggressive (and she always tried to outdo male politicians in jingoism, real John McCain is the red pantsuit).

All-in-all it looks like she in not a solution for neoliberal elite problems, she is a part of the problem

Adventurism of the US neoliberal elite, and especially possible aggressive moves in Syria by Hillary regime ("no fly zone"), makes military alliance of Russia and China very likely (with Pakistan, Iran and India as possible future members). So Hillary might really work like a powerful China lobbyist, because the alliance with Russia will be on China terms.

Regime change via color revolution in either country requires at dense network of subservient to the Western interests and financed via shadow channels MSM (including TV channels), strong network of NGO and ability to distribute cash to selected members of the fifth column of neoliberal globalization. All those condition were made more difficult in Russia and impossible in mainland China. In Russia the US adventurism in Ukraine and the regime change of February 2014 (creation of neo-fascist regime nicknamed by some "Kaganat of Nuland" (Asia Times http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-01-100315.html )) essentially killed the neoliberal fifth column in Russia and IMHO it no longer represent a viable political force.

Also Russians probably learned well lesson of unsuccessful attempt of regime change by interfering into Russian Presidential election process attempted by Hillary and Obama in 2011-2012. I would like to see the US MSM reaction if Russian ambassador invited Sanders and Trump into the embassy and promised full and unconditional support for their effort to remove criminal Obama regime, mired in corruption and subservient to Wall Street interests, the regime that produced misery for so many American workers, lower middle class and older Americans ;-)

Ambassador McFaul soon left the country, NED was banned and screws were tightened enough to make next attempt exceedingly difficult. Although everything can happen I would discount the possibility of the next "White Revolution" in Russia. So called "Putin regime" survived the period of low oil prices and with oil prices over $60 in 2017 Russian economy might be able to grow several percent a year. At the same time the US "post-Obama" regime might well face the winds of returning higher oil prices and their negative influence of economy growth and unemployment.

In China recent troubles in Hong Cong were also a perfect training ground for "anti color revolution" measures and the next attempt would much more difficult, unless China experience economic destabilization due to some bubble burst.

That means that excessive military adventurism inherent in the future Hillary regime might speed up loss by the USA military dominance and re-alignment of some states beyond Philippines. Angela Merkel regime also might not survive the next election and that event might change "pro-Atlantic" balance in Europe.

Although the list in definitely not complete, we can see that there are distinct setbacks for attempts of further neoliberalization beyond Brexit and TPP troubles.

So there are some countervailing forces in action and my impression that the Triumphal march of neoliberalism with the USA as the hegemon of the new neoliberal order is either over, or soon will be over. In certain regions of the globe the USA foreign policy is in trouble (Syria, Ukraine) and while you can do anything using bayonets, you can't sit on them.

So while still there is no viable alternative to neoliberalism as a social system, the ideology itself is discredited and like communism after 1945 lost its hold of hearts and minds of the USA population. I would say that in the USA neoliberalism entered Zombie stage.

My hope is that reasonable voices in foreign policy prevail, and the disgust of unions members toward DemoRats (Neoliberal Democrats) could play the decisive role in coming elections. As bad as Trump is for domestic policy, it represent some hope as for foreign policy unless co-opted by Republican establishment.

Val 10.26.16 at 3:54 am 72

#70
But the problem is that Hillary with her failing health is our of her prime and with a bunch of neocons in key positions in her administration, she really represents a huge threat to world peace. She might not last long as the level of stress inherent in POTUS job make it a killing ground for anybody with advanced stage of Parkinson or similar degenerative neurological disease. But that might kale her more impulsive and more aggressive (and she always tried to outdo her male politicians in jingoism, real John McCain is the red pantsuit).

Does the new CT moderation regime have any expectations about the veracity of claims made by commenters? Because I think it would be useful in cases like this.

Howard Frant 10.26.16 at 6:19 am ( 73 )

Stephen @58

Yes, it was late and I was tired, or I wouldn't have said something so foolish. Still, the point is that after centuries of constant war, Europe went 70 years without territorial conquest. That strikes me as a significant achievement, and one whose breach should not be taken lightly.

phenomenal cat @64

So democratic structures have to be robust and transparent before we care about them? I'd give a pretty high value to an independent press and contested elections. Those have been slowly crushed in Russia. The results for transparency have not been great. Personally, I don't believe that Ukraine is governed by fascists, or that Ukraine shot down that jetliner, but I'm sure a lot of Russians do.

Russian leaders have always complained about "encirclement," but we don't have to believe them. Do you really believe Russia's afraid of an attack from Estonia? Clearly what Putin wants is to restore as much of the old Soviet empire as possible. Do you think the independence of the Baltic states would be more secure or less secure if they weren't members of NATO? (Hint: compare to Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova.)

Layman 10.26.16 at 11:33 am ( 79 )

' .makes military alliance of Russia and China very likely '

Any analysis which arrives at this conclusion is profoundly ignorant.

Meta-comment: Is it permitted to say that a moderation scheme which objects to engels as a troll, while permitting this tripe from likbez has taken a wrong turn somewhere. Seriously, some explanation called for.

likbez 10.26.16 at 3:54 pm 80

@72

Does the new CT moderation regime have any expectations about the veracity of claims made by commenters? Because I think it would be useful in cases like this.

I would like to apologize about the number of typos, but I stand by statements made. Your implicit assumption that I am lying was not specific, so let's concentrate on three claims made:

1. "Hillary has serious neurological disease for at least four years",
2. "Obama and Hillary tried to stage color revolution in Russia in 2011-2012 interfering in Russian Presidential elections"
3. "Hillary Clinton is a neocon, a warmonger similar to John McCain"

1. Hillary Health : Whether she suffers from Parkinson disease or not in unclear, but signs of some serious neurological disease are observable since 2012 (for four years). Parkinson is just the most plausible hypothesis based on symptoms observed. Those symptoms suggests that she is at Stage 2 of the disease due to an excellent treatment she gets:

http://www.viartis.net/parkinsons.disease/news/100312.htm
The average time taken to progress from Stage 1 (mild) to Stage 2 (mild but various symptoms) was 1 year 8 months. The average time taken to progress from Stage 2 to Stage 3 (typical) was 7 years and 3 months. From Stage 3 to Stage 4 (severe) took 2 years. From Stage 4 to Stage 5 (incapacitated) took 2 years and 2 months. So the stage with typical symptoms lasts the longest. Those factors associated with faster progression were older age at diagnosis, and longer disease duration. Gender and ethnicity were not associated with the rate of Parkinson's Disease progression.

These figures are only averages. Progression is not inevitable. Some people with Parkinson's Disease have either : stayed the same for decades, reduced their symptoms, rid their symptoms, or worsened at a rapid rate. For more current news go to Parkinson's Disease News.

Concern about Hillary health were voiced in many publications and signs of her neurological disease are undisputable:

2. Hillary and Obama attempt to stage the color revolution in Russia in 2011-2012 are also undisputable, but not widely known:

3. The opinion that Hillary as a neocon is supported by facts from all her career , but especially during her tenure as the Secretary of State. She voted for Iraq war and was instrumental in unleashing Libya war and Syria war. The amount of evidence can't be ignored:

If you have more specific concerns please voice them and I will try to support my statements with references and known facts.


stevenjohnson 10.26.16 at 1:50 pm

likbez @70 Any analysis that starts with the assumption reactionaries still has a great deal to its agenda to achieve, such as promoting regressive taxation; privatization of Social Security; limiting Medicare; privatization of education; expansion of the police state; using the military to support the dollar, banking, world markets, etc., rather than Corey Robin's belief that "the Right" has won is in my view an improvement on the OP. But whether mine is actually a deep analysis seems doubtful even to me.

But the OP is really limiting itself solely to domestic politics, and in that context the resistance to "neoliberal globalization," (Why not use the term "imperialism?") is more or less irrelevant. The OP seems to have some essentialist notion of the "Right" as openly aimed at restoring the past, ignoring the content of policies. Reaction would be something blatant like restoring censorship of TV and movies, instead of IP laws that favor giant telecommunications companies, or abolition of divorce, instead of discriminatory enforcement of child protection laws that break up poor families. This cultural/psychological/moralizing/spiritual approach seems to me to be fundamentally a diversion from a useful understanding.

There may be some sort of confused notions about popular morals and tastes clearly evolving in a more leftish direction. Free love was never a conservative principle for instance, yet many of its tenets are now those of the majority of the population. Personally I can only observe that there's nothing quite like the usefulness of laws and law enforcement, supplemented by the occasional illicit violence, to change social attitudes. The great model of course is the de facto extermination of the Left by "McCarthyism." No doubt the disappearance of the left targeted by "McCarthyism" is perceived to be a purification of the real left. It is customary for the acceptable "left" to agree with the McCarthys that communism lost its appeal to the people, rather than being driven out by mass repression. As to populism, such reactionary goals as the abolition of public education are notoriously sold as service to the people against the hifalutin' snobs, starting of course with lazy ass teachers. It seems to me entirely mistaken to see the populist reactionaries as out of ammunition because the old forms of race-baiting aren't working so well.

By the way, there already is a Chinese bourgeoisie, in Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, as well as elements in SEZs in China proper and select circles in various financial capitals. Restoration of capitalism in China has run into the difficulty that capitalism isn't holding up its end. President Xi Jinping is finding it difficult for capitalism to keep the mainland economy growing at a sufficiently rapid rate to keep the working class pacific, much less generate the so-called middle class whose stock market portfolios will bind them to the new ruling class forever. These are the sources for a revolution in China, not NGOs or a color revolution. In the end, Putin will be done in by his oligarchs, despite the care he has taken to give them their share if they just refrain from wrecking everything with their excesses. Again, no need for NGOs.

Val @72 I remember that there were only rare, vague hints about Reagan, not factual evidence. So unless you are committed to the proposition his Alzheimer's disease only set in January 21, 1992, demanding factual evidence about the mental and physical health of our elective divinities seems unduly restrictive I think.

Layman @79 The Shanghai Cooperation Organization alone makes an analysis that a military alliance between Russia and China reasonable enough. Even if incorrect in the end, it is not "profoundly ignorant."

Meta-comment: Engels post was perceived as mocking, which was its offense. As for "trolling," that's an internet thing...

[Oct 25, 2016] Urged by neoliberal elite, Hillary Clinton administration might be ever more destabilizing due to desperate adventures both in domestic and especially foreign policy

Notable quotes:
"... There are some signs of the "revolutionary situation" in the USA in a sense that the neoliberal elite lost control and their propaganda loss effectiveness, despite dusting off the "Red scare" trick with "Reds in each computer" instead of "Reds under each bed". With Putin as a very convenient bogeyman. ..."
"... But it looks like newly formed shadow "Committee for Saving [neo]Liberal Order" (with participation of three latter agencies, just read the recent "Red scare" memorandum ( https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/215-press-releases-2016/1423-joint-dhs-odni-election-security-statement ) want Hillary to be the POTUS. ..."
Oct 25, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

stevenjohnson 10.25.16 at 1:00 pm

Six reasons for pessimism?

1. An ABC news poll says that Clinton has 50% of somebody (the electorate, likely voters?) supporting her rabidly reactionary rhetoric. She demonizes Putin, imputes treason to a major party candidate in a way hitherto seen only in Birch Society attacks on Eisenhower, shrieks that it is utterly impossible to even hint that the current electoral system has no real legitimacy.

The only real criticisms acceptable in the face of her reactionary screeds are hints that she is a traitor for Clinton Foundation cash and that she is lax on security . (The claim that Clinton is pro-war are regressions to the Obama primary campaign in 2008. Since he promptly proved the irrelevance of an anti-war rhetoric, the observations that Clinton has none are equally irrelevant.)

2. The high levels of indecision suggest that a Trump defeat may well leave the Republican establishment more or less as it was. Depending on turnout, which even at this late date is highly uncertain, it is entirely possible the Republicans will maintain control of the Senate. At this point it is probable they will keep the House. In any event, Clinton has openly committed to a bipartisan a campaign against the Trump hijacking of the Republican party.

3. Consider the longevity of reactionary leaderships in the major parties. The Democratic Leadership Council approach has dominated its party for decades. The Republican party projects like ALEC, the Federalist Society, the Mighty Wurlitzer, the designated superstar talk personality (no, shifting from Limbaugh to Beck is not a sea change,) everywhere you look behind the scenes you see the same faces. What new faces appear turn out (like Obama) to be employees of the same old political establishments. Alleged exceptions like Sanders and Warren are notable primarily for their lack of commitment.

4. There are bold thinkers willing to imagine the conservative future. Think Jason Brennan and his book Against Democracy. Even worse, the real strength of the conservatives lies in the bottom line, not in polemics. Tragically, it's when the bottom line is written in read that it shrieks the loudest, with the most conviction and the most urgent desire for the masters to unite against the rest of us.

5. California politics has set the pace once again, demonstrating the absolute irrelevance of a "Left" defined as a spiritual posture. The annihilation of an ugly materialist Left by "McCarthyism" has purified the souls of the righetous, leaving socialism/communism unthinkable. California leftism is entirely safe for capitalism, imperialism and a free market of ideas where the refined consumers of ideas can have their gated neighborhoods of ideas.

6. The majority support for a more tolerant society makes no difference in policy. Being nicer is not politics.

There is a fundamental reason for despair, the failures of the right to win the Holy Grail of a functional capitalist society. Despite their successes in destroying organized labor (with the help of counter-revolutionary "leftists" to be sure,) in limiting women's rights, in blunting the real world effects of desegregation, the short-run prospects of capital are disquieting. And the long run prospects, insofar as these people can see past the quarterly statement, are even more frightening. Urged by their fears, the system will be ever more destabilized by desperate adventures. The replacement of Social Security of course will be high on the agenda. The absolutely vital need for ever more control over the world, including regime change in Russia and China, has driven foreign policy in direct support of the dollar and banking since at least Bush 41.

But in the end, it is not the madness of the owners that is the cause for despair, but the absolute indifference of the spiritual leftists who have joined in the rabidly reactionary campaign against Clinton from the right. (You would have thought it rather difficult to criticize Clinton from the right, but never underestimate the exigencies of struggle against totalitarianism.) Win or lose, this campaign has endorsed reaction, top to bottom. On the upside, the likelihood of a Clinton impeachment offers much value for your entertainment dollar.

likbez 10.26.16 at 1:10 am

stevenjohnson

@58

This is a very good analyses. But I am less pessimistic: the blowback against neoliberal globalization is real and it is difficult to swipe it under the carpet.

There are some signs of the "revolutionary situation" in the USA in a sense that the neoliberal elite lost control and their propaganda loss effectiveness, despite dusting off the "Red scare" trick with "Reds in each computer" instead of "Reds under each bed". With Putin as a very convenient bogeyman.

As somebody here said Trump might be a reaction to secular stagnation, kind of trump card put into play by some part of the elite, because with continued secular stagnation, the social stability in the USA is under a real threat.

But it looks like newly formed shadow "Committee for Saving [neo]Liberal Order" (with participation of three latter agencies, just read the recent "Red scare" memorandum ( https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/215-press-releases-2016/1423-joint-dhs-odni-election-security-statement ) want Hillary to be the POTUS.

But the problem is that Hillary with her failing health is our of her prime and with a bunch of neocons in key positions in her administration, she really represents a huge threat to world peace. She might not last long as the level of stress inherent in POTUS job make it a killing ground for anybody with advanced stage of Parkinson or similar degenerative neurological disease. But that might kale her more impulsive and more aggressive (and she always tried to outdo her male politicians in jingoism, real John McCain is the red pantsuit).

All-in-all it looks like she in not a solution of neoliberal elite problems, she is a part of the problem

Adventurism of the US neoliberal elite, and especially possible aggressive moves in Syria by Hillary regime ("no fly zone"), makes military alliance of Russia and China very likely (with Pakistan, Iran and India as possible future members). So Hillary might really work like a powerful China lobbyist, because the alliance with Russia will be on China terms.

Regime change via color revolution in either country requires at dense network of subservient to the Western interests and financed via shadow channels MSM (including TV channels), NGO and ability to distribute cash to selection members of fifth column of neoliberalism. All those condition were made more difficult in Russia and impossible in mainland China. In Russia the US adventurism in Ukraine and the regime change of February 2014 (creation of neo-fascist regime nicknamed by some "Kaganat of Nuland" (Asia times http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-01-100315.html ) essentially killed the neoliberal fifth column in Russia and IMHO it no longer represent a viable political force.

Also Russians probably learned well lesson of unsuccessful attempt of regime change by interfering into Russian Presidential election process attempted by Hillary and Obama in 2011-2012. I would like to see the US MSM reaction if Russian ambassador invited Sanders and Trump into the embassy and promised full and unconditional support for their effort to remove criminal Obama regime, mired in corruption and subservient to Wall Street interest, the regime that produced misery for so many American workers, lower middle class and older Americans ;-)

Ambassador McFaul soon left the country, NED was banned and screws were tightened enough to make next attempt exceedingly difficult. Although everything can happen I would discount the possibility of the next "While Revolution" in Russia. So called "Putin regime" survived the period of low oil prices and with oil prices over $60 in 2017 Russian economy might be able to grow several percent a year. At the same time the US "post-Obama" regime might well face the winds of returning higher oil prices and their negative influence of economy growth and unemployment.

In China recent troubles in Hong Cong were also a perfect training ground for "anti color revolution" measures and the next attempt would much more difficult, unless China experience economic destabilization due to some bubble burst.

that means that excessive military adventurism inherent in the future Hillary regime might speed up loss by the USA military dominance and re-alignment of some states beyond Philippines. Angela Merkel regime also might not survive the next election and change "pro-Atlantic" balance in Europe.

Although the list in definitely not complete, we can see that there are distinct setbacks for attempts of further neoliberalization - Brexit and TPP troubles.

So there are some countervailing forces in action and my impression that the Triumphal march of neoliberalism with the USA as a hegemon of the new neoliberal order is either over or soon will be over. In certain regions of the globe the USA foreign policy is in trouble (Syria, Ukraine) and while you can do anything using bayonets, you can't sit on them.

So while still there is no viable alternative to neoliberalism as social system, the ideology itself is discredited and like communism after 1945 lost its hold of hearts and minds of the USA population. I would say that in the USA neoliberalism entered Zombie stage.

My hope is that reasonable voices in foreign policy prevail, and the disgust of unions members toward DemoRats (Neoliberal Democrats) could play the decisive role in coming elections. As bad as Trump is for domestic policy, it represent some hope as for foreign policy unless co-opted by Republican establishment.

[Oct 25, 2016] My impression is that that key issue is as following: a vote for Hillary is a vote for the War Party and is incompatible with democratic principles

Oct 25, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

likbez : October 24, 2016 at 12:00 PM My impression is that that key issue is as following: a vote for Hillary is a vote for the War Party and is incompatible with democratic principles.

She is way too militant, and is not that different in this respect from Senator McCain. That creates a real danger of unleashing the war with Russia.

Trump with all his warts gives us a chance to get some kind of détente with Russia.

In other words no real Democrat can vote for Hillary. Reply Monday, October 24, 2016 at 12:00 PM DeDude -> likbez... , October 24, 2016 at 12:17 PM

You wish, you wish - you wish you were a fish, called Wanda.
Julio -> likbez... , October 24, 2016 at 01:32 PM
A vote for Hilary may indeed be a vote for the (a?) war party, but it is not, unfortunately, incompatible with democratic principles.
ilsm -> Julio ... , October 24, 2016 at 03:19 PM
at least LBJ kept it under wraps.........
likbez -> Julio ... , October 24, 2016 at 06:25 PM
Why do you think "wet kiss with neocons" is compatible with democratic principles ?
Julio -> likbez... , -1
Because the neocons have convinced a lot of the people (you know, the "demos" in "democracy") of the need for perpetual war.
Dan Kervick -> likbez... , October 24, 2016 at 01:36 PM
Just a hunch: a lot of this hoo-hah will simmer down after the election.

But yeah, I'm really bummed that we are going to be seeing a return of a lot of the same creeps who gave us the foreign policy of the 90's that went belly up in 2001-03.

Just a reminder: I called attention several times to this article in 2014 and 2015:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/are-neocons-getting-ready-to-ally-with-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0

But most of the liberal bloggers obediently kept their mouths shut about it.

anne -> Dan Kervick... , October 24, 2016 at 02:56 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/are-neocons-getting-ready-to-ally-with-hillary-clinton.html

July 5, 2014

The Next Act of the Neocons
Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton?
By JACOB HEILBRUNN

WASHINGTON - AFTER nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the neoconservative movement is back, using the turmoil in Iraq and Ukraine to claim that it is President Obama, not the movement's interventionist foreign policy that dominated early George W. Bush-era Washington, that bears responsibility for the current round of global crises.

Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver's seat of American foreign policy.

To be sure, the careers and reputations of the older generation of neocons - Paul D. Wolfowitz, L. Paul Bremer III, Douglas J. Feith, Richard N. Perle - are permanently buried in the sands of Iraq. And not all of them are eager to switch parties: In April, William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, said that as president Mrs. Clinton would "be a dutiful chaperone of further American decline."

But others appear to envisage a different direction - one that might allow them to restore the neocon brand, at a time when their erstwhile home in the Republican Party is turning away from its traditional interventionist foreign policy.

It's not as outlandish as it may sound. Consider the historian Robert Kagan, the author of a recent, roundly praised article in The New Republic that amounted to a neo-neocon manifesto. He has not only avoided the vitriolic tone that has afflicted some of his intellectual brethren but also co-founded an influential bipartisan advisory group during Mrs. Clinton's time at the State Department.

Mr. Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at standard-issue neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute; instead, he's a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, that citadel of liberalism headed by Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under President Bill Clinton and is considered a strong candidate to become secretary of state in a new Democratic administration. (Mr. Talbott called the Kagan article "magisterial," in what amounts to a public baptism into the liberal establishment.)

Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Kagan and others have insisted on maintaining the link between modern neoconservatism and its roots in muscular Cold War liberalism. Among other things, he has frequently praised Harry S. Truman's secretary of state, Dean Acheson, drawing a line from him straight to the neocons' favorite president: "It was not Eisenhower or Kennedy or Nixon but Reagan whose policies most resembled those of Acheson and Truman."

Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan's careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,noted in The New Republic this year that "it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya."

And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler...

ilsm -> Dan Kervick... , October 24, 2016 at 03:22 PM
Anne and I have seen this for a while.

Nothing new Strobe Talbott was closeted, and brought Mrs Kagan aka Victoria Nuland in to State in 1993.

Bill bearded the bear breaking Kosovo and Bosi=nia out of Serbia...........

The down payment for Kyiv in 2012 was in 1996.

likbez -> ilsm... , October 24, 2016 at 05:47 PM
Nuland occupies a special place among neocons.

This former associate of Dick Cheney managed to completely destroy pretty nice European county, unleashing the horror of real starvation on the population.

Ukraine now is essentially Central African country in the middle of the Europe. Retirees often live on less then $1 a day. most adults (and lucky retirees) on less then $3 a day. $6 a day is considered a high salary. At the same time "oligarchs" drive on Maybachs, and personal jets.

Sex tourism is rampant. Probably the only "profession" that prospered since "Maydan".

Young people try to get university education and emigrate to any county that would accept them (repeating the story of Baltic countries and Poland).

Now this a typical IMF debt slave with no chances to get out of the hole.

Politically this is now a protectorate of the USA with the USA ambassador as the real, de-facto ruler of the country. Much like Kosovo is.

Standard of living dropped approximately three times since 2014.

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/ukraines-perpetual-war-perpetual-peace-17614

"If the country continues on its present course, Odessa's reformist governor Mikheil Saakashvili has noted sarcastically, Ukraine will not reach the level of GDP it had under former president Viktor Yanukovych for another fifteen years"


"In Kiev, which is by far the wealthiest city in Ukraine, payment arrears for electricity have risen by 32 percent since the beginning of this year."

[Oct 25, 2016] Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton? No question about it. She is one of them.

Oct 25, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

anne -> Dan Kervick... October 24, 2016 at 02:56 PM

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/are-neocons-getting-ready-to-ally-with-hillary-clinton.html

July 5, 2014

The Next Act of the Neocons
Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton?
By JACOB HEILBRUNN

WASHINGTON - AFTER nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the neoconservative movement is back, using the turmoil in Iraq and Ukraine to claim that it is President Obama, not the movement's interventionist foreign policy that dominated early George W. Bush-era Washington, that bears responsibility for the current round of global crises.

Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver's seat of American foreign policy.

To be sure, the careers and reputations of the older generation of neocons - Paul D. Wolfowitz, L. Paul Bremer III, Douglas J. Feith, Richard N. Perle - are permanently buried in the sands of Iraq. And not all of them are eager to switch parties: In April, William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, said that as president Mrs. Clinton would "be a dutiful chaperone of further American decline."

But others appear to envisage a different direction - one that might allow them to restore the neocon brand, at a time when their erstwhile home in the Republican Party is turning away from its traditional interventionist foreign policy.

It's not as outlandish as it may sound. Consider the historian Robert Kagan, the author of a recent, roundly praised article in The New Republic that amounted to a neo-neocon manifesto. He has not only avoided the vitriolic tone that has afflicted some of his intellectual brethren but also co-founded an influential bipartisan advisory group during Mrs. Clinton's time at the State Department.

Mr. Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at standard-issue neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute; instead, he's a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, that citadel of liberalism headed by Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under President Bill Clinton and is considered a strong candidate to become secretary of state in a new Democratic administration. (Mr. Talbott called the Kagan article "magisterial," in what amounts to a public baptism into the liberal establishment.)

Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Kagan and others have insisted on maintaining the link between modern neoconservatism and its roots in muscular Cold War liberalism. Among other things, he has frequently praised Harry S. Truman's secretary of state, Dean Acheson, drawing a line from him straight to the neocons' favorite president: "It was not Eisenhower or Kennedy or Nixon but Reagan whose policies most resembled those of Acheson and Truman."

Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan's careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in The New Republic this year that "it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya."

And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler...

ilsm -> Dan Kervick... , October 24, 2016 at 03:22 PM
Anne and I have seen this for a while. Nothing new Strobe Talbott was closeted [neocon], and brought Mrs Kagan aka Victoria Nuland in to State in 1993.

Bill bearded the bear breaking Kosovo and Bosinia out of Serbia... The down payment for Kyiv in 2012 was in 1996.

likbez -> ilsm... , October 24, 2016 at 05:47 PM
Nuland occupies a special place among neocons.

This former associate of Dick Cheney managed to completely destroy pretty nice European county, unleashing the horror of real starvation on the population.

Ukraine now is essentially Central African country in the middle of the Europe. Retirees often live on less then $1 a day. most adults (and lucky retirees) on less then $3 a day. $6 a day is considered a high salary. At the same time "oligarchs" drive on Maybachs, and personal jets.

Sex tourism is rampant. Probably the only "profession" that prospered since "Maydan".

Young people try to get university education and emigrate to any county that would accept them (repeating the story of Baltic countries and Poland).

Now this a typical IMF debt slave with no chances to get our the hole.

Politically this is now a protectorate of the USA with the USA ambassador as the real, de-facto ruler of the county. Much like Kosovo is.

Standard of living dropped approximately three times since 2014.

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/ukraines-perpetual-war-perpetual-peace-17614

"If the country continues on its present course, Odessa's reformist governor Mikheil Saakashvili has noted sarcastically, Ukraine will not reach the level of GDP it had under former president Viktor Yanukovych for another fifteen years"

"In Kiev, which is by far the wealthiest city in Ukraine, payment arrears for electricity have risen by 32 percent since the beginning of this year."

[Oct 25, 2016] The Clinton Foundation contributed to the February coup in Ukraine, having longstanding ties to Ukrainian oligarchs who pushed the country to European integration.

Notable quotes:
"... It has recently turned out that Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk, a vocal proponent of Ukraine's European integration, made huge contributions to the Clinton Foundation, while Hillary Clinton was the US Secretary of State. Although the foundation swore off donations from foreign governments while Mrs. Clinton was serving as a state official, it continued accepting money from private donors. Many of them had certain ties to their national governments like Viktor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian businessman and ex-parliamentarian. ..."
"... Viktor Pinchuk has always been one of the most vocal proponents of Ukraine's European integration. In 2004 Pinchuk founded the Yalta European Strategy (YES) platform in Kiev. YES is led by the board including ex-president of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski and former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana. According to the website of the platform, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Kofi Annan, Radoslaw Sikorski, Vitaliy Klitschko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Petro Poroshenko and other prominent figures have participated in annual meetings of YES since 2004. ..."
"... Experts note that after the coup, the Ukrainian leadership has actually become Washington's puppet government. Several foreign citizens, including American civilian Natalie Jaresko, Lithuanian investment banker Aivaras Abromavicius and Georgia-born Alexander Kvitashvili have assumed high posts in the Ukrainian government. It should be noted that Natalie Jaresko, Ukraine's Financial Minister, have previously worked in the US State Department and has also been linked to oligarch Viktor Pinchuk. ..."
May 17, 2015 | sputniknews.com

A sinister atmosphere surrounds the Clinton Foundation's role in Ukrainian military coup of February 2014, experts point out.

It has recently turned out that Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk, a vocal proponent of Ukraine's European integration, made huge contributions to the Clinton Foundation, while Hillary Clinton was the US Secretary of State. Although the foundation swore off donations from foreign governments while Mrs. Clinton was serving as a state official, it continued accepting money from private donors. Many of them had certain ties to their national governments like Viktor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian businessman and ex-parliamentarian.

Remarkably, among individual donors contributing to the Clinton Foundation in the period between 1999 and 2014, Ukrainian sponsors took first place in the list, providing the charity with almost $10 million and pushing England and Saudi Arabia to second and third places respectively.

It is worth mentioning that the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation alone transferred at least $8.6 million to the Clinton charity between 2009 and 2013. Pinchuk, who acquired his fortune from a pipe-making business, served twice as a parliamentarian in Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada and was married to the daughter of ex-president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma.

Although the Clinton's charity denies that the donations were somehow connected with political matters, experts doubt that international private sponsors received no political support in return. In 2008 Pinchuk pledged to make a five-year $29 million contribution to the Clinton Global Initiative in order to fund a program aimed at training future Ukrainian leaders and "modernizers." Remarkably, several alumni of these courses are current members of Ukrainian parliament. Because of the global financial crisis, the Pinchuk Foundation sent only $1.8 million.

Experts note that during Mrs. Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, Viktor Pinchuk was introduced to some influential American lobbyists. Curiously enough, he tried to use his powerful "friends" to pressure Ukraine's then-President Viktor Yanukovych to free Yulia Tymoshenko, who served a jail term.

Viktor Pinchuk has always been one of the most vocal proponents of Ukraine's European integration. In 2004 Pinchuk founded the Yalta European Strategy (YES) platform in Kiev. YES is led by the board including ex-president of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski and former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana. According to the website of the platform, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Kofi Annan, Radoslaw Sikorski, Vitaliy Klitschko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Petro Poroshenko and other prominent figures have participated in annual meetings of YES since 2004.

No one would argue that proponents of Ukraine's pro-Western course played the main role in organizing the coup of February 2014 in Kiev. Furthermore, the exceptional role of the United States in ousting then-president Viktor Yanukovich has also been recognized by political analysts, participants of Euromaidan and even by Barack Obama, the US President.

Experts note that after the coup, the Ukrainian leadership has actually become Washington's puppet government. Several foreign citizens, including American civilian Natalie Jaresko, Lithuanian investment banker Aivaras Abromavicius and Georgia-born Alexander Kvitashvili have assumed high posts in the Ukrainian government. It should be noted that Natalie Jaresko, Ukraine's Financial Minister, have previously worked in the US State Department and has also been linked to oligarch Viktor Pinchuk.

So far, experts note, the recent "game of thrones" in Ukraine has been apparently instigated by a few powerful clans of the US and Ukraine, who are evidently benefitting from the ongoing turmoil. In this light the Clinton Foundation looks like something more than just a charity: in today's world of fraudulent oligopoly we are facing with global cronyism, experts point out, warning against its devastating consequences.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20150323/1019905665.html#ixzz3YT3FykcI

See also: US Intelligence Services Behind 2014 Ukraine Coup – EU Parliament Member

[Oct 24, 2016] Possible return of the same neocons who gave us the foreign policy of the late 1990th that went belly up in 2001

They are the same neocon creeps... They forgot nothing and learn nothing.
Notable quotes:
"... My impression is that that key issue is as following: a vote for Hillary is a vote for the War Party and is incompatible with democratic principles. ..."
"... Trump with all his warts gives us a chance to get some kind of détente with Russia. ..."
"... In other words no real Democrat can vote for Hillary. ..."
"... Why do you think "wet kiss with neocons" is compatible with democratic principles ? ..."
"... I'm really bummed that we are going to be seeing a return of a lot of the same creeps who gave us the foreign policy of the 90's that went belly up in 2001-03. ..."
"... But most of the liberal bloggers obediently kept their mouths shut about it. ..."
Oct 24, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

likbez :

My impression is that that key issue is as following: a vote for Hillary is a vote for the War Party and is incompatible with democratic principles.

Trump with all his warts gives us a chance to get some kind of détente with Russia.

In other words no real Democrat can vote for Hillary.

Julio -> likbez... , October 24, 2016 at 01:32 PM
A vote for Hilary may indeed be a vote for the (a?) war party, but it is not, unfortunately, incompatible with democratic principles.

likbez -> Julio...

Why do you think "wet kiss with neocons" is compatible with democratic principles ?

ilsm -> Julio ... , October 24, 2016 at 03:19 PM
at least LBJ kept it under wraps.........
Dan Kervick -> likbez... , 2016 at 02:56 PM
Just a hunch: a lot of this hoo-hah will simmer down after the election.

But yeah, I'm really bummed that we are going to be seeing a return of a lot of the same creeps who gave us the foreign policy of the 90's that went belly up in 2001-03.

Just a reminder: I called attention several times to this article in 2014 and 2015:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/are-neocons-getting-ready-to-ally-with-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0

But most of the liberal bloggers obediently kept their mouths shut about it.

[Oct 24, 2016] Hillary the Hawk closing in on the White House

Notable quotes:
"... The Democratic nominee in the final debate reiterated her bellicose stance towards Syria. Combined with her 2003 vote for war in Iraq, and her central role in getting the U.S. into the 2011 war in Libya, Clinton could become the most hawkish candidate elected president in most Americans' lifetimes. ..."
"... Enforcing a no-fly zone is "basically an act of war," Michael Knights, a no-fly-zone expert at the Washington Institute told me in the run up to the Libyan war. ..."
"... "Hillary's War," was the Washington Post's headline for a flattering feature on the Secretary of State's central role in driving the U.S. to intervene in Libya's civil war in 2011. ..."
"... Clinton staff, published emails have shown, worked hard to get Clinton credit for the war. Clinton's confidante at the State Department Jake Sullivan drafted a memo on her "leadership/ownership/stewardship of this country's Libya policy from start to finish." ..."
"... Hillary's war was illegal-because the administration never obtained congressional authorization for it-and it was also disastrous. "Libya is in a state of meltdown," John Lee Anderson wrote in the Atlantic last summer. ..."
"... Yet somehow, through three general election debates, she never got a single question on Libya. Consider that: a former Secretary of State touted a war as a central achievement of hers, is running on her foreign-policy chops, and she is escaping accountability for that disastrous war. ..."
"... Clinton, of course, also voted for the Iraq War in 2003. She says now she thinks that war was a mistake because it destabilized region. But somehow she doesn't apply that supposed lesson to Libya or to Syria. ..."
"... The pattern is clear: Hillary Clinton is consistently and maybe blindly pro-war. She is now the clear frontrunner to become our next president. The antiwar movement that flourished under President George W. Bush has disappeared under President Obama . Will it revive under Hillary? Will Republicans have the power or the desire to check her ambitious interventionism. ..."
Oct 24, 2016 | www.washingtonexaminer.com

Hillary Clinton can change her views in an instant on trade, guns, gay marriage, and all sorts of issues, but she's consistent in this: she wants war.

The Democratic nominee in the final debate reiterated her bellicose stance towards Syria. Combined with her 2003 vote for war in Iraq, and her central role in getting the U.S. into the 2011 war in Libya, Clinton could become the most hawkish candidate elected president in most Americans' lifetimes.

"I am going to continue to push for a no-fly zone and safe havens within Syria," Clinton said Wednesday night. Totally separate from the fight against ISIS, Clinton's "no-fly zones and safe havens" are U.S. military intervention in the bloody and many-sided conflict between Syria's brutal government, terrorist groups, and rebel groups.

Enforcing a no-fly zone is "basically an act of war," Michael Knights, a no-fly-zone expert at the Washington Institute told me in the run up to the Libyan war. Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the Senate that a no-fly zone created "the potential of a direct conflict with the Syrian integrated air defense system or Syrian forces or, by corollary, a confrontation with the Russians."

Defense Secretary Ash Carter testified in the same hearing that "safe zones" would require significant U.S. boots on the ground.

So while Hillary says she doesn't want war with Russia or Syria, or boots on the ground in Syria, she pushes policies that the Pentagon says risk war and require boots on the ground.

Hillary showed that same cavalier attitude toward war earlier this decade, laughingly declaring "we came, we saw, he died." This was her version of George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" moment, and Libya was her smaller - and less legal - version of Bush's Iraq War.

"Hillary's War," was the Washington Post's headline for a flattering feature on the Secretary of State's central role in driving the U.S. to intervene in Libya's civil war in 2011.

Clinton staff, published emails have shown, worked hard to get Clinton credit for the war. Clinton's confidante at the State Department Jake Sullivan drafted a memo on her "leadership/ownership/stewardship of this country's Libya policy from start to finish."

Sullivan listed, point-by-point, how Clinton helped bring about and shape the war. Before Obama's attack on Moammar Gadhafi, "she [was] a leading voice for strong UNSC action and a NATO civilian B5 protection mission," the memo explained.

Hillary's war was illegal-because the administration never obtained congressional authorization for it-and it was also disastrous. "Libya is in a state of meltdown," John Lee Anderson wrote in the Atlantic last summer.

ISIS has spread, no stable government has arisen, and the chaos has led to refugee and terrorism crises.

Clinton nevertheless calls her war "smart power at its best," declaring during the primary season, "I think President Obama made the right decision at the time."

Yet somehow, through three general election debates, she never got a single question on Libya. Consider that: a former Secretary of State touted a war as a central achievement of hers, is running on her foreign-policy chops, and she is escaping accountability for that disastrous war.

Clinton, of course, also voted for the Iraq War in 2003. She says now she thinks that war was a mistake because it destabilized region. But somehow she doesn't apply that supposed lesson to Libya or to Syria.

The pattern is clear: Hillary Clinton is consistently and maybe blindly pro-war. She is now the clear frontrunner to become our next president. The antiwar movement that flourished under President George W. Bush has disappeared under President Obama . Will it revive under Hillary? Will Republicans have the power or the desire to check her ambitious interventionism.

If Hillary wins big and sweeps in a Senate majority with her, we could be in for four more years of even more war.

Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner's senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected] . His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.

[Oct 24, 2016] Qatar, like most Muslim countries, treats women as second-class citizens, but champion-of-women Hillary never lets a little thing like that stop her from doing business

nypost.com

Qatar, like most Muslim countries, treats women as second-class citizens, but champion-of-women Hillary never lets a little thing like that stop her from doing business. (See: "On favors.") And a far greater threat than murderous Muslims adhering to a fanatical 7th-century religious ideology lurks right here at home - those pesky Roman Catholics and their silly 2,000-year-old faith. (See: "On Catholics.")

[Oct 24, 2016] The Clinton administration will have a tough balance, throwing enough crumbs to the left to keep them happy while giving payback for the speaking fees

Oct 24, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Tom aka Rusty : , October 24, 2016 at 06:04 AM

Lloyd Blankfein is all in for HRC, so we know what sort of economy we will get.

The Clinton administration will have a tough balance, throwing enough crumbs to the left to keep them happy while giving payback for the speaking fees.

pgl -> Tom aka Rusty... , October 24, 2016 at 06:33 AM
Before Anne demands that you identify who this is - let me help. Lloyd Craig Blankfein is an American business executive. He is the CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs.

Now was that so hard? As for "we know what sort of economy we will get". No Rusty - we do not know WTF you mean by this. So get to it as man splain this to us.

pgl -> pgl... , October 24, 2016 at 06:36 AM
Lloyd in his own words:

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-10-22/goldman-ceo-blankfein-supportive-of-clinton-for-pragmatism

If Rusty was thinking about this discussion, wouldn't it have been nice had he bothered to provide this link. Lord!

Dan Kervick -> pgl... , -1
Of course we know what kind of economy we'll get - the one the US capitalist establishment wants.
RGC : , October 24, 2016 at 06:24 AM
Since both major parties are owned by plutocrats, we get a choice between quicker or slower misery. And since Hillary is in bed with the neocons, we also get the probability of major conflagration or US oppression of the globe.

If a progressive/populist revolt doesn't change the current path we are all screwed.

[Oct 24, 2016] Of course Clinton will work well with Republicans because she in reality is a staunch Republican

Notable quotes:
"... "We have not run this campaign as a campaign against the GOP with the big broad brush - we've run it against Donald Trump," Kaine told the Associated Press. "We're going to get a lot of Republican votes, and that will also be part of, right out of the gate, the way to bring folks back together." ..."
"... In an interview, Kaine said Saturday that he and Hillary Clinton have already discussed how to work with Republicans if they win the presidential election against Trump and his running-mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, in a little more than two weeks. He said that tackling economic anxieties, finding common policy ground with the GOP, and perhaps bringing Republicans into the administration would be elements of unity, though he added that he and Clinton did not discuss cabinet positions, the AP reported. ..."
"... So the plan isn't to try and turn the Senate blue? What kind of work can a Clinton/Kaine administration "get done" with a GOP congress? My first guess would be giving big business something they want in "exchange" for something they want like a repatriation tax holiday to gently suggest corporations bring some of the money they have overseas back to the US and using a small portion of that money to pay for infrastructure spending business associations like the US COC have been advocating for years. ..."
"... It's not like the Dems have a chance of taking congress or at least the Senate so why do anything that might annoy the GOP. Since the GOP are usually so reasonable and the slightest suggestion Dems may want to take over Congress would be the straw that broke the camel's back and turn the generally reasonable GOP into a well oiled "no" machine. ..."
Oct 24, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

efcdons : Sunday, October 23, 2016 at 08:28 AM

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/10/22/kaine-vows-work-gop-if-democrats-win-white-house/92599252/

Sen. Tim Kaine said he's already reaching out to Republicans as the Democratic vice presidential hopeful looks for ways to repair damage done between the two parties during th divisive race for the White House.

"We have not run this campaign as a campaign against the GOP with the big broad brush - we've run it against Donald Trump," Kaine told the Associated Press. "We're going to get a lot of Republican votes, and that will also be part of, right out of the gate, the way to bring folks back together."

In an interview, Kaine said Saturday that he and Hillary Clinton have already discussed how to work with Republicans if they win the presidential election against Trump and his running-mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, in a little more than two weeks. He said that tackling economic anxieties, finding common policy ground with the GOP, and perhaps bringing Republicans into the administration would be elements of unity, though he added that he and Clinton did not discuss cabinet positions, the AP reported.

Kaine, who is in his fourth year as a senator from Virginia after serving as the state's governor, said Clinton is stepping up efforts to help Democrats recapture Senate control, but he hasn't made a specific pitch for a Democratic Senate. He's focusing his efforts on finding policies Republicans and Democrats can agree on.

"I have very good relations with Republicans in the Senate," Kaine said. "There's some people who really want to get some good work done."

[So the plan isn't to try and turn the Senate blue? What kind of work can a Clinton/Kaine administration "get done" with a GOP congress? My first guess would be giving big business something they want in "exchange" for something they want like a repatriation tax holiday to gently suggest corporations bring some of the money they have overseas back to the US and using a small portion of that money to pay for infrastructure spending business associations like the US COC have been advocating for years.

It's not like the Dems have a chance of taking congress or at least the Senate so why do anything that might annoy the GOP. Since the GOP are usually so reasonable and the slightest suggestion Dems may want to take over Congress would be the straw that broke the camel's back and turn the generally reasonable GOP into a well oiled "no" machine.

[Oct 23, 2016] Clintonism is wedge politics directed against any class or populist upheaval that might threaten neoliberalism

That's explains vicious campaign by neoliberal MSM against Trump and swiping under the carpet all criminal deeds of Clinton family. They feel the threat...
Notable quotes:
"... It should be remembered that fascism does not succeed in the real world as a crusade by race-obsessed lumpen. It succeeds when fascists are co-opted by capitalists, as was unambiguously the case in Nazi Germany and Italy. And big business supported fascism because it feared the alternatives: socialism and communism. ..."
"... That's because there is no more effective counter to class consciousness than race consciousness. That's one reason why, in my opinion, socialism hasn't done a better job of catching on in the United States. The contradictions between black and white labor formed a ready-made wedge. ..."
Oct 23, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

An excellent article

It should be remembered that fascism does not succeed in the real world as a crusade by race-obsessed lumpen. It succeeds when fascists are co-opted by capitalists, as was unambiguously the case in Nazi Germany and Italy. And big business supported fascism because it feared the alternatives: socialism and communism.

That's because there is no more effective counter to class consciousness than race consciousness. That's one reason why, in my opinion, socialism hasn't done a better job of catching on in the United States. The contradictions between black and white labor formed a ready-made wedge. The North's abhorrence at the spread of slavery into the American West before the Civil War had more to do a desire to preserve these new realms for "free" labor-"free" in one context, from the competition of slave labor-than egalitarian principle.[…]

There is more to Clintonism, I think, than simply playing the "identity politics" card to screw Bernie Sanders or discombobulate the Trump campaign. "Identity politics" is near the core of the Clintonian agenda as a bulwark against any class/populist upheaval that might threaten her brand of billionaire-friendly liberalism.

In other words it's all part of a grand plan when the Clintonoids aren't busy debating the finer points of her marketing and "mark"–a term normally applied to the graphic logo on a commercial product.

http://www.unz.com/plee/trump-we-wish-the-problem-was-fascism/

[Oct 22, 2016] You would have to be so incompetent as to need a daily caregiver to be a liberal activist and not know Hillary Clinton despises you.

Notable quotes:
"... Nonsense. You would have to be so incompetent as to need a daily caregiver to be a "liberal" activist and not know Hillary Clinton despises you. ..."
"... Didn't click on the link. I presume this is just face-saving blather from inside the pen. ..."
"... It's compatible with Hillary's three-act campaign's third act of "putting the Party back together" with the solvent glue of conflation and the structural adhesive of Stronger Together ("get in mah fasces, maggots"). ..."
Oct 22, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Kim Kaufman October 21, 2016 at 6:13 pm

Some fun dish in here: WikiLeaks poisons Hillary's relationship with left. After learning how Clinton feels about them, liberals vow to push back against her agenda and appointments.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/wikileaks-hilary-clinton-progressives-230009

aab October 21, 2016 at 6:53 pm

I'm sorry, it took WIKILEAKS to figure this out?

Nonsense. You would have to be so incompetent as to need a daily caregiver to be a "liberal" activist and not know Hillary Clinton despises you.

Didn't click on the link. I presume this is just face-saving blather from inside the pen. Gotta pretend you're not in the pen to get more calves in there with you. If they can actually see the wires and the prods, it takes more effort to get them down the chute.

hunkerdown October 21, 2016 at 7:16 pm

It's a decent bit of dish, but what one gets out of the forced synonymy of "liberal" and "left" and "progressive" depends on what priors one brings in with it, and I don't think I'll wait for the third time around before calling it as enemy design.

It's compatible with Hillary's three-act campaign's third act of "putting the Party back together" with the solvent glue of conflation and the structural adhesive of Stronger Together ("get in mah fasces, maggots").

Today's aptrogram from professional political kayfabe: Amanda Marcotte → At Drama, Moan Etc.

Vatch October 22, 2016 at 1:22 pm

I'm sorry, it took WIKILEAKS to figure this out?

I agree with this. All a person has to do is look at a few of her votes in the Senate to see how right wing she is. Some examples (which I posted during the primaries - sorry for the repetition):

With the exception of a few social issues, Hillary Clinton is a right wing Republican.

[Oct 22, 2016] The Soul Of The Clinton Machine

Oct 22, 2016 | www.theamericanconservative.com

She is a Democrat only by name. In reality she is a wolf in sheep clothing -- a neoliberal (and a neocon -- a warmonger with the distinct anti-Russian bet) that betrayed working people and middle class long ago and pandering only to the top 1%. The while "clitonized" Democratic party is the party of top 1% (top 10% at best). Rejection of Hillary is just rejection of Demorats (neoliberal democrats) betrayal of working and middle classes. It remains to be seen f Wall Street managed to push her thrith the thoat of Americal people, despite all re revultion her candidacy evoke, her corruption and her failing health.
The American Conservative
Charles Krauthammer, explaining why he's not voting for either Trump or Clinton , says this about Hillary, in light of the recent Wikileaks revelations:

The soullessness of [Clinton's] campaign - all ambition and entitlement - emerges almost poignantly in the emails, especially when aides keep asking what the campaign is about. In one largely overlooked passage, Clinton complains that her speechwriters have not given her any overall theme or rationale. Isn't that the candidate's job? Asked one of her aides , Joel Benenson: "Do we have any sense from her what she believes or wants her core message to be?"

It's that emptiness at the core that makes every policy and position negotiable and politically calculable. Hence the embarrassing about-face on the Trans-Pacific Partnership after the popular winds swung decisively against free trade.

So too with financial regulation, as in Dodd-Frank . As she told a Goldman Sachs gathering, after the financial collapse there was "a need to do something because, for political reasons . . . you can't sit idly by and do nothing."

Of course, we knew all this. But we hadn't seen it so clearly laid out. Illicit and illegal as is WikiLeaks, it is the camera in the sausage factory. And what it reveals is surpassingly unpretty.

Read the whole thing.

Who on the left is genuinely excited about voting for Hillary Clinton? Sure, there are some, but she strikes me as being a Democratic figure who's a lot like Mitt Romney was on the Right: the perfect distillation of a kind of Establishmentarianism within their own party. (I hasten to say that whatever my disagreement with Romney over policy might have been, he always struck me as a thoroughly decent person. Hillary Clinton … not.) It is hard to think of two more different figures on the Right than Mitt Romney and Donald Trump - temperamentally and otherwise. Yet within four years, the GOP convulsed so much that it got Donald Trump. What Trump's triumph over the GOP Establishment showed was its deep weakness. It just needed a strong push.

Might that be the case for the Democrats post-Clinton? Who is the Donald Trump of the Democratic Party? Where might he come from? I don't think we can see him (or her) now, but I have a hunch that he's out there. I find it hard to believe that the Democrats are not going to be immune to the same economic and cultural forces that dismantled the GOP. I could be wrong. Her sort of conniving, careerist, technocratic liberalism surely is not long for this world. Yes? Posted in Democrats , Presidential politics . Tagged Charles Krauthammer , Donald Trump , Hillary Clinton .

[Oct 22, 2016] Hillary needs advisors like Paul Krugman to whitewash her sellout to Wall Street.

Oct 22, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

anne : October 22, 2016 at 09:59 AM , 2016 at 09:59 AM

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/10/22/debt-diversion-distraction/

October 22, 2016

Debt, Diversion, Distraction
By Paul Krugman

[Graph]

There was a time, not long ago, when deficit scolds were actively dangerous - when their huffing and puffing came quite close to stampeding Washington into really bad policies like raising the Medicare age (which wouldn't even have saved money) and short-term fiscal austerity. At this point their influence doesn't reach nearly that far. But they continue to play a malign role in our national discourse - because they divert and distract attention from much more deserving problems, depriving crucial issues of political oxygen.

You saw that in the debates: four, count them, four questions about debt from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, not one about climate change. And you see it again in today's New York Times, with Pete Peterson (of course) and Paul Volcker (sigh) lecturing us * about the usual stuff.

What's so bad about this kind of deficit scolding? It's deeply misleading on two levels: the problem it purports to lay out is far less clearly a major issue than the scolds claim, and the insistence that we need immediate action is just incoherent.

So, about that supposed debt crisis: right now we have a more or less stable ratio of debt to GDP, and no hint of a financing problem. So claims that we are facing something terrible rest on the presumption that the budget situation will worsen dramatically over time. How sure are we about that? Less than you may imagine.

Yes, the population is getting older, which means more spending on Medicare and Social Security. But it's already 2016, which means that quite a few baby boomers are already drawing on those programs; by 2020 we'll be about halfway through the demographic transition, and current estimates don't suggest a big budget problem.

Why, then, do you see projections of a large debt increase? The answer lies not in a known factor - an aging population - but in assumed growth in health care costs and rising interest rates. And the truth is that we don't know that these are going to happen. In fact, health costs have grown much more slowly since 2010 than previously projected, and interest rates have been much lower. As the chart above shows, taking these favorable surprises into account has already drastically reduced long-run debt projections. These days the long-run outlook looks vastly less scary than people used to imagine.

Still, it's probably true that something will eventually have to be done to bring spending and revenues in line. But that brings me to the second point: why is this a crucial issue right now?

Are debt scolds demanding that we slash spending and raise taxes right away? Actually, no: the economy is still weak, interest rates still low (meaning that the Fed can't offset fiscal tightening with easy money), and as a matter of macroeconomic prudence we should probably be running bigger, not smaller deficits in the medium term. So proposals to "deal with" the supposed debt problem always involve long-term cuts in benefits and (reluctantly) increases in taxes. That is, they don't involve actual policy moves now, or for the next 5-10 years.

So why is it so important to take up the issue right now, with so much else on our plate?

Put it this way: yes, it's possible that we may at some point in the future have to cut benefits. But deficit scolds talk as if they offer a way to avoid this fate, when in fact their solution to the prospect of future benefit cuts is … to cut future benefits.

If you try really hard, you can argue that locking in policies now for this future adjustment will make the transition smoother. But that is really a second-order issue, hardly deserving to take up a lot of our time. By putting the debt question aside, we are NOT in any material way making the future worse.

And that is a total contrast with climate change, where our failure to act means pouring vast quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, materially increasing the odds of catastrophe with every year we wait.

So my message to the deficit scolds is this: yes, we may face some hard choices a couple of decades from now. But we might not, and in any case there aren't any choices that must be made now. Meanwhile, there are genuinely scary things happening as we speak, which we should be taking on but aren't. And your fear-mongering is distracting us from these real problems. Therefore, I would respectfully request that you people just go away.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/22/opinion/ignoring-the-debt-problem.html

ilsm -> anne... , -1
Hillary needs important advisors like paul v and pete p to help her sell out to wall st.........

[Oct 22, 2016] payments for some of Bill and Hillary's activities (non-speech related and easier to hide), ie lobbying for foreign governments and corporations, were structured through holding companies in Singapore, Hong Kong

Oct 22, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Cry Shop October 22, 2016 at 4:10 am

Bill Clinton has a mysterious shell-company

Trump could not be the only candidate under reporting family income. It's been pretty common talk among the chambers of commerce in Asia that payments for some of Bill and Hillary's activities (non-speech related and easier to hide), ie lobbying for foreign governments and corporations, were structured through holding companies in Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/03/bill-black-the-clintons-have-not-changed-the-clintonian-war-on-the-ig-watchdogs.html

Certainly having a on-shore tax shell is an important part of repatriation, just in time for Hillary's promised tax holiday.
https://newrepublic.com/article/117763/clinton-proposes-repatriation-tax-holiday-fund-infrastructure-bank

[Oct 21, 2016] Those who vote for Hillary for the sake of stability need to be reminded that according to the Minsky Theory stability sometimes can be very destabilizing

Oct 21, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

likbez -> Fred C. Dobbs... October 21, 2016 at 02:12 PM

Please note that Hillary's path to the top was marked by proved beyond reasonable doubt DNC fraud. With information contained in recent email leaks some DNC honchos probably might go to jail for violation of elections laws. So for them this is a death match and people usually fight well when they are against the wall. The same in true about Obama and his entourage.

And while this Nobel Peace Price winner managed to bomb just eight countries, Hillary might improve this peace effort, which was definitely insufficient from the point of view of many diplomats in State Department. Also the number of humanitarian bombs could be much greater. Here Hillary election can really help.

From the other point of view this might well be a sign of the crisis of legitimacy of the US ruling neoliberal elite (aka financial oligarchy).

After approximately 50 years in power the level of degeneration of the US neoliberal elite reached the level when the quality of candidates reminds me the quality of candidates from the USSR Politburo after Brezhnev death. Health-wise Hillary really bear some resemblance to Andropov and Chernenko. And inability of the elite to replace either of them with a more viable candidate speaks volumes.

The other factor that will not go away is that Obama effectively pardoned Hillary for emailgate (after gentle encouragement from Bill via Loretta Lynch). Otherwise instead of candidate to POTUS, she would be a viable candidate for orange suit too. Sure, the rule of law is not applicable to neoliberal elite, so why Hilary should be an exception? But some naive schmucks might think that this is highly improper. And be way too much upset with the fruits of neoliberal globalization. Not that Brexit is easily repeatable in the USA, but vote against neoliberal globalization (protest vote) might play a role.

Another interesting thing to observe is when (and if) the impeachment process starts, if she is elected. With some FBI materials in hands of the Congress Republicans she in on the hook. A simple majority of those present and voting is required for each article of impeachment, or the resolution as a whole, to pass.

All-in-all her win might well be a Pyrrhic victory. And the unknown neurological disease that she has (Parkinson?) makes her even more vulnerable after the election, then before. The role of POTUS involves a lot of stress and requires substantial physical stamina as POTUS is the center of intersection of all important government conflicts, conversations and communications. That's a killing environment for anyone with Parkinson. And remember she was not able to survive the pressure of the role of the Secretary of State when she was in much better health and has an earlier stage of the disease.

POTUS essentially does not belong to himself/herself for the term of the office (although Obama managed to slack in this role; was he on drugs the night of Benghazi killings ? http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines/plausible-theory-was-president-obama-high-on-coke-while-benghazi-burned-video)

Another interesting question, if the leaks continue after the election. That also can contribute to the level of stress. Just anticipation is highly stressful. I do not buy the theory about "evil Russians." This hypothesis does not survive Occam razor test. I think that there some anti-Hillary forces within the USA ruling elite, possibly within the NSA or some other three letter agency that has access to email boxes of major Web mail providers via NSA.

If this is a plausible hypothesis, that makes it more probable that the leaks continue. To say nothing about possible damaging revelations about Bill (especially related to Clinton Foundation), who really enjoyed his retirement way too much.

Those who vote for Hillary for the sake of stability need to be reminded that according to the Minsky Theory stability sometimes can be very destabilizing

Jay : October 21, 2016 at 01:36 PM , 2016 at 01:36 PM
When Krugman is appointed to a top government post by Hillary Clinton we will be able to FOIA his pay and attach a value to all the columns "electioneering" Krugman has written.
likbez -> anne...
Anne,

"An intolerably destructive essay that should never have been posted, and I assume no such essay will be posted again on this blog. Shameful, shameful essay."

You mean that voting for the female warmonger with some psychopathic tendencies ("We came, we saw, he died") is not shameful ?

An interesting approach I would say.

I am not fun of Trump, but he, at least, does not have the blood of innocent women and children on his hands. And less likely to start WWIII unlike this completely out of control warmonger.

With the number of victims of wars of neoliberal empire expansion in Iraq, Libya and Syria, you should be ashamed of yourself as a women.

Please think about your current position Anne. You really should be ashamed.

[Oct 21, 2016] I wonder if Victoria Nuland and Dick Cheney vote for Hillary

Notable quotes:
"... which may be the story one wishes for. But if there were a spread to compare her win against, it was Bernie who massively beat the spread. I'll leave it as an exercise to others to determine if her unfair advantages were as large as the winning margin. ..."
"... He makes a good point and you dismiss it. You bashed Bernie Sanders and "Bernie Bros" during the primary. Then you lie about it. That's why you're the worst. Dishonest as hell. ..."
"... Remember one thing anne, America is not a country. It is an idea. You cannot arrest it, murder it, or pretend it isn't there. We as a people are not perfect. But Mr Putin is stabbing directly at our democracy, not Hillary Clinton and not Paul Krugman. Time to be a little more objective, of which you are even more capable of than me. ..."
"... It is not exactly McCarthyism as stated (although kthomas with his previous Putin comments looks like a modern day McCarthyist). I think this is a pretty clear formulation of the credo of American Exceptionalism -- a flavor of nationalism adapted to the realities of the new continent. ..."
"... And Robert Kagan explained it earlier much better ... I wonder if Victoria Nuland and Dick Cheney vote for Hillary too. ..."
Oct 21, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
point said...

Krugman says:

"...Mrs. Clinton won the Democratic nomination fairly easily..."

which may be the story one wishes for. But if there were a spread to compare her win against, it was Bernie who massively beat the spread. I'll leave it as an exercise to others to determine if her unfair advantages were as large as the winning margin.

Peter K. -> kthomas... , October 21, 2016 at 11:46 AM

"Why do people like you pretend to love Sen Sanders so much!?"

Why do you say he is pretending? What did he write to make you think that?

Are you just a dishonest troll centrist totebagger like PGL.

Peter K. -> to pgl...

What does that have to do with anything?

He makes a good point and you dismiss it. You bashed Bernie Sanders and "Bernie Bros" during the primary. Then you lie about it. That's why you're the worst. Dishonest as hell. Are most New Yorkers as dishonest as you, Trump, Guiliani, Christie, etc?

kthomas -> anne... , October 21, 2016 at 10:59 AM
No. I am a fan of Sen Sanders, and not even he would believe your nonsense. History will not remember it that way. What it will remember is how Putin Comrade meddled. And there is a price for that.

Sen Sanders wanted one, stated thing: to push the narrative to the left. He marginally accomplished this. What he did succeed in was providing an opportunity for false-lefties like you and Mr Putin who seem to think that America is the root of all evil.

Remember one thing anne, America is not a country. It is an idea. You cannot arrest it, murder it, or pretend it isn't there. We as a people are not perfect. But Mr Putin is stabbing directly at our democracy, not Hillary Clinton and not Paul Krugman. Time to be a little more objective, of which you are even more capable of than me.

Peter K. -> kthomas... , October 21, 2016 at 11:48 AM
I agree with Anne and completely disagree with those like you have drunk the Kool Aid. You're not objective at all.
anne -> kthomas... , October 21, 2016 at 12:25 PM
Sen Sanders wanted one stated thing: to push the narrative to the left. He marginally accomplished this. What he did succeed in was providing an opportunity for false-lefties like --- and -- ----- who seem to think that America is the root of all evil....

[ Better to assume such an awful comment was never written, but the McCarthy-like tone to a particular campaign has been disturbing and could prove lasting. ]

Julio -> kthomas... , -1
"America is not a country. It is an idea. You cannot ...murder it..."

[You're trying, with your McCarthyist comments.]

likbez -> Julio ... , October 21, 2016 at 05:24 PM
Julio,

It is not exactly McCarthyism as stated (although kthomas with his previous Putin comments looks like a modern day McCarthyist). I think this is a pretty clear formulation of the credo of American Exceptionalism -- a flavor of nationalism adapted to the realities of the new continent.

cal -> anne... , October 21, 2016 at 11:28 AM
BS, a remarkable.
No, I am sure he will be remembered more than that.

Bernard Sanders, last romantic politician to run his campaign on an average of $37 from 3,284,421 donations (or whatever Obama said at The Dinner). Remarkable but ineffectual. A good orator in empty houses means he was practicing, not performing.

Why does Obama succeed and Sanders fail? Axelrod and co.

Peter K. -> cal... , -1
He was written off by the like of Krugman, PGL, you, KThomas etc.

He won what 13 million votes. Young people overwhelmingly voted for Sanders. He won New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, etc. etc. etc. And now the "unromantic" complacent people have to lie about the campaign.

pgl : , October 21, 2016 at 10:05 AM
Josh Barro explains why he used to be a Republican but is now a Democrat:

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-i-left-republican-party-register-democrat-2016-10

He seems to have had it with Paul Ryan and Rubio.

pgl -> pgl... , October 21, 2016 at 10:12 AM
I was enjoying this until:

"I have voted Republican, for example, in each of the past three New York City mayoral races."

Joe Llota was racist Rudy Guiliani's minnie me. How on earth did Josh think he should be mayor of my city.

likbez -> pgl...
And Robert Kagan explained it earlier much better ... I wonder if Victoria Nuland and Dick Cheney vote for Hillary too.

[Oct 21, 2016] The capitalist crisis and the radicalization of the working class in 2012 - World Socialist Web Site by David North

Its from World Socialist Web Site by thier analysys does contain some valid points. Especially about betrayal of nomenklatura, and, especially, KGB nomenklatura,which was wholesale bought by the USA for cash.
Note that the author is unable or unwilling to use the tterm "neoliberalism". Looks like orthodox Marxism has problem with this notion as it contradict Marxism dogma that capitalism as an economic doctrine is final stage before arrival of socialism. Looks like it is not the final ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... Russia Since 1980 ..."
"... History reveals that the grandsons of the Bolshevik coup d'état didn't destroy the Soviet Union in a valiant effort to advance the cause of communist prosperity or even to return to their common European home; instead, it transformed Soviet managers and ministers into roving bandits (asset-grabbing privateers) with a tacit presidential charter to privatize the people's assets and revenues to themselves under the new Muscovite rule of men ..."
"... The scale of this plunder was astounding. It not only bankrupted the Soviet Union, forcing Russian President Boris Yeltsin to appeal to the G-7 for $6 billion of assistance on December 6, 1991, but triggered a free fall in aggregate production commencing in 1990, aptly known as catastroika. ..."
"... In retrospect, the Soviet economy didn't collapse because the liberalized command economy devised after 1953 was marked for death. The system was inefficient, corrupt and reprehensible in a myriad of ways, but sustainable, as the CIA and most Sovietologists maintained. It was destroyed by Gorbachev's tolerance and complicity in allowing privateers to misappropriate state revenues, pilfer materials, spontaneously privatize, and hotwire their ill-gotten gains abroad, all of which disorganized production. ..."
"... The rapid growth and increasing complexity of the Soviet economy required access to the resources of the world economy. ..."
"... For the Soviet bureaucracy, a parasitic social caste committed to the defense of its privileges and terrified of the working class, the revolutionary solution to the contradictions of the Soviet economy was absolutely unthinkable. The only course that it could contemplate was the second-capitulation to imperialism. ..."
"... In other words, the integration of the USSR into the structure of the world capitalist economy on a capitalist basis means not the slow development of a backward national economy, but the rapid destruction of one which has sustained living conditions which are, at least for the working class, far closer to those that exist in the advanced countries than in the third world. ..."
"... The Fourth International ..."
"... The End of the USSR, ..."
"... The report related the destruction of the USSR by the ruling bureaucracy to a broader international phenomenon. The smashing up of the USSR was mirrored in the United States by the destruction of the trade unions as even partial instruments of working-class defense. ..."
"... Millions of people are going to see imperialism for what it really is. The democratic mask is going to be torn off. The idea that imperialism is compatible with peace is going to be exposed. The very elements which drove masses into revolutionary struggle in the past are once again present. The workers of Russia and the Ukraine are going to be reminded why they made a revolution in the first place. The American workers are going to be reminded why they themselves in an earlier period engaged in the most massive struggles against the corporations. The workers of Europe are going to be reminded why their continent was the birthplace of socialism and Karl Marx. [p. 25] ..."
Jan 30, 2012 | www.wsws.org

... ... ...

This analysis has been vindicated by scholarly investigations into the causes of the Soviet economic collapse that facilitated the bureaucracy's dissolution of the USSR. In Russia Since 1980, published in 2008 by Cambridge University Press, Professors Steven Rosefielde and Stefan Hedlund present evidence that Gorbachev introduced measures that appear, in retrospect, to have been aimed at sabotaging the Soviet economy. "Gorbachev and his entourage," they write, "seem to have had a venal hidden agenda that caused things to get out of hand quickly." [p. 38] In a devastating appraisal of Gorbachev's policies, Rosefielde and Hedlund state:

History reveals that the grandsons of the Bolshevik coup d'état didn't destroy the Soviet Union in a valiant effort to advance the cause of communist prosperity or even to return to their common European home; instead, it transformed Soviet managers and ministers into roving bandits (asset-grabbing privateers) with a tacit presidential charter to privatize the people's assets and revenues to themselves under the new Muscovite rule of men. [p. 40]

Instead of displaying due diligence over personal use of state revenues, materials and property, inculcated in every Bolshevik since 1917, Gorbachev winked at a counterrevolution from below opening Pandora's Box. He allowed enterprises and others not only to profit maximize for the state in various ways, which was beneficial, but also to misappropriate state assets, and export the proceeds abroad. In the process, red directors disregarded state contracts and obligations, disorganizing inter-industrial intermediate input flows, and triggering a depression from which the Soviet Union never recovered and Russia has barely emerged. [p. 47]

Given all the heated debates that would later ensue about how Yeltsin and his shock therapy engendered mass plunder, it should be noted that the looting began under Gorbachev's watch. It was his malign neglect that transformed the rhetoric of Market Communism into the pillage of the nation's assets.

The scale of this plunder was astounding. It not only bankrupted the Soviet Union, forcing Russian President Boris Yeltsin to appeal to the G-7 for $6 billion of assistance on December 6, 1991, but triggered a free fall in aggregate production commencing in 1990, aptly known as catastroika.

In retrospect, the Soviet economy didn't collapse because the liberalized command economy devised after 1953 was marked for death. The system was inefficient, corrupt and reprehensible in a myriad of ways, but sustainable, as the CIA and most Sovietologists maintained. It was destroyed by Gorbachev's tolerance and complicity in allowing privateers to misappropriate state revenues, pilfer materials, spontaneously privatize, and hotwire their ill-gotten gains abroad, all of which disorganized production. [p. 49]

The analysis of Rosefielde and Hedlund, while accurate in its assessment of Gorbachev's actions, is simplistic. Gorbachev's policies can be understood only within the framework of more fundamental political and socioeconomic factors. First, and most important, the real objective crisis of the Soviet economy (which existed and preceded by many decades the accession of Gorbachev to power) developed out of the contradictions of the autarkic nationalist policies pursued by the Soviet regime since Stalin and Bukharin introduced the program of "socialism in one country" in 1924. The rapid growth and increasing complexity of the Soviet economy required access to the resources of the world economy. This access could be achieved only in one of two ways: either through the spread of socialist revolution into the advanced capitalist countries, or through the counterrevolutionary integration of the USSR into the economic structures of world capitalism.

For the Soviet bureaucracy, a parasitic social caste committed to the defense of its privileges and terrified of the working class, the revolutionary solution to the contradictions of the Soviet economy was absolutely unthinkable. The only course that it could contemplate was the second-capitulation to imperialism. This second course, moreover, opened for the leading sections of the bureaucracy the possibility of permanently securing their privileges and vastly expanding their wealth. The privileged caste would become a ruling class. The corruption of Gorbachev, Yeltsin and their associates was merely the necessary means employed by the bureaucracy to achieve this utterly reactionary and immensely destructive outcome.

On October 3, 1991, less than three months before the dissolution of the USSR, I delivered a lecture in Kiev in which I challenged the argument-which was widely propagated by the Stalinist regime-that the restoration of capitalism would bring immense benefits to the people. I stated:

In this country, capitalist restoration can only take place on the basis of the widespread destruction of the already existing productive forces and the social- cultural institutions that depended upon them. In other words, the integration of the USSR into the structure of the world capitalist economy on a capitalist basis means not the slow development of a backward national economy, but the rapid destruction of one which has sustained living conditions which are, at least for the working class, far closer to those that exist in the advanced countries than in the third world. When one examines the various schemes hatched by proponents of capitalist restoration, one cannot but conclude that they are no less ignorant than Stalin of the real workings of the world capitalist economy. And they are preparing the ground for a social tragedy that will eclipse that produced by the pragmatic and nationalistic policies of Stalin. ["Soviet Union at the Crossroads," published in The Fourth International (Fall- Winter 1992, Volume 19, No. 1, p. 109), Emphasis in the original.]

Almost exactly 20 years ago, on January 4, 1992, the Workers League held a party membership meeting in Detroit to consider the historical, political and social implications of the dissolution of the USSR. Rereading this report so many years later, I believe that it has stood the test of time. It stated that the dissolution of the USSR "represents the juridical liquidation of the workers' state and its replacement with regimes that are openly and unequivocally devoted to the destruction of the remnants of the national economy and the planning system that issued from the October Revolution. To define the CIS [Confederation of Independent States] or its independent republics as workers states would be to completely separate the definition from the concrete content which it expressed during the previous period." [David North, The End of the USSR, Labor Publications, 1992, p. 6]

The report continued:

"A revolutionary party must face reality and state what is. The Soviet working class has suffered a serious defeat. The bureaucracy has devoured the workers state before the working class was able to clean out the bureaucracy. This fact, however unpleasant, does not refute the perspective of the Fourth International. Since it was founded in 1938, our movement has repeatedly said that if the working class was not able to destroy this bureaucracy, then the Soviet Union would suffer a shipwreck. Trotsky did not call for political revolution as some sort of exaggerated response to this or that act of bureaucratic malfeasance. He said that a political revolution was necessary because only in that way could the Soviet Union, as a workers state, be defended against imperialism." [p. 6]

I sought to explain why the Soviet working class had failed to rise up in opposition to the bureaucracy's liquidation of the Soviet Union. How was it possible that the destruction of the Soviet Union-having survived the horrors of the Nazi invasion-could be carried out "by a miserable group of petty gangsters, acting in the interests of the scum of Soviet society?" I offered the following answer:

We must reply to these questions by stressing the implications of the massive destruction of revolutionary cadre carried out within the Soviet Union by the Stalinist regime. Virtually all the human representatives of the revolutionary tradition who consciously prepared and led that revolution were wiped out. And along with the political leaders of the revolution, the most creative representatives of the intelligentsia who had flourished in the early years of the Soviet state were also annihilated or terrorized into silence.

Furthermore, we must point to the deep-going alienation of the working class itself from state property. Property belonged to the state, but the state "belonged" to the bureaucracy, as Trotsky noted. The fundamental distinction between state property and bourgeois property-however important from a theoretical standpoint-became less and less relevant from a practical standpoint. It is true that capitalist exploitation did not exist in the scientific sense of the term, but that did not alter the fact that the day-to-day conditions of life in factories and mines and other workplaces were as miserable as are to be found in any of the advanced capitalist countries, and, in many cases, far worse.

Finally, we must consider the consequences of the protracted decay of the international socialist movement...

Especially during the past decade, the collapse of effective working class resistance in any part of the world to the bourgeois offensive had a demoralizing effect on Soviet workers. Capitalism assumed an aura of "invincibility," although this aura was merely the illusory reflection of the spinelessness of the labor bureaucracies all over the world, which have on every occasion betrayed the workers and capitulated to the bourgeoisie. What the Soviet workers saw was not the bitter resistance of sections of workers to the international offensive of capital, but defeats and their consequences. [p. 13-14]

The report related the destruction of the USSR by the ruling bureaucracy to a broader international phenomenon. The smashing up of the USSR was mirrored in the United States by the destruction of the trade unions as even partial instruments of working-class defense.

In every part of the world, including the advanced countries, the workers are discovering that their own parties and their own trade union organizations are engaged in the related task of systematically lowering and impoverishing the working class. [p. 22]

Finally, the report dismissed any notion that the dissolution of the USSR signified a new era of progressive capitalist development.

Millions of people are going to see imperialism for what it really is. The democratic mask is going to be torn off. The idea that imperialism is compatible with peace is going to be exposed. The very elements which drove masses into revolutionary struggle in the past are once again present. The workers of Russia and the Ukraine are going to be reminded why they made a revolution in the first place. The American workers are going to be reminded why they themselves in an earlier period engaged in the most massive struggles against the corporations. The workers of Europe are going to be reminded why their continent was the birthplace of socialism and Karl Marx. [p. 25]

The aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR: 20 years of economic crisis, social decay, and political reaction

According to liberal theory, the dissolution of the Soviet Union ought to have produced a new flowering of democracy. Of course, nothing of the sort occurred-not in the former USSR or, for that matter, in the United States. Moreover, the breakup of the Soviet Union-the so-called defeat of communism-was not followed by a triumphant resurgence of its irreconcilable enemies in the international workers' movement, the social democratic and reformist trade unions and political parties. The opposite occurred. All these organizations experienced, in the aftermath of the breakup of the USSR, a devastating and even terminal crisis. In the United States, the trade union movement-whose principal preoccupation during the entire Cold War had been the defeat of Communism-has all but collapsed. During the two decades that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the AFL-CIO lost a substantial portion of its membership, was reduced to a state of utter impotence, and ceased to exist as a workers' organization in any socially significant sense of the term. At the same time, everywhere in the world, the social position of the working class-from the standpoint of its influence on the direction of state policy and its ability to increase its share of the surplus value produced by its own labor-deteriorated dramatically.

Certain important conclusions flow from this fact. First, the breakup of the Soviet Union did not flow from the supposed failure of Marxism and socialism. If that had been the case, the anti-Marxist and antisocialist labor organizations should have thrived in the post-Soviet era. The fact that these organizations experienced ignominious failure compels one to uncover the common feature in the program and orientation of all the so-called labor organizations, "communist" and anticommunist alike. What was the common element in the political DNA of all these organization? The answer is that regardless of their names, conflicting political alignments and superficial ideological differences, the large labor organizations of the post-World War II period pursued essentially nationalist policies. They tied the fate of the working class to one or another nation-state. This left them incapable of responding to the increasing integration of the world economy. The emergence of transnational corporations and the associated phenomena of capitalist globalization shattered all labor organizations that based themselves on a nationalist program.

The second conclusion is that the improvement of conditions of the international working class was linked, to one degree or another, to the existence of the Soviet Union. Despite the treachery and crimes of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the existence of the USSR, a state that arose on the basis of a socialist revolution, imposed upon American and European imperialism certain political and social restraints that would otherwise have been unacceptable. The political environment of the past two decades-characterized by unrestrained imperialist militarism, the violations of international law, and the repudiation of essential principles of bourgeois democracy-is the direct outcome of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The breakup of the USSR was, for the great masses of its former citizens, an unmitigated disaster. Twenty years after the October Revolution, despite all the political crimes of the Stalinist regime, the new property relations established in the aftermath of the October Revolution made possible an extraordinary social transformation of backward Russia. And even after suffering horrifying losses during the four years of war with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union experienced in the 20 years that followed the war a stupendous growth of its economy, which was accompanied by advances in science and culture that astonished the entire world.

But what is the verdict on the post-Soviet experience of the Russian people? First and foremost, the dissolution of the USSR set into motion a demographic catastrophe. Ten years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russian population was shrinking at an annual rate of 750,000. Between 1983 and 2001, the number of annual births dropped by one half. 75 percent of pregnant women in Russia suffered some form of illness that endangered their unborn child. Only one quarter of infants were born healthy.

The overall health of the Russian people deteriorated dramatically after the restoration of capitalism. There was a staggering rise in alcoholism, heart disease, cancer and sexually transmitted diseases. All this occurred against the backdrop of a catastrophic breakdown of the economy of the former USSR and a dramatic rise in mass poverty.

As for democracy, the post-Soviet system was consolidated on the basis of mass murder. For more than 70 years, the Bolshevik regime's dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918-an event that did not entail the loss of a single life-was trumpeted as an unforgettable and unforgivable violation of democratic principles. But in October 1993, having lost a majority in the popularly elected parliament, the Yeltsin regime ordered the bombardment of the White House-the seat of the Russian parliament-located in the middle of Moscow. Estimates of the number of people who were killed in the military assault run as high as 2,000. On the basis of this carnage, the Yeltsin regime was effectively transformed into a dictatorship, based on the military and security forces. The regime of Putin-Medvedev continues along the same dictatorial lines. The assault on the White House was supported by the Clinton administration. Unlike the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the bombardment of the Russian parliament is an event that has been all but forgotten.

What is there to be said of post-Soviet Russian culture? As always, there are talented people who do their best to produce serious work. But the general picture is one of desolation. The words that have emerged from the breakup of the USSR and that define modern Russian culture, or what is left of it, are "mafia," "biznessman" and "oligarch."

What has occurred in Russia is only an extreme expression of a social and cultural breakdown that is to be observed in all capitalist countries. Can it even be said with certainty that the economic system devised in Russia is more corrupt that that which exists in Britain or the United States? The Russian oligarchs are probably cruder and more vulgar in the methods they employ. However, the argument could be plausibly made that their methods of plunder are less efficient than those employed by their counterparts in the summits of American finance. After all, the American financial oligarchs, whose speculative operations brought about the near-collapse of the US and global economy in the autumn of 2008, were able to orchestrate, within a matter of days, the transfer of the full burden of their losses to the public.

It is undoubtedly true that the dissolution of the USSR at the end of 1991 opened up endless opportunities for the use of American power-in the Balkans, the Middle East and Central Asia. But the eruption of American militarism was, in the final analysis, the expression of a more profound and historically significant tendency-the long-term decline of the economic position of American capitalism. This tendency was not reversed by the breakup of the USSR. The history of American capitalism during the past two decades has been one of decay. The brief episodes of economic growth have been based on reckless and unsustainable speculation. The Clinton boom of the 1990s was fueled by the "irrational exuberance" of Wall Street speculation, the so-called dot.com bubble. The great corporate icons of the decade-of which Enron was the shining symbol-were assigned staggering valuations on the basis of thoroughly criminal operations. It all collapsed in 2000-2001. The subsequent revival was fueled by frenzied speculation in housing. And, finally, the collapse in 2008, from which there has been no recovery.

When historians begin to recover from their intellectual stupor, they will see the collapse of the USSR and the protracted decline of American capitalism as interrelated episodes of a global crisis, arising from the inability to develop the massive productive forces developed by mankind on the basis of private ownership of the means of production and within the framework of the nation-state system.

[Oct 20, 2016] Hillary might try to give Wall Street the mother of all financial gifts by mandating retirement savings accounts managed by Wall Street

Oct 20, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

JohnH -> Chris Lowery ... October 20, 2016 at 08:19 AM , 2016 at 08:19 AM

Hillary might try to give Wall Street the mother of all financial gifts by mandating retirement savings accounts managed by Wall Street.
http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/hillary-clinton-wall-street-financial-industry-may-control-retirement-savings

Kind of like Obama's gift of mandated health insurance coverage given to a health insurance industry that is consolidating more and more every day...and becoming an oligopoly?

Of course, we already know how this ends from privatization of retirement plans in Britain and in Chile--it's a boon mainly to the finance industry.

"Britain's experience with individual accounts has been troubling. None other than the business oriented Wall Street Journal, in fact, headlined an article on the British experience: "Social Security Switch in U.K. is Disastrous; A Caution to the U.S.?"[7] While the Journal article mainly focused on a multi-billion dollar fraud scandal in which British pension sellers gave workers bad investment advice, others have critically noted the system's unexpectedly high administrative costs and the growing income inequality among the nation's workers"
http://www.eoionline.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/social-security/PensionPrivatizationBritainBoondoggle-Sep00.pdf

What else would you expect from the Clintons, who have spent a good part of their careers sucking up to the finance industry?

[Oct 20, 2016] What Hillary Clinton Privately Told Goldman Sachs

Notable quotes:
"... Much of the content of these speeches to U.S. bankers dealt with foreign policy, and virtually all of that with warfare, potential warfare, and opportunities for military-led domination of various regions of the globe. This stuff is more interesting and less insultingly presented than the idiocies spewed out at the public presidential debates. But it also fits an image of U.S. policy that Clinton might have preferred to keep private. Just as nobody advertised that, as emails now show, Wall Street bankers helped pick President Obama's cabinet, we're generally discouraged from thinking that wars and foreign bases are intended as services to financial overlords. "I'm representing all of you," Clinton says to the bankers in reference to her efforts at a meeting in Asia. Sub-Saharan Africa has great potential for U.S. "businesses and entrepreneurs," she says in reference to U.S. militarism there. ..."
"... "We're going to ring China with missile 'defense,'" Clinton tells Goldman Sachs. "We're going to put more of our fleet in the area." ..."
"... In public debates, Clinton demands a "no fly zone" or "no bombing zone" or "safe zone" in Syria, from which to organize a war to overthrow the government. In a speech to Goldman Sachs, however, she blurts out that creating such a zone would require bombing a lot more populated areas than was required in Libya. ..."
"... Clinton also makes clear that Syrian "jihadists" are being funded by Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar. In October 2013, as the U.S. public had rejected bombing Syria, Blankfein asked if the public was now opposed to "interventions" - that clearly being understood as a hurdle to be overcome. Clinton said not to fear. "We're in a time in Syria," she said, "where they're not finished killing each other . . . and maybe you just have to wait and watch it." ..."
"... Regarding China again, Clinton claims to have told the Chinese that the United States could claim ownership of the entire Pacific as a result of having "liberated it." She goes on to claim to have told them that "We discovered Japan for heaven's sake." And: "We have proof of having bought [Hawaii]." Really? From whom? ..."
"... it's fascinating that even the bankers in whom Clinton confides her militarist mania ask her identical questions to those I get asked by peace activists at speaking events: "Is the U.S. political system completely broken?" "Should we scrap this and go with a parliamentary system?" ..."
www.counterpunch.org
In the speech transcripts from June 4, 2013, October 29, 2013, and October 19, 2015, Clinton was apparently paid sufficiently to do something she denies most audiences. That is, she took questions that it appears likely she was not secretly briefed on or engaged in negotiations over ahead of time. In part this appears to be the case because some of the questions were lengthy speeches, and in part because her answers were not all the sort of meaningless platitudes that she produces if given time to prepare.

Much of the content of these speeches to U.S. bankers dealt with foreign policy, and virtually all of that with warfare, potential warfare, and opportunities for military-led domination of various regions of the globe. This stuff is more interesting and less insultingly presented than the idiocies spewed out at the public presidential debates. But it also fits an image of U.S. policy that Clinton might have preferred to keep private. Just as nobody advertised that, as emails now show, Wall Street bankers helped pick President Obama's cabinet, we're generally discouraged from thinking that wars and foreign bases are intended as services to financial overlords. "I'm representing all of you," Clinton says to the bankers in reference to her efforts at a meeting in Asia. Sub-Saharan Africa has great potential for U.S. "businesses and entrepreneurs," she says in reference to U.S. militarism there.

Yet, in these speeches, Clinton projects exactly that approach, accurately or not, on other nations and accuses China of just the sort of thing that her "far left" critics accuse her of all the time, albeit outside the censorship of U.S. corporate media. China, Clinton says, may use hatred of Japan as a means of distracting Chinese people from unpopular and harmful economic policies. China, Clinton says, struggles to maintain civilian control over its military. Hmm. Where else have we seen these problems?

"We're going to ring China with missile 'defense,'" Clinton tells Goldman Sachs. "We're going to put more of our fleet in the area."

On Syria, Clinton says it's hard to figure out whom to arm - completely oblivious to any options other than arming somebody. It's hard, she says, to predict at all what will happen. So, her advice, which she blurts out to a room of bankers, is to wage war in Syria very "covertly."

In public debates, Clinton demands a "no fly zone" or "no bombing zone" or "safe zone" in Syria, from which to organize a war to overthrow the government. In a speech to Goldman Sachs, however, she blurts out that creating such a zone would require bombing a lot more populated areas than was required in Libya. "You're going to kill a lot of Syrians," she admits. She even tries to distance herself from the proposal by referring to "this intervention that people talk about so glibly" - although she, before and at the time of that speech and ever since has been the leading such person.

Clinton also makes clear that Syrian "jihadists" are being funded by Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar. In October 2013, as the U.S. public had rejected bombing Syria, Blankfein asked if the public was now opposed to "interventions" - that clearly being understood as a hurdle to be overcome. Clinton said not to fear. "We're in a time in Syria," she said, "where they're not finished killing each other . . . and maybe you just have to wait and watch it."

That's the view of many ill-meaning and many well-meaning people who have been persuaded that the only two choices in foreign policy are bombing people and doing nothing. That clearly is the understanding of the former Secretary of State, whose positions were more hawkish than those of her counterpart at the Pentagon. It's also reminiscent of Harry Truman's comment that if the Germans were winning you should help the Russians and vice versa, so that more people would die. That's not exactly what Clinton said here, but it's pretty close, and it's something she would not say in a scripted joint-media-appearance masquerading as a debate. The possibility of disarmament, nonviolent peacework, actual aid on a massive scale, and respectful diplomacy that leaves U.S. influence out of the resulting states is just not on Clinton's radar no matter who is in her audience.

On Iran, Clinton repeatedly hypes false claims about nuclear weapons and terrorism, even while admitting far more openly than we're used to that Iran's religious leader denounces and opposes nuclear weapons. She also admits that Saudi Arabia is already pursuing nuclear weapons and that UAE and Egypt are likely to do so, at least if Iran does. She also admits that the Saudi government is far from stable.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein asks Clinton at one point how a good war against Iran might go - he suggesting that an occupation (yes, they use that forbidden word) might not be the best move. Clinton replies that Iran can just be bombed. Blankfein, rather shockingly, appeals to reality - something Clinton goes on at obnoxious length about elsewhere in these speeches. Has bombing a population into submission ever worked, Blankfein asks. Clinton admits that it has not but suggests that it just might work on Iranians because they are not democratic.

Regarding Egypt, Clinton makes clear her opposition to popular change.

Regarding China again, Clinton claims to have told the Chinese that the United States could claim ownership of the entire Pacific as a result of having "liberated it." She goes on to claim to have told them that "We discovered Japan for heaven's sake." And: "We have proof of having bought [Hawaii]." Really? From whom?

This is ugly stuff, at least as damaging to human lives as the filth coming from Donald Trump. Yet it's fascinating that even the bankers in whom Clinton confides her militarist mania ask her identical questions to those I get asked by peace activists at speaking events: "Is the U.S. political system completely broken?" "Should we scrap this and go with a parliamentary system?"

Et cetera. In part their concern is the supposed gridlock created by differences between the two big parties, whereas my biggest concern is the militarized destruction of people and the environment that never seems to encounter even a slight traffic slowdown in Congress. But if you imagine that the people Bernie Sanders always denounces as taking home all the profits are happy with the status quo, think again. They benefit in certain ways, but they don't control their monster and it doesn't make them feel fulfilled.

David Swanson wants you to declare peace at http://WorldBeyondWar.org His new book is War No More: The Case for Abolition.

[Oct 19, 2016] Hillary Fixer Breaks Ranks I Arranged Sex Trysts For Her - With Men WOMEN National Enquirer

Evidently, the National Enquirer is doing Hillary like they did Edwards.
Oct 18, 2016 | www.nationalenquirer.com
By National ENQUIRER Staff Oct 18, 2016

Hillary Clinton is a secret sex freak who paid fixers to set up illicit romps with both men AND women!

That's the blockbuster revelation from a former Clinton family operative who is sensationally breaking ranks with his one-time bosses to speak to The National ENQUIRER in a bombshell 9-page cover story - on newsstands Wednesday.

"I arranged a meeting for Hillary and a woman in an exclusive Beverly Hills hotel," the man, who was hired by the Clintons, via a Hollywood executive, to cover up their scandals, told The ENQUIRER .

"She had come to the studio to see the filming of a movie in 1994."

"While I was there, I helped her slip out of a back exit for a one-on-one session with the other woman. It was made to look casual, leaving quietly [rather] that being caught up in the melee but really it was for something presumably more sordid."

What's more, it wasn't just Hillary's flings with women that the shadowy Mr. Fix It helped to orchestrate! Hillary's former bagman finally confessed to The ENQUIRER just how he helped her to cover up her affair with married lover Vince Foster , too!

The shadowy figure - who provided PROOF of his employment for the Clintons - also revealed 12 fixes he covered-up, including:

  • + How Hillary secretly plotted to a counter-attack on Bill's mistress Monica Lewinsky - via a document buried for two decades!
  • + What crooked reporters were on the take from the Clinton camp!
  • + How he covered up Bill's seedy romp with hookers!
  • + Which A-list celebrity had a secret affair with Bill during his presidency!

In the bombshell exposé, The ENQUIRER will reveal the fixer's dossier of smoking gun proof, including 24-years of documents, notes, and journals.

See also

[Oct 19, 2016] Emails Show Hillary Struggled To Draft Bribery Corruption Reforms - She May Be So Tainted She is Really Vulnerable

Notable quotes:
"... The news was released that Hillarnazi had lesbian lovers, paid for sexual encounters, has had memory issues so severe going back to 2009 that her own people aren't sure if she knows what planet she is on, can't walk without getting massively fatigued, a new rape victim came forward, the Clinton Foundation stole over $2 billion in Haitian relief funds, the Clinton Foundation has a pay gap between men and women of $190,000 and she referred to blacks repeatedly as the dreaded "n" word . ..."
"... Again, that is from YESTERDAY Yet there has been no movement in the polls. She is the most criminal and unethical candidate in the history of America, and is likely to win. There is no greater indictment about our citizens than her candidacy. if thise was 1920, she would be in front of a firing squad. ..."
"... But we have 2016. This is not breaking news at the main media outlets. Only people actively digging know this. All this pales in comparison with the fact of bussing people around different states to vote. If elections can be rigged then nothing else actually matters. Nothing will change because the only tool to repair the country is the election. ..."
"... The ballot box is not the last remedy to fix things. Just saying. Voting is more to bring you into the system than you changing the system. What better way to keep you happy inside the system than to give you the ability to "vote the bums out" at the next (s)election? ..."
"... Europe is also facing the problem of not enough breeding to keep up the exponential expansion of their currency (debt issued with interest) so they import people to keep the ponzi going. Not going to work as the people you bring in are not going to be expanding it at the rate that someone born into that system is going to. ..."
"... Sucks to be them - the humillatiion and embarrassment of the cockroaches as they all scurry for cover. Not to mention the career nose-dives en masse for all the selfsame scum floating around the turd herself. I'm surprised Hillary hasn't told Podesta to eat a bullet (or nail-gun) yet, given the damage he has caused by being hacked. Err...rewind, eh Hillary? Because it is not as if you are an angel in this respect, you dumb fucking senile cunt. ..."
"... Neocons are IT illiterate, and this must be their primary weakness, given how fucking useless they are at securing their insidious evil shit (now in the public domain - eh, Poddy, old chum, you evil CUNT). It must be a fucking disease given how utterly bereft of intelligence with respect to IT security they collectively are. ..."
"... It definitely sucks to be Hillary when even the help knows you're crooked. It sucks to be the help too. HILLARY FOR PRISON 2017!!!! ..."
"... As if. Former Lousiana Governor Edwin Edwards in 1983 said "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy." In 2016, neither of those conditions is a bar to election to the presidency. ..."
"... Evidently the rats have been assured the ship isn't sinking. Besides it's insured if crossing is successful. ..."
"... Americans have the attention span of a gnat these days. The hypocrisy is stunning and has no bounds. ..."
"... The best part of waking up is realizing that TPTB had been pissing in our cup while we weren't looking. ..."
"... Another body to add to the Clinton Death List, this time the doctor who treated her for a concussion and knew about her glioma. A devout Hindu, this doctor supposedly committed suicide after threatening to reveal Hillary medical information if prosecutors continued to go after him for bogus criminal charges. http://www.govtslaves.info/clinton-doctor-who-confirmed-hillarys-brain-t... ..."
"... Neera Tanden must be suicidal by now. She probably doesn't even realise it yet. ..."
"... I was thinking the same thing. With so many on the "team" having such critical positions on their own "leader", why the fuck are they supporting her, and why do they still have jobs? ..."
"... Power. Money. The belief that they will be able to run things themselves once she goes full brain clot. One thing I do know, Hillary would be very unwise to let any of them pick her nursing home for her. ..."
"... Neera Tanden: "It worries me more that she doesn't seem to know what planet we are all living in at the moment." https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/18353 ..."
"... I imagine cankle's inner circle are gobling a lot off drugs about now. Their paranoia is no doubt palpable. I hope they devour one another. ..."
"... It ain't just the US where free press is extinct. Had Wiki dropped the lot, it would simply have sunk without a trace with respect to the MSM reporting it to the sheeple, as we have seen in the last 12 days. ..."
"... Free Shit and open borders and speaking well while lying. The stupidity of the average person, particularly those who only get their news from the corporate controlled media, is fuckin' amazing. Only a military coup could hunt down and arrest the Deep State... The Kagans and Powers and Jarretts and every cunt who has given HRC money. ..."
"... Short of a coup, massive desertion would be very helpful. ..."
"... you hit the nail on the head - "speaking well while lying". Middle class English people speak very well - appear attractive to Americans - when in fact they have zero monopoly on honesty, brains or ability ..."
"... just because someone speaks well does not mean they are legal, decent, honest and truthful - in fact clinton fails on all four of these positives and is illegal, indecent, crooked and a liar ..."
"... The no fly zone doesn't like questions not preprogrammed. I hope his brother gets a chance to rip Obama a new asshole. ..."
"... rule by criminals REQUIRES deep knowledge and primary experience with criminal exploits. She is the ONLY candidate who is qualified to run Gov-Co. ..."
"... Comey is a Dirty Cop – Former US Attorney. How Crooked Clinton Got Off. ..."
"... Juan Williams email to John Podesta found here: https://twitter.com/hashtag/DrainTheSwamp?src=hash ..."
"... How does it feel working for a total scumbag just to get a paycheck? ..."
Oct 19, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com

The latest WikiLeaks dump reveals yet another bombshell from the outspoken, an likely soon to be unemployed, Neera Tanden. The email chain comes from March of this year and begins when Neera distributes a memo on proposals for reform policies relative to bribery and corruption of public officials . That said, apparently the folks within the Hillary campaign were aware that this was a very dicey topic for their chosen candidate as even Tanden admits " she may be so tainted she's really vulnerable. "

Meanwhile, Hillary advisor Jake Sullivan provided his thoughts that he really liked the following proposal on strengthening bribery laws...

"Strengthen bribery laws to ensure that politicians don' change legislation for political donations."

...but subsequently admits that it might be problematic given Hillary's history.

"The second idea is a favorite of mine, as you know, but REALLY dicey territory for HRC, right?"

Even a month before these internal campaign discussions, Stan Greenberg, a democrat strategist of Democracy Corps, wrote to Podesta highlighting that "reform of money and politics is where she is taking the biggest hit." That said, Stan was quick to assure Podesta that there was no reason for concern as a specially crafted message and a little help from the media could make the whole problem go away.

"We are also going to test some messages that include acknowledgement of being part of the system , and know how much has to change. "

Finally, perhaps no one has better summarized why the Clinton camp may be worried about corruption charges than Obama:

Syrin PrayingMantis Oct 19, 2016 12:58 PM ,
The news was released that Hillarnazi had lesbian lovers, paid for sexual encounters, has had memory issues so severe going back to 2009 that her own people aren't sure if she knows what planet she is on, can't walk without getting massively fatigued, a new rape victim came forward, the Clinton Foundation stole over $2 billion in Haitian relief funds, the Clinton Foundation has a pay gap between men and women of $190,000 and she referred to blacks repeatedly as the dreaded "n" word .

Again, that is from YESTERDAY Yet there has been no movement in the polls. She is the most criminal and unethical candidate in the history of America, and is likely to win. There is no greater indictment about our citizens than her candidacy. if thise was 1920, she would be in front of a firing squad.

WTFRLY Syrin Oct 19, 2016 1:04 PM ,
2 Years After This American Journalist Was Killed, Her 'Conspiracy Theories' on Syria are Proven as Facts
nibiru WTFRLY Oct 19, 2016 1:05 PM ,
But we have 2016. This is not breaking news at the main media outlets. Only people actively digging know this. All this pales in comparison with the fact of bussing people around different states to vote. If elections can be rigged then nothing else actually matters. Nothing will change because the only tool to repair the country is the election.

In Europe they ship people from Africa and the Middle East to become multicultural societies ( look at Blair multicultural effort, Swedish no-go zones and Merkel's last effort with immigration crisis) . We are in deep shit here and the processes to repair the state are not there anymore. Now we only have Wikileaks doing the job of media - watching politicians' hands.

pods nibiru Oct 19, 2016 1:16 PM ,
The ballot box is not the last remedy to fix things. Just saying. Voting is more to bring you into the system than you changing the system. What better way to keep you happy inside the system than to give you the ability to "vote the bums out" at the next (s)election?

Europe is also facing the problem of not enough breeding to keep up the exponential expansion of their currency (debt issued with interest) so they import people to keep the ponzi going. Not going to work as the people you bring in are not going to be expanding it at the rate that someone born into that system is going to.

But, it is a plausible explanation for why they are trying it. The moneychangers have their very lives depending on keeping this going, so they have to try it.

pods

CuttingEdge pods Oct 19, 2016 1:21 PM ,
All I know is, most the cunts behind the curtain have been completely compromised pre-election.

Sucks to be them - the humillatiion and embarrassment of the cockroaches as they all scurry for cover. Not to mention the career nose-dives en masse for all the selfsame scum floating around the turd herself. I'm surprised Hillary hasn't told Podesta to eat a bullet (or nail-gun) yet, given the damage he has caused by being hacked. Err...rewind, eh Hillary? Because it is not as if you are an angel in this respect, you dumb fucking senile cunt.

The fucking irony is palpable.

Neocons are IT illiterate, and this must be their primary weakness, given how fucking useless they are at securing their insidious evil shit (now in the public domain - eh, Poddy, old chum, you evil CUNT). It must be a fucking disease given how utterly bereft of intelligence with respect to IT security they collectively are.

Theosebes Goodfellow CuttingEdge Oct 19, 2016 2:17 PM ,
It definitely sucks to be Hillary when even the help knows you're crooked. It sucks to be the help too. HILLARY FOR PRISON 2017!!!!
junction Syrin Oct 19, 2016 1:05 PM ,

As if. Former Lousiana Governor Edwin Edwards in 1983 said "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy." In 2016, neither of those conditions is a bar to election to the presidency.

Arnold Syrin Oct 19, 2016 1:09 PM ,
Evidently the rats have been assured the ship isn't sinking. Besides it's insured if crossing is successful.
Bay of Pigs PrayingMantis Oct 19, 2016 1:01 PM ,
Americans have the attention span of a gnat these days. The hypocrisy is stunning and has no bounds.
PTR erkme73 Oct 19, 2016 1:43 PM ,
The best part of waking up is realizing that TPTB had been pissing in our cup while we weren't looking.
junction PrayingMantis Oct 19, 2016 1:30 PM ,
Another body to add to the Clinton Death List, this time the doctor who treated her for a concussion and knew about her glioma. A devout Hindu, this doctor supposedly committed suicide after threatening to reveal Hillary medical information if prosecutors continued to go after him for bogus criminal charges. http://www.govtslaves.info/clinton-doctor-who-confirmed-hillarys-brain-t...
Croesus PrayingMantis Oct 19, 2016 1:31 PM ,
ZH Readers in Germany: Read this: https://file.wikileaks.org/file/angela-merkel.pdf Merkel trying to hide money in offshore accounts! Print it, spread it, and wreck that bitch.
whatamaroon Oct 19, 2016 12:53 PM ,
Lock her up!!
medium giraffe Oct 19, 2016 12:54 PM ,
Neera Tanden must be suicidal by now. She probably doesn't even realise it yet.
ShrNfr medium giraffe Oct 19, 2016 12:58 PM ,
Don't worry, for her it will just be a walk in the park.
Ranger4564 -> medium giraffe Oct 19, 2016 12:59 PM ,
I was thinking the same thing. With so many on the "team" having such critical positions on their own "leader", why the fuck are they supporting her, and why do they still have jobs?
tarabel -> Ranger4564 Oct 19, 2016 1:18 PM ,

Power. Money. The belief that they will be able to run things themselves once she goes full brain clot. One thing I do know, Hillary would be very unwise to let any of them pick her nursing home for her.

medium giraffe -> Occams_Chainsaw Oct 19, 2016 1:13 PM ,
Neera Tanden: "It worries me more that she doesn't seem to know what planet we are all living in at the moment." https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/18353
pine_marten -> medium giraffe Oct 19, 2016 2:00 PM ,
I imagine cankle's inner circle are gobling a lot off drugs about now. Their paranoia is no doubt palpable. I hope they devour one another.
CuttingEdge -> indaknow Oct 19, 2016 1:34 PM ,
Assange has played a blinder, and all those who bitched about him "not dropping everything at once" give some thought to the fact that even in the UK barely one reference to the deluge of shit landing on Hillary thus far has been reported in the MSM. They have killed virtually everything, and are mainlining Trump the mad man (for insinuating election fraud) shit.

It ain't just the US where free press is extinct. Had Wiki dropped the lot, it would simply have sunk without a trace with respect to the MSM reporting it to the sheeple, as we have seen in the last 12 days.

Better a death by a thousand cuts to build up momentum, and give EVERYONE the chance to absorb the full criminallity of this fundamentally evil bitch and her cohorts. There is way too much to take in one hit.

War Machine Oct 19, 2016 1:02 PM ,
sadly, most Americans are going to vote based on which candidate they think is least 'offensive' to them, and ISMism prevails in the corporate MSM and Regressive Left:
  • For secure borders and controlled immigration: RACIST
  • Against set asides for women or think rosie o'donnell could lose a few: MISOGYNIST.
  • But voting for a banker owned duplicitous warmonger who is the crooked politician par excellance of this millenium, one who will pursue more neocon/zionist wars and involve arming and aiding Al Qaeda and worse.... : 'PROGRESSIVE'.

Why?

Free Shit and open borders and speaking well while lying. The stupidity of the average person, particularly those who only get their news from the corporate controlled media, is fuckin' amazing. Only a military coup could hunt down and arrest the Deep State... The Kagans and Powers and Jarretts and every cunt who has given HRC money.

Short of a coup, massive desertion would be very helpful.

hooligan2009 -> War Machine Oct 19, 2016 1:39 PM ,
you hit the nail on the head - "speaking well while lying". Middle class English people speak very well - appear attractive to Americans - when in fact they have zero monopoly on honesty, brains or ability

just because someone speaks well does not mean they are legal, decent, honest and truthful - in fact clinton fails on all four of these positives and is illegal, indecent, crooked and a liar

SharkBit Oct 19, 2016 1:02 PM ,
Anyone else disgusted to hear Obozo speak anymore? What an embarrassment.
Atomizer SharkBit Oct 19, 2016 1:13 PM ,
The no fly zone doesn't like questions not preprogrammed. I hope his brother gets a chance to rip Obama a new asshole.
Mango327 Oct 19, 2016 1:04 PM ,
If Donald Trump Acted Like Hillary Clinton... http://youtu.be/K8JUpM97VZE
Madcow Oct 19, 2016 1:05 PM ,
Authoritarian rule by criminals REQUIRES deep knowledge and primary experience with criminal exploits. She is the ONLY candidate who is qualified to run Gov-Co.
SidSays Oct 19, 2016 1:07 PM ,
Comey is a Dirty Cop – Former US Attorney. How Crooked Clinton Got Off.
Miss Expectations Oct 19, 2016 1:11 PM ,
Juan Williams email to John Podesta found here: https://twitter.com/hashtag/DrainTheSwamp?src=hash
vegas Oct 19, 2016 1:13 PM ,
Is this from "The Onion"? Seriously, these people are so fucking tone deaf and out of touch it's amazing. Throw 'em all in prison. How does it feel working for a total scumbag just to get a paycheck?

[Oct 18, 2016] Hillary to come out as lesbian in October Surprise

It did not happened...
Notable quotes:
"... Yoko Ono has been talking about it for years and those who would be bothered by it, aren't voting for her anyway. ..."
"... I don't think anyone really cares especially since I doubt she's doing much of anything with anyone nowadays. ..."
"... Now, if she were to divorce Bill and have a public gay wedding ceremony with a divorced Huma Abedin, that might surprise some people but that wouldn't win her any points since it would alienate those who actually just like Bill . ..."
Oct 18, 2016 | fellowshipoftheminds.com
Artist | September 5, 2016 at 12:29 pm
why bother, it's no secret to her voters I don't think Yoko Ono has been talking about it for years and those who would be bothered by it, aren't voting for her anyway.

I don't think anyone really cares especially since I doubt she's doing much of anything with anyone nowadays.

Now, if she were to divorce Bill and have a public gay wedding ceremony with a divorced Huma Abedin, that might surprise some people but that wouldn't win her any points since it would alienate those who actually just like Bill .

Dr. Eowyn | September 5, 2016 at 12:33 pm
Good points.
It may be a preemptive move because there are whisperings that Trump would out her.

[Oct 18, 2016] BREAKING Hillary LESBIAN Sex Scandal Tapes To Be Released (GROSS)... THIS IS MASSIVE

This is just a nasty rumor or what ???
Notable quotes:
"... Rumors have abounded for years that Hillary's door swings this way and this is why she had no issue with Bill's marital infidelities. While the story is not a new one, if it came with credible proof to support those long persistent rumors, it could be a complete game-changer for the election that is now just a short, three weeks away. ..."
Oct 17, 2016 | www.americasfreedomfighters.com
Popular Conservative news personality, Matt Drudge, has caused quite the stir. On Sunday Drudge tweeted that he was about to unleash a bombshell like none other, one that could potentially upend this contentious Presidential election.

"Oh, on the sex stuff. Hillary is about to get hers ," he wrote on Twitter, sharing a photo of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton with talk show host-comedienne-actress Ellen DeGeneres. The implications, of course, are that the rumors may force Hillary out of the closet so to speak as a lesbian.

Rumors have abounded for years that Hillary's door swings this way and this is why she had no issue with Bill's marital infidelities. While the story is not a new one, if it came with credible proof to support those long persistent rumors, it could be a complete game-changer for the election that is now just a short, three weeks away.

[Oct 18, 2016] The Clinton Goldman Speeches No Smoking Guns, but a Munitions Dump Instead

Notable quotes:
"... First, Clinton's neoliberalism is so bone deep that she refers to Medicare as a "single market" rather than "single payer"; ..."
"... Clinton frames solutions exclusively ..."
"... Policy Sciences ..."
"... Stalin spent his early days in a seminary. Masters of broken promises. I'm more interested in Clinton's Chinese connections. Probably tied through JP Morgan. The Chinese are very straightforward in their, dare I say, inscrutible way. The ministers are the ministers, and the palace is the palace. ..."
"... SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I don't feel particularly courageous. I mean, if we're going to be an effective, efficient economy, we need to have all part of that engine running well, and that includes Wall Street and Main Street. ..."
"... Because she wont pay for quality speechwriters or coaching. Because she is a shyster, cheapskate and a fraud. They hired the most inept IT company to 'mange' their office server who then (in a further fit of cheapskate stupidity) hired an inept IT client manager who then (in a further fit of cheapskate stupidity) asked Reddit for a solution. ..."
"... One can say a lot of justifiable bad things about Ronald Reagan, but, he had competent advisors and he used them! With Hillary, Even if she knows she has accessed the best advice on the planet her instinct it to not trust it because "she knows better" and she absolutely will not tolerate dissent. Left to her own devices, she simply copies other people's thinking/ homework instead of building her own ideas with it. ..."
"... What surprises me is that Goldmans paid her for these speeches, you know? Hillary C typically pays "the audience" to listen to, and come to her speeches. You know? You know! ..."
"... I heard Hillary speak in summer '92, when Bill was running for Prez. She. was. amazing. No joke. Great speech, great ideas, great points. I thought then she should be the candidate. But there was in her speech just a tiny undercurrent of "the ends justify the means." i.e. 'we need to get lots of money so we can do good things.' Fast forward 20+ years. Seems to me that for the Clintons the "means" (getting lots of money) has become the end in itself. Reassuring Wall St. is one method for getting money – large, large amounts of money. ..."
"... A fine illustration of the maxim that "crime makes you stupid." ..."
"... in that context ..."
"... So I guess the moral of the story is (a) more deterioration, this time from 2008 to 2016, and (b) Clinton can actually make a good decision, but only when forced to by a catastrophe that will impact her personally. Whether she'll be able to rise to the occasion if elected is an open question, but this post argues not. ..."
"... Bingo! Think about it: She was speaking to a group of people whose time is "valued" at 100's if not 1,000's of dollars per hour. She took up their "valuable" time but provided nothing except politics-as-usual blather tailored to that particular audience. Yet she was paid $225k for a single speech… ..."
"... Hillary is a remarkably inarticulate person, which calls into question her intellectual fitness for the job (amidst many other questions, of course). I entirely agree with your depiction of her speeches as mindless drivel. ..."
"... Not to otherwise compare them, but Bush I's inarticulateness made him seem a buffoon, and that was not the case, either. ..."
"... Matt Tiabbi, Elizabeth Warren, Benie Sanders, Noam Chompsky–all those used to seem like bastions of integrity have, thanks to Hillary, been revealed as slimy little Weasels who should henceforth be completely disregarded. I'd have to thank Hillary for pulling back the nlindets on that; if not for this election I might have been still foolishly listening to these people. ..."
"... What scares me most about Clinton is her belligerence towards Russia and clamoring for a no-fly zone in Syria. The no-fly zone will mean war with Russia. If only Clinton were saying this, we might be safe, but the entire Washington deep state seems to be of one mind in favor of a war. During the cold war this would have been inconceivable; everyone understood a nuclear war must not be allowed. This is no longer true and it is terrifying. Every war game the pentagon used to simulate a war with the U.S.S.R. escalated into an all out nuclear war. What is the "plan B" Obama is pursuing in Syria? ..."
"... The current fear/fever over nuclear war with Russia requires madness in the Kremlin - of which there is no evidence. Our Rulers are depending on Putin and his cohorts being the sane ones as rhetoric from the US and the West ratchets ever upwards. ..."
"... But then, the Kremlin is looking for any hint of sanity on US and NATO side and is finding little… ..."
"... Curtis LeMay tried to provoke a nuclear war with the Soviets in the 1950's. By and large, however, the American state understood a nuclear war was unwinnable and avoided such a possibility. A no-fly zone in Syria would start a war with Russia. William Polk, who participated in the Cuban missle crisis and U.S. nuclear war games, argues in this article ..."
"... both of which present a clinical assessment that Hillary suffers from Parkinson's. Seems like an elephant in the room. ..."
"... The absolute vacuousness of Clinton's remarks, coupled with her ease at neoliberal conventional wisdom, make it clear that Goldman's payments were nothing more (or less) than a $675,000 anticipatory "so no quid pro quo ..."
"... The leaked emails confirm - even though she herself never writes them, which is really odd, when you consider that Podesta is her Campaign Chair and close ally going back decades - that she is compulsively secretive, controlling, and resistant to admitting she's wrong. The chain of people talking about how to get her to admit she was wrong about Nancy Reagan and AIDS was particularly fascinating that way; she was flat out factually inaccurate, and it had the potential to do tremendous harm to her campaign with a key donor group, and it was apparently still a major task to persuade her to say "I made a mistake." ..."
"... basically, every real world policy problem is related to every other real world policy problem ..."
"... Most noticeable thing is her subservience to them like a fresh college grad afraid of his boss at his first job ..."
Oct 18, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
As readers know, WikiLeaks has released transcripts of the three speeches to Goldman Sachs that Clinton gave in 2013, and for which she was paid the eyewatering sum of $675,000. (The link is to an email dated January 23, 2016, from Cllinton staffer Tony Carrk , Clinton's research director, which pulls out "noteworthy quotes" from the speeches. The speeches themselves are attachments to that email.)

Readers, I read them. All three of them. What surprises - and when I tell you I had to take a little nap about halfway through, I'm not making it up! - is the utter mediocrity of Clinton's thought and mode of expression[1]. Perhaps that explains Clinton's otherwise inexplicable refusal to release them. And perhaps my sang froid is preternatural, but I don't see a "smoking gun," unless forking over $675,000 for interminable volumes of shopworn conventional wisdom be, in itself, such a gun. What can Goldman Sachs possibly have thought they were paying for?

WikiLeaks has, however, done voters a favor - in these speeches, and in the DNC and Podesta email releases generally - by giving us a foretaste of what a Clinton administration will be like, once in power, not merely on policy (the "first 100 days"), but on how they will make decisions. I call the speeches a "munitions dump," because the views she expresses in these speeches are bombs that can be expected to explode as the Clinton administration progresses.

With that, let's contextualize and comment upon some quotes from the speeches

The Democrats Are the Party of Wall Street

Of course, you knew that, but it's nice to have the matter confirmed. This material was flagged by Carrk (as none of the following material will have been). It's enormously prolix, but I decided to cut only a few paragraphs. From Clinton's second Goldman speech at the AIMS Alternative Investments Symposium:

MR. O'NEILL: Let's come back to the US. Since 2008, there's been an awful lot of seismic activity around Wall Street and the big banks and regulators and politicians.

Now, without going over how we got to where we are right now , what would be your advice to the Wall Street community and the big banks as to the way forward with those two important decisions?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I represented all of you for eight years. I had great relations and worked so close together after 9/11 to rebuild downtown, and a lot of respect for the work you do and the people who do it, but I do - I think that when we talk about the regulators and the politicians, the economic consequences of bad decisions back in '08, you know, were devastating, and they had repercussions throughout the world.

That was one of the reasons that I started traveling in February of '09, so people could, you know, literally yell at me for the United States and our banking system causing this everywhere. Now, that's an oversimplification we know, but it was the conventional wisdom [really?!].

And I think that there's a lot that could have been avoided in terms of both misunderstanding and really politicizing [!] what happened with greater transparency, with greater openness on all sides, you know, what happened, how did it happen, how do we prevent it from happening? You guys help us figure it out and let's make sure that we do it right this time .

And I think that everybody was desperately trying to fend off the worst effects institutionally, governmentally, and there just wasn't that opportunity to try to sort this out, and that came later .

I mean, it's still happening, as you know. People are looking back and trying to, you know, get compensation for bad mortgages and all the rest of it in some of the agreements that are being reached.

There's nothing magic about regulations, too much is bad, too little is bad. How do you get to the golden key, how do we figure out what works? And the people that know the industry better than anybody are the people who work in the industry .

And we need banking. I mean, right now, there are so many places in our country where the banks are not doing what they need to do because they're scared of regulations , they're scared of the other shoe dropping, they're just plain scared, so credit is not flowing the way it needs to to restart economic growth.

So people are, you know, a little - they're still uncertain, and they're uncertain both because they don't know what might come next in terms of regulations, but they're also uncertain because of changes in a global economy that we're only beginning to take hold of.

So first and foremost, more transparency, more openness, you know, trying to figure out, we're all in this together , how we keep this incredible economic engine in this country going. And this [finance] is, you know, the nerves, the spinal column.

And with political people, again, I would say the same thing, you know, there was a lot of complaining about Dodd-Frank, but there was also a need to do something because for political reasons , if you were an elected member of Congress and people in your constituency were losing jobs and shutting businesses and everybody in the press is saying it's all the fault of Wall Street, you can't sit idly by and do nothing, but what you do is really important.

And I think the jury is still out on that because it was very difficult to sort of sort through it all.

And, of course, I don't, you know, I know that banks and others were worried about continued liability [oh, really?] and other problems down the road, so it would be better if we could have had a more open exchange about what we needed to do to fix what had broken and then try to make sure it didn't happen again, but we will keep working on it.

MR. O'NEILL: By the way, we really did appreciate when you were the senator from New York and your continued involvement in the issues (inaudible) to be courageous in some respects to associated with Wall Street and this environment. Thank you very much.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I don't feel particularly courageous. I mean, if we're going to be an effective, efficient economy, we need to have all part of that engine running well, and that includes Wall Street and Main Street.

And there's a big disconnect and a lot of confusion right now. So I'm not interested in, you know, turning the clock back or pointing fingers , but I am interested in trying to figure out how we come together to chart a better way forward and one that will restore confidence in, you know, small and medium-size businesses and consumers and begin to chip away at the unemployment rate [five years into the recession!].

So it's something that I, you know, if you're a realist, you know that people have different roles to play in politics, economics, and this is an important role, but I do think that there has to be an understanding of how what happens here on Wall Street has such broad consequences not just for the domestic but the global economy, so more thought has to be given to the process and transactions and regulations so that we don't kill or maim what works, but we concentrate on the most effective way of moving forward with the brainpower and the financial power that exists here.

"Moving forward." And not looking back. (It would be nice to know what "continued liability" the banks were worried about; accounting control fraud ? Maybe somebody could ask Clinton.) Again, I call your attention to the weird combination of certainty and mediocrity of it; readers, I am sure, can demolish the detail. What this extended quotation does show is that Clinton and Obama are as one with respect to the role of the finance sector. Politico describes Obama's famous meeting with the bankster CEOs:

Arrayed around a long mahogany table in the White House state dining room last week, the CEOs of the most powerful financial institutions in the world offered several explanations for paying high salaries to their employees - and, by extension, to themselves.

"These are complicated companies," one CEO said. Offered another: "We're competing for talent on an international market.".

But President Barack Obama wasn't in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public's reaction to such explanations. "Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn't buying that.".

"My administration," the president added, "is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

And he did! He did! Clinton, however, by calling the finance sector the "the nerves, the spinal column" of the country, goes farther than Obama ever did.

So, from the governance perspective, we can expect the FIRE sector to dominate a Clinton administration, and the Clinton administration to service it. The Democrats are the Party of Wall Street. The bomb that could explode there is corrupt dealings with cronies (for which the Wikileaks material provides plenty of leads).

Clinton Advocates a "Night Watchman" State

The next quotes are shorter, I swear! Here's a quote from Clinton's third Goldman speech (not flagged by Carrk, no doubt because hearing drivel like this is perfectly normal in HillaryLand):

SECRETARY CLINTON: And I tell you, I see any society like a three-legged stool. You have to have an active free market that gives people the chance to live out their dreams by their own hard work and skills. You have to have a functioning, effective government that provides the right balance of oversight and protection of freedom and privacy and liberty and all the rest of it that goes with it . And you have to have an active civil society. Because there's so much about America that is volunteerism and religious faith and family and community activities. So you take one of those legs away, it's pretty hard to balance it. So you've got to get back to getting the right balance.

Apparently, the provision of public services is not within government's remit -- What are Social Security and Medicare? "All the rest of it"? Not only that, who said the free market was the only way to "live out their dreams"? Madison, Franklin, even Hamilton would have something to say about that! Finally, which one of those legs is out of balance? Civil society? Some would advocate less religion in politics rather than more, including many Democrats. The markets? Not at Goldman? Government? Too much militarization, way too little concrete material benefits, so far as I'm concerned, but Clinton doesn't say, making the "stool" metaphor vacuous.

From a governance perspective, we can expect Clinton's blind spot on government's role in provisioning servies to continue. Watch for continued privatization efforts (perhaps aided by Silicon Valley). On any infrastructure projects, watch for "public-private partnerships." The bomb that could explode there is corrupt dealings with a different set of cronies (even if the FIRE sector does have a finger in every pie).

Clinton's Views on Health Care Reflect Market Fundamentalism

From Clinton's second Goldman Speech :

MR. O'NEILL: [O]bviously the Affordable Care Act has been upheld by the supreme court. It's clearly having limitation problems [I don't know what that means]. It's unsettling, people still - the Republicans want to repeal it or defund it. So how do you get to the middle on that clash of absolutes?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, this is not the first time that we rolled out a big program with the limitation problems [Clinton apparently does].

I was in the Senate when President Bush asked and signed legislation expanding Medicare benefits, the Medicare Part D drug benefits. And people forget now that it was a very difficult implementation.

As a senator, my staff spent weeks working with people who were trying to sign up, because it was in some sense even harder to manage because the population over 65, not the most computer-literate group, and it was difficult. But, you know, people stuck with it, worked through it.

Now, this is on - it's on a different scale and it is more complex because it's trying to create a market. In Medicare, you have a single market , you have, you know, the government is increasing funding through government programs [sic] to provide people over 65 the drugs they needed.

And there were a few variations that you could play out on it, but it was a much simpler market than what the Affordable Care Act is aiming to set up.

Now, the way I look at this, Tim, is it's either going to work or it's not going to work.

First, Clinton's neoliberalism is so bone deep that she refers to Medicare as a "single market" rather than "single payer"; but then Clinton erases single payer whenever possible . Second, Clinton frames solutions exclusively in terms of markets (and not the direct provision of services by government); Obama does the same on health care in JAMA , simply erasing the possibility of single payer. Third, rather than advocate a simple, rugged, and proven system like Canadian Medicare (single payer), Clinton prefers to run an experiment ("it's either going to work or it's not going to work") on the health of millions of people (and, I would urge, without their informed consent).

From a governance perspective, assume that if the Democrats propose a "public option," it will be miserably inadequate. The bomb that could explode here is the ObamaCare death spiral.

The Problems Are "Wicked," but Clinton Will Be Unable to Cope With Them

Finally, this little passage from the first Clinton Goldman speech caught my eye:

MR. BLANKFEIN: The next area which I think is actually literally closer to home but where American lives have been at risk is the Middle East, I think is one topic. What seems to be the ambivalence or the lack of a clear set of goals - maybe that ambivalence comes from not knowing what outcome we want or who is our friend or what a better world is for the United States and of Syria, and then ultimately on the Iranian side if you think of the Korean bomb as far away and just the Tehran death spot, the Iranians are more calculated in a hotter area with - where does that go? And I tell you, I couldn't - I couldn't myself tell - you know how we would like things to work out, but it's not discernable to me what the policy of the United States is towards an outcome either in Syria or where we get to in Iran.

MS. CLINTON: Well, part of it is it's a wicked problem , and it's a wicked problem that is very hard to unpack in part because as you just said, Lloyd, it's not clear what the outcome is going to be and how we could influence either that outcome or a different outcome.

(I say "cope with" rather than "solve" for reasons that will become apparent.) Yes, Syria's bad, as vividly shown by Blankfein's fumbling question, but I want to focus on the term "wicked problem," which comes from the the field of strategic planning, though it's also infiltrated information technology and management theory . The concept originated in a famous paper by Horst W. J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber entitled: "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning" (PDF), Policy Sciences 4 (1973), 155-169. I couldn't summarize the literature even if I had the time, but here is Rittel and Webber's introduction:

There are at least ten distinguishing properties of planning-type problems, i.e. wicked ones, that planners had better be alert to and which we shall comment upon in turn. As you will see, we are calling them "wicked" not because these properties are themselves ethically deplorable. We use the term "wicked" in a meaning akin to that of "malignant" (in contrast to "benign") or "vicious" (like a circle) or "tricky" (like a leprechaun) or "aggressive" (like a lion, in contrast to the docility of a lamb). We do not mean to personify these properties of social systems by implying malicious intent. But then, you may agree that it becomes morally objectionable for the planner to treat a wicked problem as though it were a tame one, or to tame a wicked problem prematurely, or to refuse to recognize the inherent wickedness of social problems.

And here is a list of Rittel and Webber's ten properties of a "wicked problem" ( and a critique ):

There is no definite formulation of a wicked problem Wicked problems have no stopping rule Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good-or-bad. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem. Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation"; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts significantly. Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan. Every wicked problem is essentially unique. Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another [wicked] problem. The causes of a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem's resolution. [With wicked problems,] the planner has no right to be wrong.

Of course, there's plenty of controversy about all of this, but if you throw these properties against the Syrian clusterf*ck, I think you'll see a good fit, and can probably come up with other examples. My particular concern, however, is with property #3:

Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good-or-bad

There are conventionalized criteria for objectively deciding whether the offered solution to an equation or whether the proposed structural formula of a chemical compound is correct or false. They can be independently checked by other qualified persons who are familiar with the established criteria; and the answer will be normally unambiguous.

For wicked planning problems, there are no true or false answers. Normally, many parties are equally equipped, interested, and/or entitled to judge the solutions, although none has the power to set formal decision rules to determine correctness. Their judgments are likely to differ widely to accord with their group or personal interests, their special value-sets, and their ideological predilections. Their assessments of proposed solutions are expressed as "good" or "bad" or, more likely, as "better or worse" or "satisfying" or "good enough."

(Today, we would call these "many parties" "stakeholders.") My concern is that a Clinton administration, far from compromising - to be fair, Clinton does genuflect toward "compromise" elsewhere - will try to make wicked planning problems more tractable by reducing the number of parties to policy decisions. That is, exactly, what "irredeemables" implies[2], which is unfortunate, especially when the cast out amount to well over a third of the population. The same tendencies were also visible in the Clinton campaigns approach to Sanders and Sanders supporters, and the general strategy of bringing the Blame Cannons to bear on those who demonstrate insufficient fealty.

From a governance perspective, watch for many more executive orders acceptable to neither right nor left, and plenty of decisions taken in secret. The bomb that could explode here is the legitimacy of a Clinton administration, depending on the parties removed from the policy discussion, and the nature of the decision taken.

Conclusion

I don't think volatility will decrease on November 8, should Clinton be elected and take office; if anything, it will increase. A ruling party in thrall to finance, intent on treating government functions as opportunities for looting by cronies, blinded by neoliberal ideology and hence incapable of providing truly universal health care, and whose approach to problems of conflict in values is to demonize and exclude the opposition is a recipe for continued crisis.

NOTES

[1] Matt Taibbi takes the view that "Speaking to bankers and masters of the corporate universe, she came off as relaxed, self-doubting, reflective, honest, philosophical rather than political, and unafraid to admit she lacked all the answers." I don't buy it. It all read like the same old Clinton to me, and I've read a lot of Clinton (see, e.g., here , here , here , here , here , and here ).

[2] One is irresistibly reminded of Stalin's "No man, no problem," although some consider Stalin's methods to be unsound.

oho October 17, 2016 at 1:14 pm

Slow motion coup. Wish I was being histrionic.

Vatch October 17, 2016 at 1:56 pm

Your notion is a lot like Simon Johnson's thoughts about the Quiet Coup from 2009:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/

ocop October 17, 2016 at 3:40 pm

Oh my god.

I had never read this article before. Near perfect diagnosis and even more relevant today than it was then. For everyone's benefit, the central thesis:

Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason-the powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit-and, most of the time, genteel-oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are the controlling shareholders.

Of course, the U.S. is unique. And just as we have the world's most advanced economy, military, and technology, we also have its most advanced oligarchy.

In a primitive political system, power is transmitted through violence, or the threat of violence: military coups, private militias, and so on. In a less primitive system more typical of emerging markets, power is transmitted via money: bribes, kickbacks, and offshore bank accounts. Although lobbying and campaign contributions certainly play major roles in the American political system, old-fashioned corruption-envelopes stuffed with $100 bills-is probably a sideshow today, Jack Abramoff notwithstanding.

Instead, the American financial industry gained political power by amassing a kind of cultural capital-a belief system. Once, perhaps, what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Over the past decade, the attitude took hold that what was good for Wall Street was good for the country. The banking-and-securities industry has become one of the top contributors to political campaigns, but at the peak of its influence, it did not have to buy favors the way, for example, the tobacco companies or military contractors might have to. Instead, it benefited from the fact that Washington insiders already believed that large financial institutions and free-flowing capital markets were crucial to America's position in the world.

A hypothesis (at least for "Main Street") proven true between 2009 and 2016:

Emerging-market countries have only a precarious hold on wealth, and are weaklings globally. When they get into trouble, they quite literally run out of money -- or at least out of foreign currency, without which they cannot survive. They must make difficult decisions; ultimately, aggressive action is baked into the cake. But the U.S., of course, is the world's most powerful nation, rich beyond measure, and blessed with the exorbitant privilege of paying its foreign debts in its own currency, which it can print. As a result, it could very well stumble along for years-as Japan did during its lost decade-never summoning the courage to do what it needs to do, and never really recovering.

Lastly, the "bleak" scenario from 2009 that today looks about a decade too early, but could with minor tuning (Southern instead of Eastern Europe, for example) end up hitting in a big way:


It goes like this: the global economy continues to deteriorate, the banking system in east-central Europe collapses, and-because eastern Europe's banks are mostly owned by western European banks-justifiable fears of government insolvency spread throughout the Continent. Creditors take further hits and confidence falls further. The Asian economies that export manufactured goods are devastated, and the commodity producers in Latin America and Africa are not much better off. A dramatic worsening of the global environment forces the U.S. economy, already staggering, down onto both knees. The baseline growth rates used in the administration's current budget are increasingly seen as unrealistic, and the rosy "stress scenario" that the U.S. Treasury is currently using to evaluate banks' balance sheets becomes a source of great embarrassment.

The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump "cannot be as bad as the Great Depression." This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression-because the world is now so much more interconnected and because the banking sector is now so big. We face a synchronized downturn in almost all countries, a weakening of confidence among individuals and firms, and major problems for government finances. If our leadership wakes up to the potential consequences, we may yet see dramatic action on the banking system and a breaking of the old elite. Let us hope it is not then too late.

Lambert Strether Post author October 18, 2016 at 12:34 am

That's a good reminder to us at NC that not all our readers have been with us since 2009 and may not be familiar with the great financial crash and subsequent events. I remember reading the Johnson article when it came out. And now, almost eight years later…

There's a reason that there's a "Banana Republic" category. Every time I read an article about the political economy of a second- or third-world country I look for how it applies to this country, and much of the time, it does, particularly on corruption.

Synoia October 17, 2016 at 1:16 pm

She told them what they wanted to hear. "No surprises."

craazyboy October 17, 2016 at 2:17 pm

We truly must consider the possibility Goldman wrote the 3 speeches, then paid Hillary to give them.

Next, leak them to Wiki. Everything in them is pretty close to pure fiction – but it is neolib banker fiction. Just makes it all seem more real when they do things this way.

Yike's, I'm turning into a crazy conspiracy theorist.

ambrit October 17, 2016 at 4:56 pm

Don't fall for the 'status quo's' language Jedi mind trick crazyboy. I like to call myself a "sane conspiracy theorist." You can too!
As for H Clinton's 'slavish' adherence to the Bankster Ethos; in psychology, there is the "Stockholm Syndrome." Here, H Clinton displays the markers of "Wall Street Syndrome."

Praedor October 17, 2016 at 1:22 pm

Ugh. Mindless drivel. Talking points provided by Wall St itself would sound identical.

Then there's this: She did NOT represent Wall St and the Banks while a Senator. They cannot vote. They are not people. They are not citizens. She represented the PEOPLE. The PEOPLE that can VOTE. You cannot represent a nonexistent entity like a corporation as an ELECTED official. You can ONLY represent those who actually can, or do, vote. End of story.

Portia October 17, 2016 at 1:39 pm

You cannot represent a nonexistent entity like a corporation

you are forgetting, of course, that Corporations are people, too. And a corporation's voting is done with a corporation's wallet.

Roger Smith October 17, 2016 at 1:59 pm

I saw a video in high school years back that mentioned a specific congressional ruling that gave Congress the equivalent to individual rights. I swear it was also in the 30s but I cannot recall and have never been able to find what it was I saw. Do you have any insight here?

Portia October 17, 2016 at 2:47 pm

could this be related?

Historical Background and Legal Basis of the Federal Register / CFR Publications System

Why was the Federal Register System Established ?

New Deal legislation of the 1930's delegated responsibility from Congress to agencies to regulate complex social and economic issues
Citizens needed access to new regulations to know their effect in advance
Agencies and Citizens needed a centralized filing and publication system to keep track of rules
Courts began to rule on "secret law" as a violation of right to due process under the Constitution

https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/tutorial/online-html.html

Antoine October 17, 2016 at 1:22 pm

Third paragraph : WikiLeaks, not Wikipedia :)

Lambert Strether Post author October 17, 2016 at 2:58 pm

Thanks, fixed!

Roger Smith October 17, 2016 at 1:30 pm

tl;dr - Clinton has terrible judgement

But don't forget. She is the most qualified candidate… EVER . Remind me again how this species was able to bring three stranded Apollo 13 astronauts back from the abyss, the vacuum of space with some tape and tubing.

This is like watching a cheap used car lot advertisement where the owner delivers obviously false platitudes as the store and cars collapse, break, and burst into flames behind them.

john October 17, 2016 at 3:05 pm

Stalin spent his early days in a seminary. Masters of broken promises. I'm more interested in Clinton's Chinese connections. Probably tied through JP Morgan. The Chinese are very straightforward in their, dare I say, inscrutible way. The ministers are the ministers, and the palace is the palace.

The show is disappointing, the debaters play at talking nuclear policy, but have *nothing* to say about Saudi Arabia's new arsenal.

When politicos talk nuclear, they only mean to allege a threat to Israel, blame Russia, or fear-monger the North Koreans.

We're in the loop, but only the quietest whispers of the conflict in Pakistan are available. It sounds pretty serious, but there is only interest in attacking inconvenient Arabs.

On Trump, what an interesting study in communications. The no man you speak of. Even himself caught between his own insincerity towards higher purpose and his own ego as 'the establishment' turns on him.

The proles of his support are truely a silent majority. The Republicans promised us Reagan for twenty years, and it's finally the quasi-Democrat Trump who delivers.

Lambert Strether Post author October 18, 2016 at 12:37 am

> This is like watching a cheap used car lot advertisement where the owner delivers obviously false platitudes as the store and cars collapse, break, and burst into flames behind them.

+100

With a wall of American flags waving in the background as the smoke and flames rise.

optimader October 17, 2016 at 1:35 pm

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I don't feel particularly courageous. I mean, if we're going to be an effective, efficient economy, we need to have all part of that engine running well, and that includes Wall Street and Main Street.

this all reads like a cokehead's flow of consciousness on some ethereal topic with no intellectual content on the matter to express. I would have said extemporaneous, but you know it was all scripted, so that's even worse.

Her rap kinda reminds me of a banal form of the photojournalist in
http://hartzog.org/j/apocalypsenowtranscript.html

PHOTOJOURNALIST
"Do you know what the man is saying? Do you? This is dialectics.
It's very simple dialectics. One through nine, no maybes, no
supposes, no fractions - you can't travel in space, you can't go out
into space, you know, without, like, you know, with fractions - what
are you going to land on, one quarter, three-eighths - what are you
going to do when you go from here to Venus or something - that's
dialectic physics, OK? Dialectic logic is there's only love and hate, you
either love somebody or you hate them."

Andy October 17, 2016 at 11:42 pm

NICE ref. Always like's me that redux.

Lambert Strether Post author October 18, 2016 at 12:42 am

"Da5id's voice is deep and placid, with no trace of stress. The syllables roll off his tongue like drool. As Hiro walks down the hallway he can hear Da5id talking all the way. 'i ge en i ge en nu ge en nu ge en us sa tu ra lu ra ze em men….'" –Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

ambrit October 17, 2016 at 1:41 pm

H Clinton's speaking 'style' reeks. Partial thoughts follow half baked pronouncements, all lacking clarity or coherence, you know?

grayslady October 17, 2016 at 2:24 pm

Completely agree. When I first read excerpts from her speeches, I was appalled at the constant use of "you know" peppering most of her sentences. To me, people who constantly bifurcate sentences with "you know" are simply blathering. They usually don't have any in-depth knowledge of the subject matter on which they are opining. Compare Hillary being asked to comment on a subject with someone such as Michael Hudson or Bill Black commenting on a subject and she simply sounds illiterate. I have this feeling that her educational record is based on an ability to memorize and parrot back answers rather than someone who can reach a conclusion by examining multiple concepts.

Arizona Slim October 17, 2016 at 4:03 pm

Here's what I don't understand: The lady (and her husband) have LOADS of money. Yet this is the best that she can do?

Really?

Heck, if I had half the Clintons' money, I'd be hiring the BEST speechwriters, acting coaches, and fashion consultants on the planet. And I'd be taking their advice and RUNNING with it. Sheesh. Some people have more money than sense.

uncle tungsten October 18, 2016 at 12:23 am

Because she wont pay for quality speechwriters or coaching. Because she is a shyster, cheapskate and a fraud. They hired the most inept IT company to 'mange' their office server who then (in a further fit of cheapskate stupidity) hired an inept IT client manager who then (in a further fit of cheapskate stupidity) asked Reddit for a solution.

Its in the culture: Podesta does it, Blumenthal does it

And now they blame the Russians!!!! Imagine the lunacy within the white house if this fool is elected.

fajensen October 18, 2016 at 12:33 am

I think she is just not that smart. Maybe intelligent but not flexible enough to do much with it.

Smart people seek the advice of even smarter people and knowing that experts disagree, they make sure that there is dissent on the advisory team. Then they make up their mind.

One can say a lot of justifiable bad things about Ronald Reagan, but, he had competent advisors and he used them! With Hillary, Even if she knows she has accessed the best advice on the planet her instinct it to not trust it because "she knows better" and she absolutely will not tolerate dissent. Left to her own devices, she simply copies other people's thinking/ homework instead of building her own ideas with it.

Code Name D October 17, 2016 at 4:24 pm

I don't think so. The "you know" has a name, it's called a "verbal tick" and is one of the first things that is attacked when one learns how to speak publicly. Verbal ticks come in many forms, the "ums" for example, or repeating the last few words you just said, over and over again.

The brain is complex. The various parts of the brain needed for speech; cognition, vocabulary, and vocalizations, actually have difficulty synchronizing. The vocalization part tends to be faster than the rest of the brain and can spit out words faster than the person can put them together. As a result, the "buffer" if you will runs empty, and the speech part of the brains simply fills in the gaps with random gibberish.

You can train yourself out of this habit of course – but it's something that takes practice.

So I take HRC's "you know" as evidence that these are unscripted speeches and is directly improvising.

David Carl Grimes October 17, 2016 at 10:07 pm

How come her responses during the debates are not peppered with these verbal ticks. At least, I don't recall her saying you know so many times. Isn't she improvising then?

Lambert Strether Post author October 18, 2016 at 12:43 am

No, she's not improvising in the debates. It's all scripted, all gamed out.

Code Name D October 18, 2016 at 7:57 am

As Lambert said, HRC doesn't do unscripted. The email leaks even sends us evidence that her interviews were scripted and town hall events were carful staged. Even sidestepping that however, dealing with verbal ticks is not all that difficult with a bit of practice and self-awareness.

Vatch October 17, 2016 at 4:27 pm

You know, you could have a point there! :-)

Optimader October 17, 2016 at 6:30 pm

"You know" is an insidious variation on "like" and "andum", the latter two being bias neutral forms of mental vapor lock of tbe speech center pausing for higher level intellectual processes to refill the speech centers tapped out RAM.

The "you know" variant is an end run on the listener's cognitive functions logic filters. Is essence appropriating a claim to the listener.

I detest "you knows" immediately with "no i dont know, please explain."
The same with "they say" i will always ask "who are they?"
I think this is important to fo do to ppl for no ofher reason thanto nake them think critically even if it is a fleeting annoyance.

Back on HRC, i have maintai we that many people overrate her intellectual grasp. Personally I think she is a hea ily cosched parrot. "The US has achieved energy independence"…. TILT. Just because you state things smugly doesnt mean its reality.

Rhondda October 17, 2016 at 11:13 pm

I think what I call the lacunae words are really revealing in people's speech. When she says "you know" she is emphasizing that she and the listener both know what she is "talking around." Shared context as a form of almost - encryption, you could say. "This" rather than '"finance" Here rather than at Goldman.I don't know what you'd call it exactly- free floating referent? A habit, methinks, of avoiding being quoted or pinned down. It reminds me of the leaked emails…everyone is very careful to talk around things and they can because they all know what they are talking about. Hillary is consistently referred to, in an eerie H. Rider Haggard way, as "her" - like some She Who Must Not Be Named.

Lambert Strether Post author October 18, 2016 at 12:46 am

That would be interesting. A list of all the "you knows" in context. Maybe I should do that.

clarky90 October 17, 2016 at 3:07 pm

What surprises me is that Goldmans paid her for these speeches, you know? Hillary C typically pays "the audience" to listen to, and come to her speeches. You know? You know!

sharonsj October 17, 2016 at 1:42 pm

This election cycle just proves how bad things have become. The two top presidential candidates are an egotistical ignoramus and the quintessential establishment politician and they are neck and neck because the voting public is Planet Stupid. Things will just continue to fall apart in slow motion until some spark (like another financial implosion) sets off the next revolution.

flora October 17, 2016 at 1:46 pm

"Now, without going over how we got to where we are right now, what would be your advice to the Wall Street community and the big banks as to the way forward with those two important decisions?

"SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I represented all of you [Wall St] for eight years."

I heard Hillary speak in summer '92, when Bill was running for Prez. She. was. amazing. No joke. Great speech, great ideas, great points. I thought then she should be the candidate. But there was in her speech just a tiny undercurrent of "the ends justify the means." i.e. 'we need to get lots of money so we can do good things.' Fast forward 20+ years. Seems to me that for the Clintons the "means" (getting lots of money) has become the end in itself. Reassuring Wall St. is one method for getting money – large, large amounts of money.

ekstase October 17, 2016 at 3:07 pm

I heard similar impressions of her at the time, from women who had dealt with her: Book smart. Street smart. Likeable. But what might have been the best compromise you could get in one decade, may have needed re-thinking as you moved along in time. The cast of players changes. Those who once ruled are now gone. Oh, but the money! And so old ideas can calcify. I'm not suggesting that Trump is even in the ballpark in terms of making compromises, speeches, life changes or anything else to have ever been proud of. Still, the capacity to grow and change is important in a leader. So where are we going now?

Lambert Strether Post author October 18, 2016 at 12:54 am

A fine illustration of the maxim that "crime makes you stupid."

I've said this once, but I'll say it again: After the 2008 caucus debacle, Clinton fired the staff and rejiggered the campaign. They went to lots of small venues, like high school gyms - in other words, "deplorables" territory - and Clinton did her detail, "I have a plan" thing, which worked really well in that context because people who need government to deliver concrete material benefits like that, and rightly. They also organized via cheap phones, because that was how to reach their voters, who weren't hanging out at Starbucks. And, history being written by the winners, we forget that using that strategy, Clinton won all the big states and (if all the votes are counted) a majority of the popular vote. So, good decision on her part. And so from that we've moved to the open corruption of the Clinton Foundation and Clinton campaign apparatus that takes 11 people to polish and approve a single tweet.

So I guess the moral of the story is (a) more deterioration, this time from 2008 to 2016, and (b) Clinton can actually make a good decision, but only when forced to by a catastrophe that will impact her personally. Whether she'll be able to rise to the occasion if elected is an open question, but this post argues not.

allan October 17, 2016 at 1:52 pm

"Apparently, the provision of public services is not within government's remit! What are Social Security and Medicare? "

What is the US Post Office? Rumor has it that the PO is mentioned in the US Constitution, a fact that is conveniently forgotten by Strict Constructionists.

Vatch October 17, 2016 at 1:59 pm

There's a book with a great title that I haven't read, but maybe some Naked Capitalism readers have read: How the Post Office Created America: A History , by Winifred Gallagher.

Anne October 17, 2016 at 1:56 pm

With respect to regulation, I think it should be less a case of quantity, and more one of quality, but Clinton seems to want to make it about finding the sweet spot of exactly how many regulations will be the right amount.

In general, when companies are willing to spot you $225,000 to speak for some relatively short period of time, willing to meet your demands regarding transportation, hotel accommodations, etc., why would you take the chance of killing the goose that's laying those golden eggs by saying anything likely to tick them off?

I'd like to think she's kind of embarrassed to have people see how humdrum/boring her speeches were for how much she was paid to give them, but I think there's got to be more "there" somewhere that she didn't want people to be made aware of – and it doesn't necessarily have to be Americans, it could be something to do with foreign governments, foreign policy, trade, etc.

After learning how many people it takes to send out a tweet with her name on it, I have no idea how she managed this speech thing, unless one of her requirements was that she had to be presented with all questions in advance, so she could be prepared.

I am more depressed by the day, as it's really beginning to sink in that she's going to be president, and it all just makes me want to stick needles in my eyes.

Will there even be a debate on Wednesday?

Roger Smith October 17, 2016 at 1:56 pm

Also the "Wicked Problems" definitions are very, very interesting. Thank you for bringing those in! I would add that these wicked problems lead to more wicked problems. It is basically dishonesty, and to protect the lie you double down with more, and more, and more…. Most of Clinton's decisions and career seem to be knots of wicked problems.

The wicked problem is quickly becoming our entire system of governance. Clinton has been described as the malignant tumor here before, but even she is a place holder for the rot. One head of the Hydra that I feel Establishment players would generally be okay with sacrificing if it came to it (and maybe I am wrong there–but it seems as if a lot of the push fro her comes from her inner circle and others play along).

Lambert Strether Post author October 18, 2016 at 12:59 am

Hail Hydra! Immortal Hydra! We shall never be destroyed! Cut off one limb and two more shall take its place! We serve the Supreme Hydra, as the world shall soon serve us!

JohnnyGL October 17, 2016 at 2:04 pm

Re: your conclusion,

I've heard/read in some places Hillary Clinton described as a "safe pair of hands". I don't understand where this characterization comes from. She's dangerous.

If she wins with as strong of an electoral map as Obama in '08, she'll take it as a strong mandate and she'll have an ambitious agenda and likely attempt to overreach. I've been meaning to call my congressional reps early and say "No military action on Syria, period!"

She might use a "public option" as an ACA stealth bailout scheme, but I don't think the public has much appetite to see additional resources being thrown at a "failed experiment". I worry that Bernie's being brought on board for this kind of thing. He should avoid it.

Is she crazy enough to go for a grand bargain right away? That seems nutty and has been a "Waterloo" for many presidents.

Remember how important Obama's first year was. Bailouts and ACA were all done that first year. How soon can we put President Clinton II in lame duck status?

philmc October 17, 2016 at 2:06 pm

Not really surprised by the intellectual and rhetorical poverty demonstrated by these speeches. Given the current trajectory of our politics, the bar hasn't really been set very high. In fact it looks like we're going to reach full Idiocracy long before originally predicted.

Jim Thomson October 17, 2016 at 2:09 pm

You ask, " What can Goldman Sachs possibly have thought they were paying for? "

But I think you know. Corruption has become so institutionalized that it is impossible to point to any specific Quid Pro Quo. The Quo is the entire system in which GS operates and the care and feeding of which the politicians are paid to administer.

We focus on HRC's speeches and payments here but I wonder how many other paid talks are given to GS each year by others up and down the influence spectrum. As Bill Black says, a dollar given to a politician provides the largest possible Return on Investment of any expenditure. It is Wall Street's long-term health insurance plan.

Thank you for slogging through all of this.

Rory October 17, 2016 at 6:20 pm

It seems to me that the message of these speeches is straightforward: "I'm bought and willing to stay bought for the right price."

DolleyMadison October 17, 2016 at 2:12 pm

Yeah we know which part of the "stool" we'll be getting.If the finance sector is "the nerves, the spinal column" of the country, I suggest the country find a shallow pool in which to shove it – head first.

Foppe October 17, 2016 at 2:14 pm

I skimmed the /. comments on a story about this yesterday; basically everyone missed the obvious and went with vox-type responses ("she's a creature of the system / in-fighter / Serious Person").

Gee October 17, 2016 at 2:26 pm

Care to know what they are buying? This :

"So I'm not interested in, you know, turning the clock back or pointing fingers, but I am interested in trying to figure out how we come together to chart a better way forward and one that will restore confidence in, you know, small and medium-size businesses and consumers and begin to chip away at the unemployment rate [five years into the recession!]."

Basically, even better than a get out of jail free card, in that it is rather a promise that we won't go back and ever hold you responsible, and we have done the best we could so far to avoid having you own up to anything or be held accountable in any way beyond some niggling fines, which of course, you are happy to pay, because in the end, that is simply a handout to the legal industry, who are your best drinking buddies.

The latter part of that quote is just mumbo jumbo non-sequitir blathering. Clinton appears to know next to nothing about finance, only that it generates enormous amounts of cash for the oh so deserving work that God told them to do.

uncle tungsten October 18, 2016 at 12:35 am

+1 exactly: There will be no retrospective prosecutions and none in the future either, trust me! Not the she is any better than Eric Holder but she is certain she should be paid more than him.

PapaBear October 17, 2016 at 2:34 pm

"What can Goldman Sachs possibly have thought they were paying for?"

Influence, plain and simple

shinola October 17, 2016 at 5:05 pm

Bingo! Think about it: She was speaking to a group of people whose time is "valued" at 100's if not 1,000's of dollars per hour. She took up their "valuable" time but provided nothing except politics-as-usual blather tailored to that particular audience. Yet she was paid $225k for a single speech…

I've only skimmed through the speech transcripts; did I miss something of substance?

Lambert Strether Post author October 18, 2016 at 1:00 am

That was irony…

phred October 17, 2016 at 2:37 pm

Hillary is a remarkably inarticulate person, which calls into question her intellectual fitness for the job (amidst many other questions, of course). I entirely agree with your depiction of her speeches as mindless drivel.

However, you may be overthinking the "wicked problem" language. While it is certainly possible that she is familiar with the literature that you cite, nothing else in her speeches suggests that she commands that level of intellectual detail. This makes me think that somewhere along the line she befriended someone from the greater Boston area who uses "wicked" the way Valley Girls use "like". When I first heard the expression decades ago, I found it charming and incorporated it into my own common usage. And I don't use it anything like you describe. To me it is simply used for emphasis. Nothing more or less than that, but I am amused to see an entire literature devoted to the concept of a "wicked problem".

I remain depressed by this election. No matter how it turns out, it's going to wicked suck ; )

Michael Fiorillo October 17, 2016 at 5:38 pm

I think the inarticulateness/cliche infestation is a ploy and a deflection; this is a very intelligent woman who can effectively marshall language when she feels the need. That need was more likely felt in private meetings with the inner cabal at Goldman.

Not to otherwise compare them, but Bush I's inarticulateness made him seem a buffoon, and that was not the case, either.

Finally, as a thought experiment, I'd like to suggest that, granting that Clintonismo will privilege those interests which best fortify their arguments with cash, it's also true that Bill and Hillary are all about Bill and Hillary. In other words, it could be that she has the same hustler's disregard toward the lumpen Assistant Vice Presidents filling that room at GS as she does for the average voter. Thus, the empty, past-their-expiration-date calories.

Sure, she'll take their money and do their bidding, but why even bother to make any more effort than necessary? On a very primal level with these two, it's all about the hustle and the action, and everyone's a potential rube.

Big River Bandido October 17, 2016 at 8:27 pm

As in, when Bill put his presidency on the line, the base were expected to circle the wagons. As in, "I'm With Her". Not "She's With Us", natch. It's *always* about the Clintons.

pretzelattack October 17, 2016 at 2:47 pm

"Speaking to bankers and masters of the corporate universe, she came off as relaxed, self-doubting, reflective, honest, philosophical rather than political, and unafraid to admit she lacked all the answers."

seriously, matt taibbi? next, i would like to hear about the positive, feelgood, warmfuzzy qualities of vampire squids (hugs cthulhu doll).

jgordon October 17, 2016 at 4:10 pm

Matt Tiabbi, Elizabeth Warren, Benie Sanders, Noam Chompsky–all those used to seem like bastions of integrity have, thanks to Hillary, been revealed as slimy little Weasels who should henceforth be completely disregarded. I'd have to thank Hillary for pulling back the nlindets on that; if not for this election I might have been still foolishly listening to these people.

hreik October 17, 2016 at 7:34 pm

agree w you except about Bernie. he always said he'd support the nominee. the suddenness of his capitulation has led many of us to believe he was threatened. somewhere I read something about "someone" planting kiddieporn on his son's computer if he didn't do…… I dunno. I reserve judgement on Sanders until I learn more,…. if i ever do

Lambert Strether Post author October 18, 2016 at 1:01 am

Let's see what happens after November 8, which is not far away.

Edward October 17, 2016 at 2:51 pm

Clinton's remarks were typically vague, as one might expect from a politician; she doesn't want to be pinned down. This may be part of the banality of her remarks.

What scares me most about Clinton is her belligerence towards Russia and clamoring for a no-fly zone in Syria. The no-fly zone will mean war with Russia. If only Clinton were saying this, we might be safe, but the entire Washington deep state seems to be of one mind in favor of a war. During the cold war this would have been inconceivable; everyone understood a nuclear war must not be allowed. This is no longer true and it is terrifying. Every war game the pentagon used to simulate a war with the U.S.S.R. escalated into an all out nuclear war. What is the "plan B" Obama is pursuing in Syria?

In the Russian press every day for a long time now they have been discussing the prospect of a conflict. Russia has been conducting civil defense drills in its cities and advised its citizens to recall any children living abroad. This is never reported in our press, which only presents us with caricatures of Putin. Russians are not taken seriously.

Ché Pasa October 17, 2016 at 3:49 pm

During the cold war this would have been inconceivable; everyone understood a nuclear war must not be allowed.

No it wasn't. Far from it. By some miracle, the globe escaped instant incineration but only barely. The Soviets, to their credit, were not about to risk nuclear annihilation to get one up on the US of Perfidy. Our own Dauntless Warriors were more than willing, and I believe it's only through dumb luck that a first strike wasn't launched deliberately or by deliberate "accident."

Review the Cold War concept of Brinkmanship.

The current fear/fever over nuclear war with Russia requires madness in the Kremlin - of which there is no evidence. Our Rulers are depending on Putin and his cohorts being the sane ones as rhetoric from the US and the West ratchets ever upwards.

But then, the Kremlin is looking for any hint of sanity on US and NATO side and is finding little…

Edward October 17, 2016 at 4:29 pm

Curtis LeMay tried to provoke a nuclear war with the Soviets in the 1950's. By and large, however, the American state understood a nuclear war was unwinnable and avoided such a possibility. A no-fly zone in Syria would start a war with Russia. William Polk, who participated in the Cuban missle crisis and U.S. nuclear war games, argues in this article

http://www.williampolk.com/assets/the-cuban-missile-crisis-in-reverse.pdf

that a war with Russia would escalate.

Starveling October 17, 2016 at 3:02 pm

If high finance is our nervous system, does the American body politic have a terminal case of Parkinsons?

oho October 17, 2016 at 3:25 pm

With some CJD/mad cow disease.

Oregoncharles October 17, 2016 at 3:23 pm

" "the nerves, the spinal column" of the country, goes farther than Obama ever did."

But this description is technically true. That is finance's proper function, co-ordinating the flow of capital and resources, especially from where they're in excess to where they're needed. It's a key decision-making system – for the economy, preferably not for society as a whole. That would be the political system.

So on this basic level, the problem is that finance, more and more, has put its own institutional and personal interests ahead of its proper function. It's grown far too huge, and stopped performing its intended function – redistributing resources – in favor of just accumulating them, in the rather illusory form of financial instruments, some of them pure vapor ware.

So yes, this line reflects a very bad attitude on Hillary's part, but by misappropriating a truth – pretty typical propaganda.

Yves Smith October 17, 2016 at 5:26 pm

No, finance does NOT "channel resources". Wash your mouth out. This is more neoliberal cant.

Financiers do not make investments in the real economy. The overwhelming majority of securities trading is in secondary markets, which means it's speculation. And when a public company decides whether or not to invest in a new project, it does not present a prospectus on that new project to investors. It runs the numbers internally. For those projects, the most common source of funding is retained earnings.

Sluggeaux October 17, 2016 at 6:39 pm

Clinton shows that she is either a Yale Law grad who does not have the slightest idea that Wall Street does very little in the economy but fleece would-be investors, or that she is an obsequious flatterer of those from whom she openly takes bribes.

Or both.

aab October 18, 2016 at 1:25 am

Both.

DolleyMadison October 17, 2016 at 8:10 pm

Wash your mouth out! Hahaaa I love you Yves…

timotheus October 17, 2016 at 3:34 pm

Having heard Hillary, Chelsea (yes, she's being groomed) and many, many other politicians over the years, including a stint covering Capitol Hill, Mme C's verbal style does not surprise to me at all but rather strikes me as perfectly serviceable. It is a mellifluous drone designed to lull the listener into thinking that she is on their side, and the weakness of the actual statements only becomes clear when reading them on the page later (which rarely happens). The drowsy listener will catch, among the words strung together like Christmas lights, just the key terms and concepts that demonstrate knowledge of the brief and a soothing layer of vague sympathy. Those who can award her $600K can assume with some confidence that, rhetoric aside, she will be in the tank when needed. The rest of us have to blow away the chaff and peer into the yawning gaps lurking behind the lawyerly parsing. In all fairness, this applies to 90% of seekers of public office.

xformbykr October 17, 2016 at 3:34 pm

has the commentariat seen these from paul craig roberts?
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/10/15/is-hillary-well-enough-for-the-job/

it doesn't say anything but contains links to these:
http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/wikileaks-just-dropped-bombshell-hillarys-health-truth-revealed/

https://newrepublic.com/article/137798/important-wikileaks-revelation-isnt-hillary-clinton

both of which present a clinical assessment that Hillary suffers from Parkinson's. Seems like an elephant in the room.

polecat October 17, 2016 at 7:09 pm

There's so many elephants in the room, i'd be willing to call it a herd …..

Sluggeaux October 17, 2016 at 3:57 pm

The absolute vacuousness of Clinton's remarks, coupled with her ease at neoliberal conventional wisdom, make it clear that Goldman's payments were nothing more (or less) than a $675,000 anticipatory "so no quid pro quo here" bribe.

Who on earth gives up their vote to a politician who is so shameless an corrupt that she openly accepts bribes from groups who equally shamelessly and corruptly are looting the commons? Apparently many, but not me.

LT October 17, 2016 at 4:00 pm

"Public-private partnerships"
That's higher taxes for pleebs to subsidize corporations.
Mussolini would be proud.

Ché Pasa October 17, 2016 at 4:01 pm

Nothing like making lemons out of lemonade, is there?

There really is a question why she didn't do this doc dump herself when Bernie asked. Yeah, sure, she would have been criticized ("damned if you do, damned if you don't") but because of who she is she'll be criticized no matter what. There is nothing she can do to avoid it.

Not only is there no smoking gun, it's almost as if she's trying to inject a modicum of social conscience into a culture that has none. And no, she isn't speaking artfully; nor is she an orator.

Oh. Not that we didn't know already.

The most galling aspect is her devotion to the neoLibCon status quo. Steady as she goes. Apparently a lot of people find the status quo satisfactory. Feh.



Anon October 17, 2016 at 7:17 pm

If this document dump came out during the primary campaign, then HRC may have lost. Even Black, Southern ladies can smell the corrupting odor clinging to these "speeches".

Ché Pasa October 18, 2016 at 6:11 am

Given the way DNC protected her during the primaries, and what looked like a pretty light touch by Bernie and (who? O'Malley was it?) toward her, I doubt these speeches would have been her undoing.

Dull and relatively benign, and policy-wise almost identical to Obama's approach to the bankers' role in the economic unpleasantness. "Consensus" stuff with some hint of a social conscience. 

Not effective and not enough to do more than the least possible ("I told them they ought to behave better. Really!") on behalf of the Rabble.

But not a campaign killer. Even so, by not releasing transcripts during the primary, she faced - and still faces - mountains of criticism over it. No escape. Not for her.

Lambert Strether Post author October 18, 2016 at 1:04 am

> Steady as she goes

I'm not sure that's an appropriate strategy for dealing with multiple interlocking wicked problems, but I'm not sure why. Suppose we invoke the Precautionary Principle - is incremental change really the way to avoid harm?

Ché Pasa October 18, 2016 at 6:14 am

The Consensus (of Opinions That Matter) says it is. On the other hand, blowing up the System leads to Uncertainty, and as we know, we can't have that. Mr. Market wouldn't like it…

aab October 18, 2016 at 2:32 am

The leaked emails confirm - even though she herself never writes them, which is really odd, when you consider that Podesta is her Campaign Chair and close ally going back decades - that she is compulsively secretive, controlling, and resistant to admitting she's wrong. The chain of people talking about how to get her to admit she was wrong about Nancy Reagan and AIDS was particularly fascinating that way; she was flat out factually inaccurate, and it had the potential to do tremendous harm to her campaign with a key donor group, and it was apparently still a major task to persuade her to say "I made a mistake."

So while I think you are wrong that the speeches wouldn't have hurt her in the primary, I also think Huma would have had to knock her out and tie her up (not in a fun way) to get those speeches released.

I can't imagine a worse temperament to govern, particularly under the conditions she'll be facing. But she'll be fully incompetent before too long, so I don't suppose it matters that much. I'm morbidly curious to see how long they can keep her mostly hidden and propped up for limited appearances, before having to let Kaine officially take over. Will we be able to figure out who's actually in power based on the line-up on some balcony?

Ché Pasa October 18, 2016 at 6:24 am

Fair points, though the "temperament" issue may be one that follows from the nature of the job - even "No Drama Obama" is said to have a fierce anger streak, and secrecy, controlling behavior, and refusing to admit error is pretty typical of presidents, VPs, and other high officials. The King/Queen can do no wrong, dontchaknow. (cf: Bush, GW, and his whole administration for recent examples. History is filled with them, though.)

As for Hillary's obvious errors in judgment, I think they speak for themselves and they don't speak well of her.

Blurtman October 17, 2016 at 5:19 pm

Wall Street fraud = "bad decisions"

Alex morfesis October 17, 2016 at 7:25 pm

TINA vs WATA (we are the alternative)…the next two years are gonna be interesting…evil is often a cover for total incompetence and exposure…our little tsarina will insist brigades that dont exist move against enemies that are hardly there…when she & her useless minions were last in/on the seat of power(j edger version of sop) the netizens of the world were young and dumb…now not so much…

Don Midwest USA October 17, 2016 at 10:44 pm

I got into wicked problems 35 years ago in the outstanding book by Ian Mitroff and R. O. Mason, "Challenging Strategic Planning Assumptions." First page of Chapter One has subsection title COMPLEXITY, followed by "A Little Experiment" Lets try the experiment with current problems.

One could come up with a list of major problems, but here is the one used by C. West Churchman mentioned along with Horst Riddle. Churchman back in the 80's said that the problems of the world were M*P**3, or M, P cubed, or M * P * P *P with the letters standing for Militarism, Population, Poverty and Pollution.

Here is how they ran the exercise

1. Suppose there were a solution to any of these 4 problems, would that solution be related to the other problems. Clearly.

2. Thus 'whenever a policy maker attempts to solve a complex policy problem, it is related to all the others

Repeated attempts in other contexts give the same result: basically, every real world policy problem is related to every other real world policy problem

This is from page 4, the second page of the book.

I ran this exercise for several years in ATT Bell Labs and ATT.

  1. List major problems
  2. How long have they been around? (most for ever except marketing was new after breakup in '84
  3. If one was solved, would that solution be related in any way to the other ones?
  4. Do you know of any program that is making headway? (occasionally Quality was brought up)

This could be done in a few minutes, often less than 5 minutes

5. Conclusion: long term interdependent problems that are not being addressed

Thus the only grade that matters in this course on Corporate Transformation that now begins is that you have new insights on these problems. This was my quest as an internal consultant in ATT to transform the company. I failed.

Moby October 18, 2016 at 1:27 am

Most noticeable thing is her subservience to them like a fresh college grad afraid of his boss at his first job

Phil October 18, 2016 at 1:35 am

I was a Sanders supporter. Many here will disagree, but if Clinton wins I don't think she's going to act as she might have acted in 2008, if she had won.

Clinton is a politician, and *all* politicians dissemble in private, unless they're the mayor of a small town of about 50 people – and even then! Politicians – in doing their work – *must* compromise to some degree, with the best politicians compromising in ways that bring their constituents more benefit, than not.

That said, Clinton is also a human being who is capable of change. This election cycle has been an eye opener for both parties. If Clinton wins (and, I think she will), the memory of how close it was with Sanders and the desperate anger and alienation she has experienced from Trump supporters (and even Sanders' supporters) *must* have already gotten her thinking about what she is going to have to get done to insure a 2020 win for Democrats, whether or not she is running in 2020.

In sum, I think Clinton is open to change, and I don't believe that she is some deep state evil incarnate; sge's *far* from perfect, and she's not "pure" in her positioning – thank god!, because in politics, purists rarely accomplish anything.

If Clinton reverts to prior form (assuming she makes (POTUS), 2020 will make 2016 look like a cakewalk, for both parties – including the appearance of serious 3rd party candidates with moxy, smarts, and a phalanx of backers (unlike the current crop of two – Johnson and Stein).

[Oct 17, 2016] Lead Lewinsky Scandal Reporter Says NBC Is Sitting On Devastating Tape With Juanita Broaddrick

Notable quotes:
"... Michael Isikoff, who was a leading reporter during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, said in a Thursday discussion that NBC should release a 17-year-old tape of an interview that it conducted with Broaddrick. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton was involved in quashing Broaddrick's rape claims. ..."
Oct 17, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com
From www .zerohedge .com - October 15, 7:53 PM
Michael Isikoff, who was a leading reporter during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, said in a Thursday discussion that NBC should release a 17-year-old tape of an interview that it conducted with Broaddrick.

Broaddrick has long claimed that the interview that NBC aired edited out her claim that Hillary Clinton was involved in quashing Broaddrick's rape claims.

[Oct 17, 2016] Broaddrick on evil Clinton rape I could never forgive them

Oct 17, 2016 | www.wnd.com

Warns Hillary presidency 'would be destructive to the United States' Published: 05/18/2016 at 9:56 PM >

[Editor's note: WND sent Candice Jackson, attorney and author of the acclaimed book "Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine," to Arkansas to conduct a rare in-person interview with Juanita Broaddrick, who claims Bill Clinton raped her in 1978. Jackson's revealing, in-depth interview with Broaddrick is presented here for the first time. For those not familiar with the actual details of Clinton's alleged felonious sexual assault on Broaddrick, WND has published the entire Broaddrick rape narrative from "Their Lives" here.

What follows, as Jackson explains, poignantly and in detail, reveals for the first time how Broaddrick's life – like that of so many others – has been deeply and permanently scarred by her alleged unwanted sexual encounter with Bill Clinton. Broaddrick also details Hillary Clinton's "haunting" and intimidating interaction with her following the sexual assault.]

By Candice E. Jackson

Juanita Broaddrick first spoke publicly about her experience being raped by Bill Clinton in 1999. I met her while featuring her story in my book, "Their Lives: The Women Targeted By The Clinton Machine." She has largely stayed out of the public eye for the last decade, but she has spoken out during this 2016 election cycle to urge the American public to refuse to elect Hillary Clinton to the presidency. I was honored to meet with Juanita in her Van Buren, Arkansas, home to talk about the long-lasting impact the Clintons' abuse has had on her life.

The brutal sexual assault itself has been described in Juanita's own words in the Wall Street Journal , on NBC's "Dateline" with Lisa Myers , and in my book "Their Lives." This interview isn't about cheap headlines promising new revelations of details surrounding the rape itself. This is about sharing publicly new details of how the rape has affected Juanita over her lifetime. It's also about presenting Juanita's experience to a new generation, including millennials who may be more open-minded to hearing the truth about the Clintons now than their baby boomer parents were in the 1990s.

The rape is described by Juanita Broaddrick to Candice Jackson in gruesome detail here.

Juanita created a social media firestorm earlier this year by tweeting that she had been "dreading seeing my abuser on TV campaign trail for enabler wife but his physical appearance reflects ghosts of past are catching up." One of the many media figures who called her after this tweet was Andrea Mitchell of NBC. Because she'd had a positive experience with Lisa Myers with NBC back in 1999, Andrea Mitchell was one of the few calls Juanita returned in the aftermath of her trending tweets. Andrea Mitchell asked her just one question, listened to her answer, and told Juanita condescendingly, "We're not going to air anything with you because you have nothing new to add." Juanita felt bewildered by Andrea Mitchell's dismissive attitude.

Nothing new? Hardly. What happened to Juanita in that Little Rock hotel room at the hands of Bill Clinton in 1978 is "nothing new," and Hillary's inimical confrontation of Juanita weeks later, and Bill Clinton's much-delayed and dubious "apology" to Juanita years later are historical events that haven't changed for three decades. What's new is that Hillary Clinton has all but secured the Democratic Party's nomination for president, and Juanita Broaddrick is willing to bravely come forward to shed new light on the lifetime of pain Bill and Hillary Clinton have caused her (and so many women like her).

... ... ...

"Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine" – available at the WND Superstore – is a wake-up call to Americans everywhere to re-evaluate this ruthless power couple and prevent Hillary Clinton from returning to the White House.

... ... ..

"I could actually have respected Hillary if she had divorced Bill in 1978. But I feel like she has always known about all of his dalliances and misdeeds either at the time or shortly after, and now we know their marriage is just an arrangement. I can't respect a woman like that." She pauses, reflecting, "I remember being shocked to hear that Hillary was pregnant. She'd been in Sweden or Switzerland or something like that when I heard it on the news. I was shocked because of what Bill had told me in that hotel room, you know, that I shouldn't worry about getting pregnant because he was sterile after having had the mumps."

... ... ...

The 'Stop Hillary' campaign is on fire! Join the surging response to this theme: 'Clinton for prosecution, not president'

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/05/broaddrick-on-evil-clinton-rape-i-could-never-forgive-them/#YSZ8w708aU2FKEkW.99

[Oct 13, 2016] The Clintons sure were working the Haiti angle any way that they could. I wonder how that's playing in Florida?

Notable quotes:
"... [Qatar] would like to see WJC 'for five minutes' in NYC, to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for WJC's birthday in 2011," an employee at The Clinton Foundation said to numerous aides, including Doug Brand ..."
"... No doubt! The Clintons sure were working the Haiti angle any way that they could. I wonder how that's playing in Florida? ..."
Oct 13, 2016 | www.washingtontimes.com

"[Qatar] would like to see WJC 'for five minutes' in NYC, to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for WJC's birthday in 2011," an employee at The Clinton Foundation said to numerous aides, including Doug Brand [isc]. "Qatar would welcome our suggestions for investments in Haiti - particularly on education and health. They have allocated most of their $20 million but are happy to consider projects we suggest. I'm collecting input from CF Haiti team."

No doubt! The Clintons sure were working the Haiti angle any way that they could. I wonder how that's playing in Florida?

[Oct 13, 2016] Hillary Clinton is stanch neoliberal who has nocompattion for displayed workers in the USA

Notable quotes:
"... When Hillary Clinton recently declared half of Trump supporters a "basket of deplorables", Zaitchik told another reporter, the language "could be read as another way of saying 'white-trash bin'." ..."
Oct 13, 2016 | www.theguardian.com

When Hillary Clinton recently declared half of Trump supporters a "basket of deplorables", Zaitchik told another reporter, the language "could be read as another way of saying 'white-trash bin'." Clinton quickly apologized for the comment, the context of which contained compassion for many Trump voters. But making such generalizations at a $6m fundraiser in downtown New York City, at which some attendees paid $50,000 for a seat, recalled for me scenes from the television political satire Veep in which powerful Washington figures discuss "normals" with distaste behind closed doors.

[Oct 13, 2016] Hillary as the living embodiment of neoliberal worldview

harpers.org

From: [Essay] Swat Team, by Thomas Frank

Beginning in the 1970s, it has increasingly become an organ of this same class. Affluent white-collar professionals are today the voting bloc that Democrats represent most faithfully, and they are the people whom Democrats see as the rightful winners in our economic order. Hillary Clinton, with her fantastic résumé and her life of striving and her much-commented-on qualifications, represents the aspirations of this class almost perfectly.

[Oct 11, 2016] Paul Krugman: Predators in Arms

Hillary advocates are in a typical situation "The pot calling the kettle black". Bill Clinton sexapades are much more serious that Trump said or ever attempted...
Notable quotes:
"... Krugman's hero, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is on the record for support Simpson-Bowles. Austerity and raising the Social Security age? What gives? ..."
"... I'd suggest, an underlying cynicism... We're talking about a party that has long exploited white backlash to mobilize working-class voters, while enacting policies that actually hurt those voters but benefit the wealthy. Anyone participating in that scam ... has to have the sense that politics is a sphere in which you can get away with a lot if you have the right connections ..."
"... There is also, I'd suggest, an underlying cynicism that pervades the Republican elite. We're talking about a party that has long exploited white backlash to mobilize working-class voters, while enacting policies that actually hurt those voters but benefit the wealthy. ..."
"... I agree, impugning the integrity of a large group of people is about as bad as calling a large group of people 'deplorables' or Romney's writing off 47% of the population. ..."
"... Unfortunately, history is clear that there is one group of people who routinely took sexual advantage of women: some of the rich and powerful. ..."
"... The main reason it was incomprehensible was that "Europe" practices the allegedly-French maxim "live and let live" in this regard - a considerable level of "benevolent" sin and debauchery will be tolerated and dutifully disregarded as long as it is properly hidden and orderly public perceptions are maintained (or if some of it gets out, at least a customary effort will have to have been made to keep it under wraps). I.e. if you make reasonable efforts to keep it private, it will be treated as private. But fail to make the effort or deliberately show off, then you will meet with scorn and resentment. ..."
"... Using positions of influence to actively take advantage or extract concessions, or abusive behavior of any kind, are not OK, and there is no presumption that it is a perk of power. ..."
"... And that it was viewed as extramarital relations was in good part because a lot of the media "coverage" concentrated on rehashing all the salacious "sexual" aspects in almost pornographic detail. If anybody defiled Ms. Lewinsky's virtue and reputation, it was the persecutors and the media. ..."
"... So why do the French tolerate behavior that would both shame and topple leaders in the U.S. or Britain? Because, despite French lip service to their revolution's promise of "egalite" for all citizens, voters still tend to defer to politicians as a class apart who enjoy entitlements once associated with royal courts. ..."
"... Italy was pretty tolerant of Berlusconi's behavior...until it was proven that he slept with an underage woman. ..."
"... Krugman's claim: "Yes, Bill Clinton had affairs; but there's a world of difference between consensual sex, however inappropriate, and abuse of power to force those less powerful to accept your urges." ..."
"... Wikipedia: "Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States (1993-2001), has been publicly accused by several women of sexual misconduct. Juanita Broaddrick has accused Clinton of rape; Kathleen Willey has accused Clinton of groping her without consent; and Paula Jones accuses Clinton of exposing himself and sexually harassing her." ..."
"... Sadly, Krugman is just spewing the usual partisan sanctimony ...being shocked--just shocked--at the behavior of the other side while showing a shocking lack of curiosity in the misbehavior of politicians on his side...or denying that it might have happened. ..."
"... Let's be clear...Trump's behavior was despicable. Any maybe, just maybe, Bill Clinton's behavior was somewhat less despicable. Still, we can agree that both behaved badly, taking advantage of their power and position to take advantage of others. ..."
"... Clintons have no convictions. And there is always a worse criminal to excuse them. ..."
"... According to sexual harassment guidelines issued by the Clinton administration, large imbalances of power made "consensual" very problematic. For you irony fans..... ..."
"... How can Democrats be shocked--just shocked!--at Trump's behavior, while they continue to cover up and minimize Bill Clinton's? Can Democrats legitimately claim that Bill Clinton was the lesser of two evils when it came to sexual predation? I don't think so. How many hairs do you want to split when it comes to sexual predation? ..."
"... Certainly, Hillary must find it hard to have stood by her man, despite his sexual predations, and then attack Trump for the same behavior. As a result, she leaves the attacks to her army of partisan hacks...like Krugman. ..."
"... Of course he was abusing his power. Being an apologist for Clinton exploiting his power to get sex is pathetic. Failing to recognize the significance of the power differential between Clinton and the women he screwed is pathetic. ..."
"... Predator talk angst on faux prudes is nothing to neocon predator plans on entire countries. It is alleged that Trump does women. Hillary would do Syria, ousting Assad is her goal much like her murder of Qaddafi and Libya. The bait and switch! ..."
Oct 11, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
"The Trump-Ailes axis of abuse":
Predators in Arms, by Paul Krugman, NY Times : As many people are pointing out, Republicans now trying to distance themselves from Donald Trump need to explain why The Tape was a breaking point, when so many previous incidents weren't. ...
Meanwhile, the Trump-Ailes axis of abuse raises another question: Is sexual predation by senior political figures - which Mr. Ailes certainly was, even if he pretended to be in the journalism business - a partisan phenomenon?
Just to be clear, I'm not talking about bad behavior in general... Yes, Bill Clinton had affairs; but there's a world of difference between consensual sex, however inappropriate, and abuse of power to force those less powerful to accept your urges. ...

... ... ...

Mr. Trump, in other words, isn't so much an anomaly as he is a pure distillation of his party's modern essence.
A Boy Named Sue -> Phil... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 09:46 PM
Krugman's hero, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is on the record for support Simpson-Bowles. Austerity and raising the Social Security age? What gives?
Mr. Bill -> anne... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 04:51 PM
"There is also, I'd suggest, an underlying cynicism... We're talking about a party that has long exploited white backlash to mobilize working-class voters, while enacting policies that actually hurt those voters but benefit the wealthy. Anyone participating in that scam ... has to have the sense that politics is a sphere in which you can get away with a lot if you have the right connections. ..."

Times are tough, our backs are against the wall. But, do Americans quit ? No.

Like when the Germans attacked Pearl Harbor ;-) ......

anne -> Mr. Bill... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 05:34 PM
There is also, I'd suggest, an underlying cynicism that pervades the Republican elite. We're talking about a party that has long exploited white backlash to mobilize working-class voters, while enacting policies that actually hurt those voters but benefit the wealthy.

Anyone participating in that scam - which is what it is - has to have the sense that politics is a sphere in which you can get away with a lot if you have the right connections. So in a way it's not surprising if a disproportionate number of major players feel empowered to abuse their position....

-- Paul Krugman

[ This is the rationale of the generalizing in the column, and possibly the rationale is correct as such and makes sense of the stereotyping of individuals in the Republican Party. I have no counter argument, though I feel I should have. ]

anne -> Mr. Bill... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 06:02 PM
Times are tough, our backs are against the wall. But, do Americans quit ? No....

[ I understand the analogy and sympathize completely. ]

JohnH -> anne... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 03:56 PM
I agree, impugning the integrity of a large group of people is about as bad as calling a large group of people 'deplorables' or Romney's writing off 47% of the population.

Unfortunately, history is clear that there is one group of people who routinely took sexual advantage of women: some of the rich and powerful.

The practice even has a name: Droit du seigneur, or droit du jambage, whereby a lord was entitled to deflower the bride of another man on her wedding night.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_du_seigneur

Though the Wikipedia entry casts some doubt on the practice, because there was no proof (there wasn't proof of much back then), it has been a recurring theme. Balzac and Dumas, fils wrote novels about very young women brought into wealthy households as playthings. Mario Vargas Llosa wrote a novel about the dictator Trujillo's practice of having virgins delivered to his palace during the 1950s. Amin Malouf wrote a similar novel about a local lord in Lebanon in the 19th century.

My guess is that the practice is alive and well. Many Europeans never understood why the Lewinsky affair became a scandal, because they assumed that such behavior was just a perk of the position. Certainly, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF Managing Director and a contender for the presidency of France, felt no compunction about sexually assaulting a maid in New York City in 2011.

Now I don't want to impugn the integrity of ALL people who are rich and/or powerful, but there is clearly a problem with some of them, regardless of nationality or political party.

anne -> JohnH... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 05:37 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feast_of_the_Goat

The Feast of the Goat (Spanish: La fiesta del chivo, 2000) is a novel by the Peruvian Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa. The book is set in the Dominican Republic and portrays the assassination of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, and its aftermath, from two distinct standpoints a generation apart: during and immediately after the assassination itself, in May 1961; and thirty five years later, in 1996. Throughout, there is also extensive reflection on the heyday of the dictatorship, in the 1950s, and its significance for the island and its inhabitants.

The novel follows three interwoven storylines....

anne -> JohnH... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 05:42 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/books/generalissimo.html

November 25, 2001

Generalissimo
By WALTER KIRN

THE FEAST OF THE GOAT
By Mario Vargas Llosa.
Translated by Edith Grossman.

Sympathy, or at least empathy, for the Devil seldom fails as a novelistic formula. Virtue may inspire, but evil fascinates. Most fascinating of all, perhaps, is political evil -- the sort of programmatic perfidy that doesn't just harm individuals but roils the flow of history itself. For all its richness as a subject, such large-scale wrongdoing rarely gets much play in the work of North American writers, who tend to favor stories of private crime over tales of public villainy. Recent events may change this cultural emphasis, but for now one has to look abroad, to talents such as Mario Vargas Llosa, the prolific Peruvian essayist and novelist, for the lowdown on organized evil in high places....

JohnH -> anne... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 08:40 PM
Latin American literature is great...and it often deals with the abuses of the politically powerful...Isabel Allende, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes and others. One of my favorites is 'El Otoño del Patriarca," a composite of many strongmen who ruled in Latin America.

The US once had great authors such as Steinbeck and Sinclair Lewis. Barbara Kingsolver's 'The Lacuna' is a really good story set in Mexico and The US in the 1930s and fascinating commentary on art and politics of the time.

anne -> JohnH... , Tuesday, October 11, 2016 at 05:48 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/15/reviews/marque-autumn.html

October 31, 1976

A Stunning Portrait of a Monstrous Caribbean Tyrant
By WILLIAM KENNEDY

THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH
By Gabriel García Márquez.
Translated by Gregory Rabassa.

In 1968 when he began to write this majestic novel, Gabriel García Márquez told an interviewer that the only image he had of it for years was that of an incredibly old man walking through the huge, abandoned rooms of a palace full of animals. Some of his friends remember him saying as far back as 1958, when as a newsman he was witnessing the fall of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela, that he would one day write a book about a dictator. He has since spoken of the influence of the life of the Venezuelan caudillo, Juan Vicente Gómez, on this book. He himself lived for years under the Rojas Pinilla dictatorship in his native Colombia. He covered the trial of a Batista butcher in the early days of Castro's Cuban takeover. He lived in Spain during the interminable rattlings of Franco's elusive death, when that country was a hospitable journey's end for deposed Latin dictators.

He has added to these times of his own life fragments from the long history of dictators--the deaths of Julius Caesar and Mussolini, the durability of Stroessner, the wife-worship of Perón, what seems to be a close study of the times of Trujillo and the United States and English gunboat-puppeteering of so many bestial morons into the dictator's palace. He has absorbed and re-imagined all this, and more, and emerged with a stunning portrait of the archetype: the pathological fascist tyrant.

García Márquez (his surname is García; Márquez is his mother's name) began this novel in 1968 and said in 1971 that it was finished. But he continued to embellish it until 1975 when he published it in Spain. Now Gregory Rabassa, who translated the author's last novel, "One Hundred Years of Solitude," and who on the basis of these two books alone stands as one of the best translators who ever drew breath, has given us the superb English equivalent of García Márquez's magisterial Spanish.

The book, as is to be expected from García Márquez, is mystical, surrealistic, Rabelaisian in its excesses, its distortions and its exotic language. But García Márquez' sense of life is that surreality is as much the norm as banality. "In Mexico surrealism runs through the streets,"he once said. And elsewhere: "The Latin American reality is totally Rabelaisian."

And so his patriarch, the unnamed General (his precise rank is General of the Universe) of an unnamed Caribbean nation, lives to be anywhere between 107 and 232 years old, sires 5,000 children, all runts, all born after seven-month gestations. He is a bird woman's bastard, conceived in a storm of bluebottle flies, born in a convent doorway, gifted at birth with huge, deformed feet and an enlarged testicle the size of a fig, which whistles a tune of pain to him every moment of his impossibly long life. The graffiti on the walls of the servants' toilet give him oracular insight into traitorous cohorts, one of whom he serves roasted for dinner to a gathering of his generals.

He has such power that when he orders the time of day changed from three to eight in the morning to deliver himself from darkness, the roses open two hours before dew time. His influence is so indelible that eventually his cows are born with his hereditary presidential brand. His venality such that he rigs the weekly lottery, using children under seven to draw the winning three numbers, and he always wins all three. To quiet the children about their enforced complicity, he imprisons them. When they number 2,000 and the Pope anguishes publicly over their disappearance and the League of Nations investigates it, he isolates the children in the wilderness after a Nazi-like deportation in boxcars, and finally drowns them at sea, denying they ever existed.

But his most fantastic depredation is the sale of the Caribbean Sea to the gringos who have kept him in power. The United States ambassador orders in giant suction dredges and nautical engineers, who carry off the sea "in numbered pieces to plant it far from the hurricanes in the blood-red dawns of Arizona, they took it away with everything it had inside general sir, with the reflection of our cities, our timid drowned people, our demented dragons," and they leave behind a torn crater, a deserted plain of harsh lunar dust. To replace the breezes that were lost when the sea went away, another U.S. ambassador gives the General a wind machine....

anne -> JohnH... , Tuesday, October 11, 2016 at 05:50 AM
Latin American literature is great...and it often deals with the abuses of the politically powerful...Isabel Allende, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes and others....

[ Surely so. ]

cm -> JohnH... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 11:09 PM
"Many Europeans never understood why the Lewinsky affair became a scandal, because they assumed that such behavior was just a perk of the position."

I disagree. I don't know any Europeans who think like that.

Extramarital affairs are not really uncommon, and not restricted to people of high social stature. The affair was viewed more as extramarital relations than (passively) taking advantage of somebody arguably in a position of occupational dependence, and the whole impeachment proceedings were recognized as a witch hunt by lecherous old bucks riding the well-worn Puritan mock adultery outrage theme. (And some of whom later turned out to have had affairs of their own going on.)

The main reason it was incomprehensible was that "Europe" practices the allegedly-French maxim "live and let live" in this regard - a considerable level of "benevolent" sin and debauchery will be tolerated and dutifully disregarded as long as it is properly hidden and orderly public perceptions are maintained (or if some of it gets out, at least a customary effort will have to have been made to keep it under wraps). I.e. if you make reasonable efforts to keep it private, it will be treated as private. But fail to make the effort or deliberately show off, then you will meet with scorn and resentment.

Using positions of influence to actively take advantage or extract concessions, or abusive behavior of any kind, are not OK, and there is no presumption that it is a perk of power.

cm -> cm... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 11:17 PM
And that it was viewed as extramarital relations was in good part because a lot of the media "coverage" concentrated on rehashing all the salacious "sexual" aspects in almost pornographic detail. If anybody defiled Ms. Lewinsky's virtue and reputation, it was the persecutors and the media.
JohnH -> cm... , Tuesday, October 11, 2016 at 08:11 AM
"So why do the French tolerate behavior that would both shame and topple leaders in the U.S. or Britain? Because, despite French lip service to their revolution's promise of "egalite" for all citizens, voters still tend to defer to politicians as a class apart who enjoy entitlements once associated with royal courts."

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1550022,00.html

Italy was pretty tolerant of Berlusconi's behavior...until it was proven that he slept with an underage woman.

JohnH : , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 02:52 PM
I thought that Thoma would be wise enough not to republish this Krugman column...but since he wasn't, here goes:

Krugman's claim: "Yes, Bill Clinton had affairs; but there's a world of difference between consensual sex, however inappropriate, and abuse of power to force those less powerful to accept your urges."

Wikipedia: "Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States (1993-2001), has been publicly accused by several women of sexual misconduct. Juanita Broaddrick has accused Clinton of rape; Kathleen Willey has accused Clinton of groping her without consent; and Paula Jones accuses Clinton of exposing himself and sexually harassing her."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_sexual_misconduct_allegations

Sadly, Krugman is just spewing the usual partisan sanctimony ...being shocked--just shocked--at the behavior of the other side while showing a shocking lack of curiosity in the misbehavior of politicians on his side...or denying that it might have happened.

Let's be clear...Trump's behavior was despicable. Any maybe, just maybe, Bill Clinton's behavior was somewhat less despicable. Still, we can agree that both behaved badly, taking advantage of their power and position to take advantage of others.

I say, let's continue to expose the dirty laundry...all of it. Historically, the media has chosen to treat Presidents like royalty. But, as we know, the British royal family has its share of tawdry scandals.

The American people deserve to see what's behind the carefully fabricated public images of rich and powerful people who choose to be our leaders. A spotlight needs to be shown on powerful people who abuse their position both for personal gain as well as exploitation of the less powerful.

ken melvin -> JohnH... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 03:36 PM
What alternate universe do you live in? Bill Clinton - a bit old and decrepit - goes down as a good president, isn't running. We dems don't bring up GWB - a very bad president - in re Trump.
ilsm -> ken melvin... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 03:53 PM
The analogy to Clinton and Monika: there was evidence he did the deed; she was bullied, she was the underling, she was abused, and the process let Bill off. Why different standard for no evidence but braggadocio Trump?

The shady "process" that let H. Clinton off on security and federal records was not like the process Bill endured.

pgl -> ilsm... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 04:01 PM
Monica Lewinsky engaged in consensual sex. Something you would never understand.
JohnH -> pgl... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 04:08 PM
Juanita Broaddrick has accused Clinton of rape...but pgl takes the traditional male position of denying that it could ever have happened...
pgl -> JohnH... , Tuesday, October 11, 2016 at 01:39 AM
What a load of garbage even for you. Juanita Broaddrick said under oath this did not happen. This is a fraud - just like you are.
JohnH -> pgl... , Tuesday, October 11, 2016 at 08:30 AM
Of course, pgl provides no link and cherry picks the story:
http://www.npr.org/2016/10/09/497291071/a-brief-history-of-juanita-broaddrick-the-woman-accusing-bill-clinton-of-rape
ilsm -> pgl... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 04:30 PM
Yeah like the woman Petraeus engaged in.....

A 22 year intern is an equal to the predator pres?

Clintons have no convictions. And there is always a worse criminal to excuse them.

Tom aka Rusty -> pgl... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 05:20 PM
According to sexual harassment guidelines issued by the Clinton administration, large imbalances of power made "consensual" very problematic. For you irony fans.....
JohnH -> ken melvin... , Monday, October 10, 2016 at 04:05 PM
How can Democrats be shocked--just shocked!--at Trump's behavior, while they continue to cover up and minimize Bill Clinton's? Can Democrats legitimately claim that Bill Clinton was the lesser of two evils when it came to sexual predation? I don't think so. How many hairs do you want to split when it comes to sexual predation?

Certainly, Hillary must find it hard to have stood by her man, despite his sexual predations, and then attack Trump for the same behavior. As a result, she leaves the attacks to her army of partisan hacks...like Krugman.

Chris G -> JohnH... , Tuesday, October 11, 2016 at 09:29 AM
> Krugman's claim: "Yes, Bill Clinton had affairs; but there's a world of difference between consensual sex, however inappropriate, and abuse of power to force those less powerful to accept your urges."

Wow. Show of hands: Who believes Bill Clinton was not using his power to 'encourage' less powerful people to accept his urges?

I can't keep a straight face with that. Of course he was abusing his power. Being an apologist for Clinton exploiting his power to get sex is pathetic. Failing to recognize the significance of the power differential between Clinton and the women he screwed is pathetic.

ilsm : , -1
Predator talk angst on faux prudes is nothing to neocon predator plans on entire countries. It is alleged that Trump does women. Hillary would do Syria, ousting Assad is her goal much like her murder of Qaddafi and Libya. The bait and switch!

[Oct 09, 2016] Wikileaks Releases Hillary's Paid Wall Street Speech Transcripts Hundreds Of Sensitive Excerpts

Oct 09, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com

Oct 7, 2016 6:01 PM Zero Hedge 0 SHARES While the media is transfixed with the just released Washington Post leak of a private Donald Trump conversation from 2005 in which he was speaking "lewdly" about women, and for which he has apologized, roughly at the same time, Wikileaks released part one of what it dubbed the " Podesta emails ", which it describes as "a series on deals involving Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. Mr Podesta is a long-term associate of the Clintons and was President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff from 1998 until 2001. Mr Podesta also owns the Podesta Group with his brother Tony, a major lobbying firm and is the Chair of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington DC-based think tank."

While the underlying story in this specific case involves the alleged kickbacks received by the Clinton Foundation from the Russian government-controlled "Uranium One", a story which has been profiled previously by the NYT, and about which Wikileaks adds that "as Russian interests gradually took control of Uranium One millions of dollars were donated to the Clinton Foundation between 2009 and 2013 from individuals directly connected to the deal including the Chairman of Uranium One, Ian Telfer. Although Mrs Clinton had an agreement with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors to the Clinton Foundation, the contributions from the Chairman of Uranium One were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons", what caught our attention is an email from Tony Carr, a Research Director at Hillary for America , in which he lay outs hundreds of excerpts from the heretofore missing transcripts of Hillary Clinton's infamous Wall Street speeches, with an emphasis on those which should be flagged as they may be damaging to Hillary.

But first, here are the greatest hits as conveniently flagged by the Clinton Campaign itself on page one of the 80 page addendum dubbed " awkward"

Hillary Clinton: "I'm Kind Of Far Removed" From The Struggles Of The Middle Class "Because The Life I've Lived And The Economic, You Know, Fortunes That My Husband And I Now Enjoy." "And I am not taking a position on any policy, but I do think there is a growing sense of anxiety and even anger in the country over the feeling that the game is rigged. And I never had that feeling when I was growing up. Never. I mean, were there really rich people, of course there were. My father loved to complain about big business and big government, but we had a solid middle class upbringing. We had good public schools. We had accessible health care. We had our little, you know, one-family house that, you know, he saved up his money, didn't believe in mortgages. So I lived that. And now, obviously, I'm kind of far removed because the life I've lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy, but I haven't forgotten it." [Hillary Clinton Remarks at Goldman-Black Rock, 2/4/14]

When A Questioner At Goldman Sachs Said She Raised Money For Hillary Clinton In 2008, Hillary Clinton Joked "You Are The Smartest People ." "PARTICIPANT: Secretary, Ann Chow from Houston, Texas. I have had the honor to raise money for you when you were running for president in Texas. MS. CLINTON: You are the smartest people. PARTICIPANT: I think you actually called me on my cell phone, too. I talked to you afterwards." [ Speech to Goldman Sachs, 2013 IBD Ceo Annual Conference, 6/4/13]

Hillary Clinton Joked That If Lloyd Blankfein Wanted To Run For Office, He Should "Would Leave Goldman Sachs And Start Running A Soup Kitchen Somewhere . " "MR. BLANKFEIN: I'm saying for myself. MS. CLINTON: If you were going to run here is what I would tell you to do -- MR. BLANKFEIN: Very hypothetical. MS. CLINTON: I think you would leave Goldman Sachs and start running a soup kitchen somewhere. MR. BLANKFEIN: For one thing the stock would go up. MS. CLINTON: Then you could be a legend in your own time both when you were there and when you left." [ Speech to Goldman Sachs, 2013 IBD Ceo Annual Conference, 6/4/13]

Hillary Clinton Noted President Clinton Had Spoken At The Same Goldman Summit Last Year, And Blankfein Joked "He Increased Our Budget." "SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, first, thanks for having me here and giving me a chance to know a little bit more about the builders and the innovators who you've gathered. Some of you might have been here last year, and my husband was, I guess, in this very same position. And he came back and was just thrilled by- MR. BLANKFEIN: He increased our budget. SECRETARY CLINTON: Did he? MR. BLANKFEIN: Yes. That's why we -- SECRETARY CLINTON: Good. I think he-I think he encouraged you to grow it a little, too. But it really was a tremendous experience for him, so I've been looking forward to it and hope we have a chance to talk about a lot of things." [Goldman Sachs Builders And Innovators Summit, 10/29/13]

Clinton Said When She Got To State, Employees "Were Not Mostly Permitted To Have Handheld Devices." "You know, when Colin Powell showed up as Secretary of State in 2001, most State Department employees still didn't even have computers on their desks. When I got there they were not mostly permitted to have handheld devices. I mean, so you're thinking how do we operate in this new environment dominated by technology, globalizing forces? We have to change, and I can't expect people to change if I don't try to model it and lead it." [Clinton Speech For General Electric's Global Leadership Meeting – Boca Raton, FL, 1/6/14]

Clinton Joked It's "Risky" For Her To Speak To A Group Committed To Futures Markets Given Her Past Whitewater Scandal. "Now, it's always a little bit risky for me to come speak to a group that is committed to the futures markets because -- there's a few knowing laughs -- many years ago, I actually traded in the futures markets. I mean, this was so long ago, it was before computers were invented, I think. And I worked with a group of like-minded friends and associates who traded in pork bellies and cotton and other such things, and I did pretty well. I invested about a thousand dollars and traded up to about a hundred thousand. And then my daughter was born, and I just didn't think I had enough time or mental space to figure out anything having to do with trading other than trading time with my daughter for time with the rest of my life. So I got out, and I thought that would be the end of it." [Remarks to CME Group, 11/18/13]

Hillary Clinton Said Jordan Was Threatened Because "They Can't Possibly Vet All Those Refugees So They Don't Know If, You Know, Jihadists Are Coming In Along With Legitimate Refugees." "So I think you're right to have gone to the places that you visited because there's a discussion going on now across the region to try to see where there might be common ground to deal with the threat posed by extremism and particularly with Syria which has everyone quite worried, Jordan because it's on their border and they have hundreds of thousands of refugees and they can't possibly vet all those refugees so they don't know if, you know, jihadists are coming in along with legitimate refugees. Turkey for the same reason." [Jewish United Fund Of Metropolitan Chicago Vanguard Luncheon, 10/28/13]

Hillary Clinton Said Her Dream Is A Hemispheric Common Market, With Open Trade And Open Markets. "My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere." [05162013 Remarks to Banco Itau.doc, p. 28]

* * *

Here is the full email by Carrk as of January 25, 2016 laying out all the potentially delicate issues that the Clinton campaign would wish to avoid from emerging. One thing to note: as Michael Tracey points out, the Hillary campaign had all the transcripts at her disposal all along, despite repeated deflection. Perhaps as a result of this leak she will now release the full transcripts for the "proper context."

* * *

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected] , [email protected] , [email protected] , [email protected] , [email protected] , [email protected]
Date: 2016-01-25 00:28 Subject:

HRC Paid Speeches

Team,

Attached are the flags from HRC's paid speeches we have from HWA. I put some highlights below. There is a lot of policy positions that we should give an extra scrub with Policy.

In terms of what was opened to the press and what was not, the Washington Examiner got a hold of one of the private speech contracts (her speeches to universities were typically open press), so this is worth a read http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clintons-speeches-are-cozy-for-wall-streeters-but-closed-to-journalists/article/2553294/section/author/dan-friedman

CLINTON ADMITS SHE IS OUT OF TOUCH

Hillary Clinton: "I'm Kind Of Far Removed" From The Struggles Of The Middle Class "Because The Life I've Lived And The Economic, You Know, Fortunes That My Husband And I Now Enjoy." "And I am not taking a position on any policy, but I do think there is a growing sense of anxiety and even anger in the country over the feeling that the game is rigged. And I never had that feeling when I was growing up. Never. I mean, were there really rich people, of course there were. My father loved to complain about big business and big government, but we had a solid middle class upbringing. We had good public schools. We had accessible health care. We had our little, you know, one-family house that, you know, he saved up his money, didn't believe in mortgages. So I lived that. And now, obviously, I'm kind of far removed because the life I've lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy, but I haven't forgotten it." [Hillary Clinton Remarks at Goldman-Black Rock, 2/4/14]

CLINTON SAYS YOU NEED TO HAVE A PRIVATE AND PUBLIC POSITION ON POLICY

Clinton: "But If Everybody's Watching, You Know, All Of The Back Room Discussions And The Deals, You Know, Then People Get A Little Nervous, To Say The Least. So, You Need Both A Public And A Private Position." CLINTON: You just have to sort of figure out how to -- getting back to that word, "balance" -- how to balance the public and the private efforts that are necessary to be successful, politically, and that's not just a comment about today. That, I think, has probably been true for all of our history, and if you saw the Spielberg movie, Lincoln, and how he was maneuvering and working to get the 13th Amendment passed, and he called one of my favorite predecessors, Secretary Seward, who had been the governor and senator from New York, ran against Lincoln for president, and he told Seward, I need your help to get this done. And Seward called some of his lobbyist friends who knew how to make a deal, and they just kept going at it. I mean, politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody's watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position. And finally, I think -- I believe in evidence-based decision making. I want to know what the facts are. I mean, it's like when you guys go into some kind of a deal, you know, are you going to do that development or not, are you going to do that renovation or not, you know, you look at the numbers. You try to figure out what's going to work and what's not going to work. [Clinton Speech For National Multi-Housing Council, 4/24/13]

CLINTON TALKS ABOUT HOLDING WALL STREET ACCOUNTABLE ONLY FOR POLITICAL REASONS

Clinton Said That The Blame Placed On The United States Banking System For The Crisis "Could Have Been Avoided In Terms Of Both Misunderstanding And Really Politicizing What Happened." "That was one of the reasons that I started traveling in February of '09, so people could, you know, literally yell at me for the United States and our banking system causing this everywhere. Now, that's an oversimplification we know, but it was the conventional wisdom. And I think that there's a lot that could have been avoided in terms of both misunderstanding and really politicizing what happened with greater transparency, with greater openness on all sides, you know, what happened, how did it happen, how do we prevent it from happening? You guys help us figure it out and let's make sure that we do it right this time. And I think that everybody was desperately trying to fend off the worst effects institutionally, governmentally, and there just wasn't that opportunity to try to sort this out, and that came later." [Goldman Sachs AIMS Alternative Investments Symposium, 10/24/13]

* * *

Clinton: "Even If It May Not Be 100 Percent True, If The Perception Is That Somehow The Game Is Rigged, That Should Be A Problem For All Of Us." "Now, it's important to recognize the vital role that the financial markets play in our economy and that so many of you are contributing to. To function effectively those markets and the men and women who shape them have to command trust and confidence, because we all rely on the market's transparency and integrity. So even if it may not be 100 percent true, if the perception is that somehow the game is rigged, that should be a problem for all of us, and we have to be willing to make that absolutely clear. And if there are issues, if there's wrongdoing, people have to be held accountable and we have to try to deter future bad behavior, because the public trust is at the core of both a free market economy and a democracy." [Clinton Remarks to Deutsche Bank, 10/7/14]

CLINTON SUGGESTS WALL STREET INSIDERS ARE WHAT IS NEEDED TO FIX WALL STREET

Clinton Said Financial Reform "Really Has To Come From The Industry Itself." "Remember what Teddy Roosevelt did. Yes, he took on what he saw as the excesses in the economy, but he also stood against the excesses in politics. He didn't want to unleash a lot of nationalist, populistic reaction. He wanted to try to figure out how to get back into that balance that has served America so well over our entire nationhood. Today, there's more that can and should be done that really has to come from the industry itself, and how we can strengthen our economy, create more jobs at a time where that's increasingly challenging, to get back to Teddy Roosevelt's square deal. And I really believe that our country and all of you are up to that job." [Clinton Remarks to Deutsche Bank, 10/7/14]

* * *

Speaking About The Importance Of Proper Regulation, Clinton Said "The People That Know The Industry Better Than Anybody Are The People Who Work In The Industry." "I mean, it's still happening, as you know. People are looking back and trying to, you know, get compensation for bad mortgages and all the rest of it in some of the agreements that are being reached. There's nothing magic about regulations, too much is bad, too little is bad. How do you get to the golden key, how do we figure out what works? And the people that know the industry better than anybody are the people who work in the industry. And I think there has to be a recognition that, you know, there's so much at stake now, I mean, the business has changed so much and decisions are made so quickly, in nano seconds basically. We spend trillions of dollars to travel around the world, but it's in everybody's interest that we have a better framework, and not just for the United States but for the entire world, in which to operate and trade." [Goldman Sachs AIMS Alternative Investments Symposium, 10/24/13]

CLINTON ADMITS NEEDING WALL STREET FUNDING

Clinton Said That Because Candidates Needed Money From Wall Street To Run For Office, People In New York Needed To Ask Tough Questions About The Economy Before Handing Over Campaign Contributions. "Secondly, running for office in our country takes a lot of money, and candidates have to go out and raise it. New York is probably the leading site for contributions for fundraising for candidates on both sides of the aisle, and it's also our economic center. And there are a lot of people here who should ask some tough questions before handing over campaign contributions to people who were really playing chicken with our whole economy." [Goldman Sachs AIMS Alternative Investments Symposium, 10/24/13]

* * *

Clinton: "It Would Be Very Difficult To Run For President Without Raising A Huge Amount Of Money And Without Having Other People Supporting You Because Your Opponent Will Have Their Supporters." "So our system is, in many ways, more difficult, certainly far more expensive and much longer than a parliamentary system, and I really admire the people who subject themselves to it. Even when I, you know, think they should not be elected president, I still think, well, you know, good for you I guess, you're out there promoting democracy and those crazy ideas of yours. So I think that it's something -- I would like -- you know, obviously as somebody who has been through it, I would like it not to last as long because I think it's very distracting from what we should be doing every day in our public business. I would like it not to be so expensive. I have no idea how you do that. I mean, in my campaign -- I lose track, but I think I raised $250 million or some such enormous amount, and in the last campaign President Obama raised 1.1 billion, and that was before the Super PACs and all of this other money just rushing in, and it's so ridiculous that we have this kind of free for all with all of this financial interest at stake, but, you know, the Supreme Court said that's basically what we're in for. So we're kind of in the wild west, and, you know, it would be very difficult to run for president without raising a huge amount of money and without having other people supporting you because your opponent will have their supporters. So I think as hard as it was when I ran, I think it's even harder now." [Clinton Speech For General Electric's Global Leadership Meeting – Boca Raton, FL, 1/6/14]

CLINTON TOUTS HER RELATIONSHIP TO WALL STREET AS A SENATOR

Clinton: As Senator, "I Represented And Worked With" So Many On Wall Street And "Did All I Could To Make Sure They Continued To Prosper" But Still Called For Closing Carried Interest Loophole. In remarks at Robbins, Gellar, Rudman & Dowd in San Diego, Hillary Clinton said, "When I was a Senator from New York, I represented and worked with so many talented principled people who made their living in finance. But even thought I represented them and did all I could to make sure they continued to prosper, I called for closing the carried interest loophole and addressing skyrocketing CEO pay. I also was calling in '06, '07 for doing something about the mortgage crisis, because I saw every day from Wall Street literally to main streets across New York how a well-functioning financial system is essential. So when I raised early warnings about early warnings about subprime mortgages and called for regulating derivatives and over complex financial products, I didn't get some big arguments, because people sort of said, no, that makes sense. But boy, have we had fights about it ever since." [Hillary Clinton's Remarks at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd in San Diego, 9/04/14]

* * *

Clinton On Wall Street: "I Had Great Relations And Worked So Close Together After 9/11 To Rebuild Downtown, And A Lot Of Respect For The Work You Do And The People Who Do It." "Now, without going over how we got to where we are right now, what would be your advice to the Wall Street community and the big banks as to the way forward with those two important decisions? SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I represented all of you for eight years. I had great relations and worked so close together after 9/11 to rebuild downtown, and a lot of respect for the work you do and the people who do it, but I do -- I think that when we talk about the regulators and the politicians, the economic consequences of bad decisions back in '08, you know, were devastating, and they had repercussions throughout the world." [Goldman Sachs AIMS Alternative Investments Symposium, 10/24/13]

CLINTON TALKS ABOUT THE CHALLENGES RUNNING FOR OFFICE

Hillary Clinton Said There Was "A Bias Against People Who Have Led Successful And/Or Complicated Lives," Citing The Need To Divese Of Assets, Positions, And Stocks. "SECRETARY CLINTON: Yeah. Well, you know what Bob Rubin said about that. He said, you know, when he came to Washington, he had a fortune. And when he left Washington, he had a small -- MR. BLANKFEIN: That's how you have a small fortune, is you go to Washington. SECRETARY CLINTON: You go to Washington. Right. But, you know, part of the problem with the political situation, too, is that there is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives. You know, the divestment of assets, the stripping of all kinds of positions, the sale of stocks. It just becomes very onerous and unnecessary." [Goldman Sachs Builders And Innovators Summit, 10/29/13]

CLINTON SUGGESTS SHE IS A MODERATE

Clinton Said That Both The Democratic And Republican Parties Should Be "Moderate." "URSULA BURNS: Interesting. Democrats? SECRETARY CLINTON: Oh, long, definitely. URSULA BURNS: Republicans? SECRETARY CLINTON: Unfortunately, at the time, short. URSULA BURNS: Okay. We'll go back to questions. SECRETARY CLINTON: We need two parties. URSULA BURNS: Yeah, we do need two parties. SECRETARY CLINTON: Two sensible, moderate, pragmatic parties." [Hillary Clinton Remarks, Remarks at Xerox, 3/18/14]

* * *

Clinton: "Simpson-Bowles… Put Forth The Right Framework. Namely, We Have To Restrain Spending, We Have To Have Adequate Revenues, And We Have To Incentivize Growth. It's A Three-Part Formula… And They Reached An Agreement. But What Is Very Hard To Do Is To Then Take That Agreement If You Don't Believe That You're Going To Be Able To Move The Other Side." SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, this may be borne more out of hope than experience in the last few years. But Simpson-Bowles -- and I know you heard from Erskine earlier today -- put forth the right framework. Namely, we have to restrain spending, we have to have adequate revenues, and we have to incentivize growth. It's a three-part formula. The specifics can be negotiated depending upon whether we're acting in good faith or not. And what Senator Simpson and Erskine did was to bring Republicans and Democrats alike to the table, and you had the full range of ideological views from I think Tom Coburn to Dick Durbin. And they reached an agreement. But what is very hard to do is to then take that agreement if you don't believe that you're going to be able to move the other side. And where we are now is in this gridlocked dysfunction. So you've got Democrats saying that, you know, you have to have more revenues; that's the sine qua non of any kind of agreement. You have Republicans saying no, no, no on revenues; you have to cut much more deeply into spending. Well, looks what's happened. We are slowly returning to growth. It's not as much or as fast as many of us would like to see, but, you know, we're certainly better off than our European friends, and we're beginning to, I believe, kind of come out of the long aftermath of the '08 crisis. [Clinton Speech For Morgan Stanley, 4/18/13]

* * *

Clinton: "The Simpson-Bowles Framework And The Big Elements Of It Were Right… You Have To Restrain Spending, You Have To Have Adequate Revenues, And You Have To Have Growth." CLINTON: So, you know, the Simpson-Bowles framework and the big elements of it were right. The specifics can be negotiated and argued over. But you got to do all three. You have to restrain spending, you have to have adequate revenues, and you have to have growth. And I think we are smart enough to figure out how to do that. [Clinton Speech For Morgan Stanley, 4/18/13]

CLINTON IS AWARE OF SECURITY CONCERNS AROUND BLACKBERRIES

Clinton: "At The State Department We Were Attacked Every Hour, More Than Once An Hour By Incoming Efforts To Penetrate Everything We Had. And That Was True Across The U.S. Government." CLINTON: But, at the State Department we were attacked every hour, more than once an hour by incoming efforts to penetrate everything we had. And that was true across the U.S. government. And we knew it was going on when I would go to China, or I would go to Russia, we would leave all of our electronic equipment on the plane, with the batteries out, because this is a new frontier. And they're trying to find out not just about what we do in our government. They're trying to find out about what a lot of companies do and they were going after the personal emails of people who worked in the State Department. So it's not like the only government in the world that is doing anything is the United States. But, the United States compared to a number of our competitors is the only government in the world with any kind of safeguards, any kind of checks and balances. They may in many respects need to be strengthened and people need to be reassured, and they need to have their protections embodied in law. But, I think turning over a lot of that material intentionally or unintentionally, because of the way it can be drained, gave all kinds of information not only to big countries, but to networks and terrorist groups, and the like. So I have a hard time thinking that somebody who is a champion of privacy and liberty has taken refuge in Russia under Putin's authority. And then he calls into a Putin talk show and says, President Putin, do you spy on people? And President Putin says, well, from one intelligence professional to another, of course not. Oh, thank you so much. I mean, really, I don't know. I have a hard time following it. [Clinton Speech At UConn, 4/23/14]

* * *

Hillary Clinton: "When I Got To The State Department, It Was Still Against The Rules To Let Most -- Or Let All Foreign Service Officers Have Access To A Blackberry." "I mean, let's face it, our government is woefully, woefully behind in all of its policies that affect the use of technology. When I got to the State Department, it was still against the rules to let most -- or let all Foreign Service Officers have access to a Blackberry. You couldn't have desktop computers when Colin Powell was there. Everything that you are taking advantage of, inventing and using, is still a generation or two behind when it comes to our government." [Hillary Clinton Remarks at Nexenta, 8/28/14]

* * *

Hillary Clinton: "We Couldn't Take Our Computers, We Couldn't Take Our Personal Devices" Off The Plane In China And Russia. "I mean, probably the most frustrating part of this whole debate are countries acting like we're the only people in the world trying to figure out what's going on. I mean, every time I went to countries like China or Russia, I mean, we couldn't take our computers, we couldn't take our personal devices, we couldn't take anything off the plane because they're so good, they would penetrate them in a minute, less, a nanosecond. So we would take the batteries out, we'd leave them on the plane." [Hillary Clinton Remarks at Nexenta, 8/28/14]

* * *

Clinton Said When She Got To State, Employees "Were Not Mostly Permitted To Have Handheld Devices." "You know, when Colin Powell showed up as Secretary of State in 2001, most State Department employees still didn't even have computers on their desks. When I got there they were not mostly permitted to have handheld devices. I mean, so you're thinking how do we operate in this new environment dominated by technology, globalizing forces? We have to change, and I can't expect people to change if I don't try to model it and lead it." [Clinton Speech For General Electric's Global Leadership Meeting – Boca Raton, FL, 1/6/14]

* * *

Hillary Clinton Said You Know You Can't Bring Your Phone And Computer When Traveling To China And Russia And She Had To Take Her Batteries Out And Put them In A Special Box. "And anybody who has ever traveled in other countries, some of which shall remain nameless, except for Russia and China, you know that you can't bring your phones and your computers. And if you do, good luck. I mean, we would not only take the batteries out, we would leave the batteries and the devices on the plane in special boxes. Now, we didn't do that because we thought it would be fun to tell somebody about. We did it because we knew that we were all targets and that we would be totally vulnerable. So it's not only what others do to us and what we do to them and how many people are involved in it. It's what's the purpose of it, what is being collected, and how can it be used. And there are clearly people in this room who know a lot about this, and some of you could be very useful contributors to that conversation because you're sophisticated enough to know that it's not just, do it, don't do it. We have to have a way of doing it, and then we have to have a way of analyzing it, and then we have to have a way of sharing it." [Goldman Sachs Builders And Innovators Summit, 10/29/13]

* * *

Hillary Clinton Lamented How Far Behind The State Department Was In Technology, Saying "People Were Not Even Allowed To Use Mobile Devices Because Of Security Issues." "Personally, having, you know, lived and worked in the White House, having been a senator, having been Secretary of State, there has traditionally been a great pool of very talented, hard-working people. And just as I was saying about the credit market, our personnel policies haven't kept up with the changes necessary in government. We have a lot of difficulties in getting-when I got to the State Department, we were so far behind in technology, it was embarrassing. And, you know, people were not even allowed to use mobile devices because of security issues and cost issues, and we really had to try to push into the last part of the 20 th Century in order to get people functioning in 2009 and '10." [Goldman Sachs Builders And Innovators Summit, 10/29/13]

CLINTON REMARKS ARE PRO KEYSTONE AND PRO TRADE

Clinton: "So I Think That Keystone Is A Contentious Issue, And Of Course It Is Important On Both Sides Of The Border For Different And Sometimes Opposing Reasons…" "So I think that Keystone is a contentious issue, and of course it is important on both sides of the border for different and sometimes opposing reasons, but that is not our relationship. And I think our relationship will get deeper and stronger and put us in a position to really be global leaders in energy and climate change if we worked more closely together. And that's what I would like to see us do." [Remarks at tinePublic, 6/18/14]

* * *

Hillary Clinton Said Her Dream Is A Hemispheric Common Market, With Open Trade And Open Markets. "My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere." [05162013 Remarks to Banco Itau.doc, p. 28]

* * *

Hillary Clinton Said We Have To Have A Concerted Plan To Increase Trade; We Have To Resist Protectionism And Other Kinds Of Barriers To Trade. "Secondly, I think we have to have a concerted plan to increase trade already under the current circumstances, you know, that Inter-American Development Bank figure is pretty surprising. There is so much more we can do, there is a lot of low hanging fruit but businesses on both sides have to make it a priority and it's not for governments to do but governments can either make it easy or make it hard and we have to resist, protectionism, other kinds of barriers to market access and to trade and I would like to see this get much more attention and be not just a policy for a year under president X or president Y but a consistent one." [05162013 Remarks to Banco Itau.doc, p. 32]

CLINTON IS MORE FAVORABLE TO CANADIAN HEALTH CARE AND SINGLE PAYER

Clinton Said Single-Payer Health Care Systems "Can Get Costs Down," And "Is As Good Or Better On Primary Care," But "They Do Impose Things Like Waiting Times." "If you look at countries that are comparable, like Switzerland or Germany, for example, they have mixed systems. They don't have just a single-payer system, but they have very clear controls over budgeting and accountability. If you look at the single-payer systems, like Scandinavia, Canada, and elsewhere, they can get costs down because, you know, although their care, according to statistics, overall is as good or better on primary care, in particular, they do impose things like waiting times, you know. It takes longer to get like a hip replacement than it might take here." [Hillary Clinton remarks to ECGR Grand Rapids, 6/17/13]

* * *

Clinton Cited President Johnson's Success In Establishing Medicare And Medicaid And Said She Wanted To See The U.S. Have Universal Health Care Like In Canada. "You know, on healthcare we are the prisoner of our past. The way we got to develop any kind of medical insurance program was during World War II when companies facing shortages of workers began to offer healthcare benefits as an inducement for employment. So from the early 1940s healthcare was seen as a privilege connected to employment. And after the war when soldiers came back and went back into the market there was a lot of competition, because the economy was so heated up. So that model continued. And then of course our large labor unions bargained for healthcare with the employers that their members worked for. So from the early 1940s until the early 1960s we did not have any Medicare, or our program for the poor called Medicaid until President Johnson was able to get both passed in 1965. So the employer model continued as the primary means by which working people got health insurance. People over 65 were eligible for Medicare. Medicaid, which was a partnership, a funding partnership between the federal government and state governments, provided some, but by no means all poor people with access to healthcare. So what we've been struggling with certainly Harry Truman, then Johnson was successful on Medicare and Medicaid, but didn't touch the employer based system, then actually Richard Nixon made a proposal that didn't go anywhere, but was quite far reaching. Then with my husband's administration we worked very hard to come up with a system, but we were very much constricted by the political realities that if you had your insurance from your employer you were reluctant to try anything else. And so we were trying to build a universal system around the employer-based system. And indeed now with President Obama's legislative success in getting the Affordable Care Act passed that is what we've done. We still have primarily an employer-based system, but we now have people able to get subsidized insurance. So we have health insurance companies playing a major role in the provision of healthcare, both to the employed whose employers provide health insurance, and to those who are working but on their own are not able to afford it and their employers either don't provide it, or don't provide it at an affordable price. We are still struggling. We've made a lot of progress. Ten million Americans now have insurance who didn't have it before the Affordable Care Act, and that is a great step forward. (Applause.) And what we're going to have to continue to do is monitor what the costs are and watch closely to see whether employers drop more people from insurance so that they go into what we call the health exchange system. So we're really just at the beginning. But we do have Medicare for people over 65. And you couldn't, I don't think, take it away if you tried, because people are very satisfied with it, but we also have a lot of political and financial resistance to expanding that system to more people. So we're in a learning period as we move forward with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. And I'm hoping that whatever the shortfalls or the glitches have been, which in a big piece of legislation you're going to have, those will be remedied and we can really take a hard look at what's succeeding, fix what isn't, and keep moving forward to get to affordable universal healthcare coverage like you have here in Canada. [Clinton Speech For tinePublic – Saskatoon, CA, 1/21/15]

* * *

Below is the full 80 page documents of "speech flags" in Hillary speeches:

[Oct 09, 2016] What struck me was not so much Clinton's statements about letting Wall Street regulate Wall Street, the fact that she is "out of touch" with Main Street, or her favorable comments about single payer (very ironic given how she has not advocated for this publicly). No, what struck me is that she is NOT a leader

Notable quotes:
"... What struck me was not so much Clinton's statements about letting Wall Street regulate Wall Street, the fact that she is "out of touch" with Main Street, or her favorable comments about single payer (very ironic given how she has not advocated for this publicly). No, what struck me is that she is NOT a leader. ..."
"... No, Clinton is many things, but not a leader. She is revealed as the perfect tool for the elite. Occasionally piping up to express some concern, but so distanced and entrenched in the establishment that she will never do anything of consequence for working Americans. ..."
"... I didn't even read the stuff about the blackberries and computer nonsense. She is incompetent with technology, doesn't understand digital security and is dangerously arrogant about her ignorance. Stipulated. ..."
Oct 09, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Otis B Driftwood October 7, 2016 at 7:58 pm

Just skimmed through the Tony Carrk email "HRC Paid Speeches"

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/927

What struck me was not so much Clinton's statements about letting Wall Street regulate Wall Street, the fact that she is "out of touch" with Main Street, or her favorable comments about single payer (very ironic given how she has not advocated for this publicly). No, what struck me is that she is NOT a leader.

Opposed to Citizens United?

… it's so ridiculous that we have this kind of free for all with all of this financial interest at stake, but, you know, the Supreme Court said that's basically what we're in for. So we're kind of in the wild west, and, you know, it would be very difficult to run for president without raising a huge amount of money.

Sorta like, "Meh! This stinks, but this is how the world works so I'm gonna go raise me some cash."

A Forceful Champion of Wall Street Reform?

I called for closing the carried interest loophole and addressing skyrocketing CEO pay. I also was calling in '06, '07 for doing something about the mortgage crisis, because I saw every day from Wall Street literally to main streets across New York how a well-functioning financial system is essential. So when I raised early warnings about early warnings about subprime mortgages and called for regulating derivatives and over complex financial products, I didn't get some big arguments, because people sort of said, no, that makes sense.

Really? She called for reinstatement of Glass-Steagall? I don't remember her anywhere near the scene of the crime in '06/07. She (may have) made a few comments here and there but never took any real action or was serious about meaningful reform. Still isn't.

And then there is this gem.

We need two parties. .. Two sensible, moderate, pragmatic parties.

A Model of Two Sensible, Pragmatic Parties Working Together: Simpson-Bowles

Simpson-Bowles framework and the big elements of it were right. The specifics can be negotiated and argued over. But you got to do all three. You have to restrain spending, you have to have adequate revenues, and you have to have growth. And I think we are smart enough to figure out how to do that.

Oh, no, we aren't! Not when "figuring it out" means following neoliberal dogma to extract more from labor and give more and more and more to the 1%.

No, Clinton is many things, but not a leader. She is revealed as the perfect tool for the elite. Occasionally piping up to express some concern, but so distanced and entrenched in the establishment that she will never do anything of consequence for working Americans.

I didn't even read the stuff about the blackberries and computer nonsense. She is incompetent with technology, doesn't understand digital security and is dangerously arrogant about her ignorance. Stipulated.

human October 7, 2016 at 9:18 pm

She comes across as either naive or duplicitous, re Latin America "coming out of 2 decades of doing well," but now having to deal with disruption and regime change.

marym October 7, 2016 at 9:38 pm

Simpson Bowles
Lest we forget

Chained CPI, increasing revenue by lower corporate and income taxes, discretionary spending cuts, raising SS retirement age, slowing SS benefit growth

[Oct 08, 2016] Krugman is an abhorrent neoliberal hack and Hillary stooge

Notable quotes:
"... Krugman is such a deplorable hack. I know we are supposed to accept bribe-taking politicians and the economy run by looting robber barons. But can't we even have a goddamn fourth estate? ..."
"... The way Krugman murders journalism ethics by outright campaigning for one of the most corrupt politicians in American history is outrageous. Barfing up her disgusting campaign memes verbatim as if he's coordinating his columns with her war room. ..."
"... If you're a scientist you would know that economics does not remotely resemble a science. One familiar with the history of math and science will notice that their development (based on discovered facts) forms a tree-like structure. One discovery branches out to more discoveries. The growth is therefore exponential. ..."
Oct 08, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
JohnH -> pgl... , Friday, October 07, 2016 at 06:44 PM
Sure...Krugman will occasionally pay lip service to green energy.

The problem is that 'liberal' economists tend to keep separate silos for green energy and infrastructure.

Question is, why do they refuse to connect the dots between climate change mitigation, green energy, fiscal stimulus, and lots of jobs? And why do they prioritize more road and bridges, which will only make climate change worse?

Sure sounds like the usual hypocrisy to me...

nikbez -> JohnH... , Saturday, October 08, 2016 at 03:45 PM
Krugman is an abhorrent neoliberal hack (as well as Hillary stooge).

Who actually understand very little about climate change clearly being non-specialist without any training of physics and geophysics. He is a second rate neoclassical economist with penchant for mathiness (and a very talented writer).

The key question here is Clinton warmongering and the threat of nuclear war with Russia. Washington neocon chichenhawks became recently realty crazy. Obama looks completely important and does not control anything.

I think this is more immediate threat then climate change.

Oil depletion (which already started and will be in full force in a couple of decades) might take care about climate change as period of "cheap oil" (aka "oil age") probably will last less then 100 years and as such is just a blip in Earth history.

End of cheap oil also might lead to natural shrinking of human population -- another factor in the global climate change and a threat to natural ecosystems.

supersaurus : , Friday, October 07, 2016 at 09:56 AM
@Sandwichman: it isn't illegal to be an idiot in this country (USA), hence "almost".
Sandwichman -> supersaurus... , Friday, October 07, 2016 at 10:00 AM
It is, however, often illegal to not be an idiot.
Ron Waller -> pgl... , Friday, October 07, 2016 at 12:29 PM
Hillary is the fracking Queen. Claiming she's a champion of the environment is as ridiculous portraying Donald Trump a feminist.

Obomba is another pretender on the environment. The Paris Agreement commits to absolutely nothing but more talk at a future time. China signed on and is still keeping its commitment to do absolutely nothing to reduce emissions until 2030. (By the time the West has exported the lion share of its emissions to the country in a pointless GHG emissions shell game; emission per capita have skyrocketed since 2002! a 25% increase!)

Krugman is such a deplorable hack. I know we are supposed to accept bribe-taking politicians and the economy run by looting robber barons. But can't we even have a goddamn fourth estate?

The way Krugman murders journalism ethics by outright campaigning for one of the most corrupt politicians in American history is outrageous. Barfing up her disgusting campaign memes verbatim as if he's coordinating his columns with her war room.

So to all the pretend liberals out there who offer the people nothing more than more corruption, lies, war-profiteering and public trust liquidation: you deserve Trump. And I pray that you get him. (After him, a New Deal; and the 'me generation,' the Void.)

pgl -> DrDick... , Friday, October 07, 2016 at 12:44 PM
I think he consumed too much of the byproduct from fracking. Dirty dangerous business.
Ron Waller -> pgl... , Friday, October 07, 2016 at 01:24 PM
You two must be economists. Never anything intelligent to say.
DrDick -> Ron Waller ... , Friday, October 07, 2016 at 01:39 PM
Actually, I am a cultural anthropologist. I must say that there are no signs of intelligent life on you planet.
Ron Waller -> DrDick... , Friday, October 07, 2016 at 02:40 PM
If you're a scientist you would know that economics does not remotely resemble a science. One familiar with the history of math and science will notice that their development (based on discovered facts) forms a tree-like structure. One discovery branches out to more discoveries. The growth is therefore exponential.

Economic history does not follow this pattern.

With science there are paradigm shifts that occur with groundbreaking discoveries like the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. The Friedmanian paradigm shift was founded on jettisoning all the enormously successful work Keynes accomplished and digging up failed 19th century ideology, repeating disastrous history.

Even psychology follows the pattern. Although it began with a lot of unsubstantiated Aristotelian philosophizing, it was a starting point from which a significant body of definite knowledge and medical treatments developed. A real social science. (Not perfect. It was recently discovered that about 50% of published psychological experiments were not reproducible.)

As an anthropologist you should know about cliques and group-think. Have an inkling of how corruption could gradually develop and spread among upper-echelon cliques to the point where the government, the economy, the courts and the news media become captured by the upper class. Understand how cowards would rather look the other way than take a stand and deal with it: "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil."

DrDick -> Ron Waller ... , Friday, October 07, 2016 at 04:28 PM
As an anthropologist, I can assert with confidence that you are babbling about things you do not really understand at all. I have issues with a lot of economics, but you are completely incoherent.
Ron Waller -> DrDick... , Friday, October 07, 2016 at 05:21 PM
Completely incoherent? Then it should be easy enough for you to tear apart what I wrote. It was certainly easy enough for me to tear into Krugman's crass political pandering. But all you got is lame generalizations. Stock insults that could be said about anything.

What issues do you have with "a lot of economics?" I bet you can't come up with anything. Come on. Out with it! Say something intelligent about anything, if you are at all capable, Mr. Dick. I have yet to read anything from you that indicates you have any knowledge about anything.

DrDick -> Ron Waller ... , Saturday, October 08, 2016 at 06:36 AM
It is Dr. Dick, since I have a Ph.D. If you ever read the comments on this blog, you would know full well what those issues are, since I have raised them here many times. For a start the assumption of "rational actors" (only partially true), the assumption of economic maximization (people maximize many different things which affect their economic choices), and the assumption of "rational markets" (this ignores pervasive information assymetry and active deceit).
nikbez -> DrDick... , Saturday, October 08, 2016 at 03:48 PM
"I must say that there are no signs of intelligent life on you planet."

That's good :-) Thank you --

[Oct 08, 2016] I have to thank Clinton for picking Kaine since just quoting his record as Governor pretty much destroys the idea that she picks liberals.

Oct 08, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Pat October 7, 2016 at 5:53 pm

In my continued talks with people who insist that voting for Clinton is the only choice because TRUMP, I just got I would rather have war with Russia than Putin deciding American policy because the President owes him money.

After I decimated that one by asking if everyone in Congress owes Putin as well, I continued by noting that Congress is also a stumbling block if ACA was really their only concern.

That they better figure out how to move to a country with a real health care system or give up being an artist and find a better paying job with employer provided insurance because the idea that Clinton has some magic method of preventing it from dying is a fantasy.

The President cannot unilaterally do anything to stop insurance companies from dropping out and no legislation saving it is going to pass in a Congress where one or both of the Houses have Republican majorities. Sure she might stop them from cutting their subsidy, but even with Clinton they have a couple of years at most before they are royally screwed. Especially since Clinton's Democratic Party is not bothering to try to fight every race in an attempt to get the House, and even have grabbed money from the state parties for her campaign.

Every once in a while I get a little annoyed with people who want to accuse me of not being realistic and believing in unicorns when it is beyond clear that they are dreaming.

I should note that they also pulled out the SCOTUS canard. I have to thank Clinton for picking Kaine since just quoting his record as Governor pretty much destroys the idea that she picks liberals.

[Oct 06, 2016] The financial crisis commission recommended that Chuck Prince and Robert Rubin be prosecuted, which of course did not happen.

Notable quotes:
"... Globalism is all about big finance, don't you get it? The peasants are useful political tools. ..."
"... lot of people do not get that which in inherent in the financialization of non-financial firms meme, the basis for all of the charms of modern corporatism; outsourcing, merging, downsizing, and offshoring along with the complementary low wages and layoffs. The issue with public education has always been that fools make more useful tools. ..."
Oct 06, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Tom aka Rusty: Thursday, October 06, 2016 at 03:52 AM

The financial crisis commission recommended that Chuck Prince and Robert Rubin be prosecuted, which of course did not happen.

... ... ...

Crime does pay.

Tom aka Rusty -> reason ... , Thursday, October 06, 2016 at 05:24 AM
Globalism is all about big finance, don't you get it? The peasants are useful political tools.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> Tom aka Rusty... , -1
"Globalism is all about big finance..."

[A lot of people do not get that which in inherent in the financialization of non-financial firms meme, the basis for all of the charms of modern corporatism; outsourcing, merging, downsizing, and offshoring along with the complementary low wages and layoffs. The issue with public education has always been that fools make more useful tools.]

DrDick -> Tom aka Rusty... , -1
However, no one on the actual "left" is a fan of finance or anyone actively involved in it. To my knowledge, Rubin is universally loathed on the left and loved on the right and by centrists (who are the people you are actually speaking of).

[Oct 06, 2016] Rubin was not only incompetent but he was a rat.

Oct 06, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Tom aka Rusty -> Peter K.... Thursday, October 06, 2016 at 06:33 AM , Thursday, October 06, 2016 at 06:33 AM

In December 2008 The Wall Street Journal did a vicious smack down of Rubin, who received $115M in compensation from Citi over eight years but claimed he had "no line responsibilities."

Rubin encouraged Citi to increase risk but when the bubble popped he blamed the people below him.

Whatever you call him, he was not only incompetent but he was a rat.

likbez -> Peter K.... October 06, 2016 at 09:07 AM , October 06, 2016 at 09:07 AM
Peter,

Rubin is a neoliberal. He can't be center-left (even if we assume that modern US center-left means moderate republicans; some people even claim that Hillary is center-left ;-) and he can't be anti globalization.

[Oct 06, 2016] Robert Rubin, the Man Who Gave Us Bubble Driven Growth, Shares His Wisdom in the WaPo

Oct 06, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

anne : October 06, 2016 at 05:42 AM , October 06, 2016 at 05:42 AM

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-rubin-the-man-who-gave-us-bubble-driven-growth-shares-his-wisdom-in-the-wapo

October 5, 2016

Robert Rubin, the Man Who Gave Us Bubble Driven Growth, Shares His Wisdom in the WaPo

The Washington Post gave a column * to Robert Rubin, the man best known for setting the U.S. economy on a path of bubble-driven growth in the late 1990s, the opportunity to share his wisdom on the economy. Unsurprisingly, Rubin proposes to cut Social Security and Medicare, as he has in times past. Of course Rubin is not likely to need these programs since he earned over $100 million in his stint at Citigroup in the housing bubble years. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission recommended that the Justice Department investigate Rubin's conduct at Citigroup during this period but for some reason it seems the Justice Department did not follow through.

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/heres-how-america-should-play-its-winning-hand-for-long-run-economic-growth/2016/10/05/3676df9e-8a7b-11e6-b24f-a7f89eb68887_story.html

-- Dean Baker

RC AKA Darryl, Ron : , Thursday, October 06, 2016 at 04:16 AM
RE: Here's how America should play its winning hand for long-run economic growth

[Robert Rubin tells us how it should be done. There is no small irony in that.]

...For too long, we have been caught in a vicious cycle: Failure to achieve inclusive growth has undermined the public trust and Congress's commitment to governing that, in turn, is necessary to achieve inclusive growth. If we act on the policies that promote inclusive growth, we could restore support for governance and initiate a virtuous cycle, spurring further constructive policy...

[Could that public trust thingy have to do with the aftermath of decades of financial deregulation and offshoring of jobs? Bob wants us to increase public investment and reduce the public debt of course.]

Peter K. -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , Thursday, October 06, 2016 at 06:16 AM
"Failure to achieve inclusive growth has undermined the public trust"

They have achieved nice profits for the overclass.

But Bob is right. (I recommend Benjamin Friedman's book The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. Prosperity leads to tolerance and an open society. Stagnation leads to Brexit and Trump or worse.)

Too bad Bob's policies (dump Bill Clinton spending bill, strong dollar, bubble-fueled growth, corporate free trade, deregulation, deficit reduction) lead to popping bubbles which create a stagnating economy if not booming profits for the one percent.

JohnH -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , Thursday, October 06, 2016 at 07:58 AM
Yes, inclusive growth is a huge problem, largely ignored until now. It was just too easy to pander to the predatory class with investor friendly trade agreements and trickle down monetary policy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/white-working-class-men-increasingly-falling-behind-as-college-becomes-the-norm/2016/10/05/95610130-8a51-11e6-875e-2c1bfe943b66_story.html

Now the predatory class claims to be aghast at what its policies have enabled--Trump. But are Trumps policies really the problem...or is the problem that doesn't use the reassuring, coded language that the predatory class has carefully crafted to cover its exploitation?

[Oct 06, 2016] Hillary up-coming impeachment trial in the Republican Senate.

Oct 06, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
timbers October 5, 2016 at 3:06 pm

Maybe instead of Al Gore, Michael Moore should hit the stump with Clinton to work the crowd and sign people up to MoveOn.org membership since it will be needed to defend Hillary in her up-coming impeachment trial in the Republican Senate. It will bring back memories as we relive the Clinton years all over again. And while the oxygen gets sucked out policy discussion from Hillary's impeachment, she can get to work on Grand Bargain and finally privatize SS and maybe no-fly zone & WW3, too. With so much stuff like that going on, people should be sufficiently distracted from from their shittacular healthcare, declining wages, and student loaners lurking in basements as the number of states experiencing Obamacare "collapse" go from current 4-7 to who knows … 10-20 or so.

[Oct 05, 2016] Washington Free Beacon uncovered private audio of Hillary Clinton in which she is knocking down Obamacare

Oct 05, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Anon : Bill Clinton slams ObamaCare as 'craziest thing in the world'

http://nypost.com/2016/10/04/bill-clinton-slams-obamacare-as-craziest-thing-in-the-world/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPTwitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow&sr_share=twitter Reply Tuesday, October 04, 2016 at 02:12 PM pgl -> Anon... , -1

"The criticism comes as the Washington Free Beacon uncovered private audio of Hillary Clinton also knocking Obama's legacy legislation."

Did you finish reading your own link?

[Oct 04, 2016] Not convinced to contribute to the Clinton Foundation yet? See how they make magic happen

Notable quotes:
"... I think Trump may be the one and only person to increase the likelihood the US will still be an independent country in ten years. ..."
"... Trump may have some issues, but at least he psychologically identifies with the US. Most US elites think of themselves as world citizens and really couldn't care less if the US becomes like the DRC. ..."
"... Univision's lead owner is Hillary's largest contributor, the Israeli-American media mogul Haim Saban: ..."
"... This convenient FCC rule change hands them a nice exit strategy. Not convinced to contribute to the Clinton Foundation yet? They make magic happen. ..."
Oct 04, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Henry Carey October 2, 2016 at 9:54 am

There is a real risk the media will be wholly foreign owned very soon. The FCC under Pres. Obama eliminated the rule on foreign ownership. This, the TPP, and giving up internet control are of a piece.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/11/14/the-next-rupert-murdoch-wont-have-to-change-his-citizenship-to-rule-the-tv-biz/

I think Trump may be the one and only person to increase the likelihood the US will still be an independent country in ten years. With Clinton we may end up losing our sovereignty by 2020. Trump may have some issues, but at least he psychologically identifies with the US. Most US elites think of themselves as world citizens and really couldn't care less if the US becomes like the DRC.

I trust Trump's instincts much more than Hillary's. The continued existence of an independent US will be very, very important for the world to have any degree of pluralism. Any global hegemony is likely to be unpleasant for most people.

Jim Haygood October 2, 2016 at 10:26 am

From the WaPo article:

Grupo Televisa, a Mexican company with a minority stake in the Spanish-language station Univision, might now be able to increase its ownership.

Univision's lead owner is Hillary's largest contributor, the Israeli-American media mogul Haim Saban:

On June 27, 2006, Saban Capital Group led a group of investors bidding for Univision Communications, the largest Spanish-language media company in the United States.

Other investors in the Saban-led group were Texas Pacific Group of Fort Worth, Texas and Thomas H. Lee Partners. The group was successful in acquiring Univision with a bid valued at $13.7 billion.

This convenient FCC rule change hands them a nice exit strategy. Not convinced to contribute to the Clinton Foundation yet? They make magic happen.

[Oct 02, 2016] Convinced to contribute to the Clinton Foundation yet? They make magic happen.

Oct 02, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Henry Carey October 2, 2016 at 9:54 am

There is a real risk the media will be wholly foreign owned very soon. The FCC under Pres. Obama eliminated the rule on foreign ownership. This, the TPP, and giving up internet control are of a piece.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/11/14/the-next-rupert-murdoch-wont-have-to-change-his-citizenship-to-rule-the-tv-biz/

I think Trump may be the one and only person to increase the likelihood the US will still be an independent country in ten years. With Clinton we may end up losing our sovereignty by 2020. Trump may have some issues, but at least he psychologically identifies with the US. Most US elites think of themselves as world citizens and really couldn't care less if the US becomes like the DRC. I trust Trump's instincts much more than Hillary's. The continued existence of an independent US will be very, very important for the world to have any degree of pluralism. Any global hegemony is likely to be unpleasant for most people.

Jim Haygood October 2, 2016 at 10:26 am

From the WaPo article:

Grupo Televisa, a Mexican company with a minority stake in the Spanish-language station Univision, might now be able to increase its ownership.

Univision's lead owner is Hillary's largest contributor, the Israeli-American media mogul Haim Saban:

On June 27, 2006, Saban Capital Group led a group of investors bidding for Univision Communications, the largest Spanish-language media company in the United States.

Other investors in the Saban-led group were Texas Pacific Group of Fort Worth, Texas and Thomas H. Lee Partners. The group was successful in acquiring Univision with a bid valued at $13.7 billion.

This convenient FCC rule change hands them a nice exit strategy.

Convinced to contribute to the Clinton Foundation yet? They make magic happen.

[Oct 01, 2016] Justin Wolfers convincingly argues that Wall Streets darling in this election is Hillary Clinton and not Donald Trump

Oct 01, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

RC AKA Darryl, Ron : October 01, 2016 at 06:20 AM

RE: Debate Night Message: The Markets Are Afraid of Donald Trump

[ Justin Wolfers convincingly argues that Wall Street's darling in this election is Hillary Clinton and not Donald Trump although that was probably an unintended consequence of making his case without reading between his own line.]

Wall Street fears a Trump presidency. Stocks may lose 10 to 12 percent of their value if he wins the November election, and there may be a broader economic downturn.

These conclusions arise from close analysis of financial markets during Monday's presidential debate, which provides a fascinating case study of the complex interconnections between American politics and economics. The market's judgment stands in sharp opposition to Donald J. Trump's claims that his presidency would be good for business.

Decoding these market signals is no easy task because it is difficult to disentangle correlation from causation. Ideally we would observe stock prices in parallel universes with identical economic conditions, with a single exception: In one, Mr. Trump has a good shot at becoming president, while in the other, his chances are low.

Monday's presidential debate provided a rough approximation of this experiment. At 9 p.m., before the debate began, the betting markets gave Mr. Trump a 35 percent chance of becoming president. Two hours later, after the debate, we had entered the parallel universe in which economic conditions were the same, but Mr. Trump's chances had fallen a tad below 30 percent...

RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , -1
"The stock market has forecast nine of the last five recessions." Paul Samuelson (1966), quoted in: John C Bluedorn et al. Do Asset Price Drops Foreshadow Recessions? (2013), p. 4

[Of course the real question is how well do the betting markets predict the stock market? The only question actually answered was "Who do you love?"]

[Oct 01, 2016] jonny bakho

Oct 01, 2016 | warren.senate.gov
... September 30, 2016 at 06:17 AM " He got AG to agree to allow unemployment to drop to 4% in exchange for raising taxes and dropping the middle class tax cuts. "

That's untrue. Greenspan blackmailed Clinton over interest rates. He and Rubin told Clinton that the bond market would give them lower rates in exchange for deficit reduction. In reality it was up to Greenspan whether or not to raise rates.

That's why James Carville famously said:

"I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_vigilante

There is a lot of misinformation about this.

"From October 1993 to November 1994 US 10-year yields climbed from 5.2% to just over 8.0% fueled by concerns about federal spending. With some guidance from Robert Rubin, the Clinton Administration and Congress made an effort to reduce the deficit. 10-year yields dropped to approximately 4% by November 1998."

The only problem is inflation. The Fed could engage in bond-buying and bring down yields.

Greenspan didn't allow unemployment to get below 4 percent until the late 90s. As Dean Baker has pointed out, Democratic governors on the FOMC like Yellen and Blinder wanted to raise rates but Greenspan wasn't worried about inflation b/c of productivity gains and financial crises over seas.

I followed all of this in real time and so remember it very well.

[Oct 01, 2016] She really is a sociopath! Quite a revealing mindset on Hillarys part. Reminds me of Romney dismissing 47% of the population as free riders.

Notable quotes:
"... Right now, the SYSTEM(establishment) is rigged favoring Hillary. Trump is no saint but unpredictable as perceived by deep state and the MSM. What more damage he can do compared to Bush, Obama or the Hilabama. At least he is challenging the status quo and the establishment, unlike any other candidates in the past! ..."
"... I am vacillating about whom to vote. Bernie would have been my choice. Now Trump vote by default is a protest vote, against the rigged system. Not the best choice but I am fed up with status quo. It needs a jolt and now, only Trump can do that. ..."
"... Paul Ryan went on record that if Trump is elected they'll just ignore him and further the agenda hammered out for them by their Kochtopus overlords. Which is exactly what I have expected would be the case all along. This isn't a damned game, but the more I hear the more it seems that's how it's being viewed, as if the final winner has no real-world relevance. ..."
"... Amen. These so-called "best and brightest" like Clinton and Obama are not only morally bankrupt, the awful truth is they are also obviously poorly informed and self-evidently not very bright either. Obama could, in fact, be almost the definition of the "empty suit". ..."
"... I no longer entertain any such illusions, Hilary and Obama know full well what the consequences of their actions are, all the way from Yemen to Minnesota health insurers. Obama is working toward a sexy retirement golfing with billionaires and raising funds for his Library, as for Hilary, her lust for pure unbridled power for its own sake knows no bounds. From the hallowed halls of Goldman Sachs to the board room at Monsanto, Hilary knows *precisely* where she can get the funds to satisfy her blood and power lusts. ..."
"... Well, her leaked audio fits in with her new plan to give all those "basement dwellers" something to do – that National Service Reserve thing…… But yea, all you stupid millennials – get off the couch and vote for Hillary because she told you to!! And then get off her lawn! ..."
"... Beyond a tone-deafness in self-expression that's astonishing for an experienced politician (even if she did not expect the statement to become public), I find it amazing that there is not even a hint of the thought, "well, maybe there's something about our economy that we need to adjust." ..."
"... Maybe not super generous, but the U.S. medical system already costs more than single payer, so there is more than that going on than just "can't afford it". I have often though the citizens of an empire must be kept in abject poverty, so they don't get to questioning the empire thing (maybe they learned from Vietnam). ..."
"... As Hillary derides those who think we ought to be more like Scandinavia, with free college, free national health care, what she isn't making clear is that America the nation is paying more military money than most of the rest of the world combined. In her mindset, we are the Global Police, and if that $791 billion of military spending reduces us to recession, unaffordable college, unaffordable medical care, and a few dozen people owning over half of all the assets in a nation of 300 million, well that's the price of being the Good Guys. ..."
"... What this tells me about Hillary is she thinks the economy is fine, thinks the current economic policies and trade deals are fine, and has no intention of changing anything. For her, the current economic situation is the best of all possible worlds. ..."
"... Not to mention selling cluster bombs and white phosphorus to the same Saudi despots who use them against Yemeni civilians with the US's assistance. 10s of thousands have been killed and there is a dreadful famine affecting hundreds of thousands. ..."
"... But Trump called a woman fat, so he is the evil one. ..."
Oct 01, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

jgordon October 1, 2016 at 7:19 am

About that hacked audio, I suddenly saw it all over youtube last night on various progressive channels from around midnight on. Well, here is a primary source! 2 minutes of Hillary explaining that Bernie supporters are basement dwelling barista losers without futures who are too naive to understand how politics really work. And she confirms she's center-right, in case anyone was fooled by her recent ostensible leftness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVBTFhhX6DM

Now, get over your butthurt and run out to vote for Hillary! I'm with her.

sunny129 October 1, 2016 at 2:57 pm

...Right now, the SYSTEM(establishment) is rigged favoring Hillary. Trump is no saint but unpredictable as perceived by deep state and the MSM. What more damage he can do compared to Bush, Obama or the Hilabama. At least he is challenging the status quo and the establishment, unlike any other candidates in the past!

I am vacillating about whom to vote. Bernie would have been my choice. Now Trump vote by default is a protest vote, against the rigged system. Not the best choice but I am fed up with status quo. It needs a jolt and now, only Trump can do that.

cwaltz October 1, 2016 at 3:15 pm

A vote for Greens is not a vote for Hillary. A vote for the Green candidate is a vote for the Green candidate.

The GOP should have vetted someone who wasn't a buffoon and who wasn't going to treat minority populations with disdain and use their pain as a tool. In much the same way that the Democratic Party shouldn't have ignored the pain of average Americans and rigged their primary for Hillary.

You're entitled to your own strategy for how to vote, however be gracious enough to let others have that same courtesy.

Indrid Cold October 1, 2016 at 3:25 pm

The GOPs idea of 'vetting' was the usual one this go-round: They gave a lot of media attention to the crazies like Rubio and Cruz and Trump. The way it always worked before was the media would then focus on the 'grown-up' or the 'serious' candidate. In this case it was JEB!

The problem was Trump went off the reservation talking about things the Republican base actually cares about. And stole a lot of Bernie's thunder since Bernie had a long list of no-go issues (we can rail against the banks but can't actually do anything about them)

It didn't help that JEB! so obviously didn't want the job. Maybe because he can see the trainwreck coming down the pike. For the same reason Trump ended the debate by shouting about the bubble economy. (When it wasn't his turn, natch)

Elizabeth Burton October 1, 2016 at 5:02 pm

"…vote for Greens not worthless. If they average 5% of the vote nationwide they will get matching funds in 2020. Please consider this and also spread the word."

And by 2020, if the Republicans gain control of all three branches of government, those "matching funds" will be a memory. I know I'm going to catch flack for this, but in the sense that too many of the younger voters have had an all but nonexistent education in political science, history and civics, Clinton is at least right on that score. I've seen it too often-and been attacked for trying to point out that election fraud and party corruption are not what we should be focused on now when the future of the republic is in jeopardy.

How any intelligent human being can say, much less believe, that allowing Trump to be elected will "teach the Democrats" anything is beyond my comprehension. After all, it's not as if anything that happens after that will affect them in any discernible way. It will be the poor and the elderly and the people of color who'll bear the weight of a GOP-owned government.

Paul Ryan went on record that if Trump is elected they'll just ignore him and further the agenda hammered out for them by their Kochtopus overlords. Which is exactly what I have expected would be the case all along. This isn't a damned game, but the more I hear the more it seems that's how it's being viewed, as if the final winner has no real-world relevance.

Pat October 1, 2016 at 8:56 am

In a rush to judgment, I decided Clinton did not understand ACA when she said its problems could be addressed with incremental changes. Nice to have proof this is one more area the self proclaimed policy wonk is unaware of the details of the policy and its effects.

Stephen Gardner October 1, 2016 at 10:16 am

Don't confuse her awareness with her propaganda talking points. She is perfectly aware of what ACA is for and she is glad. Does she want us to share her awareness? No.

Pat October 1, 2016 at 11:54 am

I agree she understands its true purpose. Where I differ is that I don't for a moment belief that either Clinton or Obama have a clue what is really in that law or what its true effect would be over time. I think it of it this way – both of them understood the true purpose of overthrowing Qaddafi, neither of them or the architects of that strategy began to understand that it would not just continue to destabilize the region it would destabilize Europe.

Do you think either of them recognized that forcing people to buy garbage insurance with no health care attached in order to entrench insurance companies was going to significantly help their opponents? Endanger Clinton's election? Or that it might not last long enough for the opening of the Obama library because the sheer weight of it was unsustainable?

True, they don't care, but it also shows how stupid not caring is.

Romancing The Loan October 1, 2016 at 1:41 pm

I don't think they cared if it helped their "opponents." Remaining in power is less important than the payout afterwards – I think they just don't think in the long term because the short term is good enough for their purposes.

Kurt Sperry October 1, 2016 at 2:03 pm

Amen. These so-called "best and brightest" like Clinton and Obama are not only morally bankrupt, the awful truth is they are also obviously poorly informed and self-evidently not very bright either. Obama could, in fact, be almost the definition of the "empty suit".

Look at who goes onto the success track out of the Ivies, if it isn't legacy offspring dimbulbs like Chelsea, it's frequently superficially articulate suck-ups who can be trusted to faithfully and unquestioningly follow orders and has almost an inverse relationship with objective merit of the sort we are sold.

Sigh.

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL October 1, 2016 at 4:53 pm

I was ahead of the curve and saw that the fix was in before Obama's inauguration, boy that was an unpopular stance. Then I went through a long internal debate: is he stupid or is he evil? I chose "stupid" for quite a while, giving the benefit of the doubt, I just *wanted to believe* that Lucy would not pull the football away at the last minute this time around.

I no longer entertain any such illusions, Hilary and Obama know full well what the consequences of their actions are, all the way from Yemen to Minnesota health insurers. Obama is working toward a sexy retirement golfing with billionaires and raising funds for his Library, as for Hilary, her lust for pure unbridled power for its own sake knows no bounds. From the hallowed halls of Goldman Sachs to the board room at Monsanto, Hilary knows *precisely* where she can get the funds to satisfy her blood and power lusts.

polecat October 1, 2016 at 11:11 am

She understands perfectly well ….

Divvying out some crumbs … while calling it pie !!

Pat October 1, 2016 at 8:27 am

Funny how that leaked in a week where Clinton, and the Obamas were busy explaining political reality according to the usual suspects to those same basement dwellers. You know the one where any vote not for Clinton was automatically the same as voting for Trump, and voters couldn't really do that because Hillary was not perfect. But now we have proof that Clinton isn't just "not perfect" she isn't even interested in the concerns of those voters the entitled turds were lecturing.

nycTerrierist October 1, 2016 at 8:29 am

I'm with the entitled turd./

Catchy phrase!

nycTerrierist October 1, 2016 at 8:27 am

Yeah, it's not a crap job market it's a 'mindset'.

The part would be a great ad for Jill Stein.

Dog help us if we have to hear this crap for 4 years.

jgordon October 1, 2016 at 8:38 am

Well according to Hillary and Obama a vote for Jill Stein is the same as a vote against Hillary. Then that means that a vote for Trump is like two votes against Hillary! Think about it.

Whine Country October 1, 2016 at 10:15 am

She really is a sociopath!

justanotherprogressive October 1, 2016 at 10:23 am

Well, her leaked audio fits in with her new plan to give all those "basement dwellers" something to do – that National Service Reserve thing……
But yea, all you stupid millennials – get off the couch and vote for Hillary because she told you to!! And then get off her lawn!

jrs October 1, 2016 at 10:45 am

Uh I don't even see what is so bad about anything she says at least in the clip (maybe I'm missing some larger context). Otherwise much ado about nothing. Look I'm not a fan of Hillary's policies, it's unlikely I'd vote for Hillary but … really … mountains out of molehills. It's like Trump's comment about how it might be a 400 pound person who hacked the DNC and suddenly it's a fat person's rights issue or something, and frankly his statement was more offensive than this, only in context it was a common throwaway nerd stereotype in the face of Hillary falsely blaming a nuclear power.

But no not everyone who has been in an election or more knows any history is bewildered. When times are bad the choice is always go left or go right. And go right always ends in disaster, but if going left is blocked, it's exactly what people will do even so. The way to avoid that it to keep the left alive, but the ruling class will risk the hard right over going left every time.

Free health care of course is not "going as far as Scandinavia" but is what every developed country on earth has pretty much except the U.S.. So yes it's offensive if one imagined Hillary was for single payer, but did anyone seriously think this? It is not like she has campaigned on it.

jgordon October 1, 2016 at 1:57 pm

OK, if you don't see it, you don't see it. Just take my word for it then: whatever slim chance Hillary had to win just went out the window. Other than that it's not a big deal.

Waldenpond October 1, 2016 at 5:22 pm

After all we've (1%) done? for those educated? basement living? baristas?!!

Each one of those is problematic (based on memes mocking millenials) not to mention she's doing it in a room of 1%ers. The rich flat out mocking the people they victimize is not going to go over well. Her statements are worse than Rmoney's 47% garbage. MSM can ignore it, which takes care of half the citizenry but the other half is on-line.

BillC October 1, 2016 at 11:02 am

Beyond a tone-deafness in self-expression that's astonishing for an experienced politician (even if she did not expect the statement to become public), I find it amazing that there is not even a hint of the thought, "well, maybe there's something about our economy that we need to adjust."

It's clear that the only adjustment HRC feels necessary is citizens' expectations of their future in the USA. This person is not fit for public service at any level. I hope every voter who's thinking of voting for her listens carefully to exactly what she said here and ponders what it reveals about her assessment of the challenges we face.

jrs October 1, 2016 at 11:08 am

It's unclear what people just don't understand about Scandinavia. Higher taxes? Yea it's true people might balk at Scandinavian level taxes, however at the actual point in the continuum the U.S. actually exists in, I think a lot of people would trade higher taxes for the benefits of a welfare state (not dealing with insurance companies, not facing poverty in old age – and hey paid sick time and paid 6 week vacations).

Lee October 1, 2016 at 12:02 pm

When I was in the insurance biz I met a Swedish woman who was an up and coming exec in the company. She had been a school teacher in Sweden and had moved to the U.S. to earn more and pay less taxes. Her plan, once she had made her pile, was to move back to Sweden explaining, "because I would never want to be old in America."

OIFVet October 1, 2016 at 1:38 pm

So she wants the benefits of the welfare state, but she refused to pay for it. Seems fare to me.

Bas October 1, 2016 at 1:33 pm

What Americans don't understand about Scandinavia is that those countries don't have a bloated military – or any military really – to protect their 'exorbitant privilege'.

An Empire cannot be a welfare state, and vice versa.

jrs October 1, 2016 at 1:45 pm

Maybe not super generous, but the U.S. medical system already costs more than single payer, so there is more than that going on than just "can't afford it". I have often though the citizens of an empire must be kept in abject poverty, so they don't get to questioning the empire thing (maybe they learned from Vietnam).

Bas October 1, 2016 at 2:10 pm

An Empire's priorities are usually not with the welfare and general well-being of its citizenry.

In fact its population can best be kept in a precarious state in order to lower labor costs, limit social demands and, or course, fill the lower military ranks.

Antifa October 1, 2016 at 11:09 am

Quite a revealing mindset on Hillary's part. Reminds me of Romney dismissing 47% of the population as free riders.

As Hillary derides those who think we ought to be more like Scandinavia, with free college, free national health care, what she isn't making clear is that America the nation is paying more military money than most of the rest of the world combined. In her mindset, we are the Global Police, and if that $791 billion of military spending reduces us to recession, unaffordable college, unaffordable medical care, and a few dozen people owning over half of all the assets in a nation of 300 million, well that's the price of being the Good Guys.

This brings up a new (old) definition of nationalism; the simple idea that you take care of your own people and infrastructure first, and that your military expenses are only for defensive purposes - not for establishing 800+ military bases all over the world, and dividing the entire globe into theaters of war. That's what our military and political leaders have done, following the wishes of the very, very few ultra wealthy who make billions every year off this system.

A nation, any nation, has no more precious and priceless resource than the minds of its young people. The health and wellbeing of its young people. Where do they think the citizens of coming decades are going to come from? Some other country?

America the nation is dying because America's Empire is pulling up the floorboards and chopping up the furniture to feed the flames of endless wars around the world, wars which accomplish nothing for America but poverty of its citizens. We need voters and political leaders who will stand against America's Empire, who will dismantle it and return our attention to becoming a leading nation among nations, not Number One in arms sales, not Number One in blood spilled, not Number One in war crimes.

flora October 1, 2016 at 12:15 pm

wow…… clueless in bubble-land. So a bad economy for most (since 2008 at least) and poor job prospects for most is a matter of "mind set" ? Oh, if only the young did positive thinking. That would fix everything.

What this tells me about Hillary is she thinks the economy is fine, thinks the current economic policies and trade deals are fine, and has no intention of changing anything. For her, the current economic situation is the best of all possible worlds. If people can't find decent jobs it's their own fault.

Her audio clip sounds like Mitt Romney's 47 percent comment: "And so my job is not to worry about those people - I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." – Romney

Hillary is the new Mitt?

Dave October 1, 2016 at 12:28 pm

"What this tells me about Hillary is she thinks the economy is fine, thinks the current economic policies and trade deals are fine, and has no intention of changing anything. For her, the current economic situation is the best of all possible worlds."

This is why the concept of a Buy Nothing Month in October is being mentioned as a means of passive protest. No discretionary purchases. Cash only for essentials to hammer Wells Fargo and the credit card tapeworms in the economy.

Romancing The Loan October 1, 2016 at 1:38 pm

Most people are already down to essentials, and those who aren't likely agree with Hillary or don't see why they should suffer more for a very tenuous possibility of doing mild harm to their tormentors.

Buttinsky October 1, 2016 at 1:14 pm

Poor, brave Hillary - trapped between the Deplorables and the Basement Dwellers (presumably on their way to becoming the Morlocks and the Eloi). What I find hysterical is the way she depicts herself as the sane one in a world gone mad.

#DeplorableBasementDwellers

Groggo October 1, 2016 at 1:34 pm

When 'Politics is the art of the possible' starts to feel like an absurd taunt…

anti-social scientist October 1, 2016 at 5:31 pm

It wasn't "leaked," and she wasn't mocking Sanders supporters. That is all.

jgordon October 1, 2016 at 8:34 am

It's appalling that Hillary and her media toadies are playing up the fact that Trump called women fat, while that same media completely ignores that Hillary took money from Saudi Arabia to send America to war against Libya.

Seriously, in the entire history of the human race has there ever, ever been a more singularly corrupt act than to take money from a foreign power to send your own nation to war against some other nation? And all we hear about is that Trump called women fat! These people are out of their minds.

Pavel October 1, 2016 at 10:21 am

Not to mention selling cluster bombs and white phosphorus to the same Saudi despots who use them against Yemeni civilians with the US's assistance. 10s of thousands have been killed and there is a dreadful famine affecting hundreds of thousands.

But Trump called a woman fat, so he is the evil one.

ggm October 1, 2016 at 2:00 pm

The famine is affecting millions. Yemen is enduring the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet. That is a war for Saudi Arabia to flex its muscle against Iran and shiites to counteract their economic weakness from oil price declines. No one has any real geopolitical interest there. Only Trump brings attention to Yemen on the campaign trail. Not the media, and definitely not Clinton who gleefully increased weapons sales to Saudi Arabia while she was at State.

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL October 1, 2016 at 4:00 pm

The Obama/Hilary government in action. Anyone voting for a continuation is complicit.
So yes, you can have a president who did not call someone "fat"….but be sure and keep a photo of the Yemeni girl with her arms blown off on your bedside table to remind you the price you paid for that crucial advantage.

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL

Re: Syria, Yemen, Honduras, Poland, Ukraine, Brazil et alia ad nauseam.
What we need is an American Anti-Imperialist League, it should have a former president, a titan of industry, and a famous celebrity as founding members.
Oh, look, we had one already, with Grover Cleveland, Andrew Carnegie, and Mark Twain:

[Oct 01, 2016] 2 minutes of Hillary explaining that Bernie supporters are basement dwelling barista losers without futures who are too naive to understand how politics really work

Notable quotes:
"... Hey get that straight, NBC paid her Six Hundred Thousand a year for the years she was there. And I apologize I was under the impression that her contract was allowed to lapse, but it was renewed once. They really were paying her for nothing after the first year… ..."
"... You and your son might want to think about the fact that extended families living together has been historically and still is the norm for many. My son works in the building trades and doesn't make enough money to buy a house in our neighborhood. He has been living with me for several years and our relationship is very good. ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com

jgordon October 1, 2016 at 7:19 am

About that hacked audio, I suddenly saw it all over youtube last night on various progressive channels from around midnight on. Well, here is a primary source! 2 minutes of Hillary explaining that Bernie supporters are basement dwelling barista losers without futures who are too naive to understand how politics really work. And she confirms she's center-right, in case anyone was fooled by her recent ostensible leftness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVBTFhhX6DM

Now, get over your butthurt and run out to vote for Hillary! I'm with her.

Jim Haygood October 1, 2016 at 7:36 am

How revealing that Hillary views recent grads' inability to find jobs matching their qualifications as a "mindset."

If it's just a "mindset," then it can be corrected by catapulting cleverer propaganda to encourage right thinking among these confused young adults.

Which is why Hillary needs your support today. Me, I'll take the Keef Richards route:

I'll be in my basement room
With a needle and a spoon
And another girl
To take my pain away

- Rolling Stones, Dead Flowers

Desertmerf October 1, 2016 at 9:26 am

Our son is one of those recent grads Hillary disdains. He has just picked up his third slightly above minimum wage part time job. He has had two interviews in his chosen field only to be told at the end of each the companies were 'just looking' at the job field prospects and did not actually have an open job available…. he has applied for a number of generic type jobs that just require a college degree as well… to no response so far. He is personalble, bright and according to the managers at his part time jobs he was a great interviewee…

He has severe kidney stone issues that require hospitalization and stents about once a year – often for ten day stays and so we have chosen to pay for a Cadillac policy for him ourselves so he gets the quality care he needs ( no the ACA was useless – he tried) . He is embarrassed we have to do this for him…
He spends every bit of his meager pay paying off his small student loan debt so he can at least get that burden off and keeping his ancient little car in repair. He refused to allow us to help him pay his loans and or buy him a better car. He lives at home and feels terrible about it – and so is constantly doing all the home work he can during the few hours between his jobs to 'make up' for needing our help. Friends go out to dinner and movies sports games etc and have stopped asking him because he usually does not have the money …. So…..
He is on his way to depression I think…. all that work in college. He has a solid 3.4 GPA and a 3.7 GPA in his field.and he is willing to move anywhere immediately and would not mind a job that entailed a lot of travel…. But I guess Hillary just thinks he is some unmotivated stupid despite all that….
I know a vote for Stein is totally useless but other that leaving it blank I have no options here. This country is tanking….I cannot believe this is happening to my son. Spouse and I walked out of college with a 3.1 and 3.0 gpas directly into decent paying career jobs and an upward trajectory that continues to this day… he is smarter and works harder than either of us ever have frankly….

Pavel October 1, 2016 at 10:18 am

Meanwhile Chelsea (who "doesn't care about being rich" or whatever nonsense she spouted) is grifted into a $500K/year do-nothing job at NBC, marries a hedge fund manager, and flies in private jets. And her mom and dad make $300,000 for one hour speeches.

But hey, Hillary feels your son's pain!

Pat October 1, 2016 at 12:14 pm

Hey get that straight, NBC paid her Six Hundred Thousand a year for the years she was there. And I apologize I was under the impression that her contract was allowed to lapse, but it was renewed once. They really were paying her for nothing after the first year…

And don't forget the various Boards she serves on, mostly Clinton entities.

Lee October 1, 2016 at 11:09 am

You and your son might want to think about the fact that extended families living together has been historically and still is the norm for many. My son works in the building trades and doesn't make enough money to buy a house in our neighborhood. He has been living with me for several years and our relationship is very good. I am the son of a man who abandoned his own children, which perhaps accounts for my finding our arrangement particularly gratifying and take great pleasure in his company as well as that of his friends and lovers.

nothing but the truth October 1, 2016 at 1:17 pm

same experience here.

brilliant son in college, nothing out there at all except 711 jobs. the store he works and was on shift at got robbed twice on consecutive nights and i had to ask him to stop going there for his safety.

it is sad sad sad how the future of the kids is being destroyed. the 0.01% have "arranged" sinecures for their kids and they dont care about our kids. Go into debt to get an education no one seems to need to pay overpaid professors and administrators at the university, and then carry that around your neck all your life.

Chris October 1, 2016 at 2:01 pm

I hope your son does find what he's looking for. I'm worried for my own children and what they will do too.

What strikes me the most about stories like yours is how much luck factors into things. Graduating into a recession is horrible. Decisions that made sense 4 years prior to graduation suddenly seem irresponsible when the day comes to leave college.

So much of my own career has benefitted from being in the right place at the right time, and I could only have been at this place at that time because I graduated when I did. Sure, I've hustled and taken advantage of opportunities too. I've always been willing to get dirty and do the things other people weren't willing to do. But the fact is that I was in a position to do all of that because of many things that had nothing to do with how hard I worked, how smart I was, or what degrees I had. If I had been born a year later, graduated a year earlier, chosen a slightly different discipline… so many things would be different for me now. It's one reason why I don't complain too much about taxes.

[Sep 28, 2016] The old neoliberal ideologies are not working, every thing has to change and we hate much of the change we do see creeping up.

Notable quotes:
"... I think one reason Sanders was respected by some of these people, even when his views were radically opposed to theirs, was because this theme of fairness resonated with them, they sensed he was operating on a similar principle, even if disagreeing on the content. ..."
"... I actually find it easier to imagine why someone listening to the debate might place forlorn hope in Trump than to conjure up the people who could listen to Clinton's platitudes and not recall any of the history. Corey Robin is right that Trump is a standard Republican in everything but style, but there was also a break between the Republican electorate and the Republican establishment that put Trump on that stage, and Clinton has embraced the Republican establishment. ..."
"... In Labour Party politics, the insistence of the PLP on Tory-lite policy stances seems, from my great distance, farcical. The Clinton embrace of the Republican establishment drains the last drop of populism from the Democrats even while Late Trump proves how ill-suited the Republicans are to populist appeal despite years of petty demagoguery. ..."
"... I think Trump differs very substantially from the standard Republican politician. Sure he mostly channels the same meme's, but he is willing to consume some sacred ideological cows at the same time. ..."
"... Given that Trump loudly opposes trade deals, it is difficult to say that he on economics is a typical Republican. People vote for Trump because they think the system is rigged against them, and Hilary Clinton is running as the candidate of the status quo. They will see Hilary's resemblance to past candidates as a reminder of what they have gotten from the past 40 years of government policy. ..."
"... Clinton is socially embedded but apparently unaware of the deficiencies of elite performance. This makes her a favorite of the new class, but also makes it very difficult to rally broad popular support or avoid policy disaster. ..."
"... She wants George W Bush's vote. No joke. Why so many on the left are clueless about this and what it implies about policy is left as an exercise. ..."
"... Sure, he supported the Iraq War, but at least he lies about it. And Hillary (with Lester Holt's help) successfully maneuvered around her own vulnerability on that score. She doesn't need to be invoking GW Bush. ..."
"... aside from the Iran agreement, HRC has pretty much carried the neocons water. ..."
"... in the primaries, Trump seriously trashed Bush's most excellent Mesopotamian adventure. Hillary can't do that without creating blowback from her vote for the war. ..."
"... She may well believe that, but if so it's self-deception. She'll get nothing from Republicans in Congress, who will treat her as even more illegitimate than Obama. ..."
"... No way the median Republican member of Congress will open up to a primary challenge just because Clinton is playing nice with the Bushes. ..."
"... Only of the many unhelpful aspects of the HRC presidency will be that since her reachout to Republicans turns off base Dems, she is likely to face a Repub House and Senate, who will be at least as obstructive to her as they have been to Obama. That leaves her room to abandon all the half-hearted dog treats she threw to the Bernie supporters as "now impossible", and plenty of room to get "bipartisan" on passing the TPP and cutting SS. ..."
"... And it won't impede her military desires to enlarge the empire one iota. ..."
"... The comments here strike me as very sensible and sober. Given that the CT community shares little with a great swath of the electorate and in fact share HRC's view that they are both deplorable and irredeemable, its probably sound reasoning to deduce that if people here thought HRC won, a great many 'others' believe the opposite. ..."
"... Hillary succeeded in the first debate because she didn't fall over, cough a lot, and looked alive in that bright, red dress. That isn't enough to convince voters that she's not the candidate of the past. ..."
"... We begin from the assumption that Clinton is standard-bearer of "neoliberalism," and then interpret everything she does as evidence of that. ..."
"... the Democratic Party was once the party of the working class and old-style liberalism, but, starting with Bill Clinton, they abandoned this, and now they have lost the loyalty of the working class. In actuality, the last old-style liberal in the Democratic Party was Mondale, and he lost the popular vote by eighteen percentage points, more than anyone since. ..."
"... In foreign policy, we need a new term that we can drain of all meaning, and so Clinton becomes a "neoconservative," virtually indistinguishable from Charles Krauthammer, and eager to rain down destruction on the rest of the world. ..."
"... A no-fly zone? Those neocons will stop at nothing! ..."
Sep 28, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

bruce wilder 09.27.16 at 3:40 pm

Ideologically exhausted? Sure.

Against a background anxiety surrounding a sense that things are not working. The old ideologies are not working, every thing has to change and we hate much of the change we do see creeping up. The conservative party serves up a wrecking ball. The reform party serves up the status quo warmed over. ("Intelligent surge") We fear change. We fear the continuation of the status quo and the degeneration the status quo promises to continue.

Yan 09.27.16 at 5:46 pm

"On the other hand, there's a not so small current in American politics that would hear that, that Trump didn't pay his taxes, and think, with him, that he was indeed smart for having outsmarted the system. …This is a nation of conmen (and women)…"

I think this is right but misleading, since the voters who probably liked that comment don't see themselves as conmen out for a quick buck, but as victims gaming a rigged system. They think taxes are an injustice, and that they're John Dillinger fighting for their rightful earnings against the thieving IRS.

This is generally important for understanding Trump voters: for all their quirks, at bottom they are, like most Americans, very strongly motivated by a skewed notion of fairness: they think others are cutting in line, getting a handout, getting special rights and favors.

I think one reason Sanders was respected by some of these people, even when his views were radically opposed to theirs, was because this theme of fairness resonated with them, they sensed he was operating on a similar principle, even if disagreeing on the content.

bruce wilder 09.27.16 at 6:20 pm

Watching British Labour Party politics from afar is like seeing Democratic Party politics in a fun house mirror. One thing that is writ in primary colors and big block letters in the Labour Party struggle is the tension between the new class and everyone else seeking protection from the globalizing plutocracy and whose only ideological models are anachronisms.

I actually find it easier to imagine why someone listening to the debate might place forlorn hope in Trump than to conjure up the people who could listen to Clinton's platitudes and not recall any of the history. Corey Robin is right that Trump is a standard Republican in everything but style, but there was also a break between the Republican electorate and the Republican establishment that put Trump on that stage, and Clinton has embraced the Republican establishment.

In Labour Party politics, the insistence of the PLP on Tory-lite policy stances seems, from my great distance, farcical. The Clinton embrace of the Republican establishment drains the last drop of populism from the Democrats even while Late Trump proves how ill-suited the Republicans are to populist appeal despite years of petty demagoguery.

Patrick 09.27.16 at 6:25 pm

I think Trumps policies frequently look like a generic Republicans because he didn't enter this election as a serious candidate, and now that he's the actual nominee he's been scrambling to come up with any policies at all. So he's copying from the party that nominated him.

His campaign has always been very ad hoc. Look at his "make Mexico pay for the wall" thing. He clearly just threw that out there as bluster, then when it went viral cobbled together a pseudo plan to make it sound plausible.

His line on taxes was perfect, unfortunately. On taxes, for a lot of people the question is whether he behaved legally. If you can legally not pay taxes but you do anyway, you're a chump. Can anyone who does their own taxes honestly say that they've chosen to NOT take an exemption or deduction for which they were qualified? I can't.

The people who feel this way may wish it wasn't legal for Trump to do this. But as far as condemning him for it assuming it WAS legal… maybe they can drum up some generic resentment of the rich, or tell themselves that he probably broke the law somewhere, somehow, but that's about it. They're not going to adopt a principled belief that he should pay taxes he doesn't have to pay. And if Democrats push on this there's no shortage of "rich democrat does lawful but resentment inducing rich-guy thing" stories that can be used as a smokescreen.

Now… are Trumps taxes actually on the level? Probably not. I suppose the IRS will tell us eventually, after the election. It's not like Trump will release them in the meantime.

Other than that Hillary Clinton won but it won't matter because conservatives live in a creepy little bubble where HRC is a shadowy murderess who assassinates her rivals and must be kept from the throne at all costs.

Omega Centauri 09.27.16 at 6:28 pm

I think Trump differs very substantially from the standard Republican politician. Sure he mostly channels the same meme's, but he is willing to consume some sacred ideological cows at the same time. Just recently he said he'd allow over the counter contraception. He tried to Savage war hero John McCain because he'd been captured. He hasn't just thrown away the dog whistle, he is willing to jetison any part of the ideology he finds inconvenient.
Watson Ladd 09.27.16 at 6:51 pm

Given that Trump loudly opposes trade deals, it is difficult to say that he on economics is a typical Republican. People vote for Trump because they think the system is rigged against them, and Hilary Clinton is running as the candidate of the status quo. They will see Hilary's resemblance to past candidates as a reminder of what they have gotten from the past 40 years of government policy.
bruce wilder 09.27.16 at 7:06 pm

Omega Centauri @ 21

Listening to Trump has a way of casting his audience into the same position as the dogs in a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon, where the dogs only hear a few words they are hungry to hear.

Clinton's patter seems more conventionally structured, but its highlights are righteous self-regard, well past its sell-by date.

There is no coherence (beyond class interest) to Trump. He is a socially isolated Billionaire who is lazy, inattentive, arrogant . . . but put him in front of an audience and he will talk randomly until he finds a laugh or applause.

Clinton is socially embedded but apparently unaware of the deficiencies of elite performance. This makes her a favorite of the new class, but also makes it very difficult to rally broad popular support or avoid policy disaster.

She will win the election, but after that . . . things are unlikely to go well.

People make the observation that both have high negatives. But, beneath those high negatives, each has pursued coalition-building strategies almost guaranteed to narrow their respective bases of support below a majority threshold.

bruce wilder 09.27.16 at 7:12 pm 25

Why isn't Clinton saying "Trump is a more reckless, less coherent George W. Bush"

She wants George W Bush's vote. No joke. Why so many on the left are clueless about this and what it implies about policy is left as an exercise.

politicalfootball 09.27.16 at 7:46 pm

I wouldn't read too much into HRCs apparent decision not to tar Trump with Bush.

That's a charge that simply wouldn't stick. Trump has quite persuasively separated himself from the Bushes - and vice versa.

Sure, he supported the Iraq War, but at least he lies about it. And Hillary (with Lester Holt's help) successfully maneuvered around her own vulnerability on that score. She doesn't need to be invoking GW Bush.

I would be curious for Bruce to explain anything that Hillary has actually done to get Bush's vote. Seems to me she continues to run to the left.

Omega Centauri 09.27.16 at 8:33 pm

I'm not Bruce, but aside from the Iran agreement, HRC has pretty much carried the neocons water.

But, I think its mainly that the Bushes see Trump as crazy beyond the pale, and Clinton as a somewhat steady hand. Also in the primaries, Trump seriously trashed Bush's most excellent Mesopotamian adventure. Hillary can't do that without creating blowback from her vote for the war.

JimV 09.27.16 at 8:56 pm

I agree with Bruce Wilder than HRC doesn't want to offend Republicans unnecessarily. He seems to see it as a character flaw, and maybe it is, but it could be simply that she can get more done in office if she doesn't make a lot of bitter Republican enemies. And I think it is the polite way to behave even with those with whom you disagree, but I won't lobby for that motive here.

If Trump avoided taxes legally and that is a smart, enviable thing to do, why doesn't he release his tax information to show how smart he was? Why is he really hiding the information? Inquiring campaign adds will want to know, if people can't figure that out for themselves.

Ideology: I like the ideology that climate science is not a hoax, that universal health insurance is a good thing with more work needed on it, and some other parts of HRC's agenda that do not seem to be the current ideology (in power).

"Smart surge": that was another palpable hit by Bruce Wilder (along with "no-fly zone in Syria"). Ouch. (I'm not being sarcastic, if it is difficult to tell.) I'm going to write her a letter opposing that. She's sent me a couple letters, so I should have her return address. I think I haven't recycled the last one yet.

Layman 09.27.16 at 9:25 pm

"…it could be simply that she can get more done in office if she doesn't make a lot of bitter Republican enemies."

She may well believe that, but if so it's self-deception. She'll get nothing from Republicans in Congress, who will treat her as even more illegitimate than Obama. There's no obvious incentive for them to do anything else, and the base think she's a murderer and traitor. No way the median Republican member of Congress will open up to a primary challenge just because Clinton is playing nice with the Bushes.

marku52 09.27.16 at 9:46 pm

Only of the many unhelpful aspects of the HRC presidency will be that since her reachout to Republicans turns off base Dems, she is likely to face a Repub House and Senate, who will be at least as obstructive to her as they have been to Obama. That leaves her room to abandon all the half-hearted dog treats she threw to the Bernie supporters as "now impossible", and plenty of room to get "bipartisan" on passing the TPP and cutting SS.

And it won't impede her military desires to enlarge the empire one iota.

A Trump presidency would be hated by all parties to the duo-gopoly, and would be stymied at everything.

Phil 09.27.16 at 9:51 pm

The point about not paying tax is on point, I think. I wrote something yonks ago about Berlusconi and 'patrimonial populism' – the idea being that Berlusconi was seen as both the figurehead of the nihilistic "screw politics" crowd and a national sugar daddy, dishing out favours from the national budget in just the same way that he lobbed sweeteners to business partners. One Italian commentator spotted a graffito that called on Berlusconi to abolish speed limits – "Silvio, let us speed on the autostrada!" Because you knew he would, and if you voted for him, hey, maybe he'd let you do it too.

(Berlusconi hasn't been in government for a while, but he was Prime Minister for ten years in total between 1994 and 2011. He's still involved in three court cases relating to corruption and fraud, and has been found guilty in another; he served a sentence of house arrest and community service. He will be 80 on Thursday.)

kidneystones 09.27.16 at 10:05 pm

The comments here strike me as very sensible and sober. Given that the CT community shares little with a great swath of the electorate and in fact share HRC's view that they are both deplorable and irredeemable, its probably sound reasoning to deduce that if people here thought HRC won, a great many 'others' believe the opposite.
derrida derider 09.27.16 at 11:17 pm

The best way to assess how a national TV debate went is to watch the whole thing with the sound turned off. Swing voters are almost by definition the least interested watchers who will just not care about coherence, patter, policy, ideology, etc because they don't just don't care about politics much. Subconscious impressions, mainly set by body language with perhaps the odd striking expression, are what persuades or dissuades them.

I haven't done this yet, but has anyone else?

Anarcissie 09.28.16 at 12:04 am

ZM 09.27.16 at 11:24 pm @ 45:
'This is a paper by Paul Gilding on a war time mobilisation response, although he isn't connected to the Democrats I don't think: WAR. What Is It Good For? WWII Economic Mobilisation An Analogy For Climate Action http://media.wix.com/ugd/148cb0_1bfd229f6638410f8fcf230e12b1e285.pdf '

I criticized the war metaphor before, mostly on literary or stylistic grounds, but having seen this publication, I feel it is necessary to offer as well a practical consideration, out of character as that may be. War metaphors and models appeal to many people because a good-sized war, especially in our era, appears as an existential crisis, and in properly organized wartime all dissidence and discussion are swept away by the power of necessity, harnessed by great leaders and experts. It is a paradise of authority.

kidneystones 09.28.16 at 12:25 am

@ 52 "My main takeaway from the debate is that it finally refuted any notion that Trump has any idea what he's doing."

What markers did Trump provide that are significantly different from any of the ravings that propelled him past a stable of extremely well-funded and politically-skilled GOP politicians?

The fact that a rodeo clown like Trump is even on the same stage as HRC suggests that whatever his perceived defects here, Trump commands the attention, affection, and respect of almost as many Americans, perhaps more, than the candidate of Goldman-Sachs.

Trump is not going to 'win' any of the debates. Trump is marketing the Trump brand on the biggest stage possible. What actually takes place on stage is negligible in a world where superficiality is much more important than substance.

What will happen is that Trump is going to remind the audience that Hillary does indeed sound very clever and well-grounded. Then, he'll catalogue the questions: 'How can HRC credibly claim not to know what the initial 'C' means on a classified document?' etc.

The most recent good poll I saw on HRC identified the voters' principal concerns with HRC: Syria, Libya, emails – in short, her judgment and her honesty.

Hillary succeeded in the first debate because she didn't fall over, cough a lot, and looked alive in that bright, red dress. That isn't enough to convince voters that she's not the candidate of the past.

As others have noted, the Dukakis title doesn't make any sense to me at all.

She's done.

kidneystones 09.28.16 at 12:30 am

And then there's the health issue (the one that can't be wished away).

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/1fa5d876cd9e4d899b277574f84b9d96/ap-poll-voters-more-confident-trumps-health-office

Lee A. Arnold 09.28.16 at 10:13 am

The Arizona Republic, Arizona's biggest newspaper (Phoenix), just endorsed Clinton for President, the first time it has endorsed a Democrat in its 126-year history.
Glen Tomkins 09.28.16 at 1:56 pm

Rich,

"…that no one is really pushing these propaganda lines on people."

That's the very thing, isn't it? That's what US politics has gotten too. There is a very conventional approach to a national campaign that dictates that you do messaging, which means that you carefully avoid saying anything with any public policy entailments. Having the candidate say anything of this sort is especially to be avoided, because that ties the campaign most concretely to specifics, and specific public policy your side advocates can be fitted into a different, hostile, theoretical frame by the other side. Yet candidates have to say things, it's expected. So they have refined a method that avoids propagandizing for anything in terms more concrete than "Make America Great Again", or "Stronger Together", both of which are brilliant at hinting at whatever good thing you might want them to mean, without pushing any actual policy.

In that silence from the campaigns themselves step all of the sorts of sophisticated people such as those of us in the CT commentariat. The media rise no higher on the intellectual food chain than the attempt to fill the silence with theorizing about campaigns as horse races, who's winning and why. We here at CT are a superior sort, so we tend to weave in theories about the actual supposed subject of politics, public policy. But at all levels of this effort, we theorize because we are of the species Homo theoreticus, and we must have theories. The more sophisticated we are the more we need them. We fill the silence by propagandizing on a DIY, freebie basis.

Not that any of this is new. Swift told us all about it in Tale of a Tub, the oracle of our age. Think of this campaign as a tub bobbing on the waves. Worry it as you will, and it just moves to the next wave.

Rich Puchalsky 09.28.16 at 2:05 pm

Glen Tomkins: "We here at CT are a superior sort, so we tend to weave in theories about the actual supposed subject of politics, public policy."

Does not fit the observables. These theories are not about public policy and are not good on any theoretical level (even if you consider this goodness to be possible if it is decoupled from fact and is purely a matter of internal consistency).

Almost all of these "theories" are based on a simple three-step;

1. HRC is the lesser evil.

2. I can't stand voting for someone purely as the lesser evil: my ego requires that I affirmatively support someone.

3. Therefore the lesser evil is really kind of good and anyone against it is bad.

Howard Frant 09.28.16 at 3:41 pm

As usual, I find a lot of discussion here about worlds totally unlike the one that I live in.

We begin from the assumption that Clinton is standard-bearer of "neoliberalism," and then interpret everything she does as evidence of that. Um… people.. she was Secretary of State. Can we really think of no reason she might favor an agreement that includes the US and east Asia, but not China, other than subservience to international capital? Can we think of no reason a Secretary of State might want to encourage fracking in Bulgaria other than anticipated future contributions from the oil and gas industry? (Hint: Russia is monopoly supplier of natural gas to Europe, and not shy about reminding them of that.)

In this imaginary world, the Democratic Party was once the party of the working class and old-style liberalism, but, starting with Bill Clinton, they abandoned this, and now they have lost the loyalty of the working class. In actuality, the last old-style liberal in the Democratic Party was Mondale, and he lost the popular vote by eighteen percentage points, more than anyone since.

In foreign policy, we need a new term that we can drain of all meaning, and so Clinton becomes a "neoconservative," virtually indistinguishable from Charles Krauthammer, and eager to rain down destruction on the rest of the world. Um.. people… destruction has been raining down on Syria for years now. There have been 400,000 people killed, and, as you may have noticed, a whole lot of refugees. The left doesn't seem to be overly concerned about this, other than bitterly oppose any attempts to use military force to do anything about it. A no-fly zone? Those neocons will stop at nothing! If Obama had carried out his threat over the "red line" by striking at the Syrian air force, it would have saved many, many lives, but that would be imperialism.

Possibly people at CT, even Americans, have gotten used to thinking of politics in parliamentary terms, in which platforms actually have some practical effect, and winning means winning a legislative majority. (That's the only way a Sanders candidacy would have made sense.) As you know, though, the US doesn't work that way, and so the question is what can get done. If Clinton is able to actually carry out the things she is talking about – an increase in the minimum wage, paid family leave, increased infrastructure spending -- it will make a much bigger difference in people's lives than bringing back Glass-Steagall would.

likbez 09.28.16 at 4:45 pm

@80
Rich,

This "HRC is the lesser evil" is a very questionable line of thinking that is not supported by the facts.

How Hillary can be a lesser evil if by any reasonable standard she is a war criminal. War criminal like absolute zero is an absolute evil. You just can't go lower.

Trump might be a crook, but he still did not committed any war crimes. Yet.

[Sep 28, 2016] Who Cares About the Clinton Foundation?

Sep 28, 2016 | baselinescenario.com
by James Kwak Posted on August 25, 2016 The Baseline Scenario | 59 comments By James Kwak

Imagine that while George W. Bush was governor of Texas and president of the United States, various people and companies decided to write him checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars, just because they thought he was a great guy. Those people and companies, just coincidentally, happened to have interests that were affected by the policies of Texas and the United States. But when he thanked them for their money, Bush never promised to do anything in particular for them. You would be suspicious, right?

Now, that's roughly what has been happening with the Clinton Foundation. Various people and companies have been writing checks for millions of dollars to the Foundation during the same time that Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and, following that, the most likely next president of the United States-a title she has held since the day Barack Obama's second term began. (The Clintons finally decided to scale back the Foundation earlier this week.)

... ... ...

So the real question is this: Do you think it would be appropriate for people and companies affected by U.S. policy to be writing $1 million checks directly to the Clintons? If the answer is yes, then you should be against any campaign finance rules whatsoever. If the answer is no, you should be worried about the Clinton Foundation.

  1. Vinny Idol | August 25, 2016 at 8:02 pm | I disagree whole heartedly with this post. The clinton foundation is a big deal, because its proof positive that America was founded on Money laundering, the elite that run this country make and made their money through money laundering; and no one wants that in the White House. Thats ok for the rest of America sociery, but not the government where peoples lives hang on the balance through every speech, law and policy that is conducted on capitol hill.

    The Clintons destroyed Libya, Honduras, Haiti through their money laundering scheme called the clinton foundation. Theres no justification for that.

  1. Ray LaPan-Love | August 26, 2016 at 12:40 am | Trump thinks very highly of Reagan, but very lowly of Mexicans, so if Trump were to win I suspect he will secretly sell some of our nukes, this finally giving him the financial boost needed to overtake Carlos Slim on the list of the world's richest men. This 'deal of deals' then also harkens back to another historical 'deal' (Iran/Contra), and of course Reagan, while simultaneously eliminating Trump's deepest regret which is that of being bested by a Mexican. This being the real reason that he decided to run in the first place.

    Probably though, HRC will win. The problem there being that all of the scrutiny that she has been receiving for so long, coupled with Bills' infidelities, and other various setbacks and slights, have left her very angry and bitter. Combining this seething hatred of all humans, especially men, with the fact that there has never been a women president to look up to, HRC's only influence is a secretary who worked for Woodrow Wilson by the name of Mildred Jingowitz, or Ms. Jingo as she was called. Ms. Jingo stands out for HRC because she actually wrote the Espionage Act of 1917 and the the Sedition Act of 1918. Those combining to "cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds."
    "The Sedition Act of 1918 stated that people or countries cannot say negative things about the government or the war."
    "It forbade the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt." Most importantly though, these acts gave the Government the legal right to prosecute draft dodgers, and …these could bring an end to at least some of the scrutiny that has plagued HRC for so long just so long as we remain at war.
    So, if you are wondering what any of this has to do with the Clinton Foundation, well, HRC used the Foundation to facilitate at least one very large arms deal with at least one Royal Gulfie. But it matters little whether she used the foundation or not, HRC used her tenure at Foggy Bottom to arrange a record number of weapons deals, and of course she is mad as hell and determined to prove just how tough women can be (and there is of course one man who she respects, H. Kissinger).

    Anyway, it doesn't take a historian specializing in the build-up leading to the two World Wars to figure out the rest. BOOM!!!

  2. Philip Diehl | August 26, 2016 at 12:46 am | Dear James,

    I'm a long-time reader. I admire what you and Simon have done educating us about the financial crisis and its aftermath, and I agree with most of your political positions, especially related to the corrupting influence of money in politics. I have seen this first hand over my years in politics and government, and I believe it is the single most important issue we face because progress on all others depends on it.

    But in taking yet another hack at Hillary Clinton in this post, you've contradicted yourself in a way that unravels your argument, while engaging in false equivalencies and blowing a key fact out of proportion. First, the internal contradiction:

    "Bill and Hillary are getting on in years, they only have one child, and she is married to a hedge fund manager. When you have that much money, a dollar in your foundation is as good as a dollar in your bank account. Once you have all your consumption needs covered, what do you need money for?"

    You imply, here, that the Clintons' wealth and Marc Mezvinsky's hedge fund income have made the marginal value of another dollar in income de minimis for the Clintons' personal finances. Then you write, paraphrasing, that a dollar donated to the Foundation is as good as a dollar deposited in their personal bank account; therefore, you imply, money that goes to their foundation is as corrupting as money that goes into their personal accounts.

    You see the problem in claiming that a contribution to the Clinton Foundation is a powerful incentive for HRC to tilt her foreign policy positions, right? You just made the case for why a donation to the Foundation has little personal value to the Clintons:

    MV of $ to bank account = 0.
    MV of $ to Foundation = MV of $ to bank account.
    But you don't proceed to: Therefore, MV of $ to Foundation = 0. So, according to your logic, there can be no corrupting influence.

    You follow this, writing:

    "If you're a Clinton, you want to have an impact in the world, reward your friends, and burnish your legacy. A foundation is an excellent vehicle for all of those purposes, for obvious reasons. It is also an excellent way to transfer money to your daughter free of estate tax, since she can control it after you die."

    Your imply that the Clintons give equal weight to their desires to reward their friends, burnish their legacy, and have an impact on the world. What evidence do you have of this? Also, you implicitly denigrate their charitable motives by describing them as a desire "to have an impact on the world" without a nod to their clear intent to have an impact that is profoundly constructive. You also speculate, without providing any support, that the Foundation is a tax avoidance scheme to enrich their daughter. I think you've crossed a line here.

    Now for the false equivalencies:

    "Imagine that while George W. Bush was governor of Texas and president of the United States, various people and companies decided to write him checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars, just because they thought he was a great guy. Those people and companies, just coincidentally, happened to have interests that were affected by the policies of Texas and the United States. But when he thanked them for their money, Bush never promised to do anything in particular for them. You would be suspicious, right?"

    Why imagine? We have the real-world case of the Saudis bailing out George W's Harken Energy while his father was president. Of course, this is only one example of how the lucrative Bush-Saudi relationship generated income that went straight into the Bush "coffers".

    So you implicitly compare HRC's alleged conflict related to the family's charity with the Bush family conflict related to their own personal bank accounts. While HW Bush, as president, made use of his long friendship with the Saudis for the family's personal gain, HRC gave access to the likes of the crown prince of Bahrain and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus. Not equivalent. Not even close. I wonder how routine it is for a Secretary of State to meet with the crown prince of an oil-producing nation or a Nobel Prize winner versus how routine is it for foreign oligarchs friendly to a president to bailout his son.

    But at least the Saudis were allies of the US. Today, the GOP nominee has undisclosed but apparently significant business ties to close allies of the president of our greatest strategic adversary, and expresses his admiration for an autocrat who is seizing territory in Europe and terminating his opponents. I've missed your post on this one, though I'm sure there is one.

    One last point: This controversy involved some 85 meetings or telephone calls HRC granted to Foundation donors. The media have morphed this into 85 meetings, dropping the "and telephone calls," and made this out to be a pretty big number. Naive readers and Hillary haters have accepted it as such. If fact, 85 meetings and telephone calls over four years are, well, de minimis.

    Many of these donors had standing sufficient to get them in the door whether they gave to the Foundation or not. But let's say all of them gained access solely as a result of their donations. Over the four years HRC was Secretary of State, 85 meetings and telephone calls work out to 1.8 meetings/calls per month. Let's make a guess that she met or talked on the phone with an average of 15 people a day. So, one of every 250 people HRC met or had a phone call with each month, or 21 out of 3000 each year, would have secured their contact with her by donating to the Foundation. 85 doesn't look so big in context, especially since no one has presented any evidence of any quid pro quos.

  3. Ray LaPan-Love | August 26, 2016 at 2:42 am | Philip,
    The 85 meetings occurred during about half of HRC's term and I've not heard anyone else dilute things with "phone calls".

    Plus, the Bahrainis were approved for a major arms deal after donating. The Prince tried to make an appointment with HRC privately, but was made to go through State Dept. channels before being allowed a meeting.

    HRC was also involved in the selling of more weapons in her term than all of those occurring during the Bush 43 terms combined.

  1. Ray LaPan-Love | August 26, 2016 at 2:50 am | Philip.
    Also, there is this:
    "You had a situation, that The Wall Street Journal reported, where Hillary Clinton herself intervened in a case dealing with taxes with UBS, a Swiss bank, and then, suddenly, after that, UBS began donating big to the Clinton Foundation. So there are many examples of-I mean, there's oil companies-that's another one I should mention right now, which is that oil companies were giving big to the Clinton Foundation while lobbying the State Department-successfully-for the passage of the Alberta Clipper, the tar sands pipeline."
    David Sarota, interview: http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/25/weapons_pipelines_wall_st_did_clinton
  2. Ray LaPan-Love | August 26, 2016 at 9:40 am | Other noteworthy donors to the Clinton Foundation:
    $1,000,000-$5,000,000

    Carlos Slim
    Chairman & CEO of Telmex, largest New York Times shareholder

    James Murdoch
    Chief Operating Officer of 21st Century Fox

    Newsmax Media
    Florida-based conservative media network

    Thomson Reuters
    Owner of the Reuters news service

    $500,000-$1,000,000

    Google

    News Corporation Foundation
    Philanthropic arm of former Fox News parent company

    $250,000-$500,000

    Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
    Publisher

    Richard Mellon Scaife
    Owner of Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

    $100,000-$250,000

    Abigail Disney
    Documentary filmmaker

    Bloomberg Philanthropies

    Howard Stringer
    Former CBS, CBS News and Sony executive

    Intermountain West Communications Company
    Local television affiliate owner (formerly Sunbelt Communications)

    $50,000-$100,000

    Bloomberg L.P.

    Discovery Communications Inc.

    George Stephanopoulos
    ABC News chief anchor and chief political correspondent

    Mort Zuckerman
    Owner of New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report

    Time Warner Inc.
    Owner of CNN parent company Turner Broadcasting

    $25,000-$50,000

    AOL

    HBO

    Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/clinton-foundation-donors-include-dozens-of-media-organizations-individuals-207228#ixzz4IRfGoJcr
    Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook

  1. publiustex | August 26, 2016 at 10:11 am | Hello Ray,

    First, I'd appreciate it if you could provide a cite supporting the statement that move arms sales occurred during HRC's four years than during W's eight years. I'd like to look under the cover of that one.

    Also, it's important to note that a lot more people are involved in approving arms sales than the SoS, including Republicans on the Hill.

    Second, the AP touted its original story as being "meetings" but when you read the story itself you found it was "meetings and phone calls." Subsequently, the media and commentariat referred to 85 meetings, dropping reference to phone calls.

    Now for the arms sales to Bahrain. This one is especially juicy because it's an excellent example of how HRC is being tarred.

    The US has massive military assets in Bahrain, which hosts the largest US military outpost in the Gulf. We've been making massive arms sale to Bahrain for many years. So no surprise that we'd make some when HRC was SoS.

    And considering the strategic importance of Bahrain, there's no surprise in HRC meeting with the crown prince. The surprise would be if she declined to do so.

    Now, if memory serves, and I encourage you to check me on this, the US suspended arms sales to Bahrain while HRC was SoS in response to the Bahrain's suppression of dissent among its Shia minority. Later, we partially lifted the suspension to allow sales of arms Related to protecting our huge naval base in Bahrain. I think this decision also came while HRC was SoS.

    So, the arm sales to Bahrain illustrates my objections to the facile claims that contributions to the CF suggest that HRC is corrupt. These claims bring one sliver of information to the discussion: so and so donated money to the CF and then talked to HRC on the phone (or got a meeting). No evidence is produced that there's a causal relationship between the two much less a quid pro quo in which the donation and meeting led HRC to act in an official capacity to benefit the contributor.

    All of the examples I've seen so far, the oil companies, UBS, etc. are like this. No context, no evidence of a quid pro quo, all inuendo.

  2. publiustex | August 26, 2016 at 10:20 am | I consider some of these contributors to be unsavory, and I wish they'd give the Clinton Foundation a lot more money so they'd have less to sink into GOP House and Senate races.
  1. Philip Diehl | August 26, 2016 at 11:05 am | Ray LaPan-Love: You left out this quote from the interview with David Sirota. Context matters.

    'DAVID SIROTA: Well, my reaction to it is that I think that if you look at some of these individual examples, I think Paul is right that it's hard to argue that their donations to the foundation got them access. They are - a lot of these people in the AP story are people who knew her."

  2. Ray LaPan-Love | August 26, 2016 at 11:21 am | Pub,
    I can't remember where I saw the comparison between the arms sales of HRC and the shrub. But, if it comes to me I'll add it later. Meanwhile, here is a link to lots of related info:

    https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Arms+sales+under+obama

    And yes, "no context, no evidence of a quid pro quo", and almost as if she knew she might run for the prez job.

  3. Ray LaPan-Love | August 26, 2016 at 11:41 am | Sorry Phillip, but gee whiz, am I to assume that nobody else has any 'context' on a story that is difficult to miss. Where does one draw such lines? And the spin you are hoping for is somewhat unwound by David using the phrase "hard to argue". That could be interpreted to simply mean that the CF is good at obfuscating. And as someone who has worked in politics and even for a large NPO, I can atably assure you
  4. Ray LaPan-Love | August 26, 2016 at 11:59 am | ….!!!!!! my cursor got stuck on the previous comment as I tried to use spell-check.
    Anyway, I was trying to comfratably assure you that these organizations are commonly structured to allow for deceptive practices. The Sierra Club for example has affiliates that collect donations and then those funds are used to pay the overhead of the affiliate 'before' any money is donated to the Sierra Club. Thus, the Sierra club's solicitation costs are not reflected in the percentage of funds used toward whatever cause. This is not of course very subtle, and a Foundation such the CF could not likely get away something this obvious, but…schemes such those exposed by the Panama Papers should make us all hesitant to assume anything.
  5. RICK | August 26, 2016 at 12:20 pm | Dear James -

    I'm a long-time fan of your smart writing and the important work that you (and Simon) do. But what's with this constant Clinton Derangement Syndrome? Why look so hard to find some morsel of "scandal" with the Clintons when there's an entire herd of elephants in the room with the Republican candidate??

    As a wealth manager of many years, I must disagree with your dismissive assessment of the Clintons' personal philanthropy as a personal piggy bank. For sure, in a regular family foundation (many of my clients!) the grants and donations are entirely at the discretion of the controlling family, and very often it's all about shiny brass plaques and photo ops with museum directors or mayors. Fine, that's our system, and at least something gets done. And then the donors die and the plaques fade. A shawl has no pockets.

    But the Clinton operation is unique: they choose specific issues, partner with competent outside groups, and then direct enormous extra outside funds - not just their own meager foundation money - to tackle the problems. This is only possible because of their international status; not a Gates nor a Slim nor a Zuckerberg could engineer the same.

    One can certainly speculate about who got access (a phone call, seriously?) or who was schmoozed in what way in order to secure their donations. But to broad-brush the whole of the Clinton philanthropy as personal corruption is truly unfair. And it sure doesn't make sense when there's so much worse and genuinely scandalous material on the other side just waiting to be uncovered.

    Keep the faith!

  1. Bruce E. Woych | August 27, 2016 at 2:39 pm | Note: (from Global Research critique @ (eg: https://mail.aol.com/webmail-std/en-us/suite ) cited above: "Philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist, Andre Vltchek has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: "Exposing Lies Of The Empire" and "Fighting Against Western Imperialism". Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: "Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear". Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV.
  2. Ray LaPan-Love | August 27, 2016 at 3:42 pm | Bruce, (been awhile),
    High grade stuff there. Yet, I'm not as taken by Caros' comment as you seem to be. Near the end, this part: "The Clinton family business is benefiting themselves AND OTHERS by way of their prominence."
    To begin with, the Clinton's influence in arming the royal gulfies may get us all killed, and so his comparison to the Bushs, while apt in a current sense, it may well be…dangerously premature. Then too, Caro is of course taking sides as if the Clintons don't fully realize the P.R. benefits of giving away other peoples money. Which segs the question of how could the Clintons have put so much time and effort into Hillary's run, while creating so many pitfalls for themselves? Did they think the Repubs might get nice? Are they stupid, arrogant maybe? Or just so corrupt that they just can't stop like so many kleptomaniacs? In any case, it isn't only Trump's fitness that we should be questioning.

[Sep 26, 2016] Red-Light Warning on Now, About Hillary Clinton

Notable quotes:
"... Russia even hacked into the Democratic National Committee, maybe even some state election systems. So, we've got to step up our game. Make sure we are well defended and able to take the fight to those who go after us. As President, I will make it clear, that the United States will treat cyber attacks just like any other attack . We will be ready with serious political, economic and military responses. ..."
"... "We need to respond to evolving threats from states like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea from networks, criminal and terrorist networks like ISIS. We need a military that is ready and agile so it can meet the full range of threats, and operate on short notice across every domain, not just land, sea, air and space, but also cyberspace". ..."
"... "serious political, economic and military responses" ..."
"... notwithstanding ..."
"... The mainstream The Hill newspaper bannered, "Clinton: Treat cyberattacks 'like any other attack'" , and reported that, "Since many high-profile cyberattacks could be interpreted as traditional intelligence-gathering - something the US itself also engages in - the White House is often in a tricky political position when it comes to its response". That's not critical of her position, but at least it makes note of the crucial fact that if the US were to treat a hacker's attack as being an excuse to invade Russia, it would treat the US itself as being already an invader of Russia - which the US prior to a President Hillary Clinton never actually has been, notwithstanding the routine nature of international cyber espionage (which Clinton has now stated she wants to become a cause of war), which has been, and will continue to be, essential in the present era. ..."
"... The International Business Times, an online-only site, headlined September 1 st , "Clinton: US should use 'military response' to fight cyberattacks from Russia and China" , and reported that a Pentagon official had testified to Congress on July 13 th , that current US policy on this matter is: "When determining whether a cyber incident constitutes an armed attack, the US government considers a broad range of factors, including the nature and extent of injury or death to persons and the destruction of or damage to property. Cyber incidents are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, and the national security leadership and the president will make a determination if it's an armed attack". ..."
"... Hillary's statement on this matter was simply ignored by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, Fox, CNN, The Nation, The Atlantic, Harper's, National Review, Common Dreams, Alternet, Truthout, and all the rest of the US standard and 'alternative news' reporting organizations. Perhaps when Americans go to the polls to elect a President on November 8th, almost none of them will have learned about her policy on this incredibly important matter. ..."
"... Hillary's statement was in line with the current Administration's direction of policy, but is farther along in that direction than the Obama Administration's policy yet is. ..."
"... On Tuesday, June 14 th , NATO announced that if a NATO member country becomes the victim of a cyber attack by persons in a non-NATO country such as Russia or China, then NATO's Article V "collective defense" provision requires each NATO member country to join that NATO member country if it decides to strike back against the attacking country. ..."
"... NATO is now alleging that because Russian hackers had copied the emails on Hillary Clinton's home computer , this action of someone in Russia taking advantage of her having privatized her US State Department communications to her unsecured home computer and of such a Russian's then snooping into the US State Department business that was stored on it, might constitute a Russian attack against the United States of America, and would, if the US President declares it to be a Russian invasion of the US, trigger NATO's mutual-defense clause and so require all NATO nations to join with the US government in going to war against Russia, if the US government so decides. ..."
"... And finally, we did talk about cyber-security generally. I'm not going to comment on specific investigations that are still alive and active, but I will tell you that we've had problems with cyber-intrusions from Russia in the past, from other countries in the past, and, look, we're moving into a new era here, where a number of countries have significant capacities, and frankly we've got more capacity than anybody both offensively and defensively, but our goal is not to suddenly in the cyber-arena duplicate a cycle of escalation that we saw when it comes to other arms-races in the past, but rather to start instituting (9:00) some norms so that everybody's acting responsibly. ..."
"... "neoconservative" ..."
"... Hillary is now the neoconservatives' candidate . (And she's also the close friend of many of them, and hired and promoted many of them at her State Department .) If she becomes the next President, then we might end up having the most neoconservative (i.e., military-industrial-complex-run) government ever. This would be terrific for America's weapons-makers, but it very possibly would be horrific for everybody else. That's the worst lobby of all, to run the country . (And, as that link there shows, Clinton has received over five times as much money from it as has her Republican opponent.) ..."
"... George Herbert Walker Bush knows lots that the 'news' media don't report (even when it has already been leaked in one way or another), and the Clinton plan to destroy Russia is part of that. Will the Russian government accept it? Or will it do whatever is required in order to defeat it? This is already a serious nuclear confrontation . ..."
Sep 26, 2016 | www.strategic-culture.org
Hillary Clinton, on September 19th, was endorsed for President, by the most historically important, intelligent, and dangerous, Republican of modern times.

She was endorsed then by the person who in 1990 cunningly engineered the end of the Soviet Union and of its Warsaw Pact military alliance in such a way as to continue the West's war against Russia so as to conquer Russia gradually for the owners of US international corporations. The person, who kept his plan secret even from his closest advisors, until the night of 24 February 1990, when he told them that what he had previously instructed them to tell Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as the West's future military intentions about Russia if the USSR were to end, was actually a lie.

He also told them that they were henceforth to proceed forward on the basis that the residual stump of the former Soviet Union, Russia, will instead be treated as if it still is an enemy-nation, and that the fundamental aim of the Western alliance will then remain: to conquer Russia (notwithstanding the end of the USSR, of its communism, and of its military alliances) - that the Cold War is to end only on the Russian side, not at all, really, on the Western side. (All of that is documented from the historical record, at that linked-to article.)

This person was the former Director of the US CIA, born US aristocrat, and committed champion of US conquest of the entire world, the President of the United States at the time (1990): George Herbert Walker Bush .

He informed the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, Kathleen Hartington Kennedy Townsend - as she posted it, apparently ecstatically, on September 19th, to her facebook page after personally having just met with Mr. Bush - "The President told me he's voting for Hillary!!" She then confirmed this to Politico the same day, which headlined promptly, "George H.W. Bush to Vote for Hillary" .

G.H.W. Bush is an insider's insider: he would not do this if he felt that Hillary Clinton wouldn't carry forward his plan ( which has been adhered-to by each of the US Presidents after him ), and if he felt that Donald Trump - Bush's own successor now as the Republican US candidate for President - would not carry it forward. (This was his most important and history-shaping decision during his entire Presidency, and therefore it's understandable now that he would be willing even to cross Party-lines on his Presidential ballot in order to have it followed-through to its ultimate conclusion.)

What indications exist publicly, that she will carry it forward? Hillary Clinton has already publicly stated (though tactfully, so that the US press could ignore it) her intention to push things up to and beyond the nuclear brink, with regard to Russia:

German Economic News was the first news medium to headline this, "Hillary Clinton Threatens Russia with War" (in German, on September 4th: the original German of the headline was " Hillary Clinton Droht Russland mit Krieg" ), but the source of this shocking headline was actually Clinton's bellicose speech that had been given to the American Legion, on August 31 st , in which she had said:

Russia even hacked into the Democratic National Committee, maybe even some state election systems. So, we've got to step up our game. Make sure we are well defended and able to take the fight to those who go after us. As President, I will make it clear, that the United States will treat cyber attacks just like any other attack . We will be ready with serious political, economic and military responses.

Russia denies that it did any such thing, but the US even taps the phone conversations of Angela Merkel and other US allies ; and, of course, the US and Russia routinely hack into each others' email and other communications; so, even if Russia did what Clinton says, then to call it "like any other attack" against the United States and to threaten to answer it with "military responses", would itself be historically unprecedented - which is what Hillary Clinton is promising to do.

Historically unprecedented, like nuclear war itself would be. And she was saying this in the context of her alleging that Russia had "attacked" the DNC (Democratic National Committee), and she as President might "attack" back, perhaps even with "military responses". This was not an off-the-cuff remark from her - it was her prepared text in a speech. She said it though, for example, on 26 October 2013, Britain's Telegraph had headlined, "US 'operates 80 listening posts worldwide, 19 in Europe, and snooped on Merkel mobile 2002-2013' : US intelligence targeted Angela Merkel's phone from 2002 to 2013, according to new eavesdropping leaks".

But now, this tapping against Merkel would, according to Hillary Clinton's logic (unless she intends it to apply only by the United States against Russia), constitute reason for Germany (and 34 other nations ) to go to war against the United States.

Clinton also said there: "We need to respond to evolving threats from states like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea from networks, criminal and terrorist networks like ISIS. We need a military that is ready and agile so it can meet the full range of threats, and operate on short notice across every domain, not just land, sea, air and space, but also cyberspace".

She also said that the sequester agreement between the Congress and the President must end, because US military spending should not be limited: "I am all for cutting the fat out of the budget and making sure we stretch our dollars But we cannot impose arbitrary limits on something as important as our military. That makes no sense at all. The sequester makes our country less secure. Let's end it and get a budget deal that supports America's military". She wasn't opposing "arbitrary limits" on non-military spending; she implied that that's not "as important as our military".

She was clear: this is a wartime US, not a peacetime nation; we're already at war, in her view; and therefore continued unlimited cost-overruns to Lockheed Martin etc. need to be accepted, not limited (by "arbitrary limits" or otherwise). She favors "cutting the fat out of the budget" for healthcare, education, subsidies to the poor, environmental protection, etc., but not for war, not for this war. A more bellicose speech, especially against "threats from states like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea from networks, criminal and terrorist networks like ISIS", all equating "states" such as Russia and China, with "terrorist networks like ISIS", could hardly be imagined - as if Russia and China are anything like jihadist organizations, and are hostile toward America, as such jihadist groups are.

However, her threat to respond to an alleged "cyber attack" from Russia by "serious political, economic and military responses" , is unprecedented, even from her. It was big news when she said it, though virtually ignored by America's newsmedia.

The only US newsmedia to have picked up on Clinton's shocking threat were Republican-Party-oriented ones, because the Democratic-Party and nonpartisan 'news' media in the US don't criticize a Democratic nominee's neoconservatism - they hide it, or else find excuses for it (even after the Republican neoconservative President George W. Bush's catastrophic and lie-based neoconservative invasion of Iraq - then headed by the Moscow-friendly Saddam Hussein - in 2003, which many Democratic office-holders, such as Hillary Clinton backed).

So, everything in today's USA 'news' media is favorable toward neoconservatism - it's now the "Establishment" foreign policy, established notwithstanding the catastrophic Iraq-invasion, from which America's 'news' media have evidently learned nothing whatsoever (because they're essentially unchanged and committed to the same aristocracy as has long controlled them).

However, now that the Republican Party's Presidential nominee, Donald Trump, is openly critical of Hillary Clinton's and George W. Bush's neoconservatism, any Republican-oriented 'news' media that support Trump's candidacy allows its 'journalists' to criticize Clinton's neoconservatism; and, so, there were a few such critiques of this shocking statement from Clinton.

The Republican Party's "Daily Caller" headlined about this more directly than any other US 'news' medium, "Clinton Advocates Response To DNC Hack That Would Likely Bring On WWIII" , and reported, on September 1st, that "Clinton's cavalier attitude toward going to war over cyber attacks seems to contradict her assertion that she is the responsible voice on foreign policy in the current election".

The Republican Washington Times newspaper headlined "Hillary Clinton: US will treat cyberattacks 'just like any other attack'" , and reported that she would consider using the "military to respond to cyberattacks," but that her Republican opponent had indicated he would instead use only cyber against cyber: "'I am a fan of the future, and cyber is the future,' he said when asked by Time magazine during the Republican National Convention about using cyberweapons". However, Trump was not asked there whether he would escalate from a cyber attack to a physical one. Trump has many times said that having good relations with Russia would be a priority if he becomes President. That would obviously be impossible if he (like Hillary) were to be seeking a pretext for war against Russia.

The mainstream The Hill newspaper bannered, "Clinton: Treat cyberattacks 'like any other attack'" , and reported that, "Since many high-profile cyberattacks could be interpreted as traditional intelligence-gathering - something the US itself also engages in - the White House is often in a tricky political position when it comes to its response". That's not critical of her position, but at least it makes note of the crucial fact that if the US were to treat a hacker's attack as being an excuse to invade Russia, it would treat the US itself as being already an invader of Russia - which the US prior to a President Hillary Clinton never actually has been, notwithstanding the routine nature of international cyber espionage (which Clinton has now stated she wants to become a cause of war), which has been, and will continue to be, essential in the present era.

The International Business Times, an online-only site, headlined September 1 st , "Clinton: US should use 'military response' to fight cyberattacks from Russia and China" , and reported that a Pentagon official had testified to Congress on July 13 th , that current US policy on this matter is: "When determining whether a cyber incident constitutes an armed attack, the US government considers a broad range of factors, including the nature and extent of injury or death to persons and the destruction of or damage to property. Cyber incidents are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, and the national security leadership and the president will make a determination if it's an armed attack".

Hillary's statement on this matter was simply ignored by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, Fox, CNN, The Nation, The Atlantic, Harper's, National Review, Common Dreams, Alternet, Truthout, and all the rest of the US standard and 'alternative news' reporting organizations. Perhaps when Americans go to the polls to elect a President on November 8th, almost none of them will have learned about her policy on this incredibly important matter.

Hillary's statement was in line with the current Administration's direction of policy, but is farther along in that direction than the Obama Administration's policy yet is.

As the German Economic News article had noted, but only in passing: "Just a few months ago, US President Barack Obama had laid the legal basis for this procedure and signed a decree that equates hacker attacks with military attacks". However, this slightly overstated the degree to which Obama has advanced "this procedure". On 1 April 2016 - and not as any April Fool's joke - techdirt had headlined "President Obama Signs Executive Order Saying That Now He's Going To Be Really Mad If He Catches Someone Cyberattacking Us" and linked to the document, which techdirt noted was "allowing the White House to issue sanctions on those 'engaging in significant malicious cyber-enabled activities'".

The writer, Mike Masnick, continued, quite accurately: "To make this work, the President officially declared foreign hacking to be a 'national emergency' (no, really) and basically said that if the government decides that some foreign person is doing a bit too much hacking, the US government can basically do all sorts of bad stuff to them, like seize anything they have in the US and block them from coming to the US". What Hillary Clinton wants to add to this policy is physical, military, invasion, for practices such as (if Russia becomes declared by the US President to have been behind the hacking of the DNC) what is actually routine activity of the CIA, NSA, and, of course, of Russia's (and other countries') intelligence operations.

It wasn't directly Obama's own action that led most powerfully up to Hillary Clinton's policy on this, but instead NATO's recent action - and NATO has always been an extension of the US President, it's his military club, and it authorizes him to go to war against any nation that it decides to have been invaded by some non-member country (especially Russia or China - the Saudis, Qataris, and other funders behind international jihadist attacks are institutionally prohibited from being considered for invasion by NATO, because the US keeps those regimes in power, and those regimes are generally the biggest purchasers of US weapons). I reported on this at The Saker's site, on 15 June 2016, headlining "NATO Says It Might Now Have Grounds to Attack Russia" . That report opened:

On Tuesday, June 14 th , NATO announced that if a NATO member country becomes the victim of a cyber attack by persons in a non-NATO country such as Russia or China, then NATO's Article V "collective defense" provision requires each NATO member country to join that NATO member country if it decides to strike back against the attacking country.

NATO is now alleging that because Russian hackers had copied the emails on Hillary Clinton's home computer , this action of someone in Russia taking advantage of her having privatized her US State Department communications to her unsecured home computer and of such a Russian's then snooping into the US State Department business that was stored on it, might constitute a Russian attack against the United States of America, and would, if the US President declares it to be a Russian invasion of the US, trigger NATO's mutual-defense clause and so require all NATO nations to join with the US government in going to war against Russia, if the US government so decides.

So, Obama is using NATO to set the groundwork for Hillary Clinton's policy as (he hopes) America's next President. Meanwhile, Obama's public rhetoric on the matter is far more modest, and less scary. It's sane-sounding falsehoods. At the end of the G-20 Summit in Beijing, he held a press conference September 5th (VIDEO at this link) , in which he was asked specifically (3:15) "Q: On the cyber front, do you think Russia is trying to influence the US election?" and he went into a lengthy statement, insulting Putin and saying (until 6:40 on the video) why Obama is superior to Putin on the Syrian war, and then (until 8:07 in the video) blaming Putin for, what is actually, the refusal of the Ukrainian parliament or Rada to approve the federalization of Ukraine that's stated in the Minsk agreement as being a prerequisite to direct talks being held between the Donbass residents and the Obama-installed regime in Kiev that's been trying to exterminate the residents of Donbass . Then (8:07 in the video), Obama got around to the reporter's question:

And finally, we did talk about cyber-security generally. I'm not going to comment on specific investigations that are still alive and active, but I will tell you that we've had problems with cyber-intrusions from Russia in the past, from other countries in the past, and, look, we're moving into a new era here, where a number of countries have significant capacities, and frankly we've got more capacity than anybody both offensively and defensively, but our goal is not to suddenly in the cyber-arena duplicate a cycle of escalation that we saw when it comes to other arms-races in the past, but rather to start instituting (9:00) some norms so that everybody's acting responsibly.

He is a far more effective deceiver than is his intended successor, but Hillary's goals and his, have always been the same: achieving what the US aristocracy want. Whereas she operates with a sledgehammer, he operates with a scalpel . And he hopes to hand this operation off to her on 20 January 2017.

This is what Hillary's statement that "the United States will treat cyber attacks just like any other attack" is reflecting: it's reflecting that the US will, if she becomes President, be actively seeking an excuse to invade Russia. The Obama-mask will then be off.

If this turns out to be the case, then it will be raw control of the US Government by the military-industrial complex, which includes the arms-makers plus the universities . It's the owners - the aristocrats - plus their servants; and at least 90% of the military-industrial complex support Hillary Clinton's candidacy. Like her, they are all demanding that the sequester be ended and that any future efforts to reduce the US Government's debts must come from cutting expenditures for healthcare, education, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, environmental protection, and expenditures on the poor; no cuts (but only increases) for the military. This is based on the conservative theory, that the last thing to cut in government is the military.

The Republicans used to champion that view (thus the "conservative" in "neoconservative" ). But after Obama came into office, the Republican Party became divided about that, while the Democratic Party (under Obama) increasingly came to support neoconservatism . Hillary is now the neoconservatives' candidate . (And she's also the close friend of many of them, and hired and promoted many of them at her State Department .) If she becomes the next President, then we might end up having the most neoconservative (i.e., military-industrial-complex-run) government ever. This would be terrific for America's weapons-makers, but it very possibly would be horrific for everybody else. That's the worst lobby of all, to run the country . (And, as that link there shows, Clinton has received over five times as much money from it as has her Republican opponent.)

George Herbert Walker Bush knows lots that the 'news' media don't report (even when it has already been leaked in one way or another), and the Clinton plan to destroy Russia is part of that. Will the Russian government accept it? Or will it do whatever is required in order to defeat it? This is already a serious nuclear confrontation .

[Sep 26, 2016] Bill Clintons crime policies left many poor people with only two options: prison, or homelessness.

Notable quotes:
"... It's really, really damning on Clinton. Heartbreaking meanness for political gain. #NeverHillary ..."
Sep 26, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Kim Kaufman September 25, 2016 at 6:28 pm

Dunno if this has been posted here but this is part 3: "The following is adapted from the new book Superpredator: Bill Clinton's Use and Abuse of Black America .

The Evictor-in-Chief

Bill Clinton's crime policies left many poor people with only two options: prison, or homelessness.
by Nathan J. Robinson

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/09/bill-clinton-crime-hud-prisons-constitution-habeas-corpus/

It's really, really damning on Clinton. Heartbreaking meanness for political gain. #NeverHillary

[Sep 26, 2016] Hillary doesnt pander to the left or to the peacenicks. I bet the debate will all about diversity and little about economic populism.

Notable quotes:
"... Informative to follow the link and get more of what Trump said and what Clinton waffles upon. League of Conservation Voters is a DNC front. ..."
"... Clean coal, like her clean tar sands' pipeline costs more in HGH than just burning low sulfur stuff. So much needs to stay in the ground, not a Clinton theme. Nor one for LCV! ..."
"... She doesn't pander to the left or to the peacenicks. I bet the debate will all about diversity and little about economic populism. The center-left dislikes the left, just like in the UK. ..."
Sep 26, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

ilsm -> pgl, Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 04:00 AM

Informative to follow the link and get more of what Trump said and what Clinton waffles upon. League of Conservation Voters is a DNC front.
ilsm -> Peter K.... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 09:28 AM
Clean coal, like her clean tar sands' pipeline costs more in HGH than just burning low sulfur stuff. So much needs to stay in the ground, not a Clinton theme. Nor one for LCV!
ilsm -> EMichael... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 09:27 AM
Who does Clinton not pander to? Deplorables, everyone else she is a woman for your plight.
Peter K. -> ilsm... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 09:40 AM
She doesn't pander to the left or to the peacenicks. I bet the debate will all about diversity and little about economic populism. The center-left dislikes the left, just like in the UK.

[Sep 26, 2016] September 25, 2016 at 11:03 am

Notable quotes:
"... While Dems throw younger voters under the bus, they are cozying up to "W"–quite literally. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3806509/Photo-Michelle-Obama-George-W-Bush-hugging-edited.html ..."
"... A whole generation of school kids in their formative years got the message from their parents that Bills behavior was a national embarrassment. So why would they be excited about or vote for Mrs. Clinton? ..."
"... I'm pretty jaded and cynical but that photo of Michelle Obama hugging GWB shocked even me. It's getting scathing comments on Twitter as well (cf @DavidSirota for one). ..."
"... You should probably read the book: Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas. It looks like Michelle was a dangerous, power hungry player from the very beginning. ..."
Sep 26, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

While Dems throw younger voters under the bus, they are cozying up to "W"–quite literally. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3806509/Photo-Michelle-Obama-George-W-Bush-hugging-edited.html

Jomo September 25, 2016 at 12:25 pm

One thing I never see discussed in the media is the effect of the sorry Clinton/Lewinsky/Impeachment episode on millennials. As a parent of school kids in the suburbs at that time I can tell you that I and other parents were none too pleased to see the presidents sexual infidelities on the evening news and headlined in the paper for all youngsters to see (and emulate?).

A whole generation of school kids in their formative years got the message from their parents that Bills behavior was a national embarrassment. So why would they be excited about or vote for Mrs. Clinton?

crittermom September 25, 2016 at 2:05 pm

Jomo–We don't see anything about Billy's former indiscretions in the news anymore.
They'd rather the millennials forget about it.
That's all been carefully swept back into a little box gathering dust in the corner.
How convenient.

'Look over there! It's a Trump!'.
Distractions, distractions…

I lost all respect for Hellary (not that I had much, to begin with) when she 'stood by her man' following the Monica incident.
She would have impressed me had she planted her foot up his a** all the way up to her cankles, instead.

I've no doubt part of the 'bargain' of her staying by his side was to get her into the WH.
I've thought that since it happened. Call me Nostradamus.

Pavel September 25, 2016 at 2:08 pm

I'm pretty jaded and cynical but that photo of Michelle Obama hugging GWB shocked even me. It's getting scathing comments on Twitter as well (cf @DavidSirota for one).

Michelle was the only one I had any respect for… now… POOF like Keyser Soze that respect is gone.

likbez September 25, 2016 at 3:08 pm
You should probably read the book: Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas. It looks like Michelle was a dangerous, power hungry player from the very beginning.

[Sep 26, 2016] Young voters understand that Hillary is a neoliberal and is hostile to thier interests. why they should vote for her?

Notable quotes:
"... The trouble is that the candidate they are meant to support does not appear to find that show particularly horrifying ..."
"... People under 40 or 35 grew up under title IX. Electing the wife of a lousy President isnt relevant ..."
"... Then of course, 9/11 would also explain the voting problems. Fear mongering doesn't work when fear mongering has been omnipresent in the lives of millennials for 15 years. ..."
"... Basically, a bunch of Democrats are voting against their interests because they are shallow as they seem. ..."
"... Why the young don't like Hillary? Our friends got blown apart in a war, came home w/ ptsd-missing limbs, getting little care & she wants even more war. Her husband's trade deals destroyed the economy & we know she is pro TPP. ..."
"... She is clearly a liar & has track record of a sell out. She & DNC cheated Bernie & we can't forgive even if he has. ..."
"... The Clintons have been terrible for a long time. The question is why are (did) so many Democrats especially older ones voting against their own interests. ..."
"... I've tried multiple times to explain this to my parents, but they just can't get how much has changed since the 90s, especially for the young. It's key, of course, that they still rely on the New York Times and PBS to get their news. They view "blogs" with reflexive disdain. ..."
"... When I go from hospital room to room at work there are many more older folks (40+) watching fox news, expressing interest in Trump & their hatred of the Clintons. Except in CT where everyone loves their Dems, corrupt or not. This was over last yr working in CT, NY, ME & AZ. I don't see how Clinton can win unless she cheats. ..."
"... So yes, lie, cheat, and steal, those are three things she and her crew excel at. ..."
"... Or, in short form, why the young (and a lot of other people) don't like HIllary: Why would they? The strange media delusion that the dislike needs to be explained, and is moreover terribly puzzling and hard to explain, is itself in greater need of explanation. ..."
"... That Newsweek article you posted on Hillary's millennial "problem" is an amazing read. So satisfying to finally see something in MSM that states obvious truths. Nice little video clip too. ..."
"... Many younger American voters, perhaps a sufficient number of them to seriously imperil Clinton's chances, have significant ideological differences with the candidate. ..."
"... Millennials might vote for Dad or Mom. They are being asked to vote for Granny, who is wobbly, eccentric and does not even live in the same Century as them. ..."
Sep 26, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Jen September 25, 2016 at 7:47 am

On Clinton's millennial problem: http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-millennial-voters-502298

"Here is my own wild take on why millennials don't support Clinton "enough": Many younger American voters, perhaps a sufficient number of them to seriously imperil Clinton's chances, have significant ideological differences with the candidate. That's my theory. Many liberal pundits seem unimpressed by this idea perhaps because it suggests that votes must be earned in a democracy, but it does have the benefit of the evidence."

And

"The Clinton campaign might be forgiven for imagining these voters would "come home" had it not spent the weeks since the Democratic Convention fundraising and playing Bush administration endorsement bingo. The trouble is not that young people are insufficiently familiar with the neoconservative horror show of their own childhoods. The trouble is that the candidate they are meant to support does not appear to find that show particularly horrifying ."

And

"There are only so many times one can insist that young voters capitulate to a political party's sole demand-vote for us!-in exchange for nothing."

Apparently, I'm a millennial.

http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-millennial-voters-502298

NotTimothyGeithner September 25, 2016 at 9:45 am

I would suggest the ideological differences extend past the 38 age barrier, but

1. People under 40 or 35 grew up under title IX. Electing the wife of a lousy President isnt relevant
2. No one under 38 voted for Bill Clinton. The youth haven't twisted themselves into voting for that ass in the first place. Even then Bill's 1996 campaign when he failed to crack 50% against Mumbly Joe was marked by record low minority turnout, just what is being worried about now. Gee.
3. Then of course, 9/11 would also explain the voting problems. Fear mongering doesn't work when fear mongering has been omnipresent in the lives of millennials for 15 years.

Basically, a bunch of Democrats are voting against their interests because they are shallow as they seem.

m September 25, 2016 at 10:10 am

Why the young don't like Hillary? Our friends got blown apart in a war, came home w/ ptsd-missing limbs, getting little care & she wants even more war. Her husband's trade deals destroyed the economy & we know she is pro TPP. She is pro fracking, pushing it overseas & once in office will promote it here. She is a corporatist bankster & won't release Goldman speeches. We have no jobs, no prospects, large amount of school debt & must come of age during the second great depression. She is clearly a liar & has track record of a sell out. She & DNC cheated Bernie & we can't forgive even if he has.

NotTimothyGeithner September 25, 2016 at 10:21 am

The Clintons have been terrible for a long time. The question is why are (did) so many Democrats especially older ones voting against their own interests.

Obama enjoys a relative popularity with young people despite being a disaster.

voteforno6 September 25, 2016 at 10:41 am

My guess is, that after twelve years of Reagan and Bush, any Democrat was a relief. Unfortunately, so many in the Democratic Party and in the commentariat came of age during that time, so they just assume that this is the way that it has to be.

Katharine September 25, 2016 at 11:15 am

Actually, no, Clinton did not look like a good option in 1992, and certainly wasn't my choice in the primary. Even then there were a lot of people who only got talked into voting for him in November on the lesser evil principle, regretted it, and did not vote for him again in 1996.

Katniss Everdeen September 25, 2016 at 11:23 am

Plus they turned Ross Perot into a crazy loon because he kept attacking nafta, which was a big deal at the time, effectively making it a more "manageable" two person race.

Hmmm…….Now that I think about it, that sounds kind of familiar.

Michael September 25, 2016 at 1:06 pm

Ross Perot was a crazy loon, and he attacked NAFTA. These are separate truths.

crittermom September 25, 2016 at 1:43 pm

Katniss–Looking back, I think when I voted for Ross Perot that was the last time I voted for someone I actually wanted, rather than just voting the LOTE.

Bernie was the only candidate since I've actually wanted to win. I'm heartsick and mad as hell he's not in the running.

BTW, I'm still trying to figure out how DWS beat Tim Canova in FL after all the dirty dealings about DWS came out? More manipulation at the polls?

emptyfull September 25, 2016 at 2:36 pm

This is definitely true of my parents (both barely pre-boomers). After watching McGovern flop, then Carter flail, they both assumed the Clintons were the best a liberal could hope for in this country. Also my mother admired Hillary for being an unapologetic career woman when, especially in the South, this was still controversial.

Indeed, having grown up in the age of Reagan and George HW, I basically agreed with them in the 90s, even though I hoped more would be possible at some point. It wasn't until the financial crisis (and, importantly, beginning to read NC!) that I began to realize how toxic the Clinton legacy really was. Also, as a grad student, I was teaching lots of millennials and began to realize how genuinely screwed they were by what we now all call the neoliberal (and neocon) era.

I've tried multiple times to explain this to my parents, but they just can't get how much has changed since the 90s, especially for the young. It's key, of course, that they still rely on the New York Times and PBS to get their news. They view "blogs" with reflexive disdain.

m September 25, 2016 at 10:42 am

When I told "older" people I would vote for Bernie, now Trump to shake things up-all I got was a lecture. Clinton's will protect wall street & 401ks. And I think there is a lot of fear about moving away from the token/chosen candidates.

When I go from hospital room to room at work there are many more older folks (40+) watching fox news, expressing interest in Trump & their hatred of the Clintons. Except in CT where everyone loves their Dems, corrupt or not. This was over last yr working in CT, NY, ME & AZ. I don't see how Clinton can win unless she cheats.

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL September 25, 2016 at 1:32 pm

In Philly last time around they had 53 precincts that were without a single non-Obama vote. Not one. The Black Panthers at the door shooed out the Republican observers and the magic happened, this time around it will be much easier. And then we might end up with hanging chads on steroids, with an 8-person Supreme Court that should be a fun-fest.

So yes, lie, cheat, and steal, those are three things she and her crew excel at.

Katharine September 25, 2016 at 10:59 am

Or, in short form, why the young (and a lot of other people) don't like HIllary: Why would they? The strange media delusion that the dislike needs to be explained, and is moreover terribly puzzling and hard to explain, is itself in greater need of explanation.

Pavel September 25, 2016 at 12:25 pm

Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how is the candidate?

JCC September 25, 2016 at 1:35 pm

The only Democrats voting against their own interests are those that vote for HRC (and also the ones that vote for Trump).

Light a Candle September 25, 2016 at 12:08 pm

That Newsweek article you posted on Hillary's millennial "problem" is an amazing read. So satisfying to finally see something in MSM that states obvious truths. Nice little video clip too.

Synoia September 25, 2016 at 1:34 pm

Many younger American voters, perhaps a sufficient number of them to seriously imperil Clinton's chances, have significant ideological differences with the candidate.

Millennials might vote for Dad or Mom. They are being asked to vote for Granny, who is wobbly, eccentric and does not even live in the same Century as them.

Light a Candle September 25, 2016 at 12:08 pm

That Newsweek article you posted on Hillary's millennial "problem" is an amazing read. So satisfying to finally see something in MSM that states obvious truths. Nice little video clip too.

[Sep 26, 2016] Elizabeth Warren Tells Hillary Clinton Not To Hire Wall Street Donors

Sep 26, 2016 | www.ibtimes.com

"Elizabeth Warren Tells Hillary Clinton Not To Hire Wall Street Donors" [ International Business Times ]. At the Center for American Progress:

"I know that personnel is policy," she told the group. "But let me be clear - when we talk about personnel, we don't mean advisors who just pay lip service to Hillary's bold agenda [irony, surely?], coupled with a sigh, a knowing glance, and a twiddling of thumbs until it's time for the next swing through the revolving door, serving government then going back to the very same industries they regulate. We don't mean Citigroup or Morgan Stanley or BlackRock getting to choose who runs the economy in this country so they can capture our government."

This, before November 8! They must be gritting their teeth in Brooklyn, as Warren underlines her status as a party baron once more.

"The Clinton Global Initiative wraps up its 12th and final annual meeting Wednesday amid intense scrutiny about the access its donors received while Hillary Clinton was the nation's top diplomat" [ McClatchy ]. So I guess they're closing out the fund? And the payouts will come over the course of a future Clinton administration….

[Sep 26, 2016] 2008 Crisis Deepened the Ties Between Clintons and Goldman Sachs

Sep 26, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs... , 2008 Crisis Deepened the Ties Between Clintons and Goldman Sachs

Hillary Clinton for President http://nyti.ms/2cLk18H
NYT editorial - Sep 24

Our endorsement is rooted in respect
for her intellect, experience and courage. ...

In any normal election year, we'd compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues. But this is not a normal election year. A comparison like that would be an empty exercise in a race where one candidate - our choice, Hillary Clinton - has a record of service and a raft of pragmatic ideas, and the other, Donald Trump, discloses nothing concrete about himself or his plans while promising the moon and offering the stars on layaway. (We will explain in a subsequent editorial why we believe Mr. Trump to be the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history.)

But this endorsement would also be an empty exercise if it merely affirmed the choice of Clinton supporters. We're aiming instead to persuade those of you who are hesitating to vote for Mrs. Clinton - because you are reluctant to vote for a Democrat, or for another Clinton, or for a candidate who might appear, on the surface, not to offer change from an establishment that seems indifferent and a political system that seems broken. ...

2008 Crisis Deepened the Ties Between Clintons and Goldman Sachs http://nyti.ms/2cLHnuY
NYT - NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and SUSANNE CRAIG - Sep 24

A blue-ribbon commission had just excoriated Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks for fueling the financial crisis. Prosecutors were investigating whether Goldman had misled investors. The company was a whipping boy for politicians looking to lay blame for the crash.

But in spring of 2011, Lloyd C. Blankfein, leading one of the nation's most reviled companies, found himself onstage with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, one of the nation's most admired public figures at the time. And Mrs. Clinton had come to praise Goldman Sachs.

The State Department, Mrs. Clinton announced that day in an auditorium in its Foggy Bottom headquarters, would throw its weight behind a Goldman philanthropic initiative aimed at encouraging female entrepreneurs around the world - a program Goldman viewed as central to rehabilitating its reputation.

Mrs. Clinton's blessing - an important public seal of approval for Goldman at a time when it had few defenders in Washington - underscored a long-running relationship between one of the country's most powerful financial firms and one of its most famous political families. Over 20-plus years, Goldman provided the Clintons with some of their most influential advisers, millions of dollars in campaign contributions and speaking fees, and financial support for the family foundation's charitable programs.

And in the wake of the worst crash since the Great Depression, as the firm fended off investigations and criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike, the Clintons drew Goldman only closer. Bill Clinton publicly defended the company and leased office space from Goldman for his foundation. Mrs. Clinton, after leaving the State Department, earned $675,000 to deliver three speeches at Goldman events, where she reassured executives that they had an important role to play in the nation's recovery.

The four years between the end of the financial crisis and the start of Mrs. Clinton's second White House bid revealed a family that viewed Wall Street's elite as friends and collaborators even as the public viewed them with suspicion and scorn. ...

EMichael -> Fred C. Dobbs... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 08:17 AM
geez

So these people think it is a big deal for the Sec of State to appear at a dinner with GS where the bank starts a program to help women in business throughout the world.

GS is evil. I got it. That program? Not so much.

http://www.icrw.org/media/news/icrw-unveils-evaluation-goldman-sachs-10000-women

Behind a paywall and I will not pay the NY Times a penny to support most of their writers, but let me ask a question.

Do the authors address in their article the success of this program? If not, just another piece of drek that should not have gotten past the editors.

Fred C. Dobbs -> EMichael... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 08:39 AM
The program?

10,000 Women is a program organized by Goldman Sachs with the goal of helping to grow local economies by providing business education, mentoring and networking, and access to capital to underserved women entrepreneurs globally. ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10,000_Women

Goldman Sachs | 10,000 Women | An Initiative to Provide Business & Management Education to Female Entrepreneurs in Emerging Markets http://www.goldmansachs.com/citizenship/10000women/

(Not so vaguely related?)

Meet the Goldman Partner who gets paid
$2M to give the bank's money away http://read.bi/17nzlUO
via @BusinessInsider

EMichael -> Fred C. Dobbs... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 08:48 AM
Fred,

I know about the program. A local charity group I do a little work for has partnered with it. My question was doe the writers in that Times article mention the program?

If not, it is just another in a long series of attacks on the Clintons with little basis in fact. I am not a big fan of either of them, but this treatment is beyond the pale.

ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
The NYT board like Mrs. Clinton has no idea about providing for the common defense.

Experience that could not remember nor take responsibility for safeguarding information that could damage US well being...........

Nor remember the most basic requirements for filing public records.

Yeah, and W was less derelict than Hillary!

[Sep 15, 2016] Clinton Corruption Watch, Sept. 15, 2016

Notable quotes:
"... "State Department Delays Records Request About Clinton-Linked Firm Until After The 2016 Election" [ International Business Times ]. "Beacon Global Strategies is a shadowy consulting firm that's stacked with former Obama administration officials, high profile Republicans and a number of Hillary Clinton's closest foreign policy advisers. But beyond its billing as a firm that works with the defense industry, it is unclear for whom specifically the company works, exactly what it does, and if Beacon employees have tried to influence national security policy since the firm's founding in 2013. ..."
"... UPDATE "New York-based Teneo, with 575 employees, markets itself as a one-stop shop for CEOs to get advice on a wide range of issues, including mergers and acquisitions, handling crises and managing public relations. For its services, it generally charges clients monthly retainer fees of $100,000 to $300,000." [ Wall Street Journal , "Teneo, Consulting Firm with Clinton Ties, Eyes $1 Billion IPO"]. Founder Douglas Band was Bill Clinton's body man . One can only wonder what a body man does to become worth $1 billion to, well, the people who made him worth a billion. ..."
"... The donors expect that their support of the Clinton Foundation will help them get access to the State Department, [Doug] Band see above] expects that he can count on [Huma] Abedin to help, and Abedin seems to understand that she needs to be responsive to Band. This would be a lot of effort for powerful people to expend, if it led to nothing at all. ..."
"... UPDATE "Even as the Clintons are touting plans to distance themselves from their foundation and limit its fundraising if Hillary Clinton is elected president, they're planning one last glitzy fundraising bash on Friday to belatedly celebrate Bill Clinton's 70th birthday" [ Politico ]. ..."
"... "Plans called for performances by Wynton Marsalis, Jon Bon Jovi and Barbra Streisand, according to people briefed on the planning. They said that major donors are being asked to give $250,000 to be listed as a chair for the party, $100,000 to be listed a co-chair and $50,000 to be listed as a vice-chair." Sounds lovely! How I wish I could go… ..."
Sep 15, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

"State Department Delays Records Request About Clinton-Linked Firm Until After The 2016 Election" [ International Business Times ]. "Beacon Global Strategies is a shadowy consulting firm that's stacked with former Obama administration officials, high profile Republicans and a number of Hillary Clinton's closest foreign policy advisers. But beyond its billing as a firm that works with the defense industry, it is unclear for whom specifically the company works, exactly what it does, and if Beacon employees have tried to influence national security policy since the firm's founding in 2013.

UPDATE "New York-based Teneo, with 575 employees, markets itself as a one-stop shop for CEOs to get advice on a wide range of issues, including mergers and acquisitions, handling crises and managing public relations. For its services, it generally charges clients monthly retainer fees of $100,000 to $300,000." [ Wall Street Journal , "Teneo, Consulting Firm with Clinton Ties, Eyes $1 Billion IPO"]. Founder Douglas Band was Bill Clinton's body man . One can only wonder what a body man does to become worth $1 billion to, well, the people who made him worth a billion.

"[I]n many of these [Clinton Foundation] episodes you can see expectations operating like an electrical circuit. The donors expect that their support of the Clinton Foundation will help them get access to the State Department, [Doug] Band see above] expects that he can count on [Huma] Abedin to help, and Abedin seems to understand that she needs to be responsive to Band. This would be a lot of effort for powerful people to expend, if it led to nothing at all. There are two obvious possibilities. One is that the State Department actually was granting important favors to Clinton Foundation donors that the many sustained investigations have somehow failed to detect. The other, which is more likely, is that someone, somewhere along the line, was getting played" [ The New Yorker ]. Surely those two possibilities are not mutually exclusive? And public office is being used for private gain in either case?

UPDATE "Even as the Clintons are touting plans to distance themselves from their foundation and limit its fundraising if Hillary Clinton is elected president, they're planning one last glitzy fundraising bash on Friday to belatedly celebrate Bill Clinton's 70th birthday" [ Politico ].

"Plans called for performances by Wynton Marsalis, Jon Bon Jovi and Barbra Streisand, according to people briefed on the planning. They said that major donors are being asked to give $250,000 to be listed as a chair for the party, $100,000 to be listed a co-chair and $50,000 to be listed as a vice-chair." Sounds lovely! How I wish I could go…

[Sep 15, 2016] Are the categories terrorist and dictator versus crucial allies are determined based on the size of payments to the Clinton Foundation?

Sep 15, 2016 | www.moonofalabama.org

As one Michael Curry points out , Clinton's social messaging team is simply incompetent.

From a series of Clinton tweets attacking Trump over his assumed foreign policy:

Hillary Clinton @HillaryClinton

4. If you were willing to work with Qaddafi-a known terrorist and dictator-is there anyone you aren't willing to make a deal with? Who?

9:32 AM - 14 Sep 2016

---

Hillary Clinton @HillaryClinton

Hillary Clinton Retweeted Donald J. Trump

13. How can we know you won't (again) impulsively damage relationships with crucial allies to preserve your own ego? Hillary Clinton added,

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Dopey Prince @Alwaleed_Talal wants to control our U.S. politicians with daddy's money. Can't do it when I get elected. #Trump2016

7:53 PM - 11 Dec 2015

9:48 AM - 14 Sep 2016

Is such incompetence in messaging a reflection of Hillary Clinton own confusion? Or are the categories "terrorist and dictator" versus "crucial allies" solely depending on the size of payments to the Clinton Foundation?

Posted by b at 02:03 PM | Comments (6) originalone | Sep 15, 2016 2:08:08 PM | 1
Again, B hits the nail on the head. Oh wait, could it be the koolaid by Putin the cause?

Terry | Sep 15, 2016 2:21:10 PM | 2
She is sliding to throwing mud ,. what ever will stick will do the trick I guess .This started after some polls showing the Donald ahead a few points .

FecklessLeft | Sep 15, 2016 2:52:32 PM | 3
I recognize election season is always crazy in the states, especially as an outside observer looking in, but this cycle seems so far beyond that norm compared even to 4 years ago it makes me quite uncomfortable. It reeks of a growing desperation by the elites to me. The 2012 campaigns of the two major parties were a circus by any measure, but they seem completely measured and intellectual by this year's standards.

I understand American culture dwells a lot on violence, but the new standards of political rhetoric disturb me greatly. It seems most of the country's population is either willfully ignorant of the destruction their country creates or cheers it on wildly and willingly. How anybody could advocate carpet bombing without irony or rebuttal is frightenening. That it could drum up support - well that's just depressing.

The two most important topics in this election, nuclear weapons and global warming, both candidates have been decidedly silent about. It scares me that neither party even attempts to appeal to the left anymore, except by manipulating them by fear and non existent 'security' issues. If it's all about PR and perception management anyways, I wonder why Clinton wears her right leaning nature and war mongering history on her sleeve? Maybe content and debate matters less than I assume it does to the average American voter. Maybe it's totally about spectacle and personality now and nothing else. Sad, sad days for those who live in the middle of the Empire but it's hard to be sympathetic sometimes. It seems the hot new consumer electronic device gets more of a thorough analysis and debate than does either major party candidates' platform (if you could even call it that).

Vote republican and catastrophic, irreversible climate change is almost guaranteed, with a hearty chance of more war and more regime change operations (despite attempts to paint the candidate as 'isolationist').

Vote democrat for more wars and regime change, with the status quo of environmental destruction happily maintained (despite the attempts to paint the candidate as an 'environmentalist').

james | Sep 15, 2016 2:54:25 PM | 4
this us election is much more pathetic then usual... witnessing the standing president refer to putin akin to saddam hussain is frankly insane, but shows how depraved the usa has gotten... and, besides that, since when did the average usa person even know where any place outside the usa was on a map, let alone having actually been their? oh - i guess it doesn't matter...

as @1 originalone says basically 'putin did it'...

Les | Sep 15, 2016 2:57:20 PM | 5
As everyone knows, the US normalized relations with Qaddafi in 2004.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya%E2%80%93United_States_relations#Normalizing_relations

The Obama administration authorized CIA backing of the rebellion almost before it started. In all likelihood, it started several years before the revolt, and the authorization was to provide legal cover for activity that was already ongoing.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-usa-order-idUSTRE72T6H220110331

Erelis | Sep 15, 2016 3:18:51 PM | 6
@ FecklessLeft 3

Unfortunately, your observations are sharp, correct and to the point. All I can weakly offer is something Ralph Nader said. Ralph Nader once noted that the difference between the democrats and republicans is the difference between a car hitting a wall at 60 miles per hour versus 120 miles per hour. Not so anymore. Now both cars will hit the wall going as fast as they can. And the passengers will jump for joy at the speed.

[Sep 14, 2016] Hillary Is Not Sorry

Clinton is neither well-liked nor trusted. She is just a marionette promoted by neocon cabal. Sanders team has a point that Clinton is like the job candidate wit the impressive resume who sounds great on paper, but then when you meet her in person, you realize she's not he right person for the job.
Notable quotes:
"... She has never acknowledged, maybe even to herself, that routing diplomatic emails with classified information through a homebrew server was an outrageous, reckless and foolish thing to do, and disloyal to Obama, whose administration put in place rules for record-keeping that she flouted. ..."
"... And Hillary did not merely fail the ask the right questions. The questions were asked and the answers were given. Joe Biden, Robert Gates and much of the military and intelligence communities advised against the Libya intervention. Hillary just chose to ignore the advice, because she is a radical neoconservative at heart. ..."
"... She volunteered that that the United States should continue to "look for missions" that NATO will support ..."
"... She vows to go around looking for new military adventures. ..."
"... Maureen is right that Hillary has huge character problems. Sure, she can't admit mistakes and compulsively blames others when things go wrong. That's a given. But it's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that she will take our country down the wrong path, both in terms of domestic and foreign policy. ..."
"... She has had 40-some years to develop this kind of judgment, imagination and long term reflection, and she has proudly, aggressively, mean-spiritedly run the opposite direction every time and viciously attacked anyone who called her on it. It's time to stop this game of "wondering" whether she can change, wondering whether all of these terrible moments were "the real Hillary" or not. They were. Voting someone in as President on the hope that they will be a completely different person once in office then they have been in 40 years is the definition of insanity. ..."
"... it's about her paranoia about secrecy that made her think she could get away with a private email server in one of the nation's most high-profile jobs, or taking huge sums of money for Wall Street speeches she now refuses to release, or doubling-down on her ill-considered, if not ill-informed (as you note), hawkish regime change views by advocating for it again in Libya that has, as a result, turned into an ISIS outpost. ..."
"... Clinton did herself no favors in the debate, drawing even more attention to her dependence on that money and the impossibility of being completely free to make policy without repaying debts. ..."
"... They don't, but it is telling that Bill said that. His chosen exaggeration displays who he sees as Hillary's side in this. When he says, "they are coming for us" he means Wall Street. ..."
"... "Clinton, who talked Obama into it" on Libya and claimed credit, but when it went poorly, she blamed Obama for listening to her, "On Libya, she noted that "the decision was the president's."" That is her claim to experience, and not something we ought to vote to experience again. ..."
"... Hillary is a self-serving, power hungry politician. She is only ever sorry if she fails to get what she wants, or is forced to explain her actions. She feels she is above "the masses." As for her qualifications, job titles alone don't cut it. What did she actually accomplish as a Senator or SecState? Any major laws? Treaties? No. She failed with Russia, Syria and Libya to name just a few. She is not qualified to be president based on qualifications and personality. ..."
Apr 16, 2016 | The New York Times

... Clinton sowed suspicion again, refusing to cough up her Wall Street speech transcripts.

... ... ...

Hillary alternately tried to blame and hug the men in her life, divvying up credit in a self-serving way.

After showing some remorse for the 1994 crime bill, saying it had had "unintended" consequences, she stressed that her husband "was the president who actually signed it." On Libya, she noted that "the decision was the president's." And on her desire to train and arm Syrian rebels, she recalled, "The president said no."

But she wrapped herself in President Obama's record on climate change and, when criticized on her "super PACs," said, well, Obama did it, too.

Sanders accused her of pandering to Israel after she said that "if Yasir Arafat had agreed with my husband at Camp David," there would have been a Palestinian state for 15 years.

Bernie is right that Hillary's judgment has often been faulty.

She has shown an unwillingness to be introspective and learn from her mistakes. From health care to Iraq to the email server, she only apologizes at the point of a gun. And even then, she leaves the impression that she is merely sorry to be facing criticism, not that she miscalculated in the first place.

... ... ...

She has never acknowledged, maybe even to herself, that routing diplomatic emails with classified information through a homebrew server was an outrageous, reckless and foolish thing to do, and disloyal to Obama, whose administration put in place rules for record-keeping that she flouted.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story Wouldn't it be a relief to people if Hillary just acknowledged some mistakes?

... ... ...

Clinton accused Sanders of not doing his homework on how he would break up the banks. And she is the queen of homework, always impressively well versed in meetings. But that is what makes her failure to read the National Intelligence Estimate that raised doubts about whether Iraq posed a threat to the U.S. so egregious.

P. Greenberg El Cerrito, CA

Maureen Dowd fundamentally misunderstands Hillary Clinton's foreign policy failings. When it comes to Libya, Clinton does not merely need to apologize for getting distracted by other global issues and "taking her eye off the ball". The decision to go in was wrong, not the failure to follow through.

And Hillary did not merely fail the ask the right questions. The questions were asked and the answers were given. Joe Biden, Robert Gates and much of the military and intelligence communities advised against the Libya intervention. Hillary just chose to ignore the advice, because she is a radical neoconservative at heart.

Clinton continues to adhere to the neoconservative approach to foreign policy. Her choice of words during the Brooklyn debate were significant. She volunteered that that the United States should continue to "look for missions" that NATO will support. That says it all. She vows to go around looking for new military adventures.

Maureen is right that Hillary has huge character problems. Sure, she can't admit mistakes and compulsively blames others when things go wrong. That's a given. But it's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that she will take our country down the wrong path, both in terms of domestic and foreign policy.

And please Maureen, stop denigrating Bernie Sanders with pejorative adjectives and vague accusations. He has held elective office for 35 years, showing leadership and good judgment and good values.

Brett Morris California,

She has had 40-some years to develop this kind of judgment, imagination and long term reflection, and she has proudly, aggressively, mean-spiritedly run the opposite direction every time and viciously attacked anyone who called her on it. It's time to stop this game of "wondering" whether she can change, wondering whether all of these terrible moments were "the real Hillary" or not. They were. Voting someone in as President on the hope that they will be a completely different person once in office then they have been in 40 years is the definition of insanity.

That said, of course she is better than the republicans. But she is the worst possible candidate for the Democratic Party, especially in this era where we have a serious opportunity to turn away from Reagan's Overton Window. And right now we actually have a candidate available who represents our best ideas. Can't we just ditch her while we have the chance? If she gets elected, more war is absolutely guaranteed. A one-term Presidency is also highly likely, because nobody will be on her side. She loses trust and support the more she exposes herself, every time.

Paul Long island

I agree when you say of Hillary Clinton, "She has shown an unwillingness to be introspective and learn from her mistakes." That is only part of her problem because her judgment seems always wrong, despite all the "listening tours," whether it's about her paranoia about secrecy that made her think she could get away with a private email server in one of the nation's most high-profile jobs, or taking huge sums of money for Wall Street speeches she now refuses to release, or doubling-down on her ill-considered, if not ill-informed (as you note), hawkish regime change views by advocating for it again in Libya that has, as a result, turned into an ISIS outpost. To say she's "sorry" would only confirm her consistently bad judgment since she has so much to be sorry about. So, what we have instead is a very "sorry" candidate who, despite her resume and establishment backing, is having immense trouble overcoming "a choleric 74-year-old democratic socialist" and will have an even harder time if she's the Democratic nominee in November.

Rima Regas is a trusted commenter Mission Viejo, CA

Hillary isn't sorry. Bill is definitely not sorry. Bernie Sanders isn't a senator with few accomplishments.

Hillary isn't sorry about anything. She hasn't apologized for the superpredator comment. Saying she wouldn't say it now is hardly an apology and during Thursday's debate, she talked about her husband apologizing for it instead of talking about herself (since that was what she was being asked to do), when Bill has yet to apologize. (Clips here: http://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2bw) If anything, he doubled down on defending her and himself. When it comes to mass-incarceration, they both exhibit a kind of moral absenteeism. http://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2b7

On money in politics, Clinton did herself no favors in the debate, drawing even more attention to her dependence on that money and the impossibility of being completely free to make policy without repaying debts. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was no help to her this week when in an answer, she included big money in the "Big Tent" that the democratic party is supposed to be. http://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2bO

During his entire tenure in both houses of Congress, Sanders has distinguished himself as one who can work with the other side, propose legislation gets things done through amendments. There is a yuuuge difference in approach between Clinton and Sanders and the willingness to trust Sanders over Clinton. When the choice in front of Americans becomes Trump versus Clinton or Sanders, Sanders wins by a wider margin. Sanders will take more from Trump.

Mark Thomason is a trusted commenter Clawson, Mich

So Bill claimed Bernie supporters think, "Just shoot every third person on Wall Street and everything will be fine."

They don't, but it is telling that Bill said that. His chosen exaggeration displays who he sees as Hillary's side in this. When he says, "they are coming for us" he means Wall Street.

"Clinton, who talked Obama into it" on Libya and claimed credit, but when it went poorly, she blamed Obama for listening to her, "On Libya, she noted that "the decision was the president's.""

That is her claim to experience, and not something we ought to vote to experience again.

That is important, because she still wants to sink us deeper into it. Her own adviser on this says, Hillary "does not see the Libya intervention as a failure, but as a work in progress."

"Like other decisions, it was put through a political filter and a paranoid mind-set." That is the essence of what makes Hillary so dangerous in a responsible office. From Iraq in the beginning to Libya now, the homework lady did all her work and then saw the wrong things and got it wrong.

Joe Pike Gotham City

Hillary is a self-serving, power hungry politician. She is only ever sorry if she fails to get what she wants, or is forced to explain her actions. She feels she is above "the masses." As for her qualifications, job titles alone don't cut it. What did she actually accomplish as a Senator or SecState? Any major laws? Treaties? No. She failed with Russia, Syria and Libya to name just a few. She is not qualified to be president based on qualifications and personality.

[Sep 14, 2016] I wonder if Bill Clinton got AIDS

Sep 14, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com

Transformer Bunghole Sep 13, 2016 12:47 PM

Here's a good analysis of her condition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr1IDQ2V1eM

Lore rbg81 Sep 13, 2016 2:52 PM

Bill looks sick too. Notice the extreme thinness, and that red waxy pallor. I wonder if he's got AIDS. Serve the mass-murdering psychopathic SOB right.

J S Bach Four chan May 30, 2016 2:05 AM

Just sit right back

And you'll hear a tale

A tale of a sordid lot

Who started from this Florida port

Aboard this pervert yacht.

The mate was a sleazy Jewish boy

Both cocky and assured

Five pedophiles set sail that day

For an all-weekend splurge

An all-weekend splurge.

The pressure started heating up

The foul ship was tossed

If not for the cover of his corrupt tribe

Jeff Epstein would be lost

Jeff Epstein would be lost.

The ship touched ground

On the shore of this uncharted orgy isle

With Billy-Boy

Jeff Epstein too

The millionaires

Without their wives

The movie stars

Prince Andrew and Dershowitz

Here on Jeff Epstein's isle. conscious being J S Bach May 30, 2016 2:21 AM Fantastic. You could write for Hollyweird. .. On second thought, they might not appreciate your style.

Tarjan willwork4food May 30, 2016 12:56 PM If that was my wife I would divorce her and go get a real life. But what do I know about how psychopathic/pervert minds work?

~ Jeffersonian Liberal Richard Chesler May 30, 2016 12:45 PM Richard,

Did you miss the part about surveillance cameras being set up in key places around the compound to record people engaging in child rape so that it could be used for blackmail?

It may be PC to say one's sex life is personal and no one's business, but when you are a public servant (which is all these scum-fucking-bags are supposed to be, not elitist rulers), then the personal life becomes one of national importance.

If the sociopathic rug-muncher Shitlary manages to steal what the feminazis will rebrand as the "Ova Office," you can be damn sure that she is very vulnerable to being blackmailed for her scumbag husband's lifetime of rape.

She will give the blackmailers whatever the fuck they want because she'll want her term to be so many years of 'peace and prosperity,' the same lie the leftists used to rewrite the history of the 92-2000.

[Sep 13, 2016] Neocon Kagan: Hillary Clinton Is One Of Us

Notable quotes:
"... In fact, HRC may be a better prospect for neocons, because they can distract the Dem base with how cool it is for a "strong woman" to send men into battle. Anyone opposed must be a misogynist/sexist pig. By contrast Jeb would be too obvious. ..."
"... "There is no prospect of a non-interventionist president." ..."
"... Exactly. Obama has certainly proved this to be true, for those who might've thought otherwise. And since it is true, if one is going to vote anyway, then the decision won't be made on the basis of not "wanting more wars with terrible outcomes." There will have to be another, different, deciding factor, since that factor would rule out Ms. Clinton AND every other candidate. ..."
"... Yes, I have to second Lysander's view. People - both in and outside the US - must first disabuse themselves of ANY notion that the US is a democratic state, that "changes" in leadership will actually bring about ANY difference in foreign/domestic policy and that the American war criminal ship can be righted by the people utilizing the "democratic" mechanisms at their disposal. ..."
"... Furthermore, after the Obama debacle and his utter betrayal etc of his supporters if anyone thinks someone in the American Establishment is looking out for their peon asses why then they probably also believe that the US was "surprised/caught off guard" - yet again - by ISIS et al in Iraq. ..."
"... I wish Rand Paul had his fathers balls, but he doesnt. Ron was a Libertarian pretending to be a Republican, while Rand is a Republican pretending to be a Libertarian... Rand would be no different than any other Republican or Democratic establishment schmuck. ..."
"... I never did like Ron Pauls economic policy, being left leaning, and I'm doubtful whether he would have actually accomplished anything useful as President, but his NonInterventionism was admirable and I was happy to put his name in in the Rethug primary in 2012 for that reason alone. ..."
"... Mr. Kristol said he, too, sensed "more willingness to rethink" neoconservatism, which he called "vindicated to some degree" by the fruits of Mr. Obama's detached approach to Syria and Eastern Europe. Mr. Kagan, he said, gives historical heft to arguments "that are very consistent with the arguments I made, and he made, 20 years ago, 10 years ago." ..."
"... After all the slaughter these people feel like crowing. They are clearly, as JSorrentine often reminds us, pyschopath butchers. ..."
"... Incidentally, where is the outrage from Samantha Powers about the ISIS massacre in Tikrit? ..."
"... Well, I guess the world just can't talk about how the amazingly rapid rise of ISIS/L and fall of Iraq completely continues the plans of the apartheid genocidal state of Israel's - and their traitorous Zionist partners in the American Establishment - as set out in the Yinon Plan and Clean Break strategies because - HOW FORTUITOUS...I mean, terribly sad and unexpected, sorry - some unlucky Israeli teenagers just happened to be "kidnapped" by "Hamas" just as the ISIS show was kicking off or so that's what the apartheid genocidal state of Israel is telling the world. ..."
"... Shrillary wouldn't be where she is today if she wasn't criminally insane. I want her to become President. She'll redefine the meaning of Eerily Inept (a label coined by Gore Vidal and attached to G Dubya Bush). Her greatest moment was when Lavrov called her out on her RESET button and pointed out, with a chuckle, "You got it wrong. It doesn't say RESET it says SHORT CIRCUIT." ..."
"... Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who argued in favor of arming Syrian rebels, said last week at an event in New York hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, "this is not just a Syrian problem anymore. I never thought it was just a Syrian problem. I thought it was a regional problem. ..."
"... Why, even HILLARY is just SOOOO SURPRISED about people trying to erase boundaries, huh? Funny, she should have read further into yesterday's times where it seems that the Zionist mouthpiece of record was desperately trying to get "out in front" of anyone mentioning that the fracturing of Iraq and the ME was all part of long-time Israeli strategy: ..."
"... In 2006, it was Ralph Peters, the retired lieutenant colonel turned columnist, who sketched a map that subdivided Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and envisioned Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite republics emerging from a no-longer-united Iraq. Two years later, The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg imagined similar partings-of-the-ways, with new microstates -- an Alawite Republic, an Islamic Emirate of Gaza -- taking shape and Afghanistan splitting up as well. Last year, it was Robin Wright's turn in this newspaper, in a map that (keeping up with events) subdivided Libya as well. ..."
"... As president she's da bomb! ..."
"... Hillary is a loathsome war mongering bitch. She almost had a public orgasm when Libyan leader Quadaffi was tortured and murdered by US supported Libyan rebels. The muder of Chris Stevens was a case of what goes around comes around. ..."
"... A point which nobody else has made as far as I know. To wit there is a big overlap between the banking and Israel lobbies since wealthy Jews account for a hugely disproportionate number of top financial movers and shakers. Anything that helps the financial industry also helps the war mongering Israel and neo con lobbies. The heavily Jewish Fed is another enabler of all that is wrong with America today. ..."
"... I, also agree, with the possible exception of replacing the word "Zionist", with the word "Corporatist", although both can be rightly used. We'll still get the person the 1%ers want us to have. Ain't Oligarchies grand? ..."
"... Hillary's election depends on two things still unknown: her health and whether the Republicans can manage to choose someone sufficiently batshit crazy to make her the best of abysmal alternatives. ..."
"... HRH is a Neo Liberal of Arianne 'Sniff Sniff' Huffington's type, the 'Third Way Up Your Ass' of Globalist NAFTA/TPP Free Trade Neonazi destruction of labor and environmental protections, and in your face with NOOOOO apologies. ..."
"... And Victoria Nuland indicates that she agrees with her husband Robert Kagan's criticism of Obama's foreign policy. ..."
"... Would it be safe to say Hillary's White Trash ? ..."
"... There are some really nice photographs of Hillary being very friendly with bearded famous Libyan Islamists (Gaddafi was still alive then). In combination with Benghazi - I think you probably can connect the people greeting Hillary with what happened there (and today's Iraq) I would not think she has a chance to convince with foreign policy. ..."
"... 'You have a schism between Sunni and Shia throughout the region that is profound. Some of it is directed or abetted by states who are in contests for power there.'" Now, if only he had mentioned the states included and featured the (United) States and Israel. Obama...usually a day late and a dollar short and leading or retreating from behind. ..."
"... I would rank Obama as the most cynical one. He is doing the dark colonial art. You can berate Bush for bombing Iraq (Obama did that with Libya, just as bad), but he did sink American manpower and treasure for all this futile nation building stuff, ie he tried to repair it. ..."
"... Obama tried to double down on the nation building stuff in Afghanistan, even copying the "surge". He is still not out of Afghanistan. ..."
"... He then tried to continue Bush's policy on the cheap, scrapping the nation building stuff and concentrating on shock and awe in Libya. When Russia put a stop to that in Syria he doubled down on the subversion supporting guerilla groups. He is now back in Iraq with allies supporting a "Sunni" insurrection by proxy. After a "color revolution" in Ukraine. ..."
"... It is not "US foreign policy" but the policy of the british empire. If he was running a US foreign policy, he would at least sometimes do something positive for Americans, by accident if nothing more. ..."
"... Economic policy to vote on? Are you joking? Whichever party we elect we get Neoliberalism anyway. ..."
"... "That smile and her gloating about his death made me feel she was some sort of sociopath." Massinissa, you meant psychopath, didn't you? ..."
Jun 16, 2014 | moonofalabama.org

Here is the reason why Hillary Clinton should never ever become President of the United States.

A (sympathetic) New York Times profile of neocon Robert Kagan has this on Clinton II:

But Exhibit A for what Robert Kagan describes as his "mainstream" view of American force is his relationship with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes. Mr. Kagan pointed out that he had recently attended a dinner of foreign-policy experts at which Mrs. Clinton was the guest of honor, and that he had served on her bipartisan group of foreign-policy heavy hitters at the State Department, where his wife worked as her spokeswoman.

"I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama's more realist approach "could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table" if elected president. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue," he added, "it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else."

Want more wars with terrible outcomes and no winner at all? Vote the neocon's vessel, Hillary Clinton.

Clinton, by the way, is also a coward, unprincipled and greedy. Her achievements as Secretary of State were about zero. Why would anyone vote for her?

Posted by b on June 16, 2014 at 09:09 AM | Permalink

Lysander | Jun 16, 2014 9:44:15 AM | 4

I'm afraid you focus too much on elections that have no meaning. It seems we may be cornered into choosing between HR Clinton and Jeb Bush. The latter, I'm sure, would earn equal praise from the Kagan clan. There is no prospect of a non-interventionist president. There is no prospect of a president that is not a Zionist stooge.

In fact, HRC may be a better prospect for neocons, because they can distract the Dem base with how cool it is for a "strong woman" to send men into battle. Anyone opposed must be a misogynist/sexist pig. By contrast Jeb would be too obvious.

dahoit | Jun 16, 2014 9:54:05 AM | 6

Personally, I don't think she is anyone to worry about gaining the office. Too much hatred of her by most Americans, from her serial lying to her terrible foreign policy, to her standing by bent dick, in her lust for power. She will be backed by feminazis,homonazis and zionazis(Kagan).

Not enough devil worshippers in America,at least not yet,and I believe Americans,from current events that our traitor MSM will be unable to counter with their usual BS,that we are down the rabbit hole of idiotic intervention,and we will end this nonsense,and return to worrying about America,not foreign malevolent monsters like Israel.
Well,I can at least hope,it springs eternal.

Earwig | Jun 16, 2014 9:58:14 AM | 7

"There is no prospect of a non-interventionist president."

Exactly. Obama has certainly proved this to be true, for those who might've thought otherwise. And since it is true, if one is going to vote anyway, then the decision won't be made on the basis of not "wanting more wars with terrible outcomes." There will have to be another, different, deciding factor, since that factor would rule out Ms. Clinton AND every other candidate.

JSorrentine | Jun 16, 2014 10:01:53 AM | 8

Yes, I have to second Lysander's view. People - both in and outside the US - must first disabuse themselves of ANY notion that the US is a democratic state, that "changes" in leadership will actually bring about ANY difference in foreign/domestic policy and that the American war criminal ship can be righted by the people utilizing the "democratic" mechanisms at their disposal.

I understand that some speak to how corrupt our institutions are but there always seems to be a "feel-goodiness" - i.e., we can still fix it all, boys and girls, if you all just clap your hands LOUDER!! - implicit in their analyses/prescriptions when there should be nothing but anger, fear and revulsion towards the fascist war criminal state that we live within.

Furthermore, after the Obama debacle and his utter betrayal etc of his supporters if anyone thinks someone in the American Establishment is looking out for their peon asses why then they probably also believe that the US was "surprised/caught off guard" - yet again - by ISIS et al in Iraq.

Fucking nonsense.

Massinissa | Jun 16, 2014 11:40:18 AM | 13

"There is no chance of a non-interventionist president"

I wish Rand Paul had his fathers balls, but he doesnt. Ron was a Libertarian pretending to be a Republican, while Rand is a Republican pretending to be a Libertarian... Rand would be no different than any other Republican or Democratic establishment schmuck.

I never did like Ron Pauls economic policy, being left leaning, and I'm doubtful whether he would have actually accomplished anything useful as President, but his NonInterventionism was admirable and I was happy to put his name in in the Rethug primary in 2012 for that reason alone.

Mike Maloney | Jun 16, 2014 12:01:20 PM | 15

Great post, b. I saw the article and felt the same thing. While commentators are right to say that the foreign policy of the U.S. remains largely untouched regardless of which candidate or party wins the White House (which the NYT piece does a fine job illustrating), I do think Hillary is the worst the Democrats have to offer.

What I found amazing about the story is how neocons are now preening about as if they have been vindicated:

Mr. Kristol said he, too, sensed "more willingness to rethink" neoconservatism, which he called "vindicated to some degree" by the fruits of Mr. Obama's detached approach to Syria and Eastern Europe. Mr. Kagan, he said, gives historical heft to arguments "that are very consistent with the arguments I made, and he made, 20 years ago, 10 years ago."
After all the slaughter these people feel like crowing. They are clearly, as JSorrentine often reminds us, pyschopath butchers.

Incidentally, where is the outrage from Samantha Powers about the ISIS massacre in Tikrit?

Dubhaltach | Jun 16, 2014 12:07:31 PM | 16

Want more wars with terrible outcomes and no winner at all? Vote the neocon's vessel, Hillary Clinton.

That's what they've been voting for generations - why change the habit of a lifetime?

Clinton, by the way, is also a coward, unprincipled and greedy. Her achievements as Secretary of State were about zero. Why would anyone vote for her?

Well at the risk of being a smartass her achievements were negative, the American hegemony is in worse condition because of her.

Dubhaltach

JSorrentine | Jun 16, 2014 12:10:24 PM | 17

OT:

Well, I guess the world just can't talk about how the amazingly rapid rise of ISIS/L and fall of Iraq completely continues the plans of the apartheid genocidal state of Israel's - and their traitorous Zionist partners in the American Establishment - as set out in the Yinon Plan and Clean Break strategies because - HOW FORTUITOUS...I mean, terribly sad and unexpected, sorry - some unlucky Israeli teenagers just happened to be "kidnapped" by "Hamas" just as the ISIS show was kicking off or so that's what the apartheid genocidal state of Israel is telling the world.

Yeah, I bet the apartheid genocidal state of Israel probably has just NO IDEA about what's going on in Iraq what with their harrowing search - read: collective punishment for the residents of the illegally occupied territories - for the 3 missing boys who haven't been ransomed or claimed to have been taken by anyone.

Wait a second...what if it was ISIS/L and NOT Hamas that "kidnapped" the boys!!!Holy tie-in, Bat-Man!!!!

Then there would be NO WAY that what we're witnessing is the furthering of the Yinon Plan because the apartheid genocidal Israelis would never instigate false flag terror to further/distract from their own ends/agenda, would they? Nah.

Wait a second...they ALREADY DID (supposedly):

A Qaeda-inspired group calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria - Palestine, West Bank claimed responsibility for the kidnappings, saying it wanted to avenge Israel's killing of three of its group in the Hebron area late last year and to try to free prisoners from Israeli jails. The credibility of the claim was not immediately clear.

But clear enough for the Zionist mouthpiece of the NYT to print it, right?

Hoarsewhisperer | Jun 16, 2014 12:18:00 PM | 18

Shrillary wouldn't be where she is today if she wasn't criminally insane. I want her to become President. She'll redefine the meaning of Eerily Inept (a label coined by Gore Vidal and attached to G Dubya Bush). Her greatest moment was when Lavrov called her out on her RESET button and pointed out, with a chuckle, "You got it wrong. It doesn't say RESET it says SHORT CIRCUIT."

Then he laughed. At her, not with her. She's a sick, intellectually lazy, dumb, joke. America deserves her.

JSorrentine | Jun 16, 2014 12:41:43 PM | 20

Here's Killary quoted in the NYT yesterday:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who argued in favor of arming Syrian rebels, said last week at an event in New York hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, "this is not just a Syrian problem anymore. I never thought it was just a Syrian problem. I thought it was a regional problem. I could not have predicted, however, the extent to which ISIS could be effective in seizing cities in Iraq and trying to erase boundaries to create an Islamic state."

Why, even HILLARY is just SOOOO SURPRISED about people trying to erase boundaries, huh? Funny, she should have read further into yesterday's times where it seems that the Zionist mouthpiece of record was desperately trying to get "out in front" of anyone mentioning that the fracturing of Iraq and the ME was all part of long-time Israeli strategy:

Here's from another NYT piece yesterday:

In 2006, it was Ralph Peters, the retired lieutenant colonel turned columnist, who sketched a map that subdivided Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and envisioned Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite republics emerging from a no-longer-united Iraq. Two years later, The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg imagined similar partings-of-the-ways, with new microstates -- an Alawite Republic, an Islamic Emirate of Gaza -- taking shape and Afghanistan splitting up as well. Last year, it was Robin Wright's turn in this newspaper, in a map that (keeping up with events) subdivided Libya as well.

Peters's map, which ran in Armed Forces Journal, inspired conspiracy theories about how this was America's real plan for remaking the Middle East. But the reality is entirely different: One reason these maps have remained strictly hypothetical, even amid regional turmoil, is that the United States has a powerful interest in preserving the Sykes-Picot status quo.

This is not because the existing borders are in any way ideal. Indeed, there's a very good chance that a Middle East that was more politically segregated by ethnicity and faith might become a more stable and harmonious region in the long run.

My favorite part of the above column is that it references a previous column from the Zionist NYT from last year in which a war criminal even drew up the new map of the ME!!

Oh, but that war criminal thought SYRIA was going to be the trigger that allowed for the culmination of the Yinon Plan. Oops!

And then ALSO YESTERDAY in the NYT everyone's favorite little war Establishment mouthpiece Nicholas Kristoff had this to say:

The crucial step, and the one we should apply diplomatic pressure to try to achieve, is for Maliki to step back and share power with Sunnis while accepting decentralization of government.

If Maliki does all that, it may still be possible to save Iraq. Without that, airstrikes would be a further waste in a land in which we've already squandered far, far too much.

DECENTRALIZATION, huh? Why, Nicky, that sounds like what Putin has suggested for Ukraine, huh? Shhhhhhhh

And of course Mr. Fuckhead Tom Friedman weighs in ALSO YESTERDAY in the NYT with this:

THE disintegration of Iraq and Syria is upending an order that has defined the Middle East for a century. It is a huge event, and we as a country need to think very carefully about how to respond. Having just returned from Iraq two weeks ago, my own thinking is guided by five principles, and the first is that, in Iraq today, my enemy's enemy is my enemy. Other than the Kurds, we have no friends in this fight. Neither Sunni nor Shiite leaders spearheading the war in Iraq today share our values.

The ME is going to be split up inevitably: check

The US/Israel are JUST NOWHERE to be found: check

Thanks, Tom, you fucking war criminal scum!!!

To review:

Everyone in the Establishment - fake left, right, center, dove, hawk, blah blah - says that it's just inevitable now that Iraq and the ME will probably be broken up.

Everyone in the Establishment also agrees that NO ONE could see this whole ISIS etc shitpile coming, right?

Anyone else get the feeling that this is a coordinated continuation of the Zionist Plan for the Middle East?

Naahh. Nothing to see here, fuckers!!! Move along!!!!

Penny | Jun 16, 2014 12:45:13 PM | 21

I am thirding Lysanders comment

Hillary is perfect for '(p)resident'

She ties right in with the whole pink power agenda. She is the woMAN version and can also be useful for the women=victims, but, no way for the women/whore

women/victim/whore is quintessentially Pussy Riot

And if you criticize HC you are just a woman hater!
(you know like antisemitic)
Same as Obama- criticize him, you are just a racist
Shuts the complaints right off!

As president she's da bomb!

Eureka Springs | Jun 16, 2014 1:48:59 PM | 22

These people aren't just measuring the drapes... they're counting corpses she's sure to order.

A most barbaric woman/human being, a terrible person, a terrible Governors wife, First Lady, Senator, SOS.... Obviously will be a perfect President.

She's a shoe-in. Hopefully it will be a presidency that once and for all sends the Demo party the way of the Whigs.

Andoheb | Jun 16, 2014 2:38:11 PM | 24

Hillary is a loathsome war mongering bitch. She almost had a public orgasm when Libyan leader Quadaffi was tortured and murdered by US supported Libyan rebels. The muder of Chris Stevens was a case of what goes around comes around.

Andoheb | Jun 16, 2014 2:47:02 PM | 25

A point which nobody else has made as far as I know. To wit there is a big overlap between the banking and Israel lobbies since wealthy Jews account for a hugely disproportionate number of top financial movers and shakers. Anything that helps the financial industry also helps the war mongering Israel and neo con lobbies. The heavily Jewish Fed is another enabler of all that is wrong with America today.

ben | Jun 16, 2014 2:55:41 PM | 26

lysander @ 4: "There is no prospect of a president that is not a Zionist stooge."

I, also agree, with the possible exception of replacing the word "Zionist", with the word "Corporatist", although both can be rightly used. We'll still get the person the 1%ers want us to have. Ain't Oligarchies grand?

Knut | Jun 16, 2014 3:27:22 PM | 31

Hillary's election depends on two things still unknown: her health and whether the Republicans can manage to choose someone sufficiently batshit crazy to make her the best of abysmal alternatives. I think her health is the critical variable, as the PTB are going to make sure that the Republican candidate will come out strongly for privatization of social security and reversing the 19th amendment. Vote-rigging and gerrymandering will maintain a sufficiently close election to preserve the simulacrum of a free election.

@18 You live in a dream world.

chip nikh | Jun 16, 2014 4:30:18 PM | 34

HRH is a Neo Liberal of Arianne 'Sniff Sniff' Huffington's type, the 'Third Way Up Your
Ass' of Globalist NAFTA/TPP Free Trade Neonazi destruction of labor and environmental
protections, and in your face with NOOOOO apologies.

That she is a totally-disjointed Royal is clear in her 'dead broke' claim. That she is a famous Hectorian, constantly checking which way public opinion is flowing, then crafting
her confabulated dialogue as screed to her real intents, is well known. Der Prevaricator.

What should be equally well known, if news got around, Hillary (and UKs Milliband) grifted
Hamid Karzai $5 BILLION of Americans' last life savings, stolen from US Humanitarian Aid
to Afghanistan, then made five trips to Kabul for no apparent purpose, before announcing
that her $-35 MILLION 'dead broke' presidential campaign had been paid off by 'anonymous
donors'. This is all public record; in the 2009 International Conference on Afghanistan in
London, right in the conference speeches, framed as 'Karzai's demand', but in fact, that
speech of Karzai's was written by US State Department. I read the drafts. 'Bicycling'.

Hillary soon had to fly back one more time and grift Karzai an emergency $3.5 BILLION
theft, after he lost Americans' $5 BILLION while speculating in Dubai R/E by looting
his Bank of Kabul. Her 'injection of capital' saved the bank from being audited, and
no doubt saved all the Kaganites from an embarrassing and public episiotomy.

In the end, Hillary retired with a fortune of $50 MILLION, again announced publicly, which
together with the $-35 MILLION campaign payoff in violation of all US election regulations,
is exactly 1% of the $8.5 BILLION she grifted to Karzai. She's in the 'One Percent Club'.
"It's a Great Big Club, ...and you ain't in it!" George 'The Man' Carlin

But who cares? I'll tell you. The Russian know about this grift, certainly the Israelis
know about this grift, the Millibandits know, the London Karzais know, and if G-d forbid,
Hillary became HRHOTUS, Americans will be blackmailed down to their underdrawers.

That's the Levant Way.

lysias | Jun 16, 2014 4:36:24 PM | 36

And Victoria Nuland indicates that she agrees with her husband Robert Kagan's criticism of Obama's foreign policy.

Cold N. Holefield | Jun 16, 2014 7:40:23 PM | 44

Would it be safe to say Hillary's White Trash? And to think, she was once a Goldwater Girl. So many faces, so many more to come.

somebody | Jun 16, 2014 7:51:25 PM | 45

Posted by: scalawag | Jun 16, 2014 5:54:41 PM | 38

There are some really nice photographs of Hillary being very friendly with bearded famous Libyan Islamists (Gaddafi was still alive then). In combination with Benghazi - I think you probably can connect the people greeting Hillary with what happened there (and today's Iraq) I would not think she has a chance to convince with foreign policy.

Female voters are not stupid.

People do not vote on foreign policy. As US household incomes are decreasing there should be a lot of economic policy to vote on.

truthbetold | Jun 16, 2014 7:51:40 PM | 46

"Well at the risk of being a smartass her achievements were negative, the American hegemony is in worse condition because of her."
Because of her and it.

Dubhaltach gets it right, and as applied to events inclusive of and after 9-11-2001. The purported masterful seamless garment of conspiracy,
yet it weakened the US and helped get Israel whacked good by Hezbollah.

As for the unmentioned Saudi, it is of course impossible that Saudi could outplay longterm both the US and Israel longterm.

Just as it was impossible Chalabi could outplay the neocons and help win Iran the Iraq War. Who is playing catch up and who is
playing masterfully cohesive and unbeatable conspiracy?

Dubhaltach gets it right, the US will be pushed out of the Mideast and Israel is longterm DOOMED.

truthbetold | Jun 16, 2014 8:45:57 PM | 50

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/06/16/resisting-the-stupid-shit/

Here is Obama in the very recent Remnick interview

"Obama said:

'You have a schism between Sunni and Shia throughout the region that is profound. Some of it is directed or abetted by states who are in contests for power there.'" Now, if only he had mentioned the states included and featured the (United) States and Israel. Obama...usually a day late and a dollar short and leading or retreating from behind.

somebody | Jun 17, 2014 5:06:26 AM | 71

Posted by: HnH | Jun 17, 2014 4:30:40 AM | 64

I would rank Obama as the most cynical one. He is doing the dark colonial art. You can berate Bush for bombing Iraq (Obama did that with Libya, just as bad), but he did sink American manpower and treasure for all this futile nation building stuff, ie he tried to repair it.

The withdrawal from Iraq was negotiated by Bush. It was an election campaign deceit to pretend Obama's foreign policy was any different.

Obama tried to double down on the nation building stuff in Afghanistan, even copying the "surge". He is still not out of Afghanistan.

He then tried to continue Bush's policy on the cheap, scrapping the nation building stuff and concentrating on shock and awe in Libya. When Russia put a stop to that in Syria he doubled down on the subversion supporting guerilla groups. He is now back in Iraq with allies supporting a "Sunni" insurrection by proxy. After a "color revolution" in Ukraine.

He just "sold" US foreign policy in a different target group, Hillary will sell it to her target group, Jeb Bush to his.

The substance never changes and is cooked by the Council of Foreign Relations.

T2015 | Jun 17, 2014 5:45:44 AM | 72

It is not "US foreign policy" but the policy of the british empire. If he was running a US foreign policy, he would at least sometimes do something positive for Americans, by accident if nothing more.

Massinissa | Jun 17, 2014 11:53:21 AM | 84

@45

Economic policy to vote on? Are you joking? Whichever party we elect we get Neoliberalism anyway.

Crone | Jun 18, 2014 12:23:56 AM | 97

"That smile and her gloating about his death made me feel she was some sort of sociopath." Massinissa, you meant psychopath, didn't you?

the following is an excerpt from essay written by James at Winter Patriot:

"... Psychopaths are people without a conscience; without compassion for others; without a sense of shame or guilt. The majority of people carry within them the concern for others that evolution has instilled in us to allow us to survive as groups. This is the evolutionary basis of the quality of compassion. Compassion is not just a matter of virtue; it is a matter of survival. Psychopaths do not have this concern for others and so are a danger to the survival of the rest of us.

Psychopaths, as a homogeneous group, would not survive one or two generations by themselves. They are motivated only by self interest and would exploit each other till they ended up killing each other. Which gives one pause for thought! They are parasites and need the rest of us to survive. In doing so they compromise the survival of the whole species.

Psychopaths represent approximately between 1% and 20% of the population in western countries depending on whose research you go by and also depending on how broad a definition of the condition you adopt. It is generally held, though, that there is a hard core of between 4-6% or so and maybe another 10 -15% of the population that is functionally psychopathic in that they will exploit their fellow human being without hesitation.

The hard core are untreatable. They see nothing wrong with who or what they are. The other 10-15% group may be persuaded to act differently in a different environment or a different society. The second group act out of a misguided strategy of survival. I'll concentrate on the hard core 5% and the singular fact that must be borne in mind with them is that they are incapable of change for the better. They cannot reform or be reformed. And you can take that to the bank in every case! They must never be trusted.

Documented liars like those that populate the current Kiev regime can be confidently assumed to be psychopaths from their behaviour and so will never negotiate in good faith and will always renege on any deals they make. The same can be said for the governments of the US and UK who back them. Historically, they have never made a treaty that they did not subsequently break."

James' essay is extremely informative wrt group psychopathy... some of you may want to give it a read:

http://winterpatriot.com/node/894

psst... imho TPTB are psychopaths as are the puppets whose strings they pull.

Massinissa | Jun 18, 2014 1:29:31 PM | 98@97

My bad... Im not even sure what the difference between the two is.

crone | Jun 18, 2014 4:47:48 PM | 99

sociopath: a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.

see also http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201305/how-spot-sociopath

psychopath: a person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior.
an unstable and aggressive person. "schoolyard psychopaths will gather around a fight to encourage the combatants"

see also http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mindmelding/201301/what-is-psychopath-0

Mina, now that I've looked up these links for you, I am confused myself! Since a sociopath is less of a danger to the rest of us, I prefer to call TPTB and their puppets psychopaths. Not your bad at all, apparently the two are so similar as to there being difficulty telling them apart.

btw, I always enjoy your posts ~ not only do I get new info, but often new sources... which is great. Thanks!

[Sep 13, 2016] Hillary Clinton's National Security Advisers Are a "Who's Who" of the Warfare State

Notable quotes:
"... Hillary Clinton's National Security Advisers Are a "Who's Who" of the Warfare State ..."
"... The list of key advisers - which includes the general who executed the troop surge in Iraq and a former Bush homeland security chief turned terror profiteer - is a strong indicator that Clinton's national security policy will not threaten the post-9/11 national-security status quo that includes active use of military power abroad and heightened security measures at home. ..."
Sep 08, 2016 | theintercept.com

Hillary Clinton's National Security Advisers Are a "Who's Who" of the Warfare State
By Zaid Jilani, Alex Emmons, and Naomi LaChance

HILLARY CLINTON IS meeting with a new national security "working group" that is filled with an elite "who's who" of the military-industrial complex and the security deep state.

The list of key advisers - which includes the general who executed the troop surge in Iraq and a former Bush homeland security chief turned terror profiteer - is a strong indicator that Clinton's national security policy will not threaten the post-9/11 national-security status quo that includes active use of military power abroad and heightened security measures at home.

It's a story we've seen before in President Obama's early appointments. In retrospect, analysts have pointed to the continuity in national security and intelligence advisers as an early sign that despite his campaign rhetoric Obama would end up building on - rather than tearing down - the often-extralegal, Bush-Cheney counterterror regime. For instance, while Obama promised in 2008 to reform the NSA, its director was kept on and its reach continued to grow.

Obama's most fateful decision may have been choosing former National Counterterrorism Center Director John Brennan to be national security adviser, despite Brennan's support of Bush's torture program. Brennan would go on to run the president's drone program, lead the CIA, fight the Senate's torture investigation, and then lie about searching Senate computers.

That backdrop is what makes Clinton's new list of advisers so significant.

It includes Gen. David Petraeus, the major architect of the 2007 Iraq War troop surge, which brought 30,000 more troops to Iraq. Picking him indicates at partiality to combative ideology. It also represents a return to good standing for the general after he pled guilty to leaking notebooks full of classified information to his lover, Paula Broadwell, and got off with two years of probation and a fine. Petraeus currently works at the investment firm KKR & Co.

Another notable member of Clinton's group is Michael Chertoff, a hardliner who served as President George W. Bush's last secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and who since leaving government in 2009 has helmed a corporate consulting firm called the Chertoff Group that promotes security-industry priorities. For example, in 2010, he gave dozens of media interviews touting full-body scanners at airports while his firm was employed by a company that produced body scanning machines. His firmalso employs a number of other ex-security state officials, such as former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden. It does not disclose a complete list of its clients - all of whom now have a line of access to Clinton.

Many others on the list are open advocates of military escalation overseas. Mike Morell, the former acting director of the CIA, endorsed Clinton last month in a New York Times opinion piece that accused Trump of being an "unwitting agent of the Russian Federation." The Times was criticized for not disclosing his current employment by Beacon Global Strategies, a politically powerful national-security consulting firm with strong links to Clinton. Three days later, Morell told Charlie Rose in a PBS interview that the CIA should actively assassinate Russians and Iranians in Syria.

During his time at the CIA, Morell was connected to some of the worst scandals and intelligence failures of the Bush administration. In his book, he apologizes for giving flawed intelligence to Colin Powell about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, but defends the CIA torture program as legal and ethical.

Jim Stavridis, a former NATO supreme allied commander Europe on Clinton's advisory group, told Fox News Radio in July, when he was being vetted by Clinton as a possible vice presidential nominee, that "we have got to get more aggressive going into Syria and Iraq and go after [ISIS] because if we don't they're going to come to us. It's a pretty simple equation." He said he would "encourage the president to take a more aggressive stance against Iran, to increase our military forces in Iraq and Syria, and to confront Vladmir Putin" over his moves in Crimea.

The New York Times reported in 2011 that Michael Vickers, a former Pentagon official on Clinton's new list, led the use of drone strikes. He would grin and tell his colleagues at meetings, "I just want to kill those guys."

Others on the list played a role in the targeted killing policies of the Obama administration, including Chris Fussell, a top aide to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and now a partner with him at his lucrative consulting firm, the McChrystal Group....

[Sep 13, 2016] Bill Clinton Was Here The Elite One-Percent's 'Orgy Island' Exposed Zero Hedge

Sep 13, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com

May 30, 2016

Submitted by Shepard Ambellas of IntellliHub

Bill Clinton made multiple trips to Epstein's private island, Little St James (pictured), between 2002 and 2005

However, the people attending the lavish residence are likely do not go there to discuss "cutting edge scientific and medical research" as the Epstein VI Foundation would like you to believe, but rather go there to experience full-on sexual encounters with underage girls as young as fourteen.

That's right, just like a scene out of the Hollywood blockbuster film Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise, from wild parties to prostitution, orgies and even underage sex, Little St. James reportedly has it all and is seemingly a gathering point frequented by prominent jet-setters, and it is all being exposed. The cat is out of the bag so to speak.

Back in 2005 police conducted an 11-month-long undercover investigation on Jeffery Epstein and his estate after the mother of a 14-year-old girl went to police after suspecting her daughter was paid $300 for at least one sexual act on the island in which she was ordered to strip, leaving on just her panties while giving Epstein a massage.

Although police found tons of photos of young women on the island and even interviewed eyewitnesses, Epstein was hit with a mere slap on the wrist after "pleading to a single charge of prostitution." Epstein later served 13-months of his 18-month service in jail.

In 2008 Epstein was hit again, this time with a $50 million civil suit after another victim, a woman, made a filing in a federal court claiming that she was "recruited" by Epstein to give him a "massage" but was essentially forced into having sexual intercourse with him for $200, which was payable upon completion.

Additionally it is important to point out that Bill Clinton has been mentioned by the press often over the years - and not just for his controversial relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but rather his friendship with Jeffery Epstein.

In fact, flight records indicate that ol' Billy-boy would frequent the island paradise around the 2002 and 2005 era, while Hillary, Bill's wife, was a Senator in New York.

The Daily Mail wrote about one woman's experience on the island:

'I remember asking Jeffrey what's Bill Clinton doing here kind of thing, and he laughed it off and said well he owes me a favor,' one unidentified woman said in the lawsuit, which was filed in Palm Beach Circuit Court.

The woman went on to say how orgies were a regular occurrence and she recalled two young girls from New York who were always seen around the five-house compound but their personal backstories were never revealed.

"At least one woman on the compound was there unwillingly" and was an actual sex slave, according to the Daily Mail.

The woman was allegedly forced to have sex with "politicians, businessmen, royalty, [and] academics" at the retreat and was just one of "more than 40 women" that have come forth with claims against Epstein, showing the vast scale of the man's dark operations, which aren't limited only to 'Orgy Island.'

Moreover Epstein was invited to Chelsea Clinton's wedding in 2010, amongst 400 other guests, demonstrating his close friendship with the Clinton family.

To top it all off "Prince Andrew was allegedly one of the house's visitors. On Friday, the Duke of York was named in a federal lawsuit filed against Epstein, whom the FBI once reportedly linked to 40 young women. Filed in 2008 in the Southern District of Florida, the $50 million lawsuit claimed Epstein had a "sexual preference and obsession for underage minor girls gained access to primarily economically disadvantaged minor girls in his home, sexually assaulted these girls", as reported by the Washington Post. Manthong bamawatson May 29, 2016 6:10 PM

Hey,

I thought that his personal life did not matter.

Damn, would I love to see one of those teeny boppers come forward and finger the former f'r-in-chief.

He was on Epstein's "Lolita Express" something like 26 times.

philipat Chris Dakota May 29, 2016 11:56 PM If Epstein needs to restock merchandise, ISIS now have a bargain line in sex slaves.

Anyone close to UK trade circles knows that Andrew is partial to a "massage" wherever he travels.....

Four chan philipat May 30, 2016 1:31 AM clinton foundation and child rape fund. has a nice ring to it.
jeff montanye Tall Tom May 30, 2016 7:48 AM possibly hillary could draw on her experience with the children's defense fund:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/08/hillary-clintons-populist-charade/

RedDwarf MalteseFalcon May 31, 2016 10:42 AM Meh, tons of elites visited the island once or twice. He was a well connected billionaire, I'm sure he hosted plenty of events that were mostly above board to futher his connections and dealings. What matters are those who were regulars and went to the island time and time again. HowdyDoody Supernova Born May 29, 2016 7:51 PM There is also the UK Royal connection.

"Jeffrey Epstein breaks his silence over Prince Andrew 'sex slave' scandal"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2928650/Jeffrey-Epstein-breaks-s...

beemasters HowdyDoody May 30, 2016 7:03 AM "Little St. James Island appears to be somewhat of a gathering place and is a well desired hangout among key figureheads, actors and royalty to the likes of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey and even Prince Andrew"

Why, only three are highlighted??? Can we please have the complete list? Jeffersonian Liberal beemasters May 30, 2016 12:46 PM

Wait until the scumbag 'whose cultural identity must not be named' has another high-power orgy and then let the navy use it for target practice.

Crash Overide HowdyDoody May 30, 2016 7:15 PM Rumor is Epstein recorded a lot of the sexual acts without people knowledge.

Ut oh...!

[Sep 13, 2016] The people dont want a phony Democrat

Now the idea that Hillary can beat Trump looks pretty questionable. Probably corrupt honchos at DNC now realized that by sinking Sanders they sunk the Party.
Notable quotes:
"... "The people don't want a phony Democrat." – President Harry Truman, Address at the National Convention Banquet of the Americans for Democratic Action, 1952 ..."
"... Totally 'liberating' these Truman quotes for FB electioneering. Corporate 'crapification' of both Republican and Democratic parties is complete, since the most authentic – like it or not – candidates in this election are not party members per usual (Trump and Sanders). Think we may already have our third party… the Up Yours party! ..."
"... Trump's support sure looks like a big middle finger salute to the party establishment more than anything else. ..."
"... You have forgotten the rules: when it is close to fifty fifty but Clinton has the advantage it is a clear victory for Clinton, when Sanders has the advantage it must be a tie! Especially for the Bezos Gazette and the Grey Lady's fish wrap. ..."
"... - Poll: Clinton would easily beat Trump How shameless is that? ..."
"... I mainly only listen to local NPR programs, the NPR classical/jazz station (local), and some of the weekend non-news shows. I avoid NPR Faux Nooz Lite like the plague. ..."
"... It's now owned by the corporations anyway. ..."
"... Post owner Jeff Bezos was rated "Worst boss in the world" by the ITUC (International Trade Union Confederation), ..."
"... Amazon was awarded a $16.5 million contract with the State Department the last year Clinton ran it. ..."
"... The lower and middle classes do all the work and the upper, leisure Class, live in the lap of luxury. The lower class does the manual work; the middle class does the administrative and managerial work and the upper, leisure, class live a life of luxury and leisure. ..."
"... Number one among the Nuremberg principles and charter of the United Nations: no aggressive war. So yes perhaps the MSM should be painting that little mustache on Hillary rather than Trump. Trump seems eager to build walls to keep the rest of the world out. By contrast the 20th century fascists were all militarists and big believers that "war is the health of the state." When the media go on and on about Trump as fascist it could be a case of what the psychologists call projection. ..."
"... That said, there has always been an authoritarian bully boy quality to the modern Republican party and Trump seems quite willing to appeal to it. But it was always there–the unfortunate result of our transition from republic to empire. Perhaps our bloated and far too powerful military establishment is to blame. Politicians are always in danger of temptation by this "ring of power." ..."
"... murdering people a central tenet of one's life? ..."
"... Reading through some of the specific polls that fivethirtyeight uses, it's interesting that some of them don't try to catch it. They outsource the demographic projection to some other group, for example, or they do things like saying landlines are close enough to a good approximation that they don't need to include cell phones. And something else about the polls, nearly all of them were conducted before the Democratic debate in Michigan, which seems kind of odd then to base any predictions off of them unless one assumes debates held in the very location of the election are irrelevant (which itself is interesting). ..."
"... Yeah, I think Clinton's general election pitch is pretty straightforward. She's the pragmatic Republican protecting us from Trumpomania. No Good Democrat would prefer Hitler over a Republican, after all! ..."
"... Banner ad from the HC campaign on my email site today "Stand with Hillary to fight Trump." ..."
Mar 09, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

DakotabornKansan , March 9, 2016 at 6:53 am

Yesterday was one of those days when there was a settlement.

"It is a pity that Wall Street, with its ability to control all the wealth of the nation and to hire the best law brains in the country, has not produced some statesmen, some men who could see the dangers of bigness and of the concentration of the control of wealth. Instead of working to meet the situation, they are still employing the best law brains to serve greed and self-interest. People can only stand so much and one of these days there will be a settlement." – Senator Harry S. Truman, Congressional Record, 1937

"The people don't want a phony Democrat." – President Harry Truman, Address at the National Convention Banquet of the Americans for Democratic Action, 1952

shinola , March 9, 2016 at 11:10 am

Your mention of Truman makes me go "Hmm… are we looking at a Truman vs Dewey moment?"

Mike Mc , March 9, 2016 at 1:56 pm

Totally 'liberating' these Truman quotes for FB electioneering. Corporate 'crapification' of both Republican and Democratic parties is complete, since the most authentic – like it or not – candidates in this election are not party members per usual (Trump and Sanders). Think we may already have our third party… the Up Yours party!

shinola , March 9, 2016 at 4:42 pm

Trump's support sure looks like a big middle finger salute to the party establishment more than anything else.

Bernie has an actual platform so his support may have more substance (although I'm not adverse to signalling Ms. Clinton to just f**k off & die).

Pat , March 9, 2016 at 8:27 am

You have forgotten the rules: when it is close to fifty fifty but Clinton has the advantage it is a clear victory for Clinton, when Sanders has the advantage it must be a tie! Especially for the Bezos Gazette and the Grey Lady's fish wrap.

Pavel , March 9, 2016 at 12:50 pm

Here is similar grossly biased "reporting": On The Hill's home page today there is an article link:

Poll: Clinton would easily beat Trump
Sanders also tops Trump in a hypothetical general election matchup.

From the article itself:

Democrat Hillary Clinton would defeat Republican presidential rival Donald Trump by double digits in a hypothetical general election matchup, according to a poll released Wednesday.

Clinton would edge out Trump by 13 points in a one-on-one vote, 51 percent to 38 percent , in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey.

Trump, the controversial GOP front-runner, would lose even more soundly to Bernie Sanders should the Independent Vermont senator secure the Democratic nomination.

Sanders bests Trump by 18 points, 55 to 37 percent. Sanders picked up a surprise win over Clinton in Michigan on Tuesday, though Clinton expanded her overall delegate lead.

[my emphasis]

- Poll: Clinton would easily beat Trump How shameless is that?

RUKidding , March 9, 2016 at 11:12 am

I mainly only listen to local NPR programs, the NPR classical/jazz station (local), and some of the weekend non-news shows. I avoid NPR Faux Nooz Lite like the plague. A lot of their stenographers also work for Fox (really). It's a pointless exercise in futility to waste my valuable time and brain cells listen to Faux Nooz National Propaganda Radio.

It's now owned by the corporations anyway.

tegnost , , March 9, 2016 at 12:56 pm
NPR here in san diego said it was a win for hill because she got more delegates when missippi and michigan are added together…

...Comments re sanders not having congressional support are actually even more true with trump, he will face considerable obstruction, while clinton will take the reins from obama on the fly and drive the buggy full tilt down the road to neo libbercon utopia

Lord Koos , March 9, 2016 at 4:09 pm

The Washington Post published 16 anti-Bernie pieces in 16 hours - http://www.fair.org/static/bernie-static.html

Post owner Jeff Bezos was rated "Worst boss in the world" by the ITUC (International Trade Union Confederation),

Amazon was awarded a $16.5 million contract with the State Department the last year Clinton ran it.

Keith , March 9, 2016 at 7:46 am

...Capitalism is essentially the same as every other social system since the dawn of civilisation.

The lower and middle classes do all the work and the upper, leisure Class, live in the lap of luxury. The lower class does the manual work; the middle class does the administrative and managerial work and the upper, leisure, class live a life of luxury and leisure.

The nature of the Leisure Class, to which the benefits of every system accrue, was studied over 100 years ago.

"The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions", by Thorstein Veblen.

(The Wikipedia entry gives a good insight. It was written a long time ago but much of it is as true today as it was then. This is the source of the term conspicuous consumption.)

We still have our leisure class in the UK, the Aristocracy, and they have been doing very little for centuries.

The UK's aristocracy has seen social systems come and go, but they all provide a life of luxury and leisure and with someone else doing all the work.

  • Feudalism – exploit the masses through land ownership
  • Capitalism – exploit the masses through wealth (Capital)

Today this is done through the parasitic, rentier trickle up of Capitalism:

a) Those with excess capital invest it and collect interest, dividends and rent.
b) Those with insufficient capital borrow money and pay interest and rent.

All this was much easier to see in Capitalism's earlier days.

Malthus and Ricardo never saw those at the bottom rising out of a bare subsistence living. This was the way it had always been and always would be, the benefits of the system only accrue to those at the top.

It was very obvious to Adam Smith:

"The Labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money. But every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers."

Like most classical economists he differentiated between "earned" and "unearned" wealth and noted how the wealthy maintained themselves in idleness and luxury via "unearned", rentier income from their land and capital.

We can no longer see the difference between the productive side of the economy and the unproductive, parasitic, rentier side. This is probably why inequality is rising so fast, the mechanisms by which the system looks after those at the top are now hidden from us.

In the 19th Century things were still very obvious.

1) Those at the top were very wealthy
2) Those lower down lived in grinding poverty, paid just enough to keep them alive to work with as little time off as possible.
3) Slavery
4) Child Labour

Immense wealth at the top with nothing trickling down, just like today.

This is what Capitalism maximized for profit looks like.

Labour costs are reduced to the absolute minimum to maximise profit.

The beginnings of regulation to deal with the wealthy UK businessman seeking to maximise profit, the abolition of slavery and child labour.

The function of the system is still laid bare.

The lower class does the manual work; the middle class does the administrative and managerial work and the upper, leisure, class live a life of luxury and leisure.

The majority only got a larger slice of the pie through organised Labour movements.

By the 1920s, mass production techniques had improved to such an extent that relatively wealthy consumers were required to purchase all the output the system could produce and extensive advertising was required to manufacture demand for the chronic over-supply the Capitalist system could produce.

They knew that if wealth concentrated too much there would not be enough demand.

Of course the Capitalists could never find it in themselves to raise wages and it took the New Deal and Keynesian thinking to usher in the consumer society.

In the 1950s, when Capitalism had healthy competition, it was essential that the Capitalist system could demonstrate that it was better than the competition.

The US was able to demonstrate the superior lifestyle it offered to its average citizens.

Now the competition has gone, the US middle class is being wiped out.

The US is going third world, with just rich and poor and no middle class.

Raw Capitalism can only return Capitalism to its true state where there is little demand and those at the bottom live a life of bare subsistence.

Capitalism is a very old system designed to maintain an upper, Leisure, class. The mechanisms by which parasitic, rentier, "unearned", income are obtained need to kept to an absolute minimum by whatever means necessary (legislation, taxation, etc ..)

Michael Hudson's book "Killing the Host" illustrates these problems very well.

When you realise the true nature of Capitalism, you know why some kind of redistribution is necessary and strong progressive taxation is the only way a consumer society can ever be kept functioning. The Capitalists never seem to recognise that employees are the consumers that buy their products and services and are very reluctant to raise wages to keep the whole system going.

A good quote from John Kenneth Galbraith's book "The Affluent Society", which in turn comes from Marx.

"The Marxian capitalist has infinite shrewdness and cunning on everything except matters pertaining to his own ultimate survival. On these, he is not subject to education. He continues wilfully and reliably down the path to his own destruction"

Marx made some mistakes but he got quite a lot right.

Jeez, no one told me that global employees are the global consumers.
So as we all increase profits by cutting labour costs we are effectively cutting our own throats.
You got it.

Massinissa , March 10, 2016 at 12:22 am Jim Haygood , March 9, 2016 at 10:15 am

"[CLINTON] The sooner I could become your nominee, the more I could begin to turn my attention to the Republicans."

Translation: [CLINTON] "The sooner I could become your nominee, the more I could begin to steer my platform HARD RIGHT."

Fascism: it's okay when we do it!

Carolinian , March 9, 2016 at 1:41 pm

Number one among the Nuremberg principles and charter of the United Nations: no aggressive war. So yes perhaps the MSM should be painting that little mustache on Hillary rather than Trump. Trump seems eager to build walls to keep the rest of the world out. By contrast the 20th century fascists were all militarists and big believers that "war is the health of the state." When the media go on and on about Trump as fascist it could be a case of what the psychologists call projection.

That said, there has always been an authoritarian bully boy quality to the modern Republican party and Trump seems quite willing to appeal to it. But it was always there–the unfortunate result of our transition from republic to empire. Perhaps our bloated and far too powerful military establishment is to blame. Politicians are always in danger of temptation by this "ring of power."

ekstase , March 9, 2016 at 4:09 pm
murdering people a central tenet of one's life?

Really, this is one of Earth's oldest taboos, and yet it has become cool to flaunt your not-caring-about it like that is some badge of honor, and better qualifies you for office. How about if say kindness, and honesty, and "first, do no harm," were exalted into the same high positions? Everything would be flipped on its head, and in my opinion, we'd be a lot better for it. It's not silly.

dk , March 9, 2016 at 9:04 am

I was in the bag for Bernie from day one, but I like to look ahead and see what I'm getting myself into. My own expectations of B. Obama were quite low in 2008 but he managed to underperform them (while the Republicans came through in grand style).

So what does a thoughtful person see ahead with a President Bernie? Can we cast a clear eye? How does this play out?

I'm thinking of looking to possible comparisons to previous (J. Carter, '76) and current (J. Corbyn across the pond, in progress) cases of, well, political outsider from the left end up at the head of the table (and maybe some similar qualities of temperament), and what happened then.

If memory serves (and please set me straight if it doesn't) Carter, always something of a loner, had a hard time getting traction with Congress, as well as considerably confusion and derision from the (nascent, burgeoning) neo-con right that came after, and from within his own party, and the press. I believe I see a similar overall pattern (again, correct me) for Corbyn, only more so: press is skeptical to derisive, and Labor is still procession what it all really means for them (how much of this is sheer denial of inevitable transformation and how much is stubborn inertial durability is not clear to me). Lessons here might serve not only to anticipate some obvious pitfalls, but perhaps to sidestep (or even strategically use) some of them.

A Bernie presidency would represent a huge challenge for the Dem establishment, not completely different from what the Republican party is going through but with different specifics (and also a later start). Without a continuing and active grassroots network (writing, marching, contributing, putting up candidates, etc), I think Bernie would be dead in the water come 2017. And accepting a largely negative reaction from business, how much will be a unified front, and what kind of internecine squabbling could take place?

Can a post-presidential grassroots activist network flip Congress in two years (it took the Tea Party 4-6)? I don't think Sanders has a second term without significant success in his first? The stakes are even higher; 2020 is a census year, as in: redistricting time.

Also, the disenfranchised usually get hit the hardest when systems shift gears (for example, loss of some good policies in the ACA rollout, not to mention the website). Given a hostile business front that will try to punish the vulnerable, what is the blowback on a $15 minimum wage.

Thoughts? Links? Take your time, no rush (yet). Lambert?

*ducks and covers*

washunate , March 9, 2016 at 5:28 pm

Reading through some of the specific polls that fivethirtyeight uses, it's interesting that some of them don't try to catch it. They outsource the demographic projection to some other group, for example, or they do things like saying landlines are close enough to a good approximation that they don't need to include cell phones. And something else about the polls, nearly all of them were conducted before the Democratic debate in Michigan, which seems kind of odd then to base any predictions off of them unless one assumes debates held in the very location of the election are irrelevant (which itself is interesting).

For example, to pick on the YouGov poll that underestimated younger voter support for Sanders. It was conducted a week ago, and the poll found that 1/3 of Dem primary voters had not firmly decided on their candidate at that time. YouGov also included a sample that was 30% for those under 45, whereas exit polling from CNN suggests actual turnout for those under 45 was more like 45%. And it gave a 32 point advantage to Sanders in the under 30 crowd, whereas CNN's exit poll suggested an actual spread of more like 62 points.

When things go as expected, the various assumptions and simplifications hold. But that very bias makes it virtually impossible to predict discontinuous change, since by definition, that is assumed away by the modeling.

Anne , March 9, 2016 at 2:47 pm

But isn't the takeaway there that she lost the independents in large numbers? How does she win a general election without young voters and independents? My guess is she would pivot in her usual clumsy manner away from the more left-leaning positions she's been pushed to take, and go back to her comfort zone as a center-right Rockefeller-style Republican with a (D) after her name.

I am less concerned that she is screwed than that the Dem establishment would rather screw us all over in order to protect their comfortable positions in the power structure.

washunate , March 9, 2016 at 3:11 pm

Yeah, I think Clinton's general election pitch is pretty straightforward. She's the pragmatic Republican protecting us from Trumpomania. No Good Democrat would prefer Hitler over a Republican, after all!

Independents have been breaking hard for Sanders (not just in Michigan). In CNN's exit polling, for example, in SC – a state Clinton won by a huge margin – Sanders still actually won voters under 30 (by 8 points) and Independents (by 7 points). Go to a state that was competitive, like Massachusetts, and it's a 30 point spread for voters under 30 and a 33 point spread on Independents. CNN didn't even do exit polling in places like Minnesota and Kansas. In Oklahoma, Sanders won under 30 voters by 65 points and Independents by 48.

marym , March 9, 2016 at 5:11 pm

Banner ad from the HC campaign on my email site today "Stand with Hillary to fight Trump."

[Sep 13, 2016] Bill Black The Clintons Have Not Changed

Notable quotes:
"... She was a horrible secretary of state. Explain to me why the US had to ruin a harmless country like Libya. ..."
"... "Among the principal concerns in Washington, London and Paris were the increasing Chinese and Russian economic interests in Libya and more generally Africa as a whole. China had developed $6.6 billion in bilateral trade, mainly in oil, while some 30,000 Chinese workers were employed in a wide range of infrastructure projects. Russia, meanwhile, had developed extensive oil deals, billions of dollars in arms sales and a $3 billion project to link Sirte and Benghazi by rail. There were also discussions on providing the Russian navy with a Mediterranean port near Benghazi. ..."
"... Gaddafi had provoked the ire of the government of Nicolas Sarkozy in France with his hostility to its scheme for creating a Mediterranean Union, aimed at refurbishing French influence in the country's former colonies and beyond. ..."
"... Moreover, major US and Western European energy conglomerates increasingly chafed at what they saw as tough contract terms demanded by the Gaddafi government, as well as the threat that the Russian oil company Gazprom would be given a big stake in the exploitation of the country's reserves" ..."
"... History shows that what flows in Hillary's political veins is new Democrat, Rubinite, Peterson, Wall Street dominated blood. ..."
"... Clinton, then Bush, and now Obama have increasingly shielded their official actions from the public. And what should be obvious to anyone paying attention is that they are doing so to hide their actions from a public that would object, because at a minimum, they are unethical, or because they are illegal. ..."
"... Nothing, absolutely nothing, in Hillary's past offers any a glimmer of anything different. Democracy requires transparency so that the public is properly informed and has oversight with which to hold people accountable. Obama promised to have the most transparent administration in history. He lied. Nothing she says today suggests Hillary would change this, and her past points to her making it worse. ..."
"... I do not know how old you are but younger Bernie supporters will not vote for Killary Clinton. I do not know any people under 30 that will vote for Clinton. ..."
"... Clinton's only path to victory in the General is to carry southern states that the Democrats always lose. She is going to get killed in the Rust Belt. Trump knows how to talk to disgruntled white voters. The only one who will stop him is Bernie since they are going after the same voter. ..."
Mar 04, 2016 | naked capitalism

Secretary Hillary Clinton is asking Democratic voters to believe that she has experienced a "Road to Damascus" conversion from her roots as a leader of the "New Democrats" – the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party.

... ... ...

Hillary and Obama made sure that they did not even have to risk their "lap dog" developing a spine. No IG was their ideal world.

...The idea that the State Department IG, appointed by President Obama, is "partisan" in the sense of being "anti-Clinton" is facially bizarre in that Obama is a strong supporter of Hillary.

EndOfTheWorld , March 4, 2016 at 4:03 am

HRC is, and always has been, bad news. She shouldn't have even run for prez the first time. She was a horrible secretary of state. Explain to me why the US had to ruin a harmless country like Libya. I hope the indictment comes down very soon, so Bernie can just be presumed the Democratic nominee.

Chris A , March 4, 2016 at 6:27 am

From wsws.org:

"Among the principal concerns in Washington, London and Paris were the increasing Chinese and Russian economic interests in Libya and more generally Africa as a whole. China had developed $6.6 billion in bilateral trade, mainly in oil, while some 30,000 Chinese workers were employed in a wide range of infrastructure projects. Russia, meanwhile, had developed extensive oil deals, billions of dollars in arms sales and a $3 billion project to link Sirte and Benghazi by rail. There were also discussions on providing the Russian navy with a Mediterranean port near Benghazi.

Gaddafi had provoked the ire of the government of Nicolas Sarkozy in France with his hostility to its scheme for creating a Mediterranean Union, aimed at refurbishing French influence in the country's former colonies and beyond.

Moreover, major US and Western European energy conglomerates increasingly chafed at what they saw as tough contract terms demanded by the Gaddafi government, as well as the threat that the Russian oil company Gazprom would be given a big stake in the exploitation of the country's reserves"

From Bill Van Auken/Wsws.org

RP , March 4, 2016 at 2:56 pm

Honduras isn't exactly a feather in her cap either

KYrocky , March 4, 2016 at 9:19 am

The past is prologue. History shows that what flows in Hillary's political veins is new Democrat, Rubinite, Peterson, Wall Street dominated blood. I agreed with her when she spoke of a vast right wing conspiracy, as it was obvious to anyone paying attention, and I could understand the Clinton's defensive secrecy given the relentlessly personal assaults they were under. But I object to the epidemic of secrecy that has infested what should be the public sphere of our government.

Clinton, then Bush, and now Obama have increasingly shielded their official actions from the public. And what should be obvious to anyone paying attention is that they are doing so to hide their actions from a public that would object, because at a minimum, they are unethical, or because they are illegal.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, in Hillary's past offers any a glimmer of anything different. Democracy requires transparency so that the public is properly informed and has oversight with which to hold people accountable. Obama promised to have the most transparent administration in history. He lied. Nothing she says today suggests Hillary would change this, and her past points to her making it worse.

MIchael C. , March 4, 2016 at 9:32 am

The "unlikeability" factor of Hillary Clinton, and her husband Bill, grows ever deeper in the American public. She drips with a uncouth and meglomaniacal drive to be president. I am not sure she can win an election, even with many voters pulling the lever for her in fear of the greater evil. I am not sure she is the lesser evil, and I think others may feel the same way election time.

Deloss Brown , March 4, 2016 at 10:45 am

Mmmmmf it's hard not to think she's the lesser of two evils when she's running against a candidate who's openly deranged–and I can guarantee she will be running against such a one, even before the Republicans pick one to nominate. All of theirs are deranged. They had a "deep bench," and they were all deranged. If Hillary inspires a large number of voters–and I'm a Sanders fan, but apparently she does–maybe they'll all come out and vote a straight D ticket, which might help us in that Home for the Deranged which is our Congress. And I doubt that Hillary would nominate another Scalia, Alito or Thomas. She probably wouldn't know where to look, for one thing. Did I mention that I'm a Sanders fan?

John , March 4, 2016 at 12:07 pm

Trump probably left of Clinton in many ways. Probably less corrupt.

jrs , March 4, 2016 at 1:38 pm

care to list all of Trumps left wing positions? single payer – nope he's not for that anymore, read his actual healthcare proposals. a few social issues like abortion? oh maybe but he keeps changing positions there as well (truthfully I don't' see these issues as really being right or left at all, but in the American political system they usually are seen that way) opposition to trade deals? … ok maybe that.

I'm not sure Kasich is deranged, but he is a warmonger for sure, then so is Hillary. Rubio might not be deranged but he's a neocon and a neophyte.

AnEducatedFool , March 4, 2016 at 4:44 pm

I do not know how old you are but younger Bernie supporters will not vote for Killary Clinton. I do not know any people under 30 that will vote for Clinton. I attend a local community college (prepping for grad school) outside of Philadelphia in an area that Killary will easily carry thanks to a lot of older feminists that still use the feminist card to justify their vote.

Clinton's only path to victory in the General is to carry southern states that the Democrats always lose. She is going to get killed in the Rust Belt. Trump knows how to talk to disgruntled white voters. The only one who will stop him is Bernie since they are going after the same voter.

I do not know how she can win if she loses Ohio.

perpetualWAR , March 4, 2016 at 11:03 am

If the Democrats choose to give us Hillary, I will vote Republican.

hreik , March 4, 2016 at 12:49 pm

If the Democrats choose to give us Hillary, I'll write in Sanders.

EndOfTheWorld , March 4, 2016 at 1:12 pm

The Libertarians have their convention in July, and they might put up an interesting nominee. Could be Jesse Ventura or McAffee of net security and Belize escape fame. Ventura would be a good prez, in my opinion.

AnEducatedFool , March 4, 2016 at 4:57 pm

Excellent article. I hope Sanders will offer Bill Black a job in his administration. I've noticed that Black was often on panels held by Sanders.

EndOfTheWorld , March 4, 2016 at 7:30 pm

That's where Bernie can really do some good. He can't snap his fingers and have medicare for all, but he can put in SEC heads, SecTreasury, and economic advisers that make sense, like Bill Black, yes, who put some bankers in jail after the S&L debacle under Reagan. Iceland put 13 bankers in jail recently. Here in the cowardly US they just pay a fine amounting to a small percentage of what they stole. No problem for them at all. Just a cost of doing business.

[Sep 13, 2016] Arrest Bill Clinton!

Notable quotes:
"... I asked Amnesty spokeswoman Sharon Singh, whether Amnesty had ever made a similar request for foreign governments to detain Bill Clinton and Al Gore when they traveled abroad? She sent me a press release Amnesty had put out in 1999 calling for an investigation of alleged war crimes during the Kosovo war but could not provide a single example of any time Amnesty had demanded the arrest of Clinton or Gore. ..."
Dec 12, 2011 | www.washingtonpost.com
Opinions

A true story: Several years ago, the CIA informed the White House counterterrorism adviser that it had located a wanted Islamic terrorist and requested White House guidance for how to proceed. The counterterrorism adviser recommended "extraordinary rendition" - snatching the terrorist in a covert operation and secretly whisking him away for interrogation in a foreign country. A White House lawyer demanded a meeting with the president to argue that this would be a violation of international law. In the Oval Office, the lawyer and the counterterrorism adviser argued their cases, when suddenly the vice president walked in. Hearing the lawyer's objections, he said: "Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.' " The rendition was authorized.

The vice president in question was not Dick Cheney, nor was the president George W. Bush. Rather, they men who decided to carry out the first extraordinary rendition of a terrorist target - over the legal objections of the White House counsel's office - were Al Gore and Bill Clinton, according a description of the meeting by the counterterrorism adviser, Richard Clarke, in his memoir, " Against All Enemies ."

This episode is worth recalling in light of Amnesty International's call for the arrest of former President George W. Bush during his recent visit to Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia for alleged "crimes under international law" relating to his administration's RDI (Rendition, Detention and Interrogation) program. Yet it was the Clinton administration that pioneered what Amnesty considers the "illegal" practice of extraordinary rendition, which the organization claims "usually involve[s] multiple human rights violations." Indeed, Gore himself acknowledged that such renditions were "a violation of international law" but counseled the president to go ahead anyway - sending captured terrorists to be interrogated by the intelligence services of regimes with questionable human rights records.

I asked Amnesty spokeswoman Sharon Singh, whether Amnesty had ever made a similar request for foreign governments to detain Bill Clinton and Al Gore when they traveled abroad? She sent me a press release Amnesty had put out in 1999 calling for an investigation of alleged war crimes during the Kosovo war but could not provide a single example of any time Amnesty had demanded the arrest of Clinton or Gore.

... ... ...

Amnesty's call for Bush's arrest was a blatantly partisan act - and it wasn't the first time the group had done so. Last October, when Bush traveled to British Columbia, the group demanded that Canada arrest him as well , declaring Canada's failure to do so would "demonstrate contempt for fundamental human rights."

... ... ...

[Sep 12, 2016] Serving the Clintonian Interest: The last thing we need is a Clinton in charge of foreign policy by Christopher Hitchens

This is Christopher Hitchens biting analysis from previous Presidential elections, but still relevant
Notable quotes:
"... The last time that Clinton foreign-policy associations came up for congressional review, the investigations ended in a cloud of murk that still has not been dispelled. ..."
"... the real problem is otherwise. Both President and Sen. Clinton, while in office, made it obvious to foreign powers that they and their relatives were wide open to suggestions from lobbyists and middlemen. ..."
"... If you recall the names John Huang, James Riady, Johnny Chung, Charlie Trie, and others, you will remember the pattern of acquired amnesia syndrome and stubborn reluctance to testify, followed by sudden willingness on the part of the Democratic National Committee to return quite large sums of money from foreign sources. Much of this cash had been raised at political events held in the public rooms of the White House, the sort of events that featured the adorable Roger Tamraz , for another example. ..."
"... It found that the Clinton administration's attitude toward Chinese penetration had been abysmally lax (as lax, I would say, as its attitude toward easy money from businessmen with Chinese military-industrial associations). ..."
"... Many quids and many quos were mooted by these investigations (still incomplete at the time of writing) though perhaps not enough un-ambivalent pros . You can't say that about the Marc Rich and other pardons-the vulgar bonanza with which the last Clinton era came to an end. Rich's ex-wife, Denise Rich, gave large sums to Hillary Clinton's re-election campaign and to Bill Clinton's library, and Marc Rich got a pardon. ..."
"... Edgar and Vonna Jo Gregory, convicted of bank fraud, hired Hillary Clinton's brother Tony and paid him $250,000, and they got a pardon. Carlos Vignali Jr. and Almon Glenn Braswell paid $400,000 to Hillary Clinton's other brother, Hugh , and, hey, they , respectively, got a presidential commutation and a presidential pardon, too. ..."
"... Does this sibling and fraternal squalor have foreign-policy implications, too? Yes. Until late 1999, the fabulous Rodham boys were toiling on another scheme to get the hazelnut concession from the newly independent republic of Georgia. There was something quixotically awful about this scheme-something simultaneously too small-time and too big-time-but it also involved a partnership with the main political foe of the then-Georgian president (who may conceivably have had political aspirations), so once again the United States was made to look as if its extended first family were operating like a banana republic. ..."
"... In matters of foreign policy, it has been proved time and again, the Clintons are devoted to no interest other than their own. ..."
"... Who can say with a straight face that this is true of a woman whose personal ambition is without limit; whose second loyalty is to an impeached and disbarred and discredited former president; and who is ready at any moment, and on government time, to take a wheedling call from either of her bulbous brothers? This is also the unscrupulous female who until recently was willing to play the race card on President-elect Obama and (in spite of her own complete want of any foreign-policy qualifications) to ridicule him for lacking what she only knew about by way of sordid backstairs dealing. What may look like wound-healing and magnanimity to some looks like foolhardiness and masochism to me. ..."
Nov 01, 2008 | www.slate.com

It was apt in a small way that the first endorser of Hillary Rodham Clinton for secretary of state should have been Henry Kissinger. The last time he was nominated for any position of responsibility-the chairmanship of the 9/11 commission-he accepted with many florid words about the great honor and responsibility, and then he withdrew when it became clear that he would have to disclose the client list of Kissinger Associates. (See, for the article that began this embarrassing process for him, my Slate column "The Latest Kissinger Outrage.")

It is possible that the Senate will be as much of a club as the undistinguished fraternity/sorority of our ex-secretaries of state, but even so, it's difficult to see Sen. Clinton achieving confirmation unless our elected representatives are ready to ask a few questions about conflict of interest along similar lines. And how can they not? The last time that Clinton foreign-policy associations came up for congressional review, the investigations ended in a cloud of murk that still has not been dispelled. Former President Bill Clinton has recently and rather disingenuously offered to submit his own foundation to scrutiny (see the work of my Vanity Fair colleague Todd Purdum on the delightful friends and associates that Clinton has acquired since he left office), but the real problem is otherwise. Both President and Sen. Clinton, while in office, made it obvious to foreign powers that they and their relatives were wide open to suggestions from lobbyists and middlemen.

Just to give the most salient examples from the Clinton fundraising scandals of the late 1990s: The House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight published a list of witnesses called before it who had either "fled or pled"-in other words, who had left the country to avoid testifying or invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination. Some Democratic members of the committee said that this was unfair to, say, the Buddhist nuns who raised the unlawful California temple dough for then-Vice President Al Gore, but however fair you want to be, the number of those who found it highly inconvenient to testify fluctuates between 94 and 120. If you recall the names John Huang, James Riady, Johnny Chung, Charlie Trie, and others, you will remember the pattern of acquired amnesia syndrome and stubborn reluctance to testify, followed by sudden willingness on the part of the Democratic National Committee to return quite large sums of money from foreign sources. Much of this cash had been raised at political events held in the public rooms of the White House, the sort of events that featured the adorable Roger Tamraz, for another example.

Related was the result of a House select committee on Chinese espionage in the United States and the illegal transfer to China of advanced military technology. Chaired by Christopher Cox, R-Calif., the committee issued a report in 1999 with no dissenting or "minority" signature. It found that the Clinton administration's attitude toward Chinese penetration had been abysmally lax (as lax, I would say, as its attitude toward easy money from businessmen with Chinese military-industrial associations).

Many quids and many quos were mooted by these investigations (still incomplete at the time of writing) though perhaps not enough un-ambivalent pros. You can't say that about the Marc Rich and other pardons-the vulgar bonanza with which the last Clinton era came to an end. Rich's ex-wife, Denise Rich, gave large sums to Hillary Clinton's re-election campaign and to Bill Clinton's library, and Marc Rich got a pardon.

Edgar and Vonna Jo Gregory, convicted of bank fraud, hired Hillary Clinton's brother Tony and paid him $250,000, and they got a pardon. Carlos Vignali Jr. and Almon Glenn Braswell paid $400,000 to Hillary Clinton's other brother, Hugh, and, hey, they, respectively, got a presidential commutation and a presidential pardon, too. In the Hugh case, the money was returned as being too embarrassing for words (and as though following the hallowed custom, when busted or flustered, of the Clinton-era DNC). But I would say that it was more embarrassing to realize that a former first lady, and a candidate for secretary of state, was a full partner in years of seedy overseas money-grubbing and has two greedy brothers to whom she cannot say no.

Does this sibling and fraternal squalor have foreign-policy implications, too? Yes. Until late 1999, the fabulous Rodham boys were toiling on another scheme to get the hazelnut concession from the newly independent republic of Georgia. There was something quixotically awful about this scheme-something simultaneously too small-time and too big-time-but it also involved a partnership with the main political foe of the then-Georgian president (who may conceivably have had political aspirations), so once again the United States was made to look as if its extended first family were operating like a banana republic.

China, Indonesia, Georgia-these are not exactly negligible countries on our defense and financial and ideological peripheries. In each country, there are important special interests that equate the name Clinton with the word pushover. And did I forget to add what President Clinton pleaded when the revulsion at the Rich pardons became too acute? He claimed that he had concerted the deal with the government of Israel in the intervals of the Camp David "agreement"! So anyone who criticized the pardons had better have been careful if they didn't want to hear from the Anti-Defamation League. Another splendid way of showing that all is aboveboard and of convincing the Muslim world of our evenhandedness.

In matters of foreign policy, it has been proved time and again, the Clintons are devoted to no interest other than their own. A president absolutely has to know of his chief foreign-policy executive that he or she has no other agenda than the one he has set. Who can say with a straight face that this is true of a woman whose personal ambition is without limit; whose second loyalty is to an impeached and disbarred and discredited former president; and who is ready at any moment, and on government time, to take a wheedling call from either of her bulbous brothers? This is also the unscrupulous female who until recently was willing to play the race card on President-elect Obama and (in spite of her own complete want of any foreign-policy qualifications) to ridicule him for lacking what she only knew about by way of sordid backstairs dealing. What may look like wound-healing and magnanimity to some looks like foolhardiness and masochism to me.

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author, most recently, of Arguably, a collection of essays.

[Sep 10, 2016] Blood Feud The Clintons vs. the Obamas

Notable quotes:
"... The two lead families of the Democratic Party hate each other. ..."
"... Barack Obama comes off as narcissistic, lazy, and shielded from reality by advisor Valerie Jarrett, effectively the shadow president since 2009. ..."
"... I get the feeling the Clintons shrewdly used this book to get their version of events into play. ..."
"... The new news is the medical stuff. Hillary's health problems have been more serious than generally noted. And Bill's heart condition is serious; Klein quotes his doctor, by name, telling him the disease is progressive, i.e. it will continue to get steadily worse. Bill's obsession with sealing his own legacy by putting Hillary in the White House has become single-minded. It's suggested this is the primary thing he wants to get done before he dies. ..."
"... You see Obama good at campaigning and manipulating, but not much else. ..."
"... There's lots of dirt about both couples. Bill still womanizes intensively; you wonder if he'll die `in the saddle' like Nelson Rockefeller did. A guy with a bad heart condition? ..."
"... He and Hillary lead separate lives, talking daily on the phone but rarely in each other's presence, and Hillary tells friends he'll have little presence in her White House should she be elected. ..."
"... some presidential couples become closer in the White House, where they finally have physical proximity after years of separation on the campaign trail, but this didn't happen with the Obamas, who are effectively estranged. ..."
"... The same day, the Wall Street Journal had a front page story about Hillary distancing herself from the Obama administration. This is exactly what the book says she would do - it's half revenge, and half good politics, as seen by Bill Clinton, with the Obama administration in a tailspin on any number of fronts. ..."
Amazon.com
Daniel Berger

5.0 out of 5 stars Klein documents how the Obama-Clinton feud evolved and deepened. July 8, 2014

The two lead families of the Democratic Party hate each other. Edward Klein documents why and how in this entertaining and fast moving book. It's a good political beach read.

It's mostly about three elections: that of 2008, where Barack Obama came from behind to knock off front-runner Hillary Clinton for the nomination, with charges and countercharges of race-card-playing in the South Carolina primary; 2012, where Bill Clinton made a whizbang nominating speech for someone he can't stand and Hillary drank the Kool-Aid in agreeing to lie about Benghazi - `it was a spontaneous riot caused by a video' - to seal Obama's reelection; and the 2016 election, where Obama promised Clinton he'd support Hillary in exchange for their carrying his water, then reneged on it.

There are tons of details and fly-on-the-wall accounts of conversations. The Clintons come off much better than the Obamas do. We know most of the Clintons' dirt already and, as a nation, don't seem to care too much, but meanwhile they seem to have a clue about how to run the country, while the Obamas don't. Barack Obama comes off as narcissistic, lazy, and shielded from reality by advisor Valerie Jarrett, effectively the shadow president since 2009.

I get the feeling the Clintons shrewdly used this book to get their version of events into play. Klein found leakers near the Obamas who are unhappy with them, but many Clinton sources appear to be lifelong friends seemingly given the green light to talk for this book - people who wouldn't jeopardize their relationship to do so. And for many of the quotations, there would be no question in the Clintons' minds who had given them - people party to conversations where only one or two others were present. So it stands to reason the anonymous sources don't mind the Clintons knowing.

The Clintons, heavily covered for over 20 years, may realize there isn't much that can hurt them that hasn't already been printed. We all know about Monica, Clinton's womanizing, the financial scandals dating back to Arkansas days, Hillary's temper and so on. And a lot of the inside poop here is either flattering - Bill Clinton as political mastermind, say - or humanizing. It's remarkable that the Clintons stay together after all they've been through, but they seem politically fascinated with each other. And it's remarkable how many times Hillary initially tells Bill off about something, only to agree later that he's right and go ahead with it. Quite cute, say, is the anecdote about how Bill convinced Hillary to "have some work done" on her face after leaving the State Department, by first doing it himself.

The new news is the medical stuff. Hillary's health problems have been more serious than generally noted. And Bill's heart condition is serious; Klein quotes his doctor, by name, telling him the disease is progressive, i.e. it will continue to get steadily worse. Bill's obsession with sealing his own legacy by putting Hillary in the White House has become single-minded. It's suggested this is the primary thing he wants to get done before he dies.

The Obamas seem more on the defensive and more paranoid. You don't get any sense of Klein's sources spinning the narrative back in their direction. Barack comes across as a narcissist stemming from a deepset insecurity about his lack of experience pre-presidency. He's someone who doesn't read much beyond popular novels but thinks he's brilliant. He's visibly bored with the dull business of running the country. He doesn't prepare in advance for big international conferences, who he'll meet and what they'll talk about; he figures he'll just wing it. Detractors (like Hillary) call his administration "rudderless".

He's threatened by Bill Clinton, who not only isn't intimidated by him but tries to lecture him. (There's a priceless account of a dinner between the two couples - the strained conversations, Obama ignoring Clinton by reading his Blackberry under the table, Obama sneaking out and coming back a while later smelling of cigarettes.) He's shielded from much by Valerie Jarrett, who surrounds him with sycophants and upon whom he relies too much. She has her own room in the presidential quarters and is the only outsider who eats with the family. He thinks he can move the world with his speeches.

You see Obama good at campaigning and manipulating, but not much else. Michelle more or less invites herself and friends to Oprah Winfrey's Hawaii estate for a joint birthday party, in part to draw her back into the Obamas' camp and keep her out of Hillary's. The weeklong stay goes fine, but Oprah resists any political rapprochement, and even starts promoting Hillary not long afterwards.

Obama picks Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg (a third Democratic family as powerful as the Obamas or Clintons) as ambassador to Japan, a way-too-late thanks for Kennedy family support in 2008 - and, apparently, just to get her halfway around the world from Hillary's candidacy.

It amazes me that the Obamas would work this hard to undermine their own party's frontrunner for the 2016 nomination. The Clintons will have raised a billion dollars for the run.

There's lots of dirt about both couples. Bill still womanizes intensively; you wonder if he'll die `in the saddle' like Nelson Rockefeller did. A guy with a bad heart condition?

His penthouse over the Clinton Library in Little Rock is his bachelor pad - Hillary avoids Little Rock - and effectively the Playboy Mansion South, the scene of many swinging parties. Klein suggests that the town not only shields its favorite son from scrutiny, but that its women, married and single alike, line up to sleep with him. Klein quotes one person saying Clinton will hit on married women even in front of their own husbands. (You'd think in Arkansas this would get a man shot, but then most other men there don't enjoy lifelong Secret Service protection.) He and Hillary lead separate lives, talking daily on the phone but rarely in each other's presence, and Hillary tells friends he'll have little presence in her White House should she be elected.

Klein notes some presidential couples become closer in the White House, where they finally have physical proximity after years of separation on the campaign trail, but this didn't happen with the Obamas, who are effectively estranged. Michelle Obama, of whom White House staffers are terrified, will burst in suddenly on her husband if he's in a room with other women; she's suspicious of him, believing he'd like to emulate Clinton's ways. Her post-White House plans, according to this book, don't include him. She and Valerie Jarrett, who plans to follow her, envision a high life of globetrotting funded by wealthy donors where they sit on corporate boards and don't have to do much work.

Barack Obama wants to retain control of the party, but Bill Clinton already sees him losing his clout and political capital.

The real question mark goes back to Bill Clinton's health. If he dies - a guy with this bad a heart condition? Waitresses and Little Rock matrons, think about it - some think Hillary, relying upon his advice forever, may not go ahead with a presidential run. It often sounds like more his obsession than hers, other than the first-woman-president thing. The family foundation's reins have been handed to Chelsea, in part to take pressure off Bill, and she is being positioned as his replacement as Mom's closest advisor and confidante. Others think Chelsea would encourage her mother to run if Bill dies because it's what he would have wanted. You get the feeling that Hillary, for all her ambition, doesn't have all that much fire in the belly - that it's Bill who's given her the vision, encouraged her, pushed her, made her see a path through obstacles, and been willing to fight battles large and small where she would have been more inclined to go along, get along and acquiesce.

Truly surreal is the ending. Bill tells an appalled Hillary, in front of friends, exactly how to stage his funeral if he dies before the election: what to wear (widow's weeds), where to do it (Arlington, he's a former commander in chief.) If properly done, he said, the video footage will be worth a couple of million votes." Not for nothing do they call him the smartest political mind of his time.

PS The day before I filed this, I saw a story online at Business Insider quoting an unnamed Clinton confidante attacking this book as lies, all lies, nothing but lies. The story didn't specifically rebut anything or cite any specific error in the book; it reprised a finding of an error in one of Klein's previous books. It suggests to me, though, this book is right, if the attack against it is as unspecific as "lies, lies, nothing but lies." Perhaps the Clinton camp is doing some preventive public fulminating so that they can deny the unflattering or unfavorable parts of it. I still think they planted a lot of this.

The same day, the Wall Street Journal had a front page story about Hillary distancing herself from the Obama administration. This is exactly what the book says she would do - it's half revenge, and half good politics, as seen by Bill Clinton, with the Obama administration in a tailspin on any number of fronts.

[Sep 10, 2016] Obama has proven to be a weak chief executive who is unable to work well with congressional leaders. Obama is not well respected in the Democratic Party

Notable quotes:
"... Valerie Jarrett is the third partner in the Obama marriage. She is the mother figure Obama turns to for solace while she is Michelle';s closet confidant. This tiger lady calls the shots influencing the POTUS and his power spouse. ..."
"... Both Hillary and Bill Clinton have serious health problems they seek to disguise. Hillary and Bill have both had extensive cosmetic surgery. ..."
amazon.com

Bloody Feud presents in grisly details the sanguinary slugfest between the Obamas and Clintons over power in the White House, July 5, 2014

By C. M Mills

Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas (Hardcover)

Blood Feud is a political hardball slammed into the guts of the two most powerful couples in the Democratic Party. Ed Klein who won fame for his earlier ":The Amateur": book about the Obama dysfunctional White House has returned with another blockbuster rich with gossip and political junkie insider poop.

Among the revelations of Mr Klein":

  1. The Clintons and Obamas loathe one another.
  2. The Clintons worked hard for Obama to be re-elected in 2008. They anticipated that this support would result in Obama';s support for Hillary in her anticipated 2016 quest for the POTUS. This deal has not seen fruition. The Clintons accuse Obama of lying and a lack of loyalty to the Clintons.
  3. Michelle Obama wears the pants in the family as Barack is an uxorious husband. Michelle has considered a run for the Illinois Senate seat but is wary of this political race due to the hard work it would entail.
  4. Valerie Jarrett is the third partner in the Obama marriage. She is the mother figure Obama turns to for solace while she is Michelle';s closet confidant. This tiger lady calls the shots influencing the POTUS and his power spouse.
  5. Both Hillary and Bill Clinton have serious health problems they seek to disguise. Hillary and Bill have both had extensive cosmetic surgery.
  6. Bill Clinton continues his adulterous ways.
  7. Look for a Hillary run for president in 2016 in a campaign masterminded by Bill. Both Clintons are eager to return to the White House.
  8. Oprah Winfrey feels betrayed by the Obamas and has little to do with them. She will probably support Hillary in 2016 as will Caroline and the Kennedy family.
  9. Hillary and the State Department screwed up the Benghazi terrorist attack and covered up to protect their butts.
  10. Obama has proven to be a weak chief executive who is unable to work well with congressional leaders. Obama is not well respected in the Democratic Party.

Edward Klein has done yeoman-like work in presenting this short but very revealing look into the lives of the Clintons and Obamas.

All readers who want to learn more about the kind of people leading our nation should read this book and have their eyes opened.

Recommended and controversial. Read it and decide what you think!

[Sep 10, 2016] Hillary and privatization of Social Security

Notable quotes:
"... Fink has also promoted the privatization of Social Security, while mocking the idea of retiring at 65, which is easy for a business executive who sits at a desk all day to say, rather than working on an assembly line or as a waiter. ..."
"... Well it's dog eat dog and I gotta think about my own needs at this stage. Ergo, here I stay. And someone younger will have to wait. Not great. If I felt more secure about SS & Medicare, I would be more willing to retire sooner, rather than later. But not the way things look now. ..."
"... He was more than mildly successful in his own landscaping business after being forced out, but the way he was treated will forever remind me of what advantage some corporations will try to get away with, and has always persuaded me not to invest in my own company's, less protected 401(k) selections ..."
"... Never heard of this parasite, so thanks for the heads up. I'm sure HRC will find some very useful role for him in her admin. ..."
"... BlackRock is a blight. Ugh. Just gets worse by the day. ..."
"... Don't count out Jamie, nor Victoria Nuland as Secretary of State. ..."
"... Some role too for Samantha Powers. Ugh. ..."
"... The reason I will never ever vote for HRC is that every single thing that comes out of her mouth is horse manure. It's so easy for her to say, "I will raise taxes on the rich", for example, knowing full well that later she can just say "we tried, but it was not politically possible" due to any of a hundred reasons. ..."
"... Her campaign promises now are totally meaningless. I'm interested in possible third party candidates McAffee and Jesse Ventura, who could actually win the election, but if I have a choice between the Donald and the Hildabeast, I will choose Trump. ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com

roadrider , March 3, 2016 at 10:05 am

Fink has also promoted the privatization of Social Security, while mocking the idea of retiring at 65, which is easy for a business executive who sits at a desk all day to say, rather than working on an assembly line or as a waiter.

Yes, I know this is Dayen's quote and not Yves'.

But I'm disturbed every time I see this argument about "desk work" vs "manual labor" WRT working longer. Its true of course but fails to recognize that many who sit behind desks are also being forced out of their jobs (and yes, this includes "business executives" too) well before 65, have little chance of being hired for anything else and thus don't really have a choice to work longer. Unless you're part of the super elite you're not much better off than the manual laborer when it comes to staying employed past your mid to late fifties, let alone your mid to late sixties.

RUKidding , March 3, 2016 at 12:12 pm

I'm extremely lucky (and know it and am grateful) to have what is viewed as a "desk job" as I approach my golden years. I am able to and plan to keep working possibly into my early '70s. Why? Well for one thing: because I can. For another, to save as much as possible just in case. Child of Depression Era parents, yadda yadda. And if I can pass on something to my nieces and nephews… well good.

The problem as I see it is not so much that I am able to continue working into my 70s but that my ability to do so, combined with that sinking feeling that I really should and need to due to current circumstances, is that I am preventing someone younger from ascending the ladder. And at this time, someone would definitely be hired or promoted to take my place.

Well it's dog eat dog and I gotta think about my own needs at this stage. Ergo, here I stay. And someone younger will have to wait. Not great. If I felt more secure about SS & Medicare, I would be more willing to retire sooner, rather than later. But not the way things look now.

Jim Young , March 3, 2016 at 12:13 pm

Can't find the details but I think I recall some startling tid bits about W.T. Grant advising Reagan's commission on overhauling military retirement pay (part of which was greatly increasing allowances for food clothing and housing that were not included in retirement pay calculations). We had the odd situations of retirees that retired early enough (grandfathered, I think), that got higher retirement pay (based on 50% of base pay which, for them, was a far higher percentage of their total pay) than those of us who retired later, at higher total pay, but a lower percentage of base pay, such that the earlier retirees cost of living raises outpaced our keeping up with inflation).

After the deed was done, I thought I heard that only four or five W.T. Grant employees that had built up substantial seniority that would have provided healthy retirement pay were able to remain employed until they reached 65 years of age (and that they were essentially senior executives at or near the top).

The more common case seemed to be like my friend's father, a master of many trades, seemingly a most effective employee in any position assigned, as well as being a well regarded President of the Lions Club and active in other civic minded organizations, promoted into a management position at Uniroyal, seemingly to exempt him from union protection. They found his capabilities "inadequate" at 17.5 years, just when he would have started accumulating substantial retirement benefits.

He was more than mildly successful in his own landscaping business after being forced out, but the way he was treated will forever remind me of what advantage some corporations will try to get away with, and has always persuaded me not to invest in my own company's, less protected 401(k) selections (in my case, the once great Kodak).

RUKidding , March 3, 2016 at 10:54 am

Never heard of this parasite, so thanks for the heads up. I'm sure HRC will find some very useful role for him in her admin.

Privatizing SS & Medicare? Shazam! Let's do it!!11!!

BlackRock is a blight. Ugh. Just gets worse by the day.

Blurtman , March 3, 2016 at 11:35 am

Don't count out Jamie, nor Victoria Nuland as Secretary of State.

RUKidding , March 3, 2016 at 12:13 pm

Some role too for Samantha Powers. Ugh.

EndOfTheWorld , March 3, 2016 at 3:48 pm

The reason I will never ever vote for HRC is that every single thing that comes out of her mouth is horse manure. It's so easy for her to say, "I will raise taxes on the rich", for example, knowing full well that later she can just say "we tried, but it was not politically possible" due to any of a hundred reasons.

Her campaign promises now are totally meaningless. I'm interested in possible third party candidates McAffee and Jesse Ventura, who could actually win the election, but if I have a choice between the Donald and the Hildabeast, I will choose Trump.

[Sep 09, 2016] The Secret Life of Bill Clinton The Unreported Stories

Notable quotes:
"... ...Bill Clinton was not just being entertained by prostitutes with his brother Roger ... he, Roger and Dan Lasater were partying with HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS when Clinton was a married governor in his early 30's. I don't know what the age of consent is in Arkansas, but Clinton and Co. were getting pretty damn close... ..."
"... The sleaziest pair to lie, cheat, and steal their way to political power. Sad to realize this country has turned stupid and apathetic while ignoring the current Bonnie and Clyde ruining our country. I approve of the Ceaucescu method of removing evil. ..."
"... And it's critical that ANYONE who votes in our next election read this book. Because Hillary Clinton is one of the most evil players on the world state today, and this book proves it. Just google 'mena arkansas clinton bush', or 'hillary rape lawyer'...there's so much info here in this book and on the web from court documents, newspaper reports that are never mentioned in the mainstream more than once (they got quashed), FOIA results. ..."
"... Wow. This book is just incredible. The Oklahoma City bombing, Waco, Vince Foster, Jerry Parks, Barry Seal, an international Cocaine trade, the airport at Mena - the list of Bill Clinton's acts of corruption and criminality goes on and on. ..."
"... And don't get the wrong idea: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is not some tabloid sensationalist; he's a legitimate and well-respected journalist for London's Daily Telegraph and every charge here is substantiated by facts: photographs, declassified FBI documents, interviews with eyewitnesses, and so on and so on, an avalanche of facts. ..."
"... This book is best read in conjunction with Terry Reed's book " Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA " to get the full picture of just how much Bill Clinton was willing to sell his soul for a shot at the White House. ..."
"... Here's this Brit's take on America's ruling class: "The American Elite, I am afraid to say, is almost beyond redemption. Moral relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have become incapable of discerning right from wrong." That was back in 1997. It's only gotten worse since. The day the "almost" in that sentence disappears, that's the day a second American Revolution will start. And when it does, justice will finally catch up with Bill and Hillary. ..."
www.amazon.com

Robert P. Morrow, January 30, 2012

A Must Read book on the corruption/criminality of Bill Clinton - drugs, Jerry Parks, young girls, etc.

...Bill Clinton was not just being entertained by prostitutes with his brother Roger ... he, Roger and Dan Lasater were partying with HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS when Clinton was a married governor in his early 30's. I don't know what the age of consent is in Arkansas, but Clinton and Co. were getting pretty damn close...

ageshio, June 12, 2016

Perverts from start to finish. And I hope their finish is soon!

The sleaziest pair to lie, cheat, and steal their way to political power. Sad to realize this country has turned stupid and apathetic while ignoring the current Bonnie and Clyde ruining our country. I approve of the Ceaucescu method of removing evil.

Joseph H. Race VINE VOICE, May 30, 2016

NOTHING NEW HERE - JUST CLINTON BEHAVIOR

This one is dated but not the conduct of the Clintons. It seems whatever they do, nothing seems to stick. Both being lawyers, they know the law and politics and how to avoid arrest.

HeavyElectronicsBuyer, December 12, 2015

OMG. This book is eye-opening. I wouldn't believe it, but there's just too much proof in court docs, FOIA, first-hand, etc.

To say I loved this book would be completely amiss. I hated the info I read in this book, but I'm not that stupid that I would ignore it either. Because anyone who has done any research into these two characters, realizes that everything in this book is unfortunately, true.

And it's critical that ANYONE who votes in our next election read this book. Because Hillary Clinton is one of the most evil players on the world state today, and this book proves it. Just google 'mena arkansas clinton bush', or 'hillary rape lawyer'...there's so much info here in this book and on the web from court documents, newspaper reports that are never mentioned in the mainstream more than once (they got quashed), FOIA results.

Folks, we are in serious trouble if this woman gets elected. If you thought it was bad with George Bush 1 and 2, or Clinton 1. Just wait. Because if Hillary or Jeb get elected, you might as well get out of this country while you've got the chance. They will put the final nail in the coffin of what was the great United States of America.

Do something about it! Vote for ANYONE OTHER THAN DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN.

Agentgary7, August 12, 2012

Good Thing This Guy Never Got to Be President ... Oh, Wait ...

Wow. This book is just incredible. The Oklahoma City bombing, Waco, Vince Foster, Jerry Parks, Barry Seal, an international Cocaine trade, the airport at Mena - the list of Bill Clinton's acts of corruption and criminality goes on and on.

And don't get the wrong idea: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is not some tabloid sensationalist; he's a legitimate and well-respected journalist for London's Daily Telegraph and every charge here is substantiated by facts: photographs, declassified FBI documents, interviews with eyewitnesses, and so on and so on, an avalanche of facts.

Ultimately, there is no smoking gun here. Evans-Pritchard got as close as he could with the available facts out there. The evidence here is mostly circumstantial. But circumstantial as it is, the cumulative effect is devastating. Yes, the federal government knew about the Oklahoma City Bombing in advance. Yes, Vince Foster was murdered and his body subsequently placed in Fort Marcy Park in an amateurish attempt to make it look like a suicide. Yes, Bill Clinton knew all about the international drug trade going on out of the airport in Mena, Arkanasas and looked the other way (for a price). And so on and so on.

This book is best read in conjunction with Terry Reed's book "Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA" to get the full picture of just how much Bill Clinton was willing to sell his soul for a shot at the White House.

And one of the truly disquieting things this book drives home to the reader is that the very institutions we look to to prosecute crimes and expose injustices - the Department of Justice, the FBI, the mainstream media - seem all to have been co-opted long ago by the White House and corrupted in the process. Read this book and, at times, you'll think you're living in the old Soviet Union - and, in a sense, you are.

Here's this Brit's take on America's ruling class: "The American Elite, I am afraid to say, is almost beyond redemption. Moral relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have become incapable of discerning right from wrong." That was back in 1997. It's only gotten worse since. The day the "almost" in that sentence disappears, that's the day a second American Revolution will start. And when it does, justice will finally catch up with Bill and Hillary.

[Sep 04, 2016] UBS upped its cash to Bill and the foundation after the scandal and her intervention as Sec. of State

Sep 04, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
Julio -> EMichael... Friday, September 02, 2016 at 10:03 AM

Look more carefully at the timeline, UBS upped its cash to Bill and the foundation after the scandal and her intervention as Sec. of State. See e.g.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/hillary-helps-a-bankand-then-it-pays-bill-15-million-in-speaking-fees/400067/

The whole thing smells to high heaven. The only reason to trust that there are no direct quid pro quos is, perversely, that there are so many donations and so many speeches and interactions that they all begin to seem normal.

Yes, there may be smoke and no fire, in the legal sense, but let us not pretend there are no issues here.

[Sep 03, 2016] Buying access is the same as putting a stack of cash into someone's pocket to get them to vote one way or another on a bill of interest

Notable quotes:
"... Does it get money because of the Clintons involvement in raising money? Undoubtedly, without their participation it can't raise anywhere near that amount of money, and the reason is that their high public profile means that people believe that by giving to them they can influence policy, ..."
angrybearblog.com

J.Goodwin, August 31, 2016 10:35 am

Low level personnel in the US government are expected to reject gifts, or if culturally they cannot, then they turn them over to their agency, unless it is something like a coffee or a sandwich.

There is an expectation that people are going to not just not actually corrupt their job by doing favors for people who give them gifts or do them favors, but that they will avoid the appearance of corruption that is generated by accepting gifts.

The supreme court doesn't agree with that anymore. Anyone can accept any kind of bribe as long as they don't let it influence their actions. You can't see the desk for the treasure that's being dumped onto political tables to fund campaigns and line their personal pockets.

This is a foreign practice, one that is corrupt and should be rooted out nationally. Accepting gifts creates a corrupting environment, no matter what the recipient does, because EVERYONE understands that the gift is intended to influence policy or gain access so that the person can influence policy. The person giving the gift knows it, or they wouldn't give it, the person receiving the gift knows it, but "deep down in their honest hearts" they're not going to allow it to influence their work and decisions?

No of course not. Buying access is the same as putting a stack of cash into someone's pocket to get them to vote one way or another on a bill of interest.

Does the Clinton foundation do good work? Sure. Does it get money because of the Clintons involvement in raising money? Undoubtedly, without their participation it can't raise anywhere near that amount of money, and the reason is that their high public profile means that people believe that by giving to them they can influence policy, even if those people are not in office (through backchannels and whispers and introductions).

Does every person donating to the Clinton foundation want to influence policy, or are they primarily motivated by wanting to fund it's good works? This is impossible to tell. Even someone as prominent and perhaps morally blameless Elie Wiesel isn't there to eat cookies and have tea and talk about the weather if he's in Hillary Clinton's office. That is not what he is there for. That kind of meeting is not purely a social call, it's an effort to influence policy, whether it is related to statements on the Armenian genocide or the Sudan or god knows what.

Is he a person that she should meet with, whether he gives a donation to her foundation or not? Maybe that is her job. Probably most of these meetings are that way. That's why public officials are expected to put investments and charities into trusts and blinds and under separate management when they're in office, to help establish the boundary between their public responsibilities and their private interests including their charitable interests.

It doesn't matter to me whether she did anything that she shouldn't have done, legally. The letter of the law is insufficient to dictate the actions of moral people. Is it disqualifying? She's already been disqualified in my mind, this is just another thing.

Is it disturbing and annoying to me to see the double standard where promoters are willing to weasel and explain away whatever the Clintons have done that for any person on the other side of the aisle would be moral issues that disqualify them from office?

[Sep 03, 2016] Emails Raise New Questions About Clinton Foundation Ties to State Dept

Notable quotes:
"... A top aide to Hillary Clinton at the State Department agreed to try to obtain a special diplomatic passport for an adviser to former President Bill Clinton in 2009, according to emails released Thursday, raising new questions about whether people tied to the Clinton Foundation received special access at the department. ..."
"... The exchange about the passport, between Mr. Band and Huma Abedin, who was then a top State Department aide to Mrs. Clinton, was included in a set of more than 500 pages of emails made public by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group that sued for their release. ..."
"... "Need get me/justy and jd dip passports," Mr. Band wrote to Ms. Abedin on July 27, 2009, referring to passports for himself and two other aides to Mr. Clinton, Justin Cooper and John Davidson. ..."
"... Traveling with a former president does not convey any special diplomatic status, the State Department indicated in a statement regarding the emails. "Diplomatic passports are issued to Foreign Service officers or a person having diplomatic or comparable status," the statement said. ..."
"... "Any individuals who do not have this status are not issued diplomatic passports," it said, adding that "the staff of former presidents are not included among those eligible to be issued a diplomatic passport." ..."
Sep 03, 2016 | www.nytimes.com

A top aide to Hillary Clinton at the State Department agreed to try to obtain a special diplomatic passport for an adviser to former President Bill Clinton in 2009, according to emails released Thursday, raising new questions about whether people tied to the Clinton Foundation received special access at the department.

The request by the adviser, Douglas J. Band, who started one arm of the Clintons' charitable foundation, was unusual, and the State Department never issued the passport. Only department employees and others with diplomatic status are eligible for the special passports, which help envoys facilitate travel, officials said.

... ... ...

The exchange about the passport, between Mr. Band and Huma Abedin, who was then a top State Department aide to Mrs. Clinton, was included in a set of more than 500 pages of emails made public by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group that sued for their release.

"Need get me/justy and jd dip passports," Mr. Band wrote to Ms. Abedin on July 27, 2009, referring to passports for himself and two other aides to Mr. Clinton, Justin Cooper and John Davidson.

... ... ...

But a person with knowledge of the issue, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the three men were arranging to travel with Mr. Clinton to Pyongyang less than a week later for the former president's secret negotiations. Mr. Clinton already had a diplomatic passport as a former president.

... ... ...

Traveling with a former president does not convey any special diplomatic status, the State Department indicated in a statement regarding the emails. "Diplomatic passports are issued to Foreign Service officers or a person having diplomatic or comparable status," the statement said.

"Any individuals who do not have this status are not issued diplomatic passports," it said, adding that "the staff of former presidents are not included among those eligible to be issued a diplomatic passport."

The emails released by Judicial Watch also include discussions about meetings between Mrs. Clinton and a number of people involved in major donations to the Clinton Foundation.

In one exchange in July 2009, Ms. Abedin told Mrs. Clinton's scheduler that Mr. Clinton "wants to be sure" that Mrs. Clinton would be able to see Andrew Liveris, the chief executive of Dow Chemical, at an event the next night. Dow Chemical has been one of the biggest donors to the Clinton Foundation, giving $1 million to $5 million, records show.

Ms. Abedin arranged what she called "a pull-aside" for Mr. Liveris to speak with Mrs. Clinton in a private room after she arrived to give a speech, according to the emails, which did not explain the reason for the meeting.

The person with knowledge of the issue said that this email chain also related to Mr. Clinton's North Korea trip because Mr. Liveris had offered to let Mr. Clinton use his private plane.

A separate batch of State Department documents released by Judicial Watch last month also revealed contacts between the State Department and Clinton Foundation donors. In one such exchange, Mr. Band sought to put a billionaire donor in touch with the department's former ambassador to Lebanon.

Donald J. Trump, Mrs. Clinton's Republican opponent, has seized on the documents, saying they revealed a "pay to play" operation.


[Sep 03, 2016] When did neoliberalism become center left ? It is always far right

Sep 03, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Jim Hannan , September 2, 2016 at 3:46 pm

Today's Water Cooler stats:
11 anti Hillary links
2 anti Trump links

Yet one candidate represents the center left, one the extreme right. And Naked Capitalism supports what?

nippersmom , September 2, 2016 at 3:54 pm

If you are implying that Hillary Clinton supports the center left, you have clearly not been paying attention her entire career, or to the careers of those with whom she has surrounded herself. Even with today's ridiculously shifted Overton window, there is nothing "left" about being an oligarch or a war criminal.

cocomaan , September 2, 2016 at 3:56 pm

Can't speak for NC as a whole, but in my opinion, NC writers are criticizing the person likely to win the election. These issues of corruption need to be hashed out and handled well before inauguration.

Trump's faults are well known.

And HRC? Center left? On what planet?

timbers , September 2, 2016 at 3:59 pm

Center Left = Trump.

Extreme Right = Clinton

Water Cooler comments doing OK based on your stats.

cwaltz , September 2, 2016 at 5:00 pm

I'm pretty sure Trump doesn't qualify as "left" center or otherwise.

But hey, let's not pretend that the left really gets more than a token attempt at representation each election cycle anyone.

The hippies on the left get punched, not elected.

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , September 2, 2016 at 6:03 pm

On a non-flat political Earth, your left is my right and my left is your right.

Yet, some still believe politics is flat, and the power universe revolves around the Exceptional Terra.

"We are HIS favorites."

Pavel , September 2, 2016 at 3:59 pm

Perhaps NC is providing a bit of balance, given the rest of the MSM has about 11 anti-Trump pieces for every 2 anti-HRC ones?

And having browsed through the FBI interview notes with Clinton, her defence against serious wrongdoing is that she is a mixture of forgetful and incompetent. Is this really the best the Dems can do?

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , September 2, 2016 at 6:05 pm

The whole family has had memory problems since the 80s.

Wonder if it was the polluted drinking water in Arkansas.

Vatch , September 2, 2016 at 4:05 pm

I don't think Trump is center left. Maybe he's center right.

Vatch , September 2, 2016 at 4:07 pm

Wow. A lot of people replied very quickly. I should refresh my browser more often! :-)

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , September 2, 2016 at 4:16 pm

Good question, this NC reader is just pretty fed up with the status quo (maybe others want to chime in):
– Unlimited immunity from prosecution for banking executive criminals
– More shiny new undeclared "nation-building" and "RTP" wars
– Globalist trade deals that enshrine unaccountable corporate tribunals over national sovereignty, environmental and worker protection, and self-determination
– America's national business conducted in secrecy at the behest of corporate donors to tax-exempt foundations
– Paid-for quid-pro-quo media manipulation of candidate and election coverage
– Health care system reform designed to benefit entrenched insurance providers over providing access to reasonable-cost basic care.
Based on the above I'd say the 11:2 ratio looks about right.

Skippy , September 2, 2016 at 4:18 pm

When did neoliberalism become center left – ?????

Jim Haygood , September 2, 2016 at 5:19 pm

'center left, extreme right'

*yawn* … so fifty years ago.

In this century, the only pertinent axis is orthogonal: the old in-out, in-out, from A Clockwork Orange .

Or as Simon & Garfunkel used to croon in the Boomers' youth, Any way you look at it, you're screwed.

The Crook vs. The Flake - choose wisely between utter hopelessness and total extinction.

[Sep 03, 2016] The Real Clinton Foundation Revelation

Notable quotes:
"... "When I was the chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush," You knew exactly where this article was going once you read the first 14 words. ..."
"... The author was chief ethics lawyer for the George W. Bush Administration. Why does that bother me? I realize this guy's term was from 2005 to 2007 and the Abu Ghraib story pretty much broke in early 2005, ..."
"... How much did the Clinton campaign pay for this Op-Ed? 'Every one does it' and 'it's not illegal'. 'It's how business is done.' How about doing a real in-depth investigation on the Clinton Foundation and perceived favors to donors NYT, instead of more opinion? ..."
"... Clearly a planted article. Nice try. Is everyone aware that the Foundation paid off Clinton's '08 campaign debt? They gave $400,000 and considered "payment for the campaign's mailing lists" ..."
"... According to former Justice Department Deputy Assistant Attorney General Shannen Coffin, there are at least three different categories of federal laws which may be implicated. ..."
"... One, the ethics and government act, which says you can't use a public office for private gain for yourself or even for a charity. So in giving special access to the donors for the Clinton Foundation, the ethics and government act is implicated. So perhaps Mr. Painter is a bit hasty dismissing such claims. ..."
"... If it was only about getting a government post or an arranged meeting, I would agree. But this seems different because significant amounts of money changed hands as a result of State Department intervention. And a lot of that money ended up at the Foundation or as speaking fees to Bill Clinton. How is this not seen as foreign donations effecting an American election - which I believe is illegal. ..."
"... Mr. Painter: You say "There is little if any evidence that federal ethics laws were broken by Mrs. Clinton". So if there is even "little" evidence that the laws were broken, then shouldn't American electorate consider it when making their election day decisions? ..."
"... You did not mention that there was no independent investigation on this subject, so there is no way to know whether there was "little" or "significant" or "overwhelming" evidence that the laws were broken. ..."
"... And finally, even if the written laws were not broken, what about the immorality of what Clintons did? Has morality been completely removed from the public square in this once great country? ..."
"... If there was no evidence of corruption at the Clinton Foundation, then why did Bill Clinton's speaking fees increase astronomically (from roughly $100,000 to $850,000) during Hillary's tenure at the State Department? ..."
"... as the neocons and neolibs in power withdraw from the govt's former "general welfare" Constitutional role and concentrate on enriching themselves and their friends - it would pay for citizens to become more aware of how the sector works. ..."
"... the system they devised inevitably empowers some groups more than others. Since democratic theory defines government officials as representatives of the voters, it encourages constituents to influence the decisions of those agents. Ideally, politicians should not favor the interests of some groups over others, but reality dictates otherwise. ..."
"... In the contest for influence, money inevitably plays a major, although not always decisive, role. In an effort to limit this role, we have developed both formal and informal methods to constrain human greed. The law prohibits bribery, for example. To discourage subtler forms of influence-buying, we have developed codes of ethics that pressure officials to limit financial connections with groups or individuals who might seek their help. ..."
"... Public opinion can serve as a powerful tool to enforce these codes. This explains the informal requirement that a president divest herself of financial connections that might affect her decisions. If Clinton rejects this tradition, she will undermine an important method of limiting the influence of moneyed interests in government. We have too few such tools as it is. ..."
"... Our laws are relatively stringent and prevent the crassest forms of corruption, and our culture makes lesser but legal offenses dangerous politically. But to imagine that any government, anywhere, could function without either those sorts of alliances or some equally corruptible strongman central oversight is is as naive and dangerously idealistic. ..."
"... How would someone feel if they found out that a doctor who prescribed them a medication is also paid large sums by a pharmaceutical company to promote the drug? Or, if the doctors owns substantial amount of stock in the company? Appearances do matter and it is likely that such conflicts do impact judgement. These kinds of allowances are being cleaned up across the country, at least in medicine. ..."
"... I am fine if they get higher salaries, but it is time to clean up the political corruption and crony capitalism. It is a shame that we hold our politicians to such incredible low standards and it is not a surprise that so many people don't bother to vote. ..."
"... It doesn't matter how good or bad the work of the Clinton Foundation is. That is not the question. The question is the motivation of many who contribute to the foundation. Are they motivated by altruism or is donating in a big way a ploy to gain access to Mrs. Clinton. ..."
"... I doubt that Clinton breached a fundamental legal boundary. However, the Clinton's have always seen the bright line and have decided to test the boundaries. From using police to secure women while governor to taking money from Walmart to major financial institutions to the email scandal, the Clinton's do it again and again and blame a vast right wing conspiracy. The Clinton foundation used Doug Band as a bag man securing commercial contracts for Bill and Hilary while he had a senior role at the foundation (flashing red lights). Huma took money off the state department books as did other Clinton confidants (flashing red lights), etc. They can't help themselves. Are these actives illegal? Probably not. However, we seek to be inspired by our leaders, we want leaders who are better than the average, better than us. ..."
"... When Bill can trot off to Russia, get 750k for a speech at the same time that business interests of the donor is before the State Department, it smells. The crux of the matter is the rotten judgement. ..."
"... You want a POTUS who has good judgement. The relentless chasing of a buck mixed with the appearance of impropriety, real or imagined, is the problem. When mixed with her poor judgement on the emails and her poor judgement on invading Iraq and disrupting Libya, you have a problem which explains her low approval rating. She is just fortunate that she has Trump to run against. ..."
"... If we look back to the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, those that were screaming the loudest for justice were having extramarital affairs during the "investigation". Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, Henry Hyde. And then there was Dennis Hastert. ..."
"... You bring up yet another problem with Hilary. She has covered for her sexual predator husband for decades, including harassing and publicly shaming her husband's sexual assault victims. And there are many going back to his Oxford days. How is that ok? ..."
"... The Trumpster won the Republican nomination precisely because of voter disgust over the in-crowd culture of politicians and donors. Bernie Sanders came close to winning the Democratic nomination for much of the same reason. Hilary and her entire family need to wake up fast if she has any hope or desire to get elected. We all know where Hilary's money is coming from. Does Hilary know where her voters are coming from and where they are now? ..."
"... To put this in a nutshell, The Clinton's self-enriching behavior- and use of public office for private gain - is troubling in the extreme ..."
"... During her tenure as Secretary of State (as reported by the AP) of the 154 non-official meetings at least 85 of those individuals were private-sector donors who contributed up to $156 million to Clinton Foundation initiatives. ..."
"... The report comes on top of other far more incriminating investigations revealing the appearance of quid pro quo with foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation. Perhaps the worst example was when investors who profited from the Clinton State Department's approval of a deal for Russia's atomic energy agency's acquisition of a fifth of America's uranium mining rights subsequently pumped money into the Clinton Foundation. ..."
"... I hate to say this but the Clintons are America's version of Russian Oligarchs - and their Foundation almost a glorified form of money laundering. I can only pray that in 2020, us Dems may find a better president ,and that the Clintons be soon forgotten. ..."
"... Without seeing the 30,000 deleted emails, how is anyone qualified to say no laws were broken? Besides, who cares what the chief ethics lawyer for a president who authorized torture thinks? ..."
Aug 31, 2016 | The New York Times

This is not the typical foundation funded by family wealth earned by an industrialist or financier. This foundation was funded almost entirely by donors, and to the extent anyone in the Clinton family "earned" the money, it was largely through speaking fees for former President Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton when she was not secretary of state. This dependence on donations - a scenario remarkably similar to that of many political campaigns - means that the motivations of every single donor will be questioned whenever a President Clinton does anything that could conceivably benefit such donors.

... ... ...

This kind of access is the most corrupting brand of favoritism and pervades the entire government. Under both Republican and Democratic presidents, top ambassadorial posts routinely go to campaign contributors. Yet more campaign contributors hound these and other State Department employees for introductions abroad, preferred access and advancement of trade and other policy agendas. More often than not the State Department does their bidding.

... ... ...

The problem is that it does not matter that no laws were broken, or that the Clinton Foundation is principally about doing good deeds. It does not matter that favoritism is inescapable in the federal government and that the Clinton Foundation stories are really nothing new. The appearances surrounding the foundation are problematic, and it is and will be an albatross around Mrs. Clinton's neck.

... ... ...

As for Chelsea Clinton, anti-nepotism laws, strengthened after President Kennedy appointed his brother Robert as attorney general, could prevent her mother from appointing her to some of the highest government positions. But she could give her mother informal advice, and there are a great many government jobs for which she would be eligible. She does not need the Clinton Foundation to succeed in life.

Richard W. Painter, a professor of law at the University of Minnesota, was the chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007.

Majortrout, is a trusted commenter Montreal 2 days ago

"When I was the chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush," You knew exactly where this article was going once you read the first 14 words.

chichimax, albany, ny 2 days ago

I have a hard time focusing on this article. The author was chief ethics lawyer for the George W. Bush Administration. Why does that bother me? I realize this guy's term was from 2005 to 2007 and the Abu Ghraib story pretty much broke in early 2005, but, thinking about those other lawyers for that Bush and what they said was okay, it really gives me the creeps to think about focusing on anything this guy might say about ethics. Just sayin'.

Lori, San Francisco 2 days ago

How much did the Clinton campaign pay for this Op-Ed? 'Every one does it' and 'it's not illegal'. 'It's how business is done.' How about doing a real in-depth investigation on the Clinton Foundation and perceived favors to donors NYT, instead of more opinion?

If the foundation is so squeaky clean there should be no problem. Or has Hilary made it clear you won't get a front row seat at her next mythical press conference? Or has she threatened to stop sending you the press releases from her campaign you report as news?

Ange, Boston 2 days ago

Clearly a planted article. Nice try. Is everyone aware that the Foundation paid off Clinton's '08 campaign debt? They gave $400,000 and considered "payment for the campaign's mailing lists"

Crabby Hayes, Virginia 2 days ago

According to former Justice Department Deputy Assistant Attorney General Shannen Coffin, there are at least three different categories of federal laws which may be implicated.

One, the ethics and government act, which says you can't use a public office for private gain for yourself or even for a charity. So in giving special access to the donors for the Clinton Foundation, the ethics and government act is implicated. So perhaps Mr. Painter is a bit hasty dismissing such claims.

Randy, Largent 2 days ago

If it was only about getting a government post or an arranged meeting, I would agree. But this seems different because significant amounts of money changed hands as a result of State Department intervention. And a lot of that money ended up at the Foundation or as speaking fees to Bill Clinton. How is this not seen as foreign donations effecting an American election - which I believe is illegal.

Isa Ten, CA 2 days ago

Mr. Painter: You say "There is little if any evidence that federal ethics laws were broken by Mrs. Clinton". So if there is even "little" evidence that the laws were broken, then shouldn't American electorate consider it when making their election day decisions?

You did not mention that there was no independent investigation on this subject, so there is no way to know whether there was "little" or "significant" or "overwhelming" evidence that the laws were broken.

Your main argument is that "everyone" does that. Perhaps, it is time to change that and Trump is the man who can do it. Is it fear of this kind of change that frightens so many NeverTrumpsters into rejecting him?

And finally, even if the written laws were not broken, what about the immorality of what Clintons did? Has morality been completely removed from the public square in this once great country?

David Keltz, Brooklyn 2 days ago

If there was no evidence of corruption at the Clinton Foundation, then why did Bill Clinton's speaking fees increase astronomically (from roughly $100,000 to $850,000) during Hillary's tenure at the State Department?

Did he suddenly become more sought after, nearly 8 or 9 years after his presidency? If there was no evidence of corruption, then why did Hillary Clinton use her authority to appoint herself onto the Haiti Relief Fund Board, where her sole relief efforts entailed asking people not to donate to the Red Cross, but to the Clinton Foundation?

John D., Out West 2 days ago

One thing that comes through loud & clear in the comments: a lot of people don't have a clue how non-profit organizations work. For a sector that's responsible for most of the good things in this country these days - as the neocons and neolibs in power withdraw from the govt's former "general welfare" Constitutional role and concentrate on enriching themselves and their friends - it would pay for citizens to become more aware of how the sector works.

James Lee, Arlington, Texas August 31, 2016

The framers of our Constitution had no illusions about the weaknesses of human nature. They carefully crafted our charter of government to pit the officials of each branch against each other, to obstruct the kind of collusion that could undermine the foundations of a free society.

Despite their best efforts, however, the system they devised inevitably empowers some groups more than others. Since democratic theory defines government officials as representatives of the voters, it encourages constituents to influence the decisions of those agents. Ideally, politicians should not favor the interests of some groups over others, but reality dictates otherwise.

In the contest for influence, money inevitably plays a major, although not always decisive, role. In an effort to limit this role, we have developed both formal and informal methods to constrain human greed. The law prohibits bribery, for example. To discourage subtler forms of influence-buying, we have developed codes of ethics that pressure officials to limit financial connections with groups or individuals who might seek their help.

Public opinion can serve as a powerful tool to enforce these codes. This explains the informal requirement that a president divest herself of financial connections that might affect her decisions. If Clinton rejects this tradition, she will undermine an important method of limiting the influence of moneyed interests in government. We have too few such tools as it is.

confetti, MD August 31, 2016

I don't think that favoritism in political life will ever go away, for the simple reason that political power isn't attained in a vacuum. It requires sturdy alliances by definition, and those are forged via exchange of valued items - material goods, policy compromises, position, status, assistance and other durable support. Our laws are relatively stringent and prevent the crassest forms of corruption, and our culture makes lesser but legal offenses dangerous politically. But to imagine that any government, anywhere, could function without either those sorts of alliances or some equally corruptible strongman central oversight is is as naive and dangerously idealistic.

Of course the Clintons wheeled and dealed - but well within the law.

I'm more interested in what end that served and the real consequences than the fact that it occurred. In their case, an effective charity that aided many very vulnerable people was sustained, and no demonstrable compromises that negatively affected global policies occurred.

It's the Republicans and truly sold out Democrats, who have forever been deep in the pocket of big money and whose 'deals' in that department cause tangible harm to the populace, that I'm more concerned with. This is their smoke and mirrors show.

Alexander K., Minnesota August 31, 2016

How would someone feel if they found out that a doctor who prescribed them a medication is also paid large sums by a pharmaceutical company to promote the drug? Or, if the doctors owns substantial amount of stock in the company? Appearances do matter and it is likely that such conflicts do impact judgement. These kinds of allowances are being cleaned up across the country, at least in medicine.

It is time that conflict of interest for politicians at all levels is taken seriously by the public. I am fine if they get higher salaries, but it is time to clean up the political corruption and crony capitalism. It is a shame that we hold our politicians to such incredible low standards and it is not a surprise that so many people don't bother to vote.

Great editorial.

Michael Belmont, Hewitt, New Jersey 2 days ago

It doesn't matter how good or bad the work of the Clinton Foundation is. That is not the question. The question is the motivation of many who contribute to the foundation. Are they motivated by altruism or is donating in a big way a ploy to gain access to Mrs. Clinton. The AP analysis suggests that is just what went on. At the very least it looks bad. Appearances are everything in politics.

Hillary doesn't need to appear to be unethical should she be elected. Bad enough she has Bill by her side. She doesn't need a special prosecutor investigator distracting her presidency with an influence peddling scandal. Like it or not, Republicans will be hunting for her political hide. Hillary doesn't need to paint a bulls-eye for them.

Chris, 10013 2 days ago

I doubt that Clinton breached a fundamental legal boundary. However, the Clinton's have always seen the bright line and have decided to test the boundaries. From using police to secure women while governor to taking money from Walmart to major financial institutions to the email scandal, the Clinton's do it again and again and blame a vast right wing conspiracy. The Clinton foundation used Doug Band as a bag man securing commercial contracts for Bill and Hilary while he had a senior role at the foundation (flashing red lights). Huma took money off the state department books as did other Clinton confidants (flashing red lights), etc. They can't help themselves. Are these actives illegal? Probably not. However, we seek to be inspired by our leaders, we want leaders who are better than the average, better than us.

In the Clintons, we have highly competent, experienced, politicians who have repeated shown deep ethical problems. She is the best candidate by far. It's unfortunate that our future President never learned what ethics are.

Robert, Minneapolis 2 days ago

An interesting article. It is probably true that many, if not most, politicians are influence sellers to a degree. I suspect that the Clintons are just better at it. It is fair to say that we do not know if laws have been broken. But it is also fair to say that appearances matter, and that the Clintons are very good at lining their own pockets at the same time the foundation does it's good work.

When Bill can trot off to Russia, get 750k for a speech at the same time that business interests of the donor is before the State Department, it smells. The crux of the matter is the rotten judgement.

You want a POTUS who has good judgement. The relentless chasing of a buck mixed with the appearance of impropriety, real or imagined, is the problem. When mixed with her poor judgement on the emails and her poor judgement on invading Iraq and disrupting Libya, you have a problem which explains her low approval rating. She is just fortunate that she has Trump to run against.

Madelyn Harris, Portland, OR 2 days ago

So glad to see many NYT readers here recognize the hypocrisy in this opinion piece. The message is "All of them do it, it's mostly legal, though it's distasteful and problematic. However, Hillary is the only one who should stop doing it because it looks bad."

The loudest voices of this partisan attack should be under the same scrutiny and be compelled to practice what they preach. If we look back to the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, those that were screaming the loudest for justice were having extramarital affairs during the "investigation". Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, Henry Hyde. And then there was Dennis Hastert.

Let's start looking into the personal emails of Paul Ryan, Jason Chaffetz, Donald Trump, Trey Gowdy, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz. Imagine what we would find! Legal, but ethically problematic exchanges and clearly illegal exchanges that would justify imprisonment. If they ask for justice, we should provide it.

Lori, San Francisco 2 days ago

You bring up yet another problem with Hilary. She has covered for her sexual predator husband for decades, including harassing and publicly shaming her husband's sexual assault victims. And there are many going back to his Oxford days. How is that ok?

John D., Out West 2 days ago

An excellent piece, actually tethered to reality and non-profit law and practice ... finally! Yes, all the Clinton clan needs to divorce themselves from the foundation, and I'm not sure why they would wait until after the election to do so.

It seems the loudest critics are of the tribe that created campaign finance law as it stands today, with the CU case having created a legal system of bribery across the board in government. C'mon guys, be consistent, or it's the big H word for you!

RNW, Albany, CA 2 days ago

When it comes to ethics and public officials, appearances do in indeed MATTER! Cronyism and conflicts of interest might elicit a big yawn from the political class, their fellow travelers and camp followers but arouse anger and indignation from voters. Remember those guys?

We're the ones that politicians suddenly remember every few years with they come. hats in hand, begging for donations and, most of all, our votes. (The plea for donations is a farce. Except for a few outliers, they don't really need or want OUR donations.)

The Trumpster won the Republican nomination precisely because of voter disgust over the in-crowd culture of politicians and donors. Bernie Sanders came close to winning the Democratic nomination for much of the same reason. Hilary and her entire family need to wake up fast if she has any hope or desire to get elected. We all know where Hilary's money is coming from. Does Hilary know where her voters are coming from and where they are now?

Tembrach, Connecticut 2 days ago

I preface this by saying that I am proud Democrat & will vote for Mrs. Clinton, as Mr. Trump is beyond the pale of decency

To put this in a nutshell, The Clinton's self-enriching behavior- and use of public office for private gain - is troubling in the extreme

During her tenure as Secretary of State (as reported by the AP) of the 154 non-official meetings at least 85 of those individuals were private-sector donors who contributed up to $156 million to Clinton Foundation initiatives.

The report comes on top of other far more incriminating investigations revealing the appearance of quid pro quo with foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation. Perhaps the worst example was when investors who profited from the Clinton State Department's approval of a deal for Russia's atomic energy agency's acquisition of a fifth of America's uranium mining rights subsequently pumped money into the Clinton Foundation.

Mrs Clinton rightly condemns Trump for playing footsy with Putin. But pray tell, what exactly was this?

I hate to say this but the Clintons are America's version of Russian Oligarchs - and their Foundation almost a glorified form of money laundering. I can only pray that in 2020, us Dems may find a better president ,and that the Clintons be soon forgotten.

Thought Bubble, New Jersey 2 days ago

Without seeing the 30,000 deleted emails, how is anyone qualified to say no laws were broken? Besides, who cares what the chief ethics lawyer for a president who authorized torture thinks?

[Sep 03, 2016] At the Clinton Foundation, Access Equals Corruption

Sep 02, 2016 |

More than half of the people who managed to score a personal one on one meeting with Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State donated money to the Clinton Foundation, either as an individual or through a company where they worked. "Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million," the Associated Press reported.

Does that make Hillary corrupt? Yes. It does.

At this writing, there is no evidence that anyone received any special favors as a result of their special access to Clinton. Not that treats were not requested. They were. (The most amusing was Bono's request to stream his band's music into the international space station, which was mercifully rejected.)

That's irrelevant. She's still corrupt.

Clinton's defenders like to point out that neither she nor her husband draw a salary from their foundation. But that's a technicality.

The Clintons extract millions of dollars in travel expenditures, including luxurious airplane accommodations and hotel suites, from their purported do-gooder outfit. They exploit the foundation as a patronage mill, arranging for it to hire their loyalists at extravagant six-figure salaries. Charity Navigator, the Yelp of non-profits, doesn't bother to issue a rating for the Clinton foundation due to the pathetically low portion of money ($9 million out of $140 million in 2013) that makes its way to someone who needs it.

"It seems like the Clinton Foundation operates as a slush fund for the Clintons," says Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog group.

As a measure of how institutionally bankrupt American politics is, all this crap is technically legal. But that doesn't mean it's not corrupt.

Public relations experts caution politicians like the Clintons that the appearance of impropriety is almost as bad as its actuality. If it looks bad, it will hurt you with the polls. True, but that's not really the point.

The point is: access is corruption.

It doesn't matter that the lead singer of U2 didn't get to live out his rocker astronaut fantasy. It's disgusting that he was ever in a position to have it considered. To put a finer point on it, ethics require that someone in Hillary Clinton's position never, ever take a meeting or correspond by email or offer a job to someone who donated money to her and her husband's foundation. Failure to build an unscalable wall between government and money necessarily creates a corrupt quid pro quo:

"Just got a call from the Clinton Foundation. They're shaking us down for a donation. Should we cough up a few bucks?"

"Hillary could be president someday. Chelsea could end up in the Senate. It couldn't hurt to be remembered as someone who threw them some money when they asked."

This, I 100% guarantee you, was the calculus when Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hillary for a one- or two-hour speech. She doesn't have anything new to say that everyone hasn't already heard million times before. It's not like she shared any valuable stock tips during those talks. Wealthy individuals and corporations pay politicians for one thing: access.

Ted Rall, syndicated writer and the cartoonist for ANewDomain.net, is the author of the book "Snowden," the biography of the NSA whistleblower.

[Sep 02, 2016] The bizarre thing is that any elected politician dumb enough to take Kissenger's advice has not prospered

Sep 02, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
dcblogger , September 2, 2016 at 3:21 pm

The bizarre thing is that any elected politician dumb enough to take Kissenger's advice has not prospered. Nixon was impeached, Ford defeated, and when Carter was dumb enough to take Kissenger's advice about letting the Shah of Iran into the US, his presidency went into meltdown. Why would anyone listen to him? putting aside the question that he is a war criminal.

nippersmom , September 2, 2016 at 3:39 pm

Yes, since we know that for Clinton, his war criminal credentials fall into the "feature not a bug" category, the question is why the smartest, most qualified candidate evuh would not see pattern of failure attendant on those who tie their wagon to his star.

Pat , September 2, 2016 at 3:44 pm

Like so many Clinton failures (from both), it wasn't the fault of the advisor, but those taking the advice didn't do it exactly the way Henry K told them to do it. Think Welfare Reform, Libya, etc. All the fault of those putting the plans into operation.

Smartest people in the room, gravitating toward each other understand how their brilliance can be misunderstood.

Elizabeth Burton , September 2, 2016 at 3:30 pm

"Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign raised an eye-popping $143 million in August for her candidacy and the Democratic Party, the best showing of her campaign, her team said Thursday"

And yet my spam folder yesterday contained 46 (count 'em) pleas for donations from HillaryClinton.com, sent over the last ten days, including the one I read that said "Just send us a dollar."

And yes, since there was absolutely NO "unsubscribe" link on the emails I initially received from the Clinton Cult, I did consign all further communication to spam, thank you very much.

Pat , September 2, 2016 at 3:41 pm

I'm sure they were just trying to make sure that 'eye-popping' amount isn't from the fewest donors in history. By about the fourth one of those I finally determined they really didn't need me to donate money they just needed to be able to count me as a donor

a different chris , September 2, 2016 at 4:31 pm

Following right after that link is the withdrawal of $$$ for airtime from Ted Strickland's campaign. Not some House race, not even a unlikely Senate attempt, but they don't have enough money to hammer on somebody who not only is chasing a big prize but actually already won the damn race once already.

And you can convince me that it is 100% likely Strickland will lose. But if you don't support him, you don't allow an alternative view to be developed and used to hammer the winner during his term. Isn't that how you play politics? You don't just show up around election, play nice, and if polls – yeech, polls – don't go your way you just go home.

But the Democrats don't even want those kinds of victories. They want
1) The Executive Branch
2) No other branch of government so they can blame what they don't (or worse, do) do – haha, if you read that right you get "dodo" – on the other side.

Ms Clinton has an insane amount of money. And what she spends it on (herself) and what she doesn't (anybody else) is what tells you what you need to know.

Unorthodoxmarxist , September 2, 2016 at 3:34 pm

The article on the difficulty of taking over the Democratic Party hits the nail on the head, but it misses the Michels-ian problem: organizations have a tendency (but not this is a tendency, not a rule or fate) towards increasing oligarchy over time, and organizational members are socialized to trust and obey party leadership. Factional dissidents within the Dems have to contend not only with the party oligarchy and its formidable resources, the decentralized and sprawling nature of the organization, but with a membership that barely participates but, when it does, turns out when and how the leadership wants.

The Militant Labour tendency example isn't perfect – entryism into a Parliamentary party is easier than our party system – but it speaks volumes. To get a hearing from the party membership you can only criticize so much of the organization itself; if you and a faction entered and created a "Destroy the Dems" faction you'd be ignored or hunted out of the party, especially if you pointedly attacked the Dems oligarchy and were openly hostile to their officials, platform and the president – though I would argue you'd need exactly a "Destroy the Dems" faction to succeed in smashing the party oligarchy and changing the culture.

Keep in mind I do say this as a Green and a person who did his PhD on inner-party democracy (or lack thereof). Lack of democracy is a persistent theme in studies of parties for the last century.

It would make more sense to really unite the left around electoral reform in the long run and push for proportional representation at the state/local level for legislatures and city councils. While it would probably be preferable for democracy's sake to have one big district elected with an open-list vote, in the US context we'd probably go the German route of mixed-member proportional that combines geographical single-member districts with proportional voting.

cocomaan , September 2, 2016 at 3:37 pm

Speculating very freely: Could there be a flow of goods we don't know about? Like containers full of opioids? Or is there a capital flow that shouldn't exist, but does? Money laundering from those same opioids? Money laundering generally? The Bezzle? Readers?

There's an enormous amount of people in the USA who are working on some kind of black market. You don't have ten million unemployed men who are simply sitting idle all the time.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-idle-army-americas-unworking-men-1472769641

Those people will never report that they are making money on the black market.

For instance, there's going to be an enormous amount of weed leaving Colorado and Washington and transported to other states. Whatever used to be traveling over the border, we can now produce domestically. Which is great, don't get me wrong, but until it's legalized in all fifty states, it doesn't show up on the books. Doing this is as easy as staying in CO for a few weeks, buying your maximum each day, then going a few states over and selling.

Stephen Tynan , September 2, 2016 at 3:43 pm

I'd still have $27 x 100 if Tad Devine had agreed to work for free.

Jim Hannan , September 2, 2016 at 3:46 pm

Today's Water Cooler stats:
11 anti Hillary links
2 anti Trump links

Yet one candidate represents the center left, one the extreme right. And Naked Capitalism supports what?

nippersmom , September 2, 2016 at 3:54 pm

If you are implying that Hillary Clinton supports the center left, you have clearly not been paying attention her entire career, or to the careers of those with whom she has surrounded herself. Even with today's ridiculously shifted Overton window, there is nothing "left" about being an oligarch or a war criminal.

cocomaan , September 2, 2016 at 3:56 pm

Can't speak for NC as a whole, but in my opinion, NC writers are criticizing the person likely to win the election. These issues of corruption need to be hashed out and handled well before inauguration.

Trump's faults are well known.

And HRC? Center left? On what planet?

timbers , September 2, 2016 at 3:59 pm

Center Left = Trump.

Extreme Right = Clinton

Water Cooler comments doing OK based on your stats.

cwaltz , September 2, 2016 at 5:00 pm

I'm pretty sure Trump doesn't qualify as "left" center or otherwise.

But hey, let's not pretend that the left really gets more than a token attempt at representation each election cycle anyone.

The hippies on the left get punched, not elected.

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , September 2, 2016 at 6:03 pm

On a non-flat political Earth, your left is my right and my left is your right.

Yet, some still believe politics is flat, and the power universe revolves around the Exceptional Terra.

"We are HIS favorites."

Pavel , September 2, 2016 at 3:59 pm

Perhaps NC is providing a bit of balance, given the rest of the MSM has about 11 anti-Trump pieces for every 2 anti-HRC ones?

And having browsed through the FBI interview notes with Clinton, her defence against serious wrongdoing is that she is a mixture of forgetful and incompetent. Is this really the best the Dems can do?

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , September 2, 2016 at 6:05 pm

The whole family has had memory problems since the 80s.

Wonder if it was the polluted drinking water in Arkansas.

Vatch , September 2, 2016 at 4:05 pm

I don't think Trump is center left. Maybe he's center right.

Vatch , September 2, 2016 at 4:07 pm

Wow. A lot of people replied very quickly. I should refresh my browser more often! :-)

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , September 2, 2016 at 4:16 pm

Good question, this NC reader is just pretty fed up with the status quo (maybe others want to chime in):
– Unlimited immunity from prosecution for banking executive criminals
– More shiny new undeclared "nation-building" and "RTP" wars
– Globalist trade deals that enshrine unaccountable corporate tribunals over national sovereignty, environmental and worker protection, and self-determination
– America's national business conducted in secrecy at the behest of corporate donors to tax-exempt foundations
– Paid-for quid-pro-quo media manipulation of candidate and election coverage
– Health care system reform designed to benefit entrenched insurance providers over providing access to reasonable-cost basic care.
Based on the above I'd say the 11:2 ratio looks about right.

Skippy , September 2, 2016 at 4:18 pm

When did neoliberalism become center left – ?????

Jim Haygood , September 2, 2016 at 5:19 pm

'center left, extreme right'

*yawn* so fifty years ago.

In this century, the only pertinent axis is orthogonal: the old in-out, in-out, from A Clockwork Orange .

Or as Simon & Garfunkel used to croon in the Boomers' youth, Any way you look at it, you're screwed.

The Crook vs. The Flake - choose wisely between utter hopelessness and total extinction.

Pat , September 2, 2016 at 6:23 pm

In reality we have a center leans extreme right Democratic candidate and a left, right and center Republican candidate. One has a clear record of supporting and increasing conservative policies in American and the other has given speeches that have been all over the spectrum.

But hey, you keep trying to shame people who don't give a fig about useless and false labels but are vastly interested in the normalization of corruption.

curlydan , September 2, 2016 at 3:52 pm

HRC: "The Great Graspy"

nippersmom , September 2, 2016 at 4:11 pm

+1

cwaltz , September 2, 2016 at 3:55 pm

I personally would like to see the reform/ takeover the Democratic party squad concede that third parties don't have a level playing field(which may indeed be why they consistently fail) and then help work to fix the problem.

A starting point would be opening every single primary to every voting age individual or forcing the private parties to pay for their own darn soiree.

It's the democratic way to settle the debate on whether or not it will be easier to reform the DNC or use a third party to enact progressive policy.

Paid Minion , September 2, 2016 at 4:02 pm

The Randian Boot Lickers over at Zero Hedge are really losing it today, over the new California "tax"

http://tinyurl.com/jtmu33y

(Sigh ."Exhibit "A" for "why I'm not a Republican" anymore .)

A law mandating that AG workers get paid overtime just like about everyone else is not a "tax".

The excuses they come up with for justifying the status quo are also a treat:

-No O/T pay because it's "Seasonal Work", and farmers can't spread their harvest labor over the whole year? (But nothing said about the months when the labor is making zero bucks, when the seasonal workers aren't on the payroll)

– Can't find additional help because of "labor shortages"? Easy enough to fix. PAY MORE MONEY. Why don't "free market" principles ever apply to labor?

-A "regressive tax on poor people"? Maybe they wouldn't be so poor, if they were paid for their O/T.

-Encouraging automation because "labor costs too much". Au contraire. It's the other way around. Development of automation (and the skills/jobs needed to design build and support these machines) is slowed, because labor is too cheap.

And finally, "a $1Billion tax" ..assuming their calculations are correct (a big if, figures don't lie but liars figure):

.a billion dollar nationwide tax amounts to ( ..one billion divvied by 300 million, carry the one .) .about four bucks a year per person. OMG, I might have to skip that McNuggets Value Meal (that will also be made by robots instead of "overpaid" labor) once a year.

People like this are so full of s##t, their eyes are brown.

ewmayer , September 2, 2016 at 6:28 pm

I'm actually thankful to the folks running ZH some months ago they made a (likely mobile-driven) change to their site layout, with result that it no longer renders readably in my default browser, a legacy FF version, dating from just before the Mozilla weenies decided to remove the 'image display' toggle from the user preferences menu (disabling bandwidth-hogging image rendering is really useful in a shared-WiFi context and when you want to focus on textual content). So now I'm not even tempted to quick-scan the site's inane alarmist headlines for yuks.

[Sep 02, 2016] Clintons Embrace of Republicans Will Harm Her Own Partys Future

Sep 01, 2016 | www.commondreams.org

Whether Clinton's strategy of trying to peel off a small percentage of Republicans to win the presidency will actually work remains to be seen. There seems to be scant evidence in the polls that a significant amount of Republicans will support her; Clinton's advantage mostly stems from the fact that black and Hispanic Americans understandably oppose Trump in historic numbers. But if the strategy hinders Democrats from retaking Congress, the damage is going to be seen for years.

[Sep 02, 2016] It's all about money

Sep 02, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

"Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has run an unusually cheap campaign in part by not paying at least 10 top staffers, consultants and advisers, some of whom are no longer with the campaign, according to a review of federal campaign finance filings" [ Reuters ]. "[N]ot compensating top people in a presidential campaign is a departure from campaign finance norms." Hirohito Award candidate, there.

"Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign raised an eye-popping $143 million in August for her candidacy and the Democratic Party, the best showing of her campaign, her team said Thursday" [ Agence France Presse ]. Ka-ching. And not doubling down. Squaring down.

[Sep 02, 2016] HRC: "The Great Graspy"

Sep 02, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

curlydan , September 2, 2016 at 3:52 pm

HRC: "The Great Graspy"

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , September 2, 2016 at 4:16 pm

Good question, this NC reader is just pretty fed up with the status quo (maybe others want to chime in):
– Unlimited immunity from prosecution for banking executive criminals
– More shiny new undeclared "nation-building" and "RTP" wars
– Globalist trade deals that enshrine unaccountable corporate tribunals over national sovereignty, environmental and worker protection, and self-determination
– America's national business conducted in secrecy at the behest of corporate donors to tax-exempt foundations
– Paid-for quid-pro-quo media manipulation of candidate and election coverage
– Health care system reform designed to benefit entrenched insurance providers over providing access to reasonable-cost basic care.
Based on the above I'd say the 11:2 ratio looks about right.

Reply
Skippy , September 2, 2016 at 4:18 pm

When did neoliberalism become center left – ?????

[Sep 02, 2016] The Foundation is a tool to provide wealthy worthy individuals, groups, corporations, nations an expedited access to the government official, in this case Hillary

Sep 02, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Marco , September 2, 2016 at 2:48 pm

Really enjoyed Atrios easy-breezy summation of Clinton Foundation / State Department skullduggery…

"…a bit unseemly in that way that the sausage factory is a bit gross, but it basically seems to fall in 'this is how things work' territory as far as I can tell…"

Pat , September 2, 2016 at 3:02 pm

Breezy is right. It does lead me to ask if this were not the Clinton Foundation but was the Bush Foundation or the Rubio Foundation or…would this still be just be the way things work? I do not think so.

Don't get me wrong I have great admiration for Atrios (he is right on the money regarding Social Security and self-driving cars), but the double standard where both Obama and Clinton are concerned is strong at Eschaton, and I'm sorry to say with him as well.

Accepting this as the way things work is just accepting that corruption is the norm and there is nothing to be done about it. So unless you are willing to shut up about supposed misdeeds of all elected officials and political candidates because this is the way it is done, you need to get the f*ck over the idea that this is NORMAL and ACCEPTABLE.

And I don't see that happening over there, or at Daily Kos, or… once the subject is out is out of the tribe.

Kurt Sperry , September 2, 2016 at 3:43 pm

I can understand the "it's OK when our people do it" double standard. Family/tribe/team, we are all trained to do that. What I don't understand is how one could ever arrive at Clinton Foundation = our people prerequisite to applying it in this instance. WT actual F?

Pat , September 2, 2016 at 3:52 pm

I think you are coming at this from far too realistic a point of view. You aren't looking at this as the Foundation is a tool, like a speech or a fundraiser, in order to provide wealthy worthy individuals/groups/corporations/nations a means to expedite access to the government official, in this case Clinton. You think of it as a false charity. But for the greasing the wheels is normal operating procedure, what this was was a gift to open more avenues for the wheels to be greased. It's up to you…or me…or even the people of Flint among others to use that opportunity.

Just saying.

timbers , September 2, 2016 at 3:45 pm

Yes. And this too:

Breezy is right. It does lead me to ask if this were not the Clinton War With Russia but was the Bush War With Iraq or the Rubio War With Syria or…would this still be just be the way things work? I do not think so.

Don't get me wrong I have great admiration for Atrios (he is right on the money regarding Social Security and self-driving cars), but the double standard where both Obama and Clinton are concerned is strong at Eschaton, and I'm sorry to say with him as well.

Accepting this as the way things work is just accepting that endless and new wars is the norm and there is nothing to be done about it. So unless you are willing to shut up about supposed endless new wars of all elected officials and political candidates because this is the way it is done, you need to get the f*ck over the idea that this is NORMAL and ACCEPTABLE.

And I don't see that happening over there, or at Daily Kos, or… once the subject is out is out of the tribe.

pretzelattack , September 2, 2016 at 4:40 pm

yeah, very well said. tammany hall, just the way things are done. jim crow laws, just the way things are done. endless etc's.

[Sep 02, 2016] 40 pieces of evidence that "the Clinton Foundation is not just a fraud, it's a massive fraud

Sep 02, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
aliteralmind , September 2, 2016 at 2:13 pm

I had the pleasure of interviewing Charles Ortel yesterday:

Charles Ortel: 40 days, 40 pieces of evidence that "the Clinton Foundation is not just a fraud, it's a massive fraud"

Jim Haygood , September 2, 2016 at 2:37 pm

"Bill Clinton wrote a book in 2007 called 'Giving' [for which he was paid $6.3 million]."

Give and ye shall receive, as the pious "Bill" is wont to say. /sarc

grayslady , September 2, 2016 at 5:55 pm

Excellent interview. I've bookmarked Ortel's website and am looking forward to his forthcoming writings. I was not aware of the differences between laws regulating charities versus other forms of organizations, so the interview as a starting point was very useful for me.

[Aug 29, 2016] Paul Wolfowitz, a former Bush advisor, says he'll likely vote for Hillary Clinton

The Independent

Agreeing with the 50 former Republican security officials who have called Trump "dangerous," Wolfowitz ultimately admitted that he has no choice but to vote for Clinton.

"I wish there were somebody I could be comfortable voting for," he continued. "I might have to vote for Hillary Clinton, even though I have big reservations about her."

Wolfowitz served as deputy secretary leading up to and during the Iraq war, a regime Trump has been highly critical of since it began. Clinton, on the other hand. voted for the war, a point that has been widely criticized by her opponents

[Aug 29, 2016] Reince Priebus Demands Public Release of All Communications Between Clinton Foundation and State Department

www.breitbart.com

Breitbart

Hillary Clinton's pay-for-play scandal is threatening to derail her campaign. Public outrage follows revelations that the Foundation took foreign cash during Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, that Clinton aide Huma Abedin was helping Foundation donors get favors and access from the State Department, and that Clinton aide Cheryl Mills was doing assignments for the Clinton Foundation while on the State Department payroll.

In a letter Monday to Foundation president Donna Shalala, Priebus demands transparency.

"I am writing to you to call on the Clinton Foundation and all of the entities under its umbrella to release all correspondence its officials had with the State Department during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state," Priebus added.

As I am sure you are well aware, a spate of recent news reports involving the Clinton Foundation's relationship with the Clinton State Department has renewed serious concerns about conflicts of interest and whether donors to the foundation benefitted from official acts under then-Secretary Clinton.

[Aug 29, 2016] Why Did Saudi Regime Other Gulf Tyrannies Donate Millions to Clinton Foundation?

"It isn't just "suspicious." It's influence peddling, which is corrupt by definition. And there's a whole infrastructure, institutional and technical, to support it." Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Notable quotes:
"... here you have Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton having this Clinton Foundation, with billions of dollars pouring into it from some of the world's worst tyrannies ..."
"... Bill and Hillary Clinton are being personally enriched by those same people, doing speeches, for many hundreds of thousands of dollars, in front of them, at the same time that she's running the State Department, getting ready to run for president, and soon will be running the executive branch. ..."
"... the problem here is that the Clintons have essentially become the pioneers of eliminating all of these lines, of amassing massive wealth from around the world, and using that to boost their own political power, and then using that political power to boost the interests of the people who are enriching them in all kinds of ways. ..."
Aug 29, 2016 | Democracy Now!

[W]hat Donna Brazile said in that video that you played is nothing short of laughable. It's not questioned when Republicans do favors for their donors? Of course it is. In fact, it's been a core, central critique of the Democratic Party, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, for years, that Republicans are corrupt because they serve the interest of their big donors. One of the primary positions of the Democratic Party is that the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court has corrupted politics because it allows huge money to flow into the political process in a way that ensures, or at least creates the appearance, that people are doing favors for donors.

And so, here you have Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton having this Clinton Foundation, with billions of dollars pouring into it from some of the world's worst tyrannies, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and Qatar and other Gulf states, other people who have all kinds of vested interests in the policies of the United States government. And at the same time, in many cases, both Bill and Hillary Clinton are being personally enriched by those same people, doing speeches, for many hundreds of thousands of dollars, in front of them, at the same time that she's running the State Department, getting ready to run for president, and soon will be running the executive branch.

And so, the problem here is that the Clintons have essentially become the pioneers of eliminating all of these lines, of amassing massive wealth from around the world, and using that to boost their own political power, and then using that political power to boost the interests of the people who are enriching them in all kinds of ways. And of course questions need to be asked, and suspicions are necessarily raised, because this kind of behavior is inherently suspicious. And it needs a lot of media scrutiny and a lot of attention, and I'm glad it's getting that.

[Aug 29, 2016] Black Panther Party Leader said that Hillary Democrats are promising everything, giving nothing

Notable quotes:
"... We, as black people, have to reexamine the relationship. We're being pimped like prostitutes and they're the big pimps pimping us politically… promising us everything and we get nothing in return. We gotta step back now as black people and we gotta look at all the parties and vote our best interests. ..."
"... Barack Obama, our president, served two terms… the first black president ever… but did our condition get better? Did financially, politically, academically with education in our community… did things get better? Are our young people working more? ..."
"... If having the Black working community start totally hammering the Dems becomes "cool" the Dem's are screwed for a long time. ..."
"... Obama trashed all of America, blacks and whites, while transferring millions of jobs overseas to Bangladesh, China, Mexico, etc. ..."
www.zerohedge.com
... following interview with New Black Panther Quanell X requires no further commentary – he breaks it down quite succinctly:

Let me say this to the brothers and sisters who listened and watched that speech… We may not like the vessel [Donald Trump] that said what he said, but I ask us to truly examine what he said.

Because it is a fact that for 54 years we have been voting for the Democratic Party like no other race in America. And they have not given us the same loyalty and love that we have given them. We, as black people, have to reexamine the relationship. We're being pimped like prostitutes and they're the big pimps pimping us politically… promising us everything and we get nothing in return. We gotta step back now as black people and we gotta look at all the parties and vote our best interests.

...

I want to say and encourage the brothers and sisters… Barack Obama, our president, served two terms… the first black president ever… but did our condition get better? Did financially, politically, academically with education in our community… did things get better? Are our young people working more?

The condition got worse.

froze25 -> jcaz, Aug 29, 2016 10:30 AM
If having the Black working community start totally hammering the Dems becomes "cool" the Dem's are screwed for a long time.
847328_3527 -> MANvsMACHINE, Aug 29, 2016 10:36 AM
Obama trashed all of America, blacks and whites, while transferring millions of jobs overseas to Bangladesh, China, Mexico, etc.
CJgipper -> FireBrander, Aug 29, 2016 12:28 PM
I've said that repeatedly. The question for hillary isn't what does the survey show, but how many will actually be motivated enough to go vote. They may not show up and pull the lever for trump this go round, but they may be curious enough to see what happens to just stay home and let things work themselves out to see what the result will be

[Aug 29, 2016] Justice Stevens dissent in Citizens United (via @ggreenwald ) shreds the central argument of Hillarys defenders

Notable quotes:
"... On numerous occasions we have recognized Congress' legitimate interest in preventing the money that is spent on elections from exerting an "'undue influence on an officeholder's judgment"' and from creating "4he appearance of such influence,"' beyond the sphere of quid pro quo relationships. I ..."
"... Corruption can take many forms. Bribery may be the paradigm case. But the difference between selling a vote and selling access is a matter of degree, not kind. And selling access is not qualitatively different from giving special preference to those who spent money on one's behalf. ..."
"... Corruption operates along a spectrum, and the majority's apparent belief that quid pro quo arrangements can be neatly demarcated from other improper influences docs not accord with the theory or reality of politics. ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com
On numerous occasions we have recognized Congress' legitimate interest in preventing the money that is spent on elections from exerting an "'undue influence on an officeholder's judgment"' and from creating "4he appearance of such influence,"' beyond the sphere of quid pro quo relationships. Id., at 150; see also. e.g., id., at 143-144. 152-154; Colorado II, 533 U. S.. at 441; Shrink Missouri. 528 U. S., at 389.

Corruption can take many forms. Bribery may be the paradigm case. But the difference between selling a vote and selling access is a matter of degree, not kind. And selling access is not qualitatively different from giving special preference to those who spent money on one's behalf.

Corruption operates along a spectrum, and the majority's apparent belief that quid pro quo arrangements can be neatly demarcated from other improper influences docs not accord with the theory or reality of politics.

It certainly does not accord with the record Congress developed in passing BCRA. a record that stands as a remarkable testament to the energy and ingenuity with which corporations, unions, lobbyists, and politicians may go about scratching each other's backs - and which amply supported Congress' determination to target a limited set of especially destructive

[Aug 29, 2016] If Clinton gets elected, she will be under investigation prior to the inauguration.

Notable quotes:
"... Hillary will win, and it will be more than business as usual. Influence peddling and pay to play will accelerate. The neocon money will flow into the system and foreign policy will be a debacle. We may very well be approaching WWIII. ..."
"... Under a Clinton II presidency, long-term international turmoil and confrontation lie ahead no matter what their family foundation may attempt to achieve. ..."
Aug 28, 2016 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Scott in MD , August 26, 2016 at 6:20 am

If Clinton gets elected, she will be under investigation prior to the inauguration. The Republicans will use their hold on the house to start several investigations on November 9.

However, the GOP (continuing a party tradition) will cruise right past several true issues, and lock onto the one thing they believe will hold the most shock value. This will turn out to not be provable, or not be all that interesting to anyone but die-hard GOP supporters, and she will exit the investigations as powerful, if not more so, than before.

There are plenty of reasons to investigate the Clinton machine, but if you expect this clown show to do it competently I have a bridge to sell you…

collin , August 26, 2016 at 9:47 am
No this one is backfiring already as most of the donors were people HRC would have met anyway, including Nobel Peace winners! and the 89 out of 154 people has not been released. And the article does not note any mischief but that there were meetings!

Or that there are a ton of other government officials have spouses that run well run charities. Matt Yglesias has de-bunked this one a lot and my guess disappears relatively quickly.

This is as worthless evidence as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

Johann , says: August 26, 2016 at 9:50 am

Hillary will win, and it will be more than business as usual. Influence peddling and pay to play will accelerate. The neocon money will flow into the system and foreign policy will be a debacle. We may very well be approaching WWIII.

The economy will continue to hollow out due to central bank hubris, government stimulus, and non-free trade deals. Income inequality will get worse. The middle class will continue to shrink.

We are well on our way to third world status.

Samuel Hooper , says: August 26, 2016 at 1:06 pm
After leaving office, Bill Clinton could have devoted his energies to Habitat for Humanity (like Jimmy Carter) or thrown his energies into helping an existing organisation (like the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation). He didn't, because he wanted the "fruits" of his philanthropic work to accrue to him and his family. And so it is not unreasonable to ask exactly what those fruits are, especially those gained while Hillary Clinton was serving as the nation's chief diplomat.
Steve Thompson \, says: August 26, 2016 at 2:41 pm
Here is an article that quite succinctly explains, in her own words, Hillary Clinton's views of America's role in the world:
http://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2016/08/rebuilding-globe-in-hillary-clintons.html

Under a Clinton II presidency, long-term international turmoil and confrontation lie ahead no matter what their family foundation may attempt to achieve.

[Aug 29, 2016] Clinton under new threat as email woes and foundation questions merge by David UsborneF:\Private_html\author.txt

independent.co.uk

The two sources of her problems are beginning to merge much as two weather depressions might collide and become a hurricane. One is the already well-trodden matter of her use of a private email server while Secretary of State. The other relates to the Clinton Foundation and whether donors received preferential access to her while she served in that post.

Two bombs dropped on the Clinton campaign at once on Monday. First it emerged that the FBI has collected and delivered to the State Department almost 15,000 new emails not previously seen and a federal judge ordered the department to accelerate their release to the public. Meanwhile, a conservative group called Judicial Watch released details of still more emails detailing exactly how donors to the foundation set about trying to get Ms Clinton's attention.

... ... ...

Questions have been swirling for weeks about whether or not Ms Clinton was drawn into giving special favours to some of her husband's pals in return for their giving generously to the charitable foundation he set up after leaving the presidency – a pay and play arrangement. On Monday, Judicial Watch unveiled details that showed exactly how that might have happened thanks to emails it had accessed through the courts sent to and from Huma Abedin, a close Clinton confidante and her deputy chief of staff during her four years at the State Department.

... ... ...

In attempt to forestall the trouble that is already upon his wife, Mr Clinton announced this week that should she win the presidency, several things will change at his Foundation. First and foremost it would cease to take money from any foreign governments and donors and only from US-based charities and individuals. He would also step down from the foundation entirely and cease personally to raise funds for it.

...many voters are simply afraid that with Ms Clinton in the White House the whole tawdry cycle will just start all over again and nothing else with get done in Washington

[Aug 29, 2016] Hillary Clinton pushes fundraising limits with $200,000 tickets for single Silicon Valley house party

independent.co.uk

It was only one in a long parade of late-August fundraisers Ms Clinton has attended, but it stands out for the generosity required of those who attended. The price of admission for the 20-odd guests who obliged was a stunning $200,000. That was double the $100,000 charged for guests who mingled recently with Ms Clinton in Omaha at the home of Susan Buffett, the daughter of Warren Buffett, the veteran investment oracle.

... ... ...

As of Monday, she and Mr Kaine had harvested no less than $32 million for the Hillary Victory Fund, which will be distributed to her campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state parties. A lot of was raised in last week as Ms Clinton hopscotched from party to party on Martha's Vineyard and Cape Code in Massachusetts.

[Aug 28, 2016] Are Clinton putting putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United States?

Aug 28, 2016 | www.moonofalabama.org

Shillary | Aug 26, 2016 5:33:47 PM | 53

Philip Giraldi• August 23, 2016 - http://www.unz.com/article/are-the-clintons-israeli-agents/

On August 5th, Michael Morell, a former acting Director of the CIA, pilloried GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, concluding that he was an "unwitting agent of Russia." Morell, who entitled his New York Times op-ed "I Ran the CIA and now I'm endorsing Hillary Clinton," described the process whereby Trump had been so corrupted. According to Morell, Putin, it seems, as a wily ex-career intelligence officer, is "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

So who is guilty of putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United States? I know there are advocates for any number of foreign states running around loose in Washington but the friends of Israel in government and the media come immediately to mind largely because there are so many of them, they are very much in-your-face and they are both extremely well-funded and very successful. Now deceased former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively, often referred to as the congressman and senator from Israel. And there are many more: Chuck Schumer, Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Mark Kirk, Nita Lowey, Ted Deutch, Brad Sherman, Ileana-Ros Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to name only a few in the Congress. All are major recipients of Israel related PAC money and all are reliable defenders of Israel no matter what Benjamin Netanyahu does and no matter how it effects the United States.

And then there are the Clintons. One only has to go back to Bill's one-sided pro-Israeli diplomacy at Camp David in 2000 to discern how the game was played. And then there was the widely condemned January 2001 last minute pardon of Mossad agent Marc Rich, whose wife Denise was a major contributor to the Clintons, to realize that there was always a deference to Israeli interests particularly when money was involved. The only problem is that the Clintons, relying on Morell's formulation, might more reasonably be described as witting agents of Israel rather than unwitting as they have certainly known what they have been doing and have been actively supporting Israeli policies even when damaging to U.S. interests since they first emerged from the primordial political swamps in Arkansas. If one were completely cynical it might be possible to suggest that they understood from the beginning that pandering to Israel and gaining access to Jewish power and money would be a major component in their rise to political prominence. It certainly has worked out that way.

=====

So who is guilty of putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United States? I know there are advocates for any number of foreign states running around loose in Washington but the friends of Israel in government and the media come immediately to mind largely because there are so many of them, they are very much in-your-face and they are both extremely well-funded and very successful. Now deceased former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively, often referred to as the congressman and senator from Israel. And there are many more: Chuck Schumer, Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Mark Kirk, Nita Lowey, Ted Deutch, Brad Sherman, Ileana-Ros Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to name only a few in the Congress. All are major recipients of Israel related PAC money and all are reliable defenders of Israel no matter what Benjamin Netanyahu does and no matter how it effects the United States.

And then there are the Clintons. One only has to go back to Bill's one-sided pro-Israeli diplomacy at Camp David in 2000 to discern how the game was played. And then there was the widely condemned January 2001 last minute pardon of Mossad agent Marc Rich, whose wife Denise was a major contributor to the Clintons, to realize that there was always a deference to Israeli interests particularly when money was involved. The only problem is that the Clintons, relying on Morell's formulation, might more reasonably be described as witting agents of Israel rather than unwitting as they have certainly known what they have been doing and have been actively supporting Israeli policies even when damaging to U.S. interests since they first emerged from the primordial political swamps in Arkansas. If one were completely cynical it might be possible to suggest that they understood from the beginning that pandering to Israel and gaining access to Jewish power and money would be a major component in their rise to political prominence. It certainly has worked out that way.

[Aug 27, 2016] Neocons declare war on Trump

Neocons will support Hillary breaking the ranks of Republican Party, as she is one of them: "The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton," Kagan warned. "The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be."
Notable quotes:
"... Donald Trump calls the Iraq War a lie-fueled fiasco, admires Vladimir Putin and says he would be a "neutral" arbiter between Israel and the Palestinians. When it comes to America's global role he asks, "Why are we always at the forefront of everything?" ..."
"... Even more than his economic positions, Trump's foreign policy views challenge GOP orthodoxy in fundamental ways. But while parts of the party establishment are resigning themselves or even backing Trump's runaway train, one group is bitterly digging in against him: the hawkish foreign policy elites known as neoconservatives. ..."
"... In interviews with POLITICO, leading neocons - people who promoted the Iraq War, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable - said Trump would be a disaster for U.S. foreign policy and vowed never to support him. So deep is their revulsion that several even say they could vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump in November. ..."
"... "Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin," said Eliot Cohen, a former top State Department official under George W. Bush and a strategic theorist who argues for a muscular U.S. role abroad. Trump's election would be "an unmitigated disaster for American foreign policy," Cohen said, adding that "he has already damaged it considerably." ..."
"... In a March 1 interview with Vox, Max Boot, a military historian at the Council on Foreign Relations who backed the Iraq War and often advocates a hawkish foreign policy, said that he, too, would vote for Clinton over Trump. "I'm literally losing sleep over Donald Trump," he said. "She would be vastly preferable to Trump." ..."
"... The letter was signed by dozens of Republican foreign policy experts, including Boot; Peter Feaver, a former senior national security aide in George W. Bush's White House; Robert Zoellick, a former deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; and Dov Zakheim, a former Bush Pentagon official; and Kori Schake, a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a former Bush State Department official. ..."
"... Kristol and Abrams have advised Florida senator Marco Rubio, the preferred choice of several neoconservatives, who admire his call for "moral clarity" in foreign policy and strong emphasis on human rights and democracy. ..."
"... Alarm brewing for months in GOP foreign policy circles burst into public view last week, when Robert Kagan, a key backer of the Iraq War and American global might, wrote in the Washington Post that a Trump nomination would force him to cross party lines. ..."
"... "The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton," Kagan warned. "The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be." ..."
POLITICO
Donald Trump calls the Iraq War a lie-fueled fiasco, admires Vladimir Putin and says he would be a "neutral" arbiter between Israel and the Palestinians. When it comes to America's global role he asks, "Why are we always at the forefront of everything?"

Even more than his economic positions, Trump's foreign policy views challenge GOP orthodoxy in fundamental ways. But while parts of the party establishment are resigning themselves or even backing Trump's runaway train, one group is bitterly digging in against him: the hawkish foreign policy elites known as neoconservatives.

In interviews with POLITICO, leading neocons - people who promoted the Iraq War, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable - said Trump would be a disaster for U.S. foreign policy and vowed never to support him. So deep is their revulsion that several even say they could vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump in November.

"Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin," said Eliot Cohen, a former top State Department official under George W. Bush and a strategic theorist who argues for a muscular U.S. role abroad. Trump's election would be "an unmitigated disaster for American foreign policy," Cohen said, adding that "he has already damaged it considerably."

Cohen, an Iraq war backer who is often called a neoconservative but said he does not identify himself that way, said he would "strongly prefer a third party candidate" to Trump, but added: "Probably if absolutely no alternative: Hillary."

In a March 1 interview with Vox, Max Boot, a military historian at the Council on Foreign Relations who backed the Iraq War and often advocates a hawkish foreign policy, said that he, too, would vote for Clinton over Trump. "I'm literally losing sleep over Donald Trump," he said. "She would be vastly preferable to Trump."

Cohen helped to organize an open letter signed by several dozen GOP foreign policy insiders - many of whom are not considered neocons - that was published Wednesday night by the military blog War on the Rocks. "[W]e are unable to support a Party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head," the letter declared. It cited everything from Trump's "admiration for foreign dictators" to his "inexcusable" support for "the expansive use of torture."

The letter was signed by dozens of Republican foreign policy experts, including Boot; Peter Feaver, a former senior national security aide in George W. Bush's White House; Robert Zoellick, a former deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; and Dov Zakheim, a former Bush Pentagon official; and Kori Schake, a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a former Bush State Department official.

Several other neocons said they find themselves in an impossible position, constitutionally incapable of voting for Clinton but repelled by a Republican whose foreign policy views they consider somewhere between nonexistent and dangerous - and disconnected from their views about American power and values abroad.

"1972 was the first time I was old enough to vote for president, and I did not vote. Couldn't vote for McGovern for foreign policy reasons, nor for Nixon because of Watergate," said Elliott Abrams, a former national security council aide to George W. Bush who specializes in democracy and the Middle East. "I may be in the same boat in 2016, unable to vote for Trump or Clinton."

Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, something of a dean of Washington neoconservatives, said he would seek out a third option before choosing between Trump and Clinton.

"If it's Trump-Clinton, I'd work with others to recruit a strong conservative third party candidate, and do my best to help him win (which by the way would be more possible than people think, especially when people - finally - realize Trump shouldn't be president and Hillary is indicted)," Kristol wrote in an email.

Kristol and Abrams have advised Florida senator Marco Rubio, the preferred choice of several neoconservatives, who admire his call for "moral clarity" in foreign policy and strong emphasis on human rights and democracy.

Alarm brewing for months in GOP foreign policy circles burst into public view last week, when Robert Kagan, a key backer of the Iraq War and American global might, wrote in the Washington Post that a Trump nomination would force him to cross party lines.

"The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton," Kagan warned. "The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be."

In an interview, Kagan said his opposition to Trump "has nothing to do with foreign policy."

[Aug 27, 2016] Artists Impression Of Hillary Clintons Old Office

Notable quotes:
"... Source: MichaelPRamirez.com ..."
www.zerohedge.com

Presented with no comment...

Source: MichaelPRamirez.com

Here2Go d nmewn •Aug 27, 2016 8:37 PM
Is that Huma in a blue dress under the Resolute desk?
Pairadimes d Here2Go •Aug 27, 2016 9:14 PM
Ramirez is a genius.
zeronetwork d debtor of last resort •Aug 27, 2016 8:15 PM

The thought process Donald has started is not going to fade very soon. Still few weeks before election. I am sure Donald got some more cards in his sleeve.
are we there yet •Aug 27, 2016 8:36 PM
I have a solution for Hillary's in-continuance and mobility declining problems. The chair behind the presidents desk should be a wheelchair with a bedpan. Otherwise the term 'campaign trail' will take on a whole new meaning.

[Aug 27, 2016] Hillary Clintons Ghosts A Legacy of Pushing the Democratic Party to the Right

Notable quotes:
"... But the party's latest generation of "New Democrats" - self-described "moderates" who are funded by Wall Street and are aggressively trying to steer the party to the right - have noticed this trend and are now fighting back. Third Way, a "centrist" think tank that serves as the hub for contemporary New Democrats, has recently published a sizable policy paper, " Ready for the New Economy ," urging the Democratic Party to avoid focusing on economic inequality. Former Obama chief of staff Bill Daley, a Third Way trustee, recently argued that Sanders' influence on the primary "is a recipe for disaster" for Democrats. ..."
"... The DLC's goal was to advance "a message that was less tilted toward minorities and welfare, less radical on social issues like abortion and gays, more pro-defense, and more conservative on economic issues," wrote Robert Dreyfuss in a 2001 article in The American Prospect . "The DLC thundered against the 'liberal fundamentalism' of the party's base - unionists, blacks, feminists, Greens, and cause groups generally." ..."
"... Within the DLC, populism was not merely out of favor; it was militantly opposed. The organization had virtually no grassroots supporters; it was funded almost entirely by corporate donors. Its executive council, Dreyfuss reported , was made up of companies that donated at least $25,000 and included Enron and Koch Industries. A list of its known donors includes scores of the United States' most powerful corporations, all of whom benefit from a Democratic Party that embraces big business and is less reliant on labor unions and the grassroots for support. ..."
"... The height of the DLC's triumph may well have been in the 1990s, when it claimed President Bill Clinton as its most prominent advocate, celebrating his disastrous welfare cuts (which were supported by Hillary Clinton as the first lady), his support for the North American Free Trade Agreement and his speech declaring that the "era of big government is over." These initiatives had the DLC's footprint all over them. ..."
"... The DLC's prescribed Third Way also found a home on Downing Street in England. Tony Blair, a major Clinton ally, was a staunch advocate of the DLC, adopted its strategies and lent his name to its website. According to the book Clinton and Blair: The Political Economy of the Third Way , he said in 1998 that it "is a third way because it moves decisively beyond an Old Left preoccupied by state control, high taxation and producer interests." ..."
"... When Bill Clinton left the White House, Hillary Clinton entered the Senate. She quickly became a major player for the DLC, serving as a prominent member of the New Democratic Caucus in the Senate, speaking at conferences on multiple occasions and serving as chair of a key initiative for the 2006 and 2008 elections. ..."
"... She also adopted the DLC's hawkish military stance. The DLC was feverishly in favor of Bush's "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. Will Marshall, one of the group's founders, was a signatory of many of the now infamous documents from the Project for the New American Century, which urged the United States to radically increase its use of force in Iraq and beyond. ..."
"... The DLC led efforts to take down Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq as an example of his weakness. Two years later, the organization played a similar role against Ned Lamont's antiwar challenge to Sen. Joe Lieberman, which the DLC decried as "The Return of Liberal Fundamentalism." ..."
"... However, the DLC's influence eventually waned . A formal affiliation with the organization became something of a deal breaker for some progressive voters. When Barack Obama first ran for the Senate in 2004, he had no affiliation with the DLC. So, when they wrongly included him in their directory of New Democrats, he asked the DLC to remove his name. In explaining this, he also publicly shunned the organization in an interview with Black Commentator. "You are undoubtedly correct that these positions make me an unlikely candidate for membership in the DLC," he wrote when pressed by the magazine . "That is why I am not currently, nor have I ever been, a member of the DLC." ..."
"... When the DLC closed, it records were acquired by the Clinton Foundation, which DLC founder Al From called an "appropriate and fitting repository." To this day, the Clinton Foundation continues to promote the work of the DLC's founding members. In September 2015, the foundation hosted an event to promote From's book The New Democrats and the Return to Power ..."
"... Citizens United ..."
"... So while the DLC may be a dirty word among many progressives, this didn't stop Obama from appointing New Democrats to key posts in his White House. The same Bill Daley who works for a hedge fund and is on the board of trustees for Third Way was also President Obama's White House chief of staff . And, as was noted above, he is now actively trying to influence the Democratic Party's direction in the 2016 election. ..."
"... The remaining champions of the DLC agenda have been increasingly active in trying to push back against populism. On October 28, 2015, Third Way published an ambitious paper, "Ready for the New Economy," that aims to do just that. The paper falsely argues that "the narrative of fairness and inequality has, to put it mildly, failed to excite voters," and says "these trends should compel the party to rigorously question the electoral value of today's populist agenda." ..."
"... When Clinton announced her tax plan, Dow Jones quoted Jim Kessler, a Third Way staffer, praising the plan. On social media , Third Way staffers are routinely cheering on Clinton and attacking Sanders and O'Malley . ..."
"... and where she will be ..."
"... Consider the case of Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and presidential candidate, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president . Dean's reputation as a fiery progressive has always been wildly overstated , but there was a rich irony about Dean's endorsement. His centrist record aside, Dean was once the face of the party's progressive base. During his campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2003 and 2004, Dean used his opposition to the war in Iraq to garner progressive support. He attracted a large group of partisan liberal bloggers, who coined the term "Netroots" in support of his candidacy . For a time, Dean was leading in the polls during the primary. ..."
"... Remember: The Dean campaign was taken down by the DLC, who attacked him for running a campaign from the "McGovern-Mondale wing" of the Democratic Party, "defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home." The rift between the DLC and Dean's supporters was so intense that Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas described it as a "civil war" between Democrats. Of course, when Dean announced his support for Clinton, he made no mention of the fact that she was the leader of the same group that ambushed his candidacy precisely because it appealed to the party's left-leaning base. ..."
"... The tendency of some progressives to downplay, ignore or deflect populist critiques of Clinton's record was observed by Doug Henwood in his 2014 Harper's piece "Stop Hillary." ..."
"... In the article, he describes the "widespread liberal fantasy of [Clinton] as a progressive paragon" as misguided. "In fact, a close look at her life and career is perhaps the best antidote to all these great expectations," Henwood writes. "The historical record, such as it is, may also be the only antidote, since most progressives are unwilling to discuss Hillary in anything but the most general, flattering terms." ..."
Aug 27, 2016 | www.truth-out.org
A discussion about how the Democrats could be compromised by their relationship with the financial institutions that fund their campaigns was unthinkable in past presidential debates. Such a discussion falls way outside the narrow parameters of debate that have dominated political discourse in the mainstream media for decades. But at the Democratic debate in Iowa this November, this issue was front and center: Hillary Clinton was forced to defend her financial relationship with Wall Street numerous times on network television.

Within the DLC, populism was not merely out of favor; it was militantly opposed.

Clinton's response to populist attacks on her Wall Street connections has largely been to adopt similar language and policy positions as her primary opponent, Bernie Sanders. In many ways she is trying to minimize the differences between her and Sanders, rather than emphasize them. "The differences among us," she said of her opponents at the Iowa debate , "pale in comparison to what's happening on the Republican [side]."

Clinton, currently the front-runner, is now making "debt-free" college tuition , minimum wage hikes ( to $12 per hour ) and measures to bring "accountability to Wall Street" major talking points in her campaign. The language of populism - at least for now - is seen as a viable electoral strategy .

But the party's latest generation of "New Democrats" - self-described "moderates" who are funded by Wall Street and are aggressively trying to steer the party to the right - have noticed this trend and are now fighting back. Third Way, a "centrist" think tank that serves as the hub for contemporary New Democrats, has recently published a sizable policy paper, " Ready for the New Economy ," urging the Democratic Party to avoid focusing on economic inequality. Former Obama chief of staff Bill Daley, a Third Way trustee, recently argued that Sanders' influence on the primary "is a recipe for disaster" for Democrats.

This "ideological gulf" inside the party, as The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus describes it , is not a new phenomenon. Before there was Third Way, there was the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). And before there was Bill Daley, there was Hillary Clinton - a key member of the DLC's leadership team during her entire tenure in the US Senate (2000-2008). As Clinton seeks progressive support, it is important to consider her role in the influential movement to, as The American Prospect describes it , "reinvent the [Democratic] party as one pledged to fiscal restraint, less government, and a pro-business, pro-free market outlook." This fairly recent history is an important part of Clinton's record, and she owes it to primary voters to answer for it.

The Reign of the DLC

A lot has happened since the last time the Democrats had a contested primary. The 2008 economic crisis , the growth of the Occupy movement , the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the consequent increase in public attention to the ongoing killings of Black people by police , and the Bernie Sanders campaign have all played major roles in shaping the political consensus of primary voters. None of these existed when Barack Obama won the nomination over Clinton in June 2008.

But before all of these events shaped public opinion, the party was largely guided by the ideas of the Democratic Leadership Council. Founded by Southern Democrats in 1985 , the group sought to transform the party by pushing it to embrace more conservative positions and win support from big business.

Clinton adopted the DLC strategy in the way she governed.

The DLC's goal was to advance "a message that was less tilted toward minorities and welfare, less radical on social issues like abortion and gays, more pro-defense, and more conservative on economic issues," wrote Robert Dreyfuss in a 2001 article in The American Prospect . "The DLC thundered against the 'liberal fundamentalism' of the party's base - unionists, blacks, feminists, Greens, and cause groups generally."

Within the DLC, populism was not merely out of favor; it was militantly opposed. The organization had virtually no grassroots supporters; it was funded almost entirely by corporate donors. Its executive council, Dreyfuss reported , was made up of companies that donated at least $25,000 and included Enron and Koch Industries. A list of its known donors includes scores of the United States' most powerful corporations, all of whom benefit from a Democratic Party that embraces big business and is less reliant on labor unions and the grassroots for support.

The organization's influence was significant, especially in the 1990s. The New York Times reported that during that era "the Democratic Leadership Council was a maker of presidents." Its influence continued into the post-Clinton years. Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt and countless others all lent their names in support of the organization. The DLC and its think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), were well financed and published a seemingly endless barrage of policy papers , op-eds and declarations in their numerous publications.

"It is almost hard to find anyone who wasn't involved with [the DLC]" said Mark Schmitt, a staffer for the nonpartisan New America Foundation think tank, in an interview with Truthout. "This was before there were a lot of organizations, and the DLC provided a way for politicians to get involved and to be in the same room with important people."

The height of the DLC's triumph may well have been in the 1990s, when it claimed President Bill Clinton as its most prominent advocate, celebrating his disastrous welfare cuts (which were supported by Hillary Clinton as the first lady), his support for the North American Free Trade Agreement and his speech declaring that the "era of big government is over." These initiatives had the DLC's footprint all over them.

The DLC's prescribed Third Way also found a home on Downing Street in England. Tony Blair, a major Clinton ally, was a staunch advocate of the DLC, adopted its strategies and lent his name to its website. According to the book Clinton and Blair: The Political Economy of the Third Way , he said in 1998 that it "is a third way because it moves decisively beyond an Old Left preoccupied by state control, high taxation and producer interests."

As recently as 2014, Blair has continued to urge the UK's Labour Party to remain committed to these ideals. "Former UK prime minister Tony Blair has urged Labour leader Ed Miliband to stick to the political centre ground, warning that the public has not 'fallen back in love with the state' despite the global financial crisis," according to the Financial Times , which noted that the left-wing base of his party has rejected his centrist leanings. "His decision as prime minister to join the US in its invasion of Iraq - as well as his free-market leanings - have made him a hate figure among the most leftwing Labour activists."

Hillary Clinton as a New Democrat

When Bill Clinton left the White House, Hillary Clinton entered the Senate. She quickly became a major player for the DLC, serving as a prominent member of the New Democratic Caucus in the Senate, speaking at conferences on multiple occasions and serving as chair of a key initiative for the 2006 and 2008 elections.

She was even promoted as the DLC's "New Dem of the Week" on its website. (It would be remiss not to note that Martin O'Malley also served as a "New Dem of the Week," and even co-wrote an op-ed on behalf of the DLC with its then-chair, Harold Ford Jr.)

New Democrats were never really about popular support; they were about bringing together big business and the Democrats.

More importantly, Clinton adopted the DLC strategy in the way she governed. She tried to portray herself as a crusader for family values when she introduced legislation to ban violent video games and flag burning in 2005. She also adopted the DLC's hawkish military stance. The DLC was feverishly in favor of Bush's "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. Will Marshall, one of the group's founders, was a signatory of many of the now infamous documents from the Project for the New American Century, which urged the United States to radically increase its use of force in Iraq and beyond.

The DLC led efforts to take down Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq as an example of his weakness. Two years later, the organization played a similar role against Ned Lamont's antiwar challenge to Sen. Joe Lieberman, which the DLC decried as "The Return of Liberal Fundamentalism."

However, the DLC's influence eventually waned . A formal affiliation with the organization became something of a deal breaker for some progressive voters. When Barack Obama first ran for the Senate in 2004, he had no affiliation with the DLC. So, when they wrongly included him in their directory of New Democrats, he asked the DLC to remove his name. In explaining this, he also publicly shunned the organization in an interview with Black Commentator. "You are undoubtedly correct that these positions make me an unlikely candidate for membership in the DLC," he wrote when pressed by the magazine . "That is why I am not currently, nor have I ever been, a member of the DLC."

The DLC's decline continued: A growing sense of discontent among progressives, Clinton's loss in 2008 and the economic crisis that followed turned the DLC into something of a political liability. And in 2011, the Democratic Leadership Council shuttered its doors .

When the DLC closed, it records were acquired by the Clinton Foundation, which DLC founder Al From called an "appropriate and fitting repository." To this day, the Clinton Foundation continues to promote the work of the DLC's founding members. In September 2015, the foundation hosted an event to promote From's book The New Democrats and the Return to Power . Amazingly, O'Malley provided a favorable blurb for the book, praising it as a "reminder of the core principles that still drive Democratic success today."

The 2016 Election and New Democrats

The DLC's demise was seen as a victory by many progressives, and the populist tone of the 2016 primary is being celebrated as a sign of rising progressivism as well. But it is probably too soon to declare that the "battle for the soul of the Democratic Party is coming to an end," as Adam Green, cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, recently told the Guardian .

Consider the way Marshall spun the closing of the DLC. "With President Obama consciously reconstructing a winning coalition by reconnecting with the progressive center, the pragmatic ideas of PPI and other organizations are more vital than ever," he said in an interview with Politico .

His reference to "PPI and other organizations" refers to the still-existing Progressive Policy Institute and Third Way. These institutions have the same Wall Street support and continue to push the same agenda that their predecessor did.

New Democrats' guns are aimed firmly at Sanders, and they are quick to defend Clinton.

Many of these "centrist" ideas lack popular support these days. But New Democrats were never really about popular support; they were about bringing together big business and the Democrats. The group's board of trustees is almost entirely made up of Wall Street executives. Further, in the aftermath of the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, these same moneyed interests have more influence over the political process than ever before.

"These organizations now are basically just corporate lobbyists today," Schmitt said.

So while the DLC may be a dirty word among many progressives, this didn't stop Obama from appointing New Democrats to key posts in his White House. The same Bill Daley who works for a hedge fund and is on the board of trustees for Third Way was also President Obama's White House chief of staff . And, as was noted above, he is now actively trying to influence the Democratic Party's direction in the 2016 election.

The remaining champions of the DLC agenda have been increasingly active in trying to push back against populism. On October 28, 2015, Third Way published an ambitious paper, "Ready for the New Economy," that aims to do just that. The paper falsely argues that "the narrative of fairness and inequality has, to put it mildly, failed to excite voters," and says "these trends should compel the party to rigorously question the electoral value of today's populist agenda."

The report attacks Sanders' proposals for expanding Social Security and implementing a single-payer health-care system directly, making faulty claims about both proposals. It also advises Democrats to avoid the "singular focus on income inequality" because its "actual impact on the middle class may be small."

"Third Way and its allies are gravely misreading the economic and political moment," said Richard Eskow, a writer for Campaign for America's Future, in a rebuttal to the paper. "If their influence continues to wane, perhaps one day Americans can stop paying the price for their ill-conceived, corporation- and billionaire-friendly agenda."

Eskow is right to use the word "if" instead of "when." Progressives ignore these efforts at their own peril. Despite their archaic and flawed ideas, Third Way's reports and speakers still get undue attention in the mainstream media. For instance, The Washington Post devoted 913 words to Third Way's new paper, describing it as part of a "big economic fight in the Democratic Party." The article provided a platform for Third Way's president Jonathan Cowan to attack Sanders. "We propose that Democrats be Democrats, not socialists," he said. This tone is the status quo for New Democrats in the media. Their guns are aimed firmly at Sanders, and they are quick to defend Clinton.

When Clinton was attacked for working with former Wall Street executives, The Wall Street Journal quoted PPI president Will Marshall, defending her. "The idea that you have to excommunicate anybody who ever worked in the financial sector is ridiculous," he said .

When Clinton announced her tax plan, Dow Jones quoted Jim Kessler, a Third Way staffer, praising the plan. On social media , Third Way staffers are routinely cheering on Clinton and attacking Sanders and O'Malley .

"The Necessities of the Moment": Will Clinton Run Back to the Right?

Of course, the New Democrats' preference for Clinton shouldn't surprise anyone. She has been an ally for years. And while they have expressed concern over her leftward tilt, they are confident, as the Post reported , that "she'll tack back their way in a general election." For instance, her recent opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership - which Third Way is supporting aggressively - has centrists "disappointed" but not worried.

"Everyone knew where she was on that and where she will be , but given the necessities of the moment and a tough Democratic primary, she felt she needed to go there initially," New Democratic Coalition chairman Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wisconsin) told the Guardian (emphasis added).

Politics isn't a sporting event. It is important to be critical, even of candidates for whom you will likely vote.

If New Democrats aren't worried that Clinton's populist rhetoric is sincere, progressives probably should be worried that it isn't. As DLC founder Al From told the Guardian : "Hillary will bend a little bit but not so much that she can't get herself back on course in the general [election] and when she is governing."

Some, however, are confident that if elected, Clinton will have to spend political capital on the very populist ideas she is now embracing.

"When you make these kind of promises it will be difficult to just go back on them," said the New America Foundation's Mark Schmitt. "She will have to work on many of these issues if she is elected."

Adam Green, cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told Truthout that his group's emphasis is to make any Democratic candidate responsive to the issues important to what he calls the "Warren wing" of the party, which espouses the more populist economic beliefs of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). Like Warren, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee hasn't endorsed a candidate in the race as of now.

"It is not about one candidate; it is about trying to make all the candidates address the issues we care about," Green said, citing debt-free education, expanding Social Security benefits and supporting Black Lives Matter as key issues.

Liberals, Clinton and Partisan Amnesia

It is understandable why some progressives are hesitant to be critical of Clinton: They fully expect that soon she will be the only thing standing between them and some candidate from the "Republican clown car," as Green described the GOP field.

But voting pragmatically in a general election is one thing. Ignoring or apologizing for Clinton's very recent and troubling record is another. Too many progressives are engaged in a sort of willful partisan amnesia and are accepting the false narrative that Clinton is "a populist fighter who for decades has been an advocate for families and children," as some unnamed Clinton advisers told The New York Times.

Consider the case of Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and presidential candidate, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president . Dean's reputation as a fiery progressive has always been wildly overstated , but there was a rich irony about Dean's endorsement. His centrist record aside, Dean was once the face of the party's progressive base. During his campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2003 and 2004, Dean used his opposition to the war in Iraq to garner progressive support. He attracted a large group of partisan liberal bloggers, who coined the term "Netroots" in support of his candidacy . For a time, Dean was leading in the polls during the primary.

Remember: The Dean campaign was taken down by the DLC, who attacked him for running a campaign from the "McGovern-Mondale wing" of the Democratic Party, "defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home." The rift between the DLC and Dean's supporters was so intense that Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas described it as a "civil war" between Democrats. Of course, when Dean announced his support for Clinton, he made no mention of the fact that she was the leader of the same group that ambushed his candidacy precisely because it appealed to the party's left-leaning base.

Once the primary is over, the chance to force Clinton to respond to left critiques will likely not come again soon.

Yet Moulitsas recently endorsed Clinton in a column for The Hill. Moulitsas was one of the key bloggers who supported Dean in 2004 and helped create the Netroots in its infancy. His goal, he said often, was "crashing the gate" of the Democratic establishment. But his uncritical support for Clinton, the quintessential establishment candidate, has turned much of his own blog into evidence of how some progressives are dismissing recent history for partisan reasons. In the last contested Democratic primary, Moulitsas was extremely critical of Clinton. Now, he is helping her do to Sanders what the DLC did to Dean.

Why are the likes of Dean and Moulitsas so quick to embrace Clinton after years of battling with her and her allies in the so-called "vital center?" Only they know for sure. In the case of Dean, it may well be because he was never a real populist to begin with. In 2003, Bloomberg did a story asking Vermonters to talk about Dean's ideology. "Howard is not a liberal. He's a pro-business, Rockefeller Republican," said Garrison Nelson, a political science professor at the University of Vermont. This sentiment is shared by many Vermonters, on both the left and right .

But for other self-identified progressives who have embraced the establishment candidate, such as Moulitsas, the answers may be simpler: partisan loyalty and ambition. The fact is the odds of Clinton winning the nomination are very good. And for the likes of Moulitsas - who now writes columns for an establishment DC paper and is a major fundraiser for Democrats - being on the side of the winner will certainly make him more friends in DC than supporting the self-identified socialist that opposes her. Moulitsas argues that Clinton has dismissed "her husband's ideological baggage" and is "aiming for a truly progressive presidency." He is now a true believer, he claims. It is up to readers to decide if they find his argument to be credible, especially compared to the conflicting statements he has made for many years. Many on his own blog are skeptical.

But, lastly, the main reason many progressives are willing to overlook Clinton's record is simply fear. They are afraid of a Republican president, and it is hard to blame them. The idea of a President Trump - or Carson or Cruz - is extremely frightening for many people. This is entirely understandable. But even if one feels obligated to vote for Clinton in the general election, should she win the nomination, that does not mean her record ought to be ignored. Politics isn't a sporting event. It is important to be critical, even of candidates for whom you will likely vote.

The Historical Record: "The Only Antidote"

The tendency of some progressives to downplay, ignore or deflect populist critiques of Clinton's record was observed by Doug Henwood in his 2014 Harper's piece "Stop Hillary."

In the article, he describes the "widespread liberal fantasy of [Clinton] as a progressive paragon" as misguided. "In fact, a close look at her life and career is perhaps the best antidote to all these great expectations," Henwood writes. "The historical record, such as it is, may also be the only antidote, since most progressives are unwilling to discuss Hillary in anything but the most general, flattering terms."

Cleary, Clinton's historical record reveals much to be concerned about, including her long career as a New Democrat. For the first time in recent memory, however, progressives actually have some leverage to make her answer for this record.

Clinton has a reasonably competitive opponent who has challenged her on her record of Wall Street support, her dismissal of the Glass-Steagall Act and her vote for war in Iraq . She should also be challenged vigorously on her role with the DLC.

Circumstances have created a unique moment where Clinton has to answer these tough questions. But it may be a fleeting moment. Once the primary is over, the chance to force Clinton - or any major establishment politician - to respond to left critiques will likely not come again soon. Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission .

Michael Corcoran is a journalist based in Boston. He has written for The Boston Globe, The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor, Extra!, NACLA Report on the Americas and other publications. Follow him on Twitter: @mcorcoran3 .

[Aug 27, 2016] Hillary Clintons Wall Street Address by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

Notable quotes:
"... International Business Times ..."
"... The Washington Post ..."
"... The Guardian ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... her way of life has marinated for a long time now in the culture of wealth, influence, and power - and a way of thinking engrained deeply in our political ethos, one in which one's own power in democracy is more important than democracy itself. ..."
www.truth-out.org

...She is, after all, a favorite of the giant banks, the CEOs and hedge funds she now was castigating. Between 2009 and 2014, Clinton's list of top 20 donors starts out with Citigroup and includes JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, whose chief Lloyd Blankfein has invested in Clinton's son-in-law's boutique hedge fund. These donors are, as the website Truthout's William Rivers Pitt notes, "the ones who gamed the system by buying politicians like her and then proceeded to burn the economy down to dust and ash while making a financial killing in the process."

They're also among the deep-pocket outfits that paid for speeches and appearances by Hillary or Bill Clinton to the tune of more than $125 million since they left the White House in 2001. It could hardly escape some in that crowd on Roosevelt Island, catching a glimpse of the towers of power and might across the river: Can we really expect someone so deeply tethered to the financial and business class – who moves so often and so easily among its swells – to fight hard to check their predatory appetites, dismantle their control of Congress, and stand up for the working people who are their prey?

Consider the two Canadian banks with financial ties to the Keystone XL pipeline that fully or partially paid for eight speeches by Hillary Clinton. Or her $3.2 million in lecture fees from the tech sector. Or the more than $2.5 million in paid speeches for companies and groups lobbying for fast-track trade. According to TIME magazine and the Center for Responsive Politics, in 2014, "Almost half of the money from Hillary Clinton's speaking engagements came from corporations and advocacy groups that were lobbying Congress at the same time… In all, the corporations and trade groups that Clinton spoke to in 2014 spent $72.5 million lobbying Congress that same year."

Then look at David Sirota's recent reporting for the International Business Times, especially the revelation that while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, her department "approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an IBTimes analysis of State Department and foundation data… nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush's second term."

Those nations include Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar, each of which "gained State Department clearance to buy caches of American-made weapons even as the department singled them out for a range of alleged ills, from corruption to restrictions on civil liberties to violent crackdowns against political opponents."

Further, American defense contractors like Boeing and Lockheed who sold those arms and their delivery systems also shelled out heavily to the $2 billion Clinton Foundation and the Clinton family. According to Sirota, "In all, governments and corporations involved in the arms deals approved by Clinton's State Department have delivered between $54 million and $141 million to the Clinton Foundation as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to the Clinton family, according to foundation and State Department records. The Clinton Foundation publishes only a rough range of individual contributors' donations, making a more precise accounting impossible."

The Washington Post reports that among the approximately 200,000 contributors there have also been donations from many other countries and corporations, overseas and domestic business leaders, the odious Blackwater Training Center, and even Rupert Murdoch of celebrity phone hacking fame.

Meredith McGehee, policy director of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, told David Sirota: "The word was out to these groups that one of the best ways to gain access and influence with the Clintons was to give to this foundation."

We pause here to note: All of these donations were apparently legal, and as others have written, at least we know who was doling out the cash, in contrast to those anonymous sources secretly channeling millions in "dark money" to the chosen candidates of the super rich.

... ... ..

We see "exactly Washington's problem" in how, during the 1990s, Bill Clinton became the willing agent of Wall Street's push to deregulate, a collaboration that enriched the bankers but eventually cost millions of Americans their homes, jobs, and pensions.

Thanks to documents that came to light last year (one even has a handwritten note attached that reads: "Please eat this paper after you have read this."), we understand more clearly how a small coterie of insiders maneuvered to get President Clinton to support repeal of the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act that had long protected depositors from being victimized by bank speculators gambling with their savings. Repeal led to a wave of Wall Street mergers.

As you can read in stories by Dan Roberts in The Guardian and Pam and Russ Martens online, the ringleader of the effort was Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, who breathlessly persuaded the president to sign the repeal and soon left office to join Citigroup, the bank that turned out to be the primary beneficiary of the deal. When it overreached and collapsed, Citigroup received the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of U.S. finance. Rubin, meanwhile, earned $126 million from the bank over ten years.

According to The New York Times, Rubin "remains a crucial kingmaker in Democratic policy circles" and, as an adviser to the Clintons, "will play an essential role in Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign for president…"

Hillary Clinton, as a young Methodist growing up in Park Ridge, Illinois, was weaned on the social ethics of John Wesley, a founder of Methodism and a courageous champion of the poor and needy; we have her word for it and the witness of others. "Do all the good you can," the Methodist saying goes, "in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can."

But over time, Hillary Clinton achieved superstar status among Washington's acculturated class – that swollen colony of permanent denizens of our capital who may have come from the hinterlands but can hardly resist the seductive ways of a new and different culture in which the prevailing mindset is: It's important to do good but more important to do well.

Lawrence Lessig believes she is an unlikely reformer – "which is precisely why she might be a particularly effective one." But her way of life has marinated for a long time now in the culture of wealth, influence, and power - and a way of thinking engrained deeply in our political ethos, one in which one's own power in democracy is more important than democracy itself.

... ... ...

Sep_Arch • 9 months ago

The Clinton foundation is basically a money-laundering operation for an influence-peddling scam. When Hillary is President, just as when she was Senator and Secretary of State, she will base her decisions mostly on what will put more money into her family's pockets. After all, they are hobnobbing with billionaires now. She will tell herself she is "pro-business" and being "realistic" as she guts the middle class and puts all of her power behind the TPP, big corporations, and Wall Street. And too many liberals will remain deaf, dumb and blind....
Guest Reader • a year ago
I will not be supporting Clinton either because of the financial interests behind her. Also because of the record of the Democrats on many issues over the years, a group she has been deeply with ... so this is not entirely about Clinton herself, but even Obama, you could say, since the two were fairly similar policy-wise, and now we've had eight years of this already.

I don't want more of the same. Plus, her campaign is based on this mythology that the country is doing so much better, economically, and nothing could be further from the truth. This mythology being pushed, because she running for office following a Democrat's administration, and one in which she has been part of.

Again, to me, this is about domestic economics. I am deeply disappointed and exhausted by the health care dispute. We should have an improved expanded Medicare for all, and, with dental and vision, like any other developed nation.

We should NOT be going into more of these so-called "free" trade agreements. They are destroying the standard of living for Americans, hitting people at the bottom the hardest.

vallehombre • a year ago
The current system allows a range of only two possibilities in electoral choices - between the far right and the farther right.

HRC is channeling Goldwater via PNAC and then some while Sanders is Eisenhower light at best, trying to catch some Huey Long soundbites on the way by. Yet we are supposed to act as if any of this is news.

The allowed candidates are products of the state of our disappearing Republic and citizens have been so effectively conditioned to accept our situation that we stumble to our destruction as meekly compliant as the folks of an earlier generation shuiffled weeping into gas chambers.

There is no perspective presented here or anywhere other than that of our self identified elites for the simple reason it has become the sole ethos of our existence. To fault a single person, HRC in this case, for promoting arms sales and profiting personally from them ignores the structure of the entire system, the anticipated "benefits" almost every citizens has come to expect as a natural right (if not divinely ordained) and a "good life" that in real terms resembles little more than a long, drawn out narcissistic display of communal suicide.

If it is true people create the government they deserve, or maybe accept, then the choice between the far right and the farther right more accurately reflect the state of our nation than we care or dare to admit.

oneski > vallehombre • a year ago
... and a "good life" that in real terms resembles little more than a long, drawn out narcissistic display of communal suicide.

Quite the diagnosis! And there's the added bonus of enriching the lives of others whilst attempting to postpone the inevitable.

The Swiss own one of the world's largest food companies and the world's largest elevator company. It's a safe bet both their customers are easy to identify.

falken751 • a year ago
This is what is coming in this country politicians, better get ready for it, especially Clinton and her Republican buddies. We don't need or want and millionaire politicians like her and her husband.

"A massive and growing anti-austerity movement will take to the streets of London on Saturday, June 20, with demonstrators demanding "an alternative to austerity and to policies that only benefit those at the top."

Tens of thousands are expected to march from the Bank of England to Parliament Square on Saturday, protesting the conservative government's "nasty, destructive cuts to the things ordinary people care about-the [National Health Service], the welfare state, education and public services."

Organized by The People's Assembly-a politically unaffiliated national campaign against austerity-the demonstration comes in the wake of UK elections in early May that saw the Conservative (Tory) Party seizing the majority of Parliamentary seats and Prime Minister David Cameron sweeping back to power."

Get ready politicians, and watch your backs.

Bassy Kims of Yesteryear • a year ago
The utter sellout of the Democratic Party over these last decades is entirely responsible for the harrowing slide of the USA to the Right. The Republican flavor of bacon isn't even worth mentioning, as those meatpuppets sold their souls many decades ago.

The rape of the poor and the middle class, the Neocon wars, the offshoring... all the worst things in this nation stem directly from our betrayal by the Democratic Party. The upcoming passage of the TPP, blacked out all across the MSM and across most of the alternative media, is proof positive of this.

The sellout of the Democratic Party, and how we must respond to that sellout, must be the root of any article on our oppression, and any article on how to respond to our national rape. Step One is raising the consciousness of the DNC's rubes. They must understand their betrayal in order to rise above it, and to consider alternatives such as Jill Stein, alternatives such as work stoppages and demonstrations. Otherwise, there is no hope for America - none at all.

Fool_me_twice_shame_on_ME • a year ago
All this is blatantly obvious and yet there are still so many Americans who remain clueless and believe she has their interests at heart because they are gullible enough to believe her incredibly empty campaign rhetoric. Well, there's the willful ignorance, coupled with the unbelievable shallowness of basing her single qualification for the Oval Office on the type of genitalia she has, or on name recognition alone, or the very telling amount of favoritism she gets in the CORPORATE media and their need to vote for "the winning candidate," regardless of values and priorities. If a voter wants genuine effort and concern in championing middle class causes, there is Bernie Sanders. His voting record and history go back 30 years and it didn't just get completely revamped by focus groups for the up-coming election. Simple logic should alert voters to Hillary, Inc.'s loyalties. Why is it that in spite of all of Hillary's new-found list of concerns in her "populist" rhetoric (which seem to only come about after Bernie Sanders speaks to them) her long list of Wall Street campaign financiers still choose her as their favorite choice in the election? Could it be she is only saying these things to pander for votes, with no intention of keeping any promises after the election (just like Obama did)? To the corporate funders of her campaign it's just the cost of doing business. They spend a few million on her and get billions back when she wins the White House. It's a great return on investment, but just like Obama, the voters will always come a distant second to Wall Street demands. This is NOT how you fix things in Washington. This is how you guarantee "business as usual."
Avatar Ken • a year ago
"Can she really stand above the cesspool that is Washington - filled not with criminals but with decent people inside a corrupted system trying to do what they think is good"

What a fcuking load of shite! They´re predominantly a load of rapacious, venal sociopaths who should be in one of the prisions they love to build to house the poor. And Killary´s at the top of the heap.

Popillius > pgathome1 • a year ago
I have no illusions about HRC - I loathe some of her positions. As for you boyz who fell for BHO (in spite of his neoliberalism being on full display) - you haven't learned a thing. You are going to honestly swallow that somebody heard that somebody heard from somebody in their "inner circle" that Bill Clinton said that about his wife? What evidence do you have that is true? Do you not see the mountains of ratfucking garbage out there about the Clintons? Their policies aside - which can absolutely be loathesome - you are going to go online and breathlessly assert that you heard someone heard that someone close to the Clintons said that? No wonder you fell for BHO so hard.
Sarah Jackson • a year ago
Democrats are in a lying frenzy, just as much so as the other faithful party. Moyers doesn't really have anything left to say of any value unless it too is a lie of sorts. As an example, he revises the obliteration of New Deal regulation by implying the President was mislead into doing so. No, that's not what happened. And we don't have a Democracy. But when we don't live in a Democracy, it is the news media's role to produce something less than honest. We're supposed to forget Sirota was a part of AIPAC, and Moyers was part of an administration that served corporations dedicated to genocide.

[Aug 27, 2016] Hillary Clinton, Corporate America and the Democrats' Dilemma by David Niose

Notable quotes:
"... The genius of the corporate coup that has overtaken US democracy is not that it dominates the GOP - the party that has long favored corporate power anyway - but that it has maneuvered even the opposition party into submission as well. The brightest minds on Wall Street are experts at hedging bets, and they play politics just as they play finance. Such dynamics are key to understanding not only the role of the Clinton candidacy in the eyes of corporate America, but the perceived threat posed by the Sanders campaign with its persistent advocacy for people over corporations. ..."
"... a leading banking executive called Clinton's tough talk about Wall Street "theatrics" made necessary in response to the Sanders campaign, adding that he predicts she'll be known as "Mrs. Wall Street" if elected. ..."
"... These realities show that the "rigged system" concerns of ordinary voters are not overblown. In a stroke of strategic brilliance, corporate power has created a playing field where even its perceived opponents are advancing its agenda. ..."
"... "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient," says noted activist and author Noam Chomsky , "is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." ..."
"... Defined as a liberal, she is in fact a consummate establishment Democrat: a hawkish corporate apologist who happens to be pro-choice. Yes, she is to the left of the GOP candidates - she doesn't deny climate change, wants to preserve Obamacare and won't entertain outlandish ideas like privatizing Social Security - but she's still well within the bounds of acceptability to the US corporate oligarchy that does not want fundamental, systemic change. Rest assured, under her watch the system will stay rigged. ..."
www.truth-out.org
The genius of the corporate coup that has overtaken US democracy is not that it dominates the GOP - the party that has long favored corporate power anyway - but that it has maneuvered even the opposition party into submission as well. The brightest minds on Wall Street are experts at hedging bets, and they play politics just as they play finance. Such dynamics are key to understanding not only the role of the Clinton candidacy in the eyes of corporate America, but the perceived threat posed by the Sanders campaign with its persistent advocacy for people over corporations.

Clinton, who once served on the board of Walmart, the gold standard of predatory corporatism, is so tight with corporate power that she's now making efforts to downplay her relationships. CNBC reports that she is postponing fundraisers with Wall Street executives, no doubt concerned that voters are awakening to the toxic influence of corporations on politics and government. Already in the awkward position of explaining six-figure checks from Wall Street firms for speaking engagements and large charitable donations from major banks, Clinton realizes that she must try to distance herself from her corporate benefactors.

And the fat cats fully understand. "Don't expect folks on Wall Street to be offended that Clinton is distancing herself from them," CNBC reports. "In fact, they see it as smart politics and they understand that Wall Street banks are deeply unpopular."

Indeed, everyone knows the game, and few are worried that Clinton - whose son-in-law is a former Goldman Sachs executive who now runs a hedge fund - is any kind of threat to the power structure. This explains why a leading banking executive called Clinton's tough talk about Wall Street "theatrics" made necessary in response to the Sanders campaign, adding that he predicts she'll be known as "Mrs. Wall Street" if elected.

These realities show that the "rigged system" concerns of ordinary voters are not overblown. In a stroke of strategic brilliance, corporate power has created a playing field where even its perceived opponents are advancing its agenda. And the fiction is propagated with impressive expertise, as moderate, corporate-friendly Democrats are portrayed in the mainstream media as "flaming liberals." Even though Barack Obama, for example, filled his administration with Wall Street veterans and stalwarts after his election in 2008 - including Tim Geithner, Michael Froman, Larry Summers and a host of others - he is frequently described as a liberal not just by those on the right, but even in mainstream media.

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient," says noted activist and author Noam Chomsky, "is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."...

This is what has happened during the centrist Obama administration, which bailed out Wall Street without prosecuting even one executive responsible for bringing about the 2008 economic collapse. It also happened in the centrist administration of Bill Clinton, who was attacked by conservatives as an "extreme liberal" while doing little to earn the designation. The Clinton administration, with vocal support from the first lady, deregulated telecommunications and the financial sector, pushed hard for passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement - a tremendous gift to corporate interests and a major blow to the working class - and passed legislation on crime and welfare that was anything but liberal.

Such is the role that corporate America wants Hillary Clinton to play today. Defined as a liberal, she is in fact a consummate establishment Democrat: a hawkish corporate apologist who happens to be pro-choice. Yes, she is to the left of the GOP candidates - she doesn't deny climate change, wants to preserve Obamacare and won't entertain outlandish ideas like privatizing Social Security - but she's still well within the bounds of acceptability to the US corporate oligarchy that does not want fundamental, systemic change. Rest assured, under her watch the system will stay rigged.<

David Niose is an attorney and author of Fighting Back the Right: Reclaiming America from the Attack on Reason.

[Aug 27, 2016] Hillary Clintons Business of Corporate Shilling and War-Making by Abby Martin,

Video report.
for definition of Hillary doctrine see Hillary Doctrine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Notable quotes:
"... Abby Martin reveals how the Clintons' multi-million-dollar political machine operates. ..."
"... the establishment of the hyper-aggressive "Hillary Doctrine" while secretary of state. ..."
"... Learn the essential facts about the great danger she poses, and why she's the US Empire's choice for its next CEO ..."
26 April 2016 00:00 teleSUR | Video Report
Digging deep into Hillary's connections to Wall Street, Abby Martin reveals how the Clintons' multi-million-dollar political machine operates.

This episode chronicles the Clintons' rise to power in the '90s on a right-wing agenda; the Clinton Foundation's revolving door with Gulf state monarchies, corporations and the world's biggest financial institutions; and the establishment of the hyper-aggressive "Hillary Doctrine" while secretary of state.

Learn the essential facts about the great danger she poses, and why she's the US Empire's choice for its next CEO.

[Aug 27, 2016] Do not confuse the left with Democrats. The latter are moderate Republicans at best. Hillary is to the right of Nixon and Eisenhower

Notable quotes:
"... You're confusing the left with Democrats. One of the clarifying things about this year is how clear it is that's not true. ..."
"... There is ample evidence that a solid majority of those identifying as or tending to generally vote Democratic (not quite the same as party registration, but in less openly corrupt and weird times, that was how polling defined D voters) rejected Hillary Clinton as a candidate, but were prevented from knowing about her opponent, being able to vote in the primary, or having their completed ballot counted as they had marked it. ..."
"... Bernie's endorsement should have been tied to the release of those speeches. After all, he made quite a big deal about those speeches during his campaign appearances. ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com

zapster , August 13, 2016 at 11:04 pm

And again, everyone is just pretending that the monumental election fraud that just occurred is completely irrelevant. I'm mystified as to why. To me, it's a national catastrophe that a party can simply suspend democracy completely, flip machine counts, deregister or reregister hundreds of thousands of Bernie voters (and yes, it was very specifically Bernie voters), subtract votes during the count and add them to Clinton in real time–and everyone accepts this as entirely legitimate?

Doesn't the complete cancellation of democracy by a dynastic family bother anyone??? Why even vote?

Lambert Strether Post author , August 12, 2016 at 5:02 pm

You're confusing the left with Democrats. One of the clarifying things about this year is how clear it is that's not true.

dcblogger , August 12, 2016 at 7:11 pm

You're confusing the left with Democrats. One of the clarifying things about this year is how clear it is that's not true.

so good, it had to be repeated

aab , August 12, 2016 at 7:23 pm

Today's reminder that the Democratic Party (which, as Lambert points out below, is NOT the same as "the left") did not nominate an Iraq War supporter through any kind of democratic process. There is ample evidence that a solid majority of those identifying as or tending to generally vote Democratic (not quite the same as party registration, but in less openly corrupt and weird times, that was how polling defined D voters) rejected Hillary Clinton as a candidate, but were prevented from knowing about her opponent, being able to vote in the primary, or having their completed ballot counted as they had marked it.

pretzelattack , August 13, 2016 at 6:31 am

the dnc's contempt for it's own voters takes a backseat to nobody! usa! usa!

Mark John , August 12, 2016 at 6:03 pm

My question is why should a progressive vote for Hillary Clinton?

If a progressive wants to show the strength of her movement and also the number of folks who represent her values, a progressive would vote for Stein.

Perhaps it could be argued that if a certain progressive lives in a swing state, she should consider voting for Clinton to prevent Trump from taking office, but that is no most progressive voters.

But, in general, a progressive voting for a candidate such as Clinton who is so actively courting big money and establishment Republicans. . .that would dilute and weaken the progressive presence in my view.

rich , August 12, 2016 at 6:50 pm

Now that HRC released her taxes can we expect the transcripts, too? Hillary Clinton has been looking into releasing her transcripts for paid speeches to Wall St. and other special interests for 189 days http://iwilllookintoit.com/

Arizona Slim , August 12, 2016 at 7:11 pm

Bernie's endorsement should have been tied to the release of those speeches. After all, he made quite a big deal about those speeches during his campaign appearances.

Steve C , August 12, 2016 at 8:26 pm

That sure would have been gutsy, and a great idea.

Pavel , August 13, 2016 at 1:09 am

They got to Bernie somehow. Cf the scene in Godfather II where the mobster sees his Sicilian relative sitting in the back of the room and changes his story.

Kim Kaufman , August 12, 2016 at 7:34 pm

More details of the organizing efforts: A Bernie Sanders Delegate Tells a Very Different Story About the DNC to the one We've Been Fed

There's another side to the story… http://www.lifeandnews.com/articles/a-bernie-sanders-delegate-tells-a-very-different-story-about-the-dnc-to-the-one-weve-been-fed-by-the-party-and-media-at-large/

Lambert Strether Post author , August 13, 2016 at 2:25 am

That's very good. We're getting a lot of stories like this, including from our own #SlayTheSmaugs. At some point, I'd like to aggregate them. Readers, do you know of any other field reports from Philly?

[Aug 27, 2016] Hillary Clinton The Neocon in Democrats Clothing

Notable quotes:
"... Everyone knows the expression "a wolf in sheep's clothing." Now, it seems the United States will invent the macho Republican in feminist, Democratic clothing. ..."
"... Bill Clinton had triangulated his presidency to Republican-hood. He had demolished Aid to Families With Dependent Children and bought into the bash-the-poor rhetoric of the right wing. He had passed a crime bill that targeted people of color; he had destroyed FDR's legacy, notably by abolishing the Glass-Steagall Act. ..."
"... Bill Clinton might not have inhaled marijuana, but he certainly had inhaled the poison of right-wing ideas. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton openly supported many of Bill Clinton's political measures. She used the terrible expression "superpredators," supported the crime bill and made a hash of health insurance reform . Liza Featherstone talks about Hillary Clinton's faux feminism , and she links her critique to class themes, which is as it should be. Feminists cannot be elite feminists or 1% feminists if they want to defend the rights of all women. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton's track record on issues of poverty, racial justice and justice for women is appalling. As a former member of the board of Walmart, she sided with the rich and powerful , which she also does when she gives speeches for Wall Street. ..."
"... On foreign policy issues, Hillary Clinton is not even an Eisenhower Republican, but a war hawk whose philosophy and shortsightedness is evidenced by the flippant way in which she advocated for war in Libya and the way in which she celebrated. "We came, we saw, he died," she said and laughed loudly. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton, like true neoliberals in the GOP, supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), so as Bill had said she supported the bond market and free trade. Now, she claims she did not, but, of course, she is lying. Her lies also have to do with Wall Street (she has not released the text of her speeches), support for people of color and her feminism. ..."
"... Feminism cannot be only about the equality of CEO compensations. Equality in CEO compensations in general should exist at a much-reduced level. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton is a 1% millionaire who now talks the progressive talk, but never really walked the progressive walk. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton is actually to the right of President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- "Ike." He refused to use the atom bomb in Asia, showing more geopolitical prudence than Hillary "we came and he died" Clinton. He also wanted to preserve the FDR advances that the Clintons have done so much to cancel or erase. ..."
"... the Republicans -- starting with Hillary Clinton's youth idol Barry Goldwater -- and the Democrats calling themselves "New Democrats" vied with each other to dismantle the New Deal ..."
"... GOP is not a political party any longer, but a radical insurgency ..."
"... The Democrats have become the Old Republicans and Hillary Clinton is more neocon than traditional conservative of the Eisenhower type. ..."
"... She is a pro-business, Koch-compatible lover of Wall Street who uses feminism like some pinkwashers or greenwashers use progressive agendas to sell regressive policies. Author Diana Johnstone calls her the " Queen of Chaos ." Clinton is the queen of deception, faux feminism and faux progressivism ..."
"... Charles Koch (whose hatred of progressivism is well documented by Jane Meyer in her book, Dark Money ) expressed some admiration for Bill and Hillary Clinton and said he could vote for Hillary this time around. ..."
www.truth-out.org
...Everyone knows the expression "a wolf in sheep's clothing." Now, it seems the United States will invent the macho Republican in feminist, Democratic clothing.

Many authors have quoted a sentence by Bill Clinton:

We're all Eisenhower Republicans here, and we are fighting the Reagan Republicans. We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market. Isn't that great?

Eisenhower Republicans were, by today's standards, quite moderate. The quote refers to the 1990s, and already Bill Clinton had triangulated his presidency to Republican-hood. He had demolished Aid to Families With Dependent Children and bought into the bash-the-poor rhetoric of the right wing. He had passed a crime bill that targeted people of color; he had destroyed FDR's legacy, notably by abolishing the Glass-Steagall Act. And he was so "tough on crime" that during the 1992 presidential campaign season, he had gone back to his home state of Arkansas to witness the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, who was "mentally deficient." Bill Clinton might not have inhaled marijuana, but he certainly had inhaled the poison of right-wing ideas.

As we all know, Hillary Clinton openly supported many of Bill Clinton's political measures. She used the terrible expression "superpredators," supported the crime bill and made a hash of health insurance reform. Liza Featherstone talks about Hillary Clinton's faux feminism, and she links her critique to class themes, which is as it should be. Feminists cannot be elite feminists or 1% feminists if they want to defend the rights of all women.

Hillary Clinton's track record on issues of poverty, racial justice and justice for women is appalling. As a former member of the board of Walmart, she sided with the rich and powerful, which she also does when she gives speeches for Wall Street. The really important question is how someone who has constantly sided with the rich can campaign as a progressive, as a friend of people of color and even as a feminist? Michelle Alexander exposed the hypocrisy of the situation in arguing that "Hillary Clinton doesn't deserve the black vote."

On foreign policy issues, Hillary Clinton is not even an Eisenhower Republican, but a war hawk whose philosophy and shortsightedness is evidenced by the flippant way in which she advocated for war in Libya and the way in which she celebrated. "We came, we saw, he died," she said and laughed loudly. This cruel statement does not take into account the mess and mayhem left behind after the intervention, something President Obama calls a "shit show" and his worst mistake. But it is the companion piece to her major fellow elite "feminist" Madeleine Albright declaring that killing half a million Iraqis is worth it.

Hillary Clinton, like true neoliberals in the GOP, supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), so as Bill had said she supported the bond market and free trade. Now, she claims she did not, but, of course, she is lying. Her lies also have to do with Wall Street (she has not released the text of her speeches), support for people of color and her feminism.

... ... ...

Feminism cannot be only about the equality of CEO compensations. Equality in CEO compensations in general should exist at a much-reduced level. In his book Listen, Liberal, Thomas Frank tells the story of a Clinton convention meeting he attended and what he witnessed was Hillary Clinton as "Ms. Walmart," pretending she cares about all women. Frank, who is genuinely worried about rising inequality in the United States and racial justice, suggests that elite feminism is worried about the glass ceiling for CEOs, but does not even worry about working-class women who have "no floors" under them. Hillary Clinton is a 1% millionaire who now talks the progressive talk, but never really walked the progressive walk.

It would indeed be a symbolic change if the US elected a woman president, but for the symbol not to be empty, something more is needed. If a woman president does not improve the lot of the majority of women, then what is the good of a symbol?

Hillary Clinton is actually to the right of President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- "Ike." He refused to use the atom bomb in Asia, showing more geopolitical prudence than Hillary "we came and he died" Clinton. He also wanted to preserve the FDR advances that the Clintons have done so much to cancel or erase.

...the Republicans -- starting with Hillary Clinton's youth idol Barry Goldwater -- and the Democrats calling themselves "New Democrats" vied with each other to dismantle the New Deal and the Great Society programs that Democrats had set up. Noam Chomsky argues that the GOP is not a political party any longer, but a radical insurgency, for it has gone off the political cliff. The Democrats have become the Old Republicans and Hillary Clinton is more neocon than traditional conservative of the Eisenhower type.

So Hillary Clinton, the Republican, is poised to win in November, but her Republicanism is closer to George W. Bush's and even more conservative than Ronald Reagan's -- except on the societal issues that have now reached a kind of quasi-consensus like same-sex marriage. She is a pro-business, Koch-compatible lover of Wall Street who uses feminism like some pinkwashers or greenwashers use progressive agendas to sell regressive policies. Author Diana Johnstone calls her the "Queen of Chaos." Clinton is the queen of deception, faux feminism and faux progressivism, whose election will be made easier by her loutish, vulgar, sexist loudmouth of an opponent.

In his book The Deep State, Mike Lofgren quotes H.L. Mencken, who gave away what explains the success of the political circus: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives were past masters at this creation of hobgoblins, but now Hillary Clinton, the opportunist, can outdo them and out-Republicanize them. I think Ike would not like her; she might now be even more reactionary than Goldwater. Indeed, Charles Koch (whose hatred of progressivism is well documented by Jane Meyer in her book, Dark Money) expressed some admiration for Bill and Hillary Clinton and said he could vote for Hillary this time around.

... ... ...

Pierre Guerlain is a professor of American studies at Université Paris Ouest, Nanterre, France.

[Aug 26, 2016] Lots of Smoke Here, Hillary

Notable quotes:
"... If Hillary Clinton wins, within a year of her inauguration, she will be under investigation by a special prosecutor on charges of political corruption, thereby continuing a family tradition. ..."
"... Of 154 outsiders whom Clinton phoned or met with in her first two years at State, 85 had made contributions to the Clinton Foundation, and their contributions, taken together, totaled $156 million. ..."
"... Conclusion: access to Secretary of State Clinton could be bought, but it was not cheap. Forty of the 85 donors gave $100,000 or more. Twenty of those whom Clinton met with or phoned dumped in $1 million or more. ..."
"... On his last day in office, January 20, 2001, Bill Clinton issued a presidential pardon to financier-crook and fugitive from justice Marc Rich, whose wife, Denise, had contributed $450,000 to the Clinton Library. ..."
Aug 26, 2016 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Prediction: If Hillary Clinton wins, within a year of her inauguration, she will be under investigation by a special prosecutor on charges of political corruption, thereby continuing a family tradition.

... ... ...

Of 154 outsiders whom Clinton phoned or met with in her first two years at State, 85 had made contributions to the Clinton Foundation, and their contributions, taken together, totaled $156 million.

Conclusion: access to Secretary of State Clinton could be bought, but it was not cheap. Forty of the 85 donors gave $100,000 or more. Twenty of those whom Clinton met with or phoned dumped in $1 million or more.

To get to the seventh floor of the Clinton State Department for a hearing for one's plea, the cover charge was high. Among those who got face time with Hillary Clinton were a Ukrainian oligarch and steel magnate who shipped oil pipe to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions and a Bangladeshi economist who was under investigation by his government and was eventually pressured to leave his own bank.

The stench is familiar, and all too Clintonian in character.

Recall. On his last day in office, January 20, 2001, Bill Clinton issued a presidential pardon to financier-crook and fugitive from justice Marc Rich, whose wife, Denise, had contributed $450,000 to the Clinton Library.

The Clintons appear belatedly to have recognized their political peril.

Bill has promised that, if Hillary is elected, he will end his big-dog days at the foundation and stop taking checks from foreign regimes and entities, and corporate donors. Cash contributions from wealthy Americans will still be gratefully accepted.

One wonders: will Bill be writing thank-you notes for the millions that will roll in to the family foundation-on White House stationery?

[Aug 26, 2016] Watchdogs warn of serious conflicts of interest for Clinton Foundation

Notable quotes:
"... Her dismal trustworthiness ratings strongly suggest the people want to see stricter ethical standards from her. She ignores that at her own peril ..."
"... the Clinton Foundation (private) was selling access to the Secretary of State (public). ..."
"... That's called influence peddling, and if you follow Zephyr Teachout on corruption (and not the majority in Citizens United ) that's a textbook case of corruption. The Clinton Foundation enables as capital in the form of wealth to be converted into social capital in the form of access (and reputation laundering). Which is how the Beltway works, and how an oligarchy works. As we have seen, liberals accept this completely, as do conservatives, although the left does not. ..."
"... On the AP story about the Clinton Foundation, the State Department refused AP access to all visitor logs. Then Clinton campaign surrogates complained that AP based its story on incomplete visitor logs. And so it goes in HillaryLand [ The Intercept ]. Lots more detail in this story, well worth a read. ..."
naked capitalism
Corruption

"Watchdogs warn of 'serious' conflicts of interest for Clinton Foundation" [The Hill]. "Chelsea Clinton's role on the board will only perpetuate the 'pay to play' perceptions and accusations, the watchdogs said. 'As long as the Clinton Foundation is tied to the family,' [Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen] said, 'very wealthy' people and special interests 'will try to find a way to throw money at the feet' of the Clinton family. And if Chelsea Clinton remains on the board - especially if she retains a fundraising roll - 'she would be the avenue.'" This is so wrong. How else is Chelsea supposed to raise money for her Senate run? Answer me that!

UPDATE "Chelsea Clinton would remain on the board of her family's foundation even if her mother is elected president, a spokeswoman said Thursday" [AP].

"Hillary Clinton said Friday the charitable programs of her family foundation would continue, perhaps through partnerships with other organizations, if she's elected president, even as critics argue that would present a conflict of interest" [AP]. Because everybody knows Middle East Wahhabists are totes on board with funding programs for women and girls.

"Editorial: Clintons should end ties to charity " [Charlotte Observer]. "[Clinton] seems not to recognize that while a good lawyer focuses on what the law allows, a good politician focuses on what the people want. Her dismal trustworthiness ratings strongly suggest the people want to see stricter ethical standards from her. She ignores that at her own peril."

UPDATE "The key to understanding why good government advocates are upset about the new revelations is to first get past the argument that Clinton Foundation donors were transactionally rewarded for their gifts" [Vox]. "This is not what my sources argued. Instead, the heart of their complaint was that the foundation's contributors appear to have gained a greater ability to make their voices heard by Clinton's State Department by virtue of donating to her husband's private foundation."

In other words, the Clinton Foundation (private) was selling access to the Secretary of State (public).

That's called influence peddling, and if you follow Zephyr Teachout on corruption (and not the majority in Citizens United) that's a textbook case of corruption. The Clinton Foundation enables as capital in the form of wealth to be converted into social capital in the form of access (and reputation laundering). Which is how the Beltway works, and how an oligarchy works. As we have seen, liberals accept this completely, as do conservatives, although the left does not.

"Democrats embrace the logic of 'Citizens United'" [Lawrence Lessig, WaPo]. 2015, even more true today. See also Sirota from 2015.

UPDATE What liberals and Democrats used to believe, before the giant sucking pit of need that is the Clinton campaign made them lose their minds [image of tiny little hands waving, faint screams, as they circle downward in the vortex]. The dissenting opinion from Citizens United: (Twitter)

Justice Stevens' dissent in Citizens United (via @ggreenwald ) shreds the central argument of Hillary's defenders

On numerous occasions we have recognized Congress' legitimate interest in preventing the money that is spent on elections from exerting an "'undue influence on an officeholder's judgment"' and from creating "4he appearance of such influence,"' beyond the sphere of quid pro quo relationships. Id., at 150; see also. e.g., id., at 143-144. 152-154; Colorado II, 533 U. S.. at 441; Shrink Missouri. 528 U. S., at 389. Corruption can take many forms. Bribery may be the paradigm case. But the difference between selling a vote and selling access is a matter of degree, not kind. And selling access is not qualitatively different from giving special preference to those who spent money on one's behalf.

Corruption operates along a spectrum, and the majority's apparent belief that quid pro quo arrangements can be neatly demarcated from other improper influences docs not accord with the theory or reality of politics. It certainly does not accord with the record Congress developed in passing BCRA. a record that stands as a remarkable testament to the energy and ingenuity with which corporations, unions, lobbyists, and politicians may go about scratching each other's backs - and which amply supported Congress' determination to target a limited set of especially destructive

UPDATE From The Blogger Formerly KnownAs Who Is IOZ?

On the AP story about the Clinton Foundation, the State Department refused AP access to all visitor logs. Then Clinton campaign surrogates complained that AP based its story on incomplete visitor logs. And so it goes in HillaryLand [The Intercept]. Lots more detail in this story, well worth a read.

UPDATE "Clinton Foundation Investigation Update: Key Details About Financial And Political Dealings" [David Sirota, International Business Times]. Good wrap-up from Sirota, who's been all over this.

UPDATE "On the campaign trial, Clinton is using a private airplane owned by a Wall Street banker and donor to get to fund-raisers this week on the West Coast" [New York Post]. How cozy.

[Aug 26, 2016] Emails Show Clinton Foundation Donor Reached Out To Hillary Clinton Before Arms Export Boost by David Sirota

Notable quotes:
"... Soon after the correspondence about a meeting, Clinton's State Department significantly increased arms export authorizations to the country's autocratic government, even as that nation moved to crush pro-democracy protests . ..."
Aug 26, 2016 | www.ibtimes.com

Emails just released by the State Department appear to show Clinton Foundation officials brokering a meeting between then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a top military leader of Bahrain - a Middle Eastern country that is a major foundation donor .

Soon after the correspondence about a meeting, Clinton's State Department significantly increased arms export authorizations to the country's autocratic government, even as that nation moved to crush pro-democracy protests .

[Aug 25, 2016] Clinton Foundation Investigation Update Key Details About Financial And Political Dealings by David Sirota

Notable quotes:
"... Early in her term, the State Department called one arms deal for a Clinton Foundation donor, Saudi Arabia, a "top priority" for Clinton. ..."
"... The Associated Press on Tuesday reported that a review of calendar items shows "more than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money - either personally or through companies or groups - to the Clinton Foundation." Those 85 donors - which did not include foreign government contributors - gave up to $156 million, according to the news service. ..."
"... The Washington Post in 2014 reported that in 2010, Clinton pushed Russia to approve a $3.7 billion purchase from Boeing. Two months after the deal was solidified, reported the newspaper, Boeing announced a $900,000 contribution to the Clinton Foundation. ..."
www.ibtimes.com

As the rhetoric about the Clintons' public and private financial dealings intensifies, here is a brief review of the major investigative reporting that has been done about the Clinton Foundation.

Arms exports: Last year, an International Business Times series documented the ways in which many major foreign governments that had donated to the Clinton Foundation ended up receiving a boost in arms export authorizations from the Clinton-led State Department. Federal law explicitly designates the secretary of state as "responsible for the continuous supervision and general direction of sales" of arms, and the State Department itself says it "is responsible for managing all government-to-government transfers of military equipment to other countries." Early in her term, the State Department called one arms deal for a Clinton Foundation donor, Saudi Arabia, a "top priority" for Clinton.

Many of the donor countries that benefited were those that the State Department criticized on human rights grounds, including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Some of the same countries received boosts in arms classified as "toxicological agents" as they worked to crush pro-democracy protests during the Arab Spring uprisings.

Donor access: The Associated Press on Tuesday reported that a review of calendar items shows "more than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money - either personally or through companies or groups - to the Clinton Foundation." Those 85 donors - which did not include foreign government contributors - gave up to $156 million, according to the news service. The AP story followed the release of emails this week that appeared to show Clinton Foundation officials working with State Department officials to broker meetings between foundation donors and Hillary Clinton. It also followed an ABC News report on a Clinton Foundation donor being appointed by the State Department to an intelligence advisory panel "even though he had no obvious experience in the field."

Business dealings: In May, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Clinton Foundation "set up a financial commitment that benefited a for-profit company part-owned by people with ties to the Clintons." The newspaper noted that former President Bill Clinton "personally endorsed the company, Energy Pioneer Solutions Inc., to then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu for a federal grant that year" - and that the company ultimately received an $812,000 grant. While the Clinton Foundation openly works with corporations and governments on its philanthropic projects, the Journal notes that "under federal law, tax-exempt charitable organizations aren't supposed to act in anyone's private interest but instead in the public interest."

Promoting corporate donors: In 2015, IBT reported that while Clinton Foundation donor Cisco faced criticism over its work with China's autocratic government, Clinton's State Department honored the company for "outstanding corporate citizenship, innovation and democratic principles." Her department also delivered government contracts to the company. The Washington Post in 2014 reported that in 2010, Clinton pushed Russia to approve a $3.7 billion purchase from Boeing. Two months after the deal was solidified, reported the newspaper, Boeing announced a $900,000 contribution to the Clinton Foundation.

[Aug 25, 2016] If Trump is Russias Candidate, Does That Make Clinton the Saudis Pick by FAYEZ NURELDINE

Notable quotes:
"... Admittedly, Mr. Trump does seem very open to the idea of negotiating with Russia, and even partnering with Moscow to tackle some of the greatest challenges facing the world today, including radical Islamist terrorism. In that sense, he may really be the most 'Russia friendly' presidential candidate the US has seen since 1945, not counting the early 1990s, when Washington's friendly overtures toward Russia were based on the condition that Moscow does everything US officials tell it to. ..."
"... Does that make him a puppet to the Russians, the Kremlin and to Vladimir Putin personally? Not likely. Despite all the media investigations and even more accusations, no substantiated evidence has been presented demonstrating that Trump has any significant business or personal interests in Russia which would create a conflict of interest. ..."
"... The Times' piece reported on the fact that the Clinton Foundation has accepted tens of millions of dollars from countries that the US State Department has repeatedly criticized for human rights abuses and discrimination against women. The offending countries purportedly include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Brunei, along with Algeria. Riyadh, the paper noted, was "a particularly generous benefactor," giving between $10 and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, with at least another $1 million donated by the 'Friends of Saudi Arabia' organization. ..."
"... Abedin has long been accused by independent media in the US and elsewhere of having connections with Islamic organizations, including the Muslim Brotherhood, charges which have long been labeled as nothing more than a conspiracy theory. But Sunday's story seems to have ruffled a few feathers in some high places, with a Clinton campaign spokesperson explaining (rather unconvincingly) to the New York Post that Abedin played no formal role in the radical journal. "My understanding is that her name was simply listed on the masthead in that periodical," the spokesman said. ..."
"... And so the question stands: If the media feels justified in crucifying 'Kremlin agent' Donald Trump for a Moscow beauty pageant and some nice words about Vladimir Putin, will it provide the same level of scrutiny for Mrs. Clinton, given the knowledge that her Foundation has taken in tens of millions of dollars from the Saudis, and that her top advisor seems to have been a supporter of hardcore Islamist ideology? ..."
Aug 25, 2016 | putniknews.com/ AFP 2016

Opinion

The media has had a field day commenting on Donald Trump's words about cooperation with Russia against ISIS, labeling him a 'Kremlin agent' and a danger to the Western security order. But what about Hillary Clinton and her foundation's ties to the Saudis? If Trump is 'Moscow's man', does that make Clinton the candidate of Middle Eastern sheikdoms?

The US media has been relentless in its efforts to sink Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign, in part due to the candidate's string of friendly remarks and gestures toward Russia and President Vladimir Putin. The media have accused Moscow of every sin imaginable, from meddling in America's elections, to using Trump advisor Paul Manafort, who was called 'the Kremlin's man in Ukraine', to outright calling Trump himself a 'Russian agent'.

Former NATO chief Anders Rasmussen joined the party bashing Trump recently, slamming him for having "his own views on the Ukrainian conflict," and adding that to top it all off, "he praises President Putin!"

Admittedly, Mr. Trump does seem very open to the idea of negotiating with Russia, and even partnering with Moscow to tackle some of the greatest challenges facing the world today, including radical Islamist terrorism. In that sense, he may really be the most 'Russia friendly' presidential candidate the US has seen since 1945, not counting the early 1990s, when Washington's friendly overtures toward Russia were based on the condition that Moscow does everything US officials tell it to.

Does that make him a puppet to the Russians, the Kremlin and to Vladimir Putin personally? Not likely. Despite all the media investigations and even more accusations, no substantiated evidence has been presented demonstrating that Trump has any significant business or personal interests in Russia which would create a conflict of interest. The businessman held a Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow a few years ago, and tried, unsuccessfully, to build a Trump tower in the Russian capital. But he also has assets around the world, in Scotland, Dubai, and in over a dozen other countries. Does that make him the agent of these countries, too?

Amid the endless suspicions surrounding 'Kremlin Agent Trump', a story in the New York Times unassumingly titled 'Foundation Ties Bedevil Hillary Clinton's Presidential Campaign' almost slipped through the cracks, before blowing up on national television.

The Times' piece reported on the fact that the Clinton Foundation has accepted tens of millions of dollars from countries that the US State Department has repeatedly criticized for human rights abuses and discrimination against women. The offending countries purportedly include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Brunei, along with Algeria. Riyadh, the paper noted, was "a particularly generous benefactor," giving between $10 and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, with at least another $1 million donated by the 'Friends of Saudi Arabia' organization.

The scandal didn't end there. Speaking to CNN reporter Dana Bash, Clinton Campaign manager Robby Mook could not coherently explain why the Clintons weren't willing to stop accepting donations from foreign 'investors' unless Clinton became president of the United States. Instead, Mook tried to divert the question to Donald Trump, saying the candidate has never revealed his financials, and adding that Mrs. Clinton had taken "unprecedented" steps to being "transparent."

And the plot thickens. On Sunday, conservative US and British media revealed that Huma Abedin, a longtime friend and top aid to Clinton, had worked as an assistant editor for a radical Islamic Saudi journal for over a decade. The publication, called the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, featured everything from pieces opposed to women's rights, to articles blaming the US for the September 11 terror attacks.

In one article in January 1996, Abedin's own mother wrote a piece for the journal, where she complained that Clinton, who was First Lady at the time, was advancing a "very aggressive and radically feminist" agenda which was un-Islamic and dangerous for empowering women.

Abedin has long been accused by independent media in the US and elsewhere of having connections with Islamic organizations, including the Muslim Brotherhood, charges which have long been labeled as nothing more than a conspiracy theory. But Sunday's story seems to have ruffled a few feathers in some high places, with a Clinton campaign spokesperson explaining (rather unconvincingly) to the New York Post that Abedin played no formal role in the radical journal. "My understanding is that her name was simply listed on the masthead in that periodical," the spokesman said.

These two stories, the first offering new details including dollar estimates about the money received by the Clinton Foundation from the Saudis, and the second shedding light on her top advisor's apparent ties to a Saudi journal propagating Islamist ideas, should lead the media to look for answers to some very troubling questions. These should be the same kinds of questions asked earlier this summer, when a formerly classified 28 page chapter of the 9/11 Commission Report was finally released, revealing that Saudi officials had supported the hijackers who carried out the terrorist attacks against the United States in 2001.

And so the question stands: If the media feels justified in crucifying 'Kremlin agent' Donald Trump for a Moscow beauty pageant and some nice words about Vladimir Putin, will it provide the same level of scrutiny for Mrs. Clinton, given the knowledge that her Foundation has taken in tens of millions of dollars from the Saudis, and that her top advisor seems to have been a supporter of hardcore Islamist ideology?

See also

[Aug 25, 2016] One example of Hillary Clinton corruption

Notable quotes:
"... Behind the private jet journey of Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin" [ Yahoo News ]. The article explains why wearing one hat from Abedin's massive collection of headgear makes this all legal. ..."
"... "After Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, Bill Clinton received $17.6 million in payments from a for-profit university. Since that time, another organization with a connection to that university received almost $90 million in grants from an agency that's part of the State Department" [ CNN ]. Clinton was paid for "inspiring people." Oh. OK. ..."
"... UPDATE "Donald Trump appears to have donated $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation" [ Business Insider ]. As Trump said: "I gave to many people before this - before two months ago I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. That's a broken system." I hate it when Trump's right. ..."
Aug 25, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Corruption

"Behind the private jet journey of Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin" [ Yahoo News ]. The article explains why wearing one hat from Abedin's massive collection of headgear makes this all legal. Musical interlude --

"Clinton Foundation: World Class Slacktivists" [ Medium ]. "I think this could be called a 'charity bubble' since at some point, there won't be any more cash to take. And then what will people do? What will happen when the hospital where future doctors and nurses will work closes due to lack of funds?"

"After Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, Bill Clinton received $17.6 million in payments from a for-profit university. Since that time, another organization with a connection to that university received almost $90 million in grants from an agency that's part of the State Department" [ CNN ]. Clinton was paid for "inspiring people." Oh. OK.

UPDATE "Donald Trump appears to have donated $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation" [ Business Insider ]. As Trump said: "I gave to many people before this - before two months ago I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. That's a broken system." I hate it when Trump's right.

Money

UPDATE "Hillary Clinton Continues Fundraising Swing at Home of Justin Timberlake, Jessica Biel" [ Variety ]. "Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Aniston, Shonda Rhimes, Tobey Maguire and former HBO programming president Michael Lombardo were among those at the event, according to a source who was there, with tickets priced at $33,400 per person. About 55 people attended….

The Democratic presidential candidate is fundraising in the weeks before her first debate with Republican rival Donald Trump [on September 26]." And definitely not holding press conferences.

UPDATE "Justin Timberlake, Jessica Biel & Hillary Clinton Pose for Adorable Photobooth Pics at Star-Studded Fundraiser" [ ET ]. " "Look who came over for lunch… #imwithher," Biel wrote on Instagram." Quite a lunch.

[Aug 24, 2016] Hillary Clinton s Lesbian Past Is Exposed

Notable quotes:
"... Washington Times ..."
"... The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, And How Far She'll Go To Become President ..."
www.mrconservative.com

https://www.mrconservative.com/2014/10/51732-hillary-clintons-lesbian-past-is-exposed/

One of the worst kept secrets in Washington circles is that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian. Rumors have swirled in the past about the former First Lady's gay ways, and with a potential presidential run coming in 2016, they have come back to haunt her.

Back in 2004, a Washington Times columnist reviewing Bill Clinton's memoir My Life concluded that Hillary and Bill, "have had a pact for decades. Their sexy, sexy pact is this: "He gets to fool around with women and she gets to fool around with women (plus the occasional man) yes, she's bisexual."

hillary_clinton_bill_clinton

The lesbian rumors resurfaced a year later in Edward Klein's book The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, And How Far She'll Go To Become President. In it, Klein claimed that Hillary "wasn't maternal" "had no wifely instincts," and "many of her closest friends were lesbians."

Jemal Countess

Klein asserted that Hillary was obsessed with lesbianism, but not in a normal way. Instead, she was "much more interested in lesbianism as a political statement than a sexual practice Hillary talked about it a lot, read lesbian literature, and embraced it as a revolutionary concept."

In the end, Klein concluded that though she has experimented with lesbianism, Hillary is ultimately asexual.

Huma-Abedin-and-Hillary-Clinton

The rumors were fired up once again in 2007, when Huma Abedin, Hillary's top aide, stumbled into the national spotlight with her husband Anthony Wiener's sex scandal. Many accused Hillary and Huma of being lesbian lovers, with Hillary hiding her "in plain sight" by hiring her as her top aide.

The lesbian rumors got so bad that year that Hillary addressed them personally. "It's not true, but it is something that I have no control over. People will say what they want to say," she told top gay magazine Advocate.

In 2013, when Hillary came out as pro-gay to the country, American Family Association radio host Sandy Rios claimed to know for a fact that Hillary is a lesbian:

"[Hillary] has always, as far as I know back to college, endorsed and embraced all things lesbian and gay, that is her history on this so that shouldn't be too shocking. She has played the role of wife and cookie-making mother, I'm sorry but this is just the reality of things. We are being caught in this vortex of homosexual advocacy, it's just amazing."

Finally, Bill Clinton's former mistress Gennifer Flowers spoke out last year about the former first couple's sex life, and what she had to say was shocking.

Flowers claimed that Bill told her repeatedly that Hillary was "bisexual," and that he was fine with it. He also told her that Hillary had "eaten more p*ssy than he had," a statement which shocked the nation.

In the end, if God-forbid Hillary becomes President in 2016, she will not only be the first female President, but also the first gay President.

Is America really ready for a lesbian to be running the free world? What do you think about all this? Sound off in the comments below!

[Aug 24, 2016] As She Rakes in the Cash, Clinton Fundraisers Still Shrouded in Secrecy

Notable quotes:
"... AP ..."
www.commondreams.org

Common Dreams

Hillary Clinton spent the weekend fundraising in affluent New England communities, speaking to more than 2,200 donors at private brunches and gatherings in Nantucket and Cape Cod-but what she told them "remains a mystery," the Associated Press reported Monday.

The fundraising effort-which follows her campaign's most lucrative month so far with a $63 million gain in July-underscores Clinton's continued evasion of transparency over her ties to wealthy elites. In fact, of the roughly 300 fundraising events she has held since announcing her White House run in April 2015, only five have allowed any press coverage, and Clinton has attempted to ban the use of social media among guests, according to the AP.

[Aug 24, 2016] Hillary's Hubris Only Tell the Rich for $5000 a Minute!

CommonDreams.org,

..."Why wouldn't Hillary tell the American people, whose votes she wants, what she told corporations in private for almost two years?" Nader wrote. "Is it that she doesn't want to be accused of doubletalk, of 'gushing' (as one insider told the Wall Street Journal) when addressing bankers, stock traders or corporate bosses?"

These speeches are so controversial in part because of the high price tag they came with. Clinton would charge an average of $5,000 per minute for her speeches.

"We know she has such transcripts. Her contract with these numerous business groups, prepared by the Harry Walker Lecture Agency, stipulated that the sponsor pay $1000 for a stenographer to take down a verbatim record, exclusively for her possession."

According to Nader, "Where Trump's White House is seen as utterly unpredictable, Hillary's White House is utterly predictable: more Wall Street, more military adventures." Nader continued, "As Senator and Secretary of State she has never seen a weapons system or a war that she didn't support."

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

[Aug 23, 2016] Are the Clintons Israeli Agents by Philip Giraldi

I think to the extent Israel elite interests are congruent with interests of the US neocons Clinton is pro-Israel. If they stray, she can change. The key here are interests of global corporations and neoliberal globalization. As such Israel is just a pawn in a big game.
Notable quotes:
"... So who is guilty of putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United States? I know there are advocates for any number of foreign states running around loose in Washington but the friends of Israel in government and the media come immediately to mind largely because there are so many of them, they are very much in-your-face and they are both extremely well-funded and very successful. Now deceased former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively, often referred to as the congressman and senator from Israel. And there are many more: Chuck Schumer, Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Mark Kirk, Nita Lowey, Ted Deutch, Brad Sherman, Ileana-Ros Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to name only a few in the Congress. All are major recipients of Israel related PAC money and all are reliable defenders of Israel no matter what Benjamin Netanyahu does and no matter how it effects the United States. ..."
"... And then there are the Clintons. One only has to go back to Bill's one-sided pro-Israeli diplomacy at Camp David in 2000 to discern how the game was played. And then there was the widely condemned January 2001 last minute pardon of Mossad agent Marc Rich, whose wife Denise was a major contributor to the Clintons, to realize that there was always a deference to Israeli interests particularly when money was involved ..."
"... Trump's crime, per Morell, is that he is disloyal to the United States because he is not sufficiently hostile to the evil Vladimir Putin, which somehow means that he is being manipulated by the clever Russian. Trump has indeed called for a positive working relationship with Putin to accomplish, among other objectives, the crushing of ISIS. And he is otherwise in favor of leaving Bashar al-Assad of Syria alone while also being disinclined to get involved in any additional military interventions in the Middle East or elsewhere, which pretty much makes him the antithesis of the Clintonian foreign policy promoted by Morell. ..."
"... The leading individual foreign donor to the Clinton Foundation between 1999 and 2014 was Ukrainian Viktor Pinchuk, who "directed between $10 and $25 million" to its Global Initiative, has let the Clintons use his private jet, attended Bill's Hollywood 65 th birthday celebration and hosted daughter Chelsea and her husband on a trip to Ukraine. Pinchuk is a Jewish oligarch married to the daughter of notoriously corrupt former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma. He is very closely tied to Israel, a supporter of regime change in his country, who was simultaneously donating money and also lobbying in Washington while Hillary was Secretary of State and promoting a similar agenda as part of her $5 billion program to "democratize" Ukraine. Clinton arranged a dozen meetings with substantive State Department officers for Pinchuk. ..."
"... Clinton supported Israel's actions in the 2014 Gaza War, which killed more than 500 children, describing them as an appropriate response to a situation that was provoked by Hamas. On the campaign trail recently husband Bill disingenuously defended Hillary's position on Gaza, saying that "Hamas is really smart. When they decide to rocket Israel they insinuate themselves in the hospitals, in the schools " placing all the blame for the large number of civilian casualties on the Palestinians, not on the Israelis. When the media began to report on the plight of the civilians trapped in Gaza Hillary dismissed the impending humanitarian catastrophe, saying "They're trapped by their leadership, unfortunately." ..."
"... Earlier, as a Senator from New York, Hillary supported Israel's building of the separation barrier on Palestinian land and cheer-led a crowd at a pro-Israel rally that praised Israel's 2006 devastation of Lebanon and Gaza. She nonsensically characterized and justified the bombing campaign as "efforts to send messages to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians, to the Iranians – to all who seek death and domination instead of life and freedom " More than nine hundred civilians died in the onslaught and when a vote came up subsequently in Congress to stop the supply of cluster bombs to countries that use them on civilians Hillary voted against the bill together with 69 other pro-Israel senators. ..."
"... Hillary enjoys a particularly close relationship with Netanyahu, writing in November , "I would also invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my first month in office." She has worked diligently to "reaffirm the unbreakable bond with Israel – and Benjamin Netanyahu." She has boasted of her being one of the promoters of annual increases in aid to Israel while she was in the Senate and Secretary of State and takes credit for repeatedly using America's Security Council veto to defend it in the United Nations. ..."
"... o you know how Prince Bandar was coaching G.W. Bush to circumvent the enmity of neocons towards his father? ..."
"... It looks very much like the US public is starting to mirror the Eastern European public under Communism by automatically disregarding government media + there's the added feature of the internet as a new kind of high-powered Samizdat, that clearly worries the Establishment. ..."
Aug 23, 2016 | The Unz Review
On August 5th, Michael Morell, a former acting Director of the CIA, pilloried GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, concluding that he was an "unwitting agent of Russia." Morell, who entitled his New York Times op-ed "I Ran the CIA and now I'm endorsing Hillary Clinton," described the process whereby Trump had been so corrupted. According to Morell, Putin, it seems, as a wily ex-career intelligence officer, is "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

I have previously observed how incomprehensible the designation of "unwitting agent" used in a sentence together with "recruited" is, but perhaps I should add something more about Morell that might not be clear to the casual reader. Morell was an Agency analyst, not a spy, who spent nearly his entire career in and around Washington. The high point of his CIA experience consisted of briefing George W. Bush on the President's Daily Brief (PDB).

Morell was not trained in the arduous CIA operational tradecraft course which agent recruiters and handlers go through. This means that his understanding of intelligence operations and agents is, to put it politely, derivative. If he had gone through the course he would understand that when you recruit an agent you control him and tell him what to do. The agent might not know whom exactly he is really answering to as in a false flag operation, but he cannot be unwitting.

Morell appears to have a tendency to make promises that others will have to deliver on, but perhaps that's what delegation by senior U.S. government officials is all about. He was also not trained in CIA paramilitary operations, which perhaps should be considered when he drops comments about the desirability of "covertly" killing Russians and Iranians to make a point that they should not oppose U.S. policies in Syria, as he did in a softball interview with Charlie Rose on August 6th.

Morell appears to be oblivious to the possibility that going around assassinating foreigners might be regarded as state sponsored terrorism and could well ignite World War 3. And, as is characteristic of chickenhawks, it is highly unlikely that he was intending that either he or his immediate family should go out and cut the throats or blow the heads off of those foreign devils who seek to derail the Pax Americana. Nor would he expect to be in the firing line when the relatives of those victims seek revenge. Someone else with the proper training would be found to do all that messy stuff and take the consequences.

Be that as it may, Morell was a very senior officer and perhaps we should accept that he might know something that the rest of us have missed, so let's just assume that he kind of misspoke and give him a pass on the "recruited unwitting agent" expression. Instead let's look for other American political figures who just might be either deliberately or inadvertently serving the interests of a foreign government, which is presumably actually what Michael Morell meant to convey regarding Trump. To be sure a well-run McCarthy-esque ferreting out of individuals who just might be disloyal provides an excellent opportunity to undertake a purge of those who either by thought, word or deed might be guilty of unacceptable levels of coziness with foreign interests.

So who is guilty of putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United States? I know there are advocates for any number of foreign states running around loose in Washington but the friends of Israel in government and the media come immediately to mind largely because there are so many of them, they are very much in-your-face and they are both extremely well-funded and very successful. Now deceased former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively, often referred to as the congressman and senator from Israel. And there are many more: Chuck Schumer, Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Mark Kirk, Nita Lowey, Ted Deutch, Brad Sherman, Ileana-Ros Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to name only a few in the Congress. All are major recipients of Israel related PAC money and all are reliable defenders of Israel no matter what Benjamin Netanyahu does and no matter how it effects the United States.

And then there are the Clintons. One only has to go back to Bill's one-sided pro-Israeli diplomacy at Camp David in 2000 to discern how the game was played. And then there was the widely condemned January 2001 last minute pardon of Mossad agent Marc Rich, whose wife Denise was a major contributor to the Clintons, to realize that there was always a deference to Israeli interests particularly when money was involved. The only problem is that the Clintons, relying on Morell's formulation, might more reasonably be described as witting agents of Israel rather than unwitting as they have certainly known what they have been doing and have been actively supporting Israeli policies even when damaging to U.S. interests since they first emerged from the primordial political swamps in Arkansas. If one were completely cynical it might be possible to suggest that they understood from the beginning that pandering to Israel and gaining access to Jewish power and money would be a major component in their rise to political prominence. It certainly has worked out that way.

Trump's crime, per Morell, is that he is disloyal to the United States because he is not sufficiently hostile to the evil Vladimir Putin, which somehow means that he is being manipulated by the clever Russian. Trump has indeed called for a positive working relationship with Putin to accomplish, among other objectives, the crushing of ISIS. And he is otherwise in favor of leaving Bashar al-Assad of Syria alone while also being disinclined to get involved in any additional military interventions in the Middle East or elsewhere, which pretty much makes him the antithesis of the Clintonian foreign policy promoted by Morell.

In comparison with the deeply and profoundly corrupt Clintons, Trump's alleged foreign policy perfidy makes him appear to be pretty much a boy scout. To understand the Clintons one might consider the hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it from foreign sources, that have flowed into the Clinton Foundation while Hillary was Secretary of State. And there is the clear email evidence that Hillary exploited her government position to favor both foreign and domestic financial supporters.

The leading individual foreign donor to the Clinton Foundation between 1999 and 2014 was Ukrainian Viktor Pinchuk, who "directed between $10 and $25 million" to its Global Initiative, has let the Clintons use his private jet, attended Bill's Hollywood 65th birthday celebration and hosted daughter Chelsea and her husband on a trip to Ukraine. Pinchuk is a Jewish oligarch married to the daughter of notoriously corrupt former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma. He is very closely tied to Israel, a supporter of regime change in his country, who was simultaneously donating money and also lobbying in Washington while Hillary was Secretary of State and promoting a similar agenda as part of her $5 billion program to "democratize" Ukraine. Clinton arranged a dozen meetings with substantive State Department officers for Pinchuk.

Hillary and Bill's predilection for all things Israeli and her promise to do even more in the future is a matter of public record. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz asserted that of all the political candidates in the primaries "Clinton had the longest public record of engagement with Israel, and has spent decades diligently defending the Jewish state." In a speech to AIPAC in March she promised to take the "U.S.-Israel alliance to the next level." Hillary's current principal financial supporter in her presidential run is Haim Saban, an Israeli who has described himself as a "one issue" guy and that issue is Israel.

Hillary Clinton boasts of having "stood with Israel my entire career." Her website promises to maintain "Israel's qualitative military edge to ensure the IDF is equipped to deter and defeat aggression from the full spectrum of threats," "stand up against the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS)," and "cut off efforts to unilaterally recognize Palestinian statehood outside of the context of negotiations with Israel." In a letter to Haim Saban, Hillary declared that "we need to make countering BDS a priority," which means she is prepared to support laws limiting First Amendment rights in the U.S. in defense of perceived Israeli interests.

As part of the Obama Administration Hillary Clinton at first supported his attempts to pressure Israel over its illegal settlements but has now backed off from that position, only rarely criticizing them as a "problem" but never advocating any steps to persuade Netanyahu to reverse his policy. Notably, she has repeatedly decried terroristic attacks on Israelis but has never acknowledged the brutality of the Israeli occupation of much of the West Bank in spite of the fact that ten Palestinians are killed for each Jewish victim of the ongoing violence.

Clinton supported Israel's actions in the 2014 Gaza War, which killed more than 500 children, describing them as an appropriate response to a situation that was provoked by Hamas. On the campaign trail recently husband Bill disingenuously defended Hillary's position on Gaza, saying that "Hamas is really smart. When they decide to rocket Israel they insinuate themselves in the hospitals, in the schools " placing all the blame for the large number of civilian casualties on the Palestinians, not on the Israelis. When the media began to report on the plight of the civilians trapped in Gaza Hillary dismissed the impending humanitarian catastrophe, saying "They're trapped by their leadership, unfortunately."

Earlier, as a Senator from New York, Hillary supported Israel's building of the separation barrier on Palestinian land and cheer-led a crowd at a pro-Israel rally that praised Israel's 2006 devastation of Lebanon and Gaza. She nonsensically characterized and justified the bombing campaign as "efforts to send messages to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians, to the Iranians – to all who seek death and domination instead of life and freedom " More than nine hundred civilians died in the onslaught and when a vote came up subsequently in Congress to stop the supply of cluster bombs to countries that use them on civilians Hillary voted against the bill together with 69 other pro-Israel senators.

Hillary enjoys a particularly close relationship with Netanyahu, writing in November, "I would also invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my first month in office." She has worked diligently to "reaffirm the unbreakable bond with Israel – and Benjamin Netanyahu." She has boasted of her being one of the promoters of annual increases in aid to Israel while she was in the Senate and Secretary of State and takes credit for repeatedly using America's Security Council veto to defend it in the United Nations.

So I think it is pretty clear who is the presidential candidate promoting the interests of a foreign country and it ain't Trump. Hillary would no doubt argue that Israel is a friend and Russia is not, an interesting point of view as Israel is not in fact an ally and has spied on us and copied our military technology to re-export to countries like China. Indeed, the most damaging spy in U.S. history Jonathan Pollard worked for Israel. In spite of all that Israel continues to tap our treasury for billions of dollars a year while still ignoring Washington when requests are made to moderate policies that damage American interests. Against that, what exactly has Moscow done to harm us since the Cold War ended? And who is advocating even more pressure on Russia and increasing the rewards for Israel, presumably in the completely illogical belief that to do so will somehow bring some benefit to the American people? Hillary Clinton.

utu, August 23, 2016 at 4:29 am GMT • 100 Words

Find the true reason why G.H. Bush was not allowed to get the 2nd term. Do you remember his attempt to reign in Yitzhak Shamir when GHB was riding high popularity wave after the Desert Storm? Do you remember anti-Bush Safire and Friedman columns in NYT week after week? Why Ross Perrot was called in? Don't you see similarity with Teddy Rosevelt's run to prevent Taft's reelection and securing Wilson's win? Do you know how Prince Bandar was coaching G.W. Bush to circumvent the enmity of neocons towards his father? Answer these questions and you will know for whom Bill Clinton worked. One more thing, Clinton did not touch Palestinian issue until last several months of his presidency. He did not make G.H. Bush's mistake.

Miro23, August 23, 2016 at 5:45 am GMT • 100 Words

This a straightforward factual article about the Clinton sellout to Israel. So the question may come down to the effectiveness of MSM propaganda.

It looks very much like the US public is starting to mirror the Eastern European public under Communism by automatically disregarding government media + there's the added feature of the internet as a new kind of high-powered Samizdat, that clearly worries the Establishment.

If the script follows through, then there's a good likelihood that the Establishment and their façade players (Clintons, Bush, Romney, McCain etc) are reaching the end of the line, since like in E.Europe, there's a background problem of economic failure and extreme élite/public inequality that can no longer be hidden.

Philip Giraldi, August 23, 2016 at 10:32 am GMT • 100 Words

@hbm

hbm – the FBI concluded that someone working in the White House was MEGA but they decided that they did not necessarily have enough evidence to convince a jury. He is still around and appears in the media. As I would prefer not to get sued I will not name him but he is not a Clinton (though he worked for them as well as for the two Bushes).

[Aug 23, 2016] Selling access is called "influence peddling" Thats what Clinton foundation is about

Notable quotes:
"... Wait, all I need to buy access to Clinton is a grand? That's all? Really? ..."
"... Even if you accept that quid pro quo ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com

Corruption

"Other donors got action via direct appeal to Abedin: For example, 75-grand-giver Maureen White wrote, 'I am going to be in DC on Thursday. Would she have any time to spare?' Huma's reply: "Yes I'll make it work'" [New York Post]. Wait, all I need to buy access to Clinton is a grand? That's all? Really?

UPDATE "'Huma, I need your help now to intervene please. We need this meeting with Secretary Clinton, who has been there now for nearly six months,' Aboussie wrote. 'It should go without saying that the Peabody folks came to Dick and I because of our relationship with the Clinton's [sic],' she added" [The Intercept]. "'We are working on it and I hope we can make something work,' Abedin replied, noting 'we have to work through the beauracracy [sic] here.' Obviously, as the example above shows, that's not always true, and Abedin seems to be the arbiter of which donors go to Happyville, and which to Pain City.

UPDATE "The emails do not show that Clinton Foundation donors received any policy favors from Hillary Clinton or other elected officials. What they show is that people who donated to the foundation believed they were owed favors by Clinton's staffers, and at least one of those staffers - the odious Doug Band - shared this belief" [Jonathon Chait, New York Magazine]. Yes, selling access is called "influence peddling." It's corrupt in itself, regardless of policy outcomes. The headline: "Clinton Foundation Still Not Criminal, Still Not Great for Hillary." So, if "not criminal" is the baseline…

UPDATE "Bill Clinton says he will leave Clinton Foundation if Hillary is elected president" [Los Angeles Times]. From the Department of How Stupid Do They Think We Are? Even if you accept that quid pro quo is the only form of corruption, which I don't, consider the possibility that Bill closed the deal on the quid before the election, and Hillz will deliver the pro quo after the election. Surely, that is, a quid pro quo can be asynchronous? Or are we now to believe that the only form of corruption is when cash in an envelope is transferred from one hand to another? That's even worse than Citizens United!

[Aug 23, 2016] Foundation becomes campaign issue

If 59% of voters believe that Hillary is not trustworthy, does this mean that 41% of voters are completly disconnected with reality ?
www.cnn.com

Hillary Clinton leads in the polls nationally and in key battleground states, but the flood of stories regarding her private email server and donations to the Clinton Foundation demonstrate the former secretary of state won't be able to completely outrun voter skepticism -- or Donald Trump.

... ... ...

Trump supporter Sen. Jeff Sessions suggested that the Democratic presidential candidate used her high position to "extort" from international governments for her family's foundation.

"The fundamental thing is you can not be Secretary of State of the United States of America and use that position to extort or seek contributions to your private foundation," he told CNN's Alisyn Camerota on "New Day" Tuesday. "That is a fundamental violation of law and that does appear to have happened."

... ... ...

A Washington Post/ABC News poll from earlier this month showed that 59% of voters believe that Clinton is not honest and trustworthy.

So the campaign turned its attention on Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and her emails. That was readily apparent Monday, as both Trump and vice presidential nominee Mike Pence brought up the issue.

"It's time for Hillary Clinton to come clean about the Clinton Foundation," Pence said at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

The Clinton Foundation last week accounced it would ban donations to from corporations and foreign countries if Hillary Clinton is elected. Pence rhetorically asked why there wasn't a conflict of interest when she was Secretary of State.

"Apparently she'll have a conflict of interest with the Clinton Foundation if she becomes President but I guess she didn't have a conflict of interest taking foreign donations while she was secretary of state of the United States of America," Pence said

... ... ...

New emails obtained by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch and released Monday show then-Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band asking top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin to arrange a meeting with the then-secretary of state for the Crown Prince of Bahrain, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa. The crown prince's charity donated $32 million for a program run through the Clinton Global Initiative.

[Aug 23, 2016] The Shameful Foundation of the Clintons Power

This foundation gives Clintons the ability to finance travel, equipment and staff for political campaigns of Hillary Clinton. Note the level of interconnection between Hillary Clinton staff and Clinton foundation in email scandal. Hume Abedin often called the system administrator from Clinton foundation to fix the "bathroom" mail server. Also spending by foundation "on charoty" are very questionable both in scope and targets. Compare with Gates foundation and you will see that Clinton foundation is essentially Clinton family slush fund disguised as a charity.
Notable quotes:
"... Since its founding in 2001, the Clinton Foundation served as a bridge between Bill Clinton's administration and Hillary Clinton's drive to conquer the White House again. ..."
"... But beyond the Republican bluster, there is a substantial critique of the Clinton Foundation: At its core, it fuses fundraising, influence-peddling, Washington networking, "humanitarian" causes and an endless grasp for power and money. ..."
"... Though taking care to adhere to the letter of the law, the foundation comes close to the line in many cases ..."
www.truth-out.org
The stated mission of the Clinton Foundation, set up at the end of Bill Clinton's second term in the White House, is to "alleviate poverty, improve global health, strengthen economies, and protect the environment."

But far more important to its operations is the Clinton Foundation's unstated mission: to further entrench the already formidable power of the Clinton family.

For more than two decades, both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have lived very public lives ensconced in the upper echelons of America's political establishment. Since its founding in 2001, the Clinton Foundation served as a bridge between Bill Clinton's administration and Hillary Clinton's drive to conquer the White House again.

... ... ...

But beyond the Republican bluster, there is a substantial critique of the Clinton Foundation: At its core, it fuses fundraising, influence-peddling, Washington networking, "humanitarian" causes and an endless grasp for power and money.

Though taking care to adhere to the letter of the law, the foundation comes close to the line in many cases -- for example, soliciting donations by offering face time with the Clintons in ways that seem suspiciously like a political campaign for elected office, but not exactly like that, because that would be a violation of the law.

[Aug 23, 2016] Trump Clinton Foundation A Clear Example Of A RICO Enterprise Video by Ian Schwartz

Notable quotes:
"... The Foundation donors included corporations and individuals with significant matters before the State Department. And then either Hillary Clinton herself or one of her closest aides took action favorable to the donor. ..."
"... The Clintons' made the State Department into the same kind of Pay-to-Play operations as the Arkansas Government was: pay the Clinton Foundation huge sums of money and throw in some big speaking fees for Bill Clinton and you got to play with the State Department. ..."
"... The amounts involved, the favors done and the significant numbers of times it was done require an expedited investigation by a Special Prosecutor. After the FBI and Department of Justice whitewash of the Clinton email crimes, they certainly cannot be trusted to quickly or impartially investigate Hillary Clinton's crimes. ..."
"... Some former prosecutors have even suggested that the coordination between the pay-for-play State Department and the corrupt Clinton Foundation constitute a clear example of a RICO (Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization) enterprise. ..."
Aug 22, 2016 | RealClearPolitics
Donald Trump called for an independent special protector to investigate the Clinton Foundation at a rally in Akron, Ohio Monday night. Trump said the Justice Department is a "political arm" of the White House and can not be trusted to investigate properly.
TRUMP: The Foundation donors included corporations and individuals with significant matters before the State Department. And then either Hillary Clinton herself or one of her closest aides took action favorable to the donor.

Her actions corrupted and disgraced one of the most important Departments of government, indeed one of only four established by the United States Constitution itself.

The Clintons' made the State Department into the same kind of Pay-to-Play operations as the Arkansas Government was: pay the Clinton Foundation huge sums of money and throw in some big speaking fees for Bill Clinton and you got to play with the State Department.

The amounts involved, the favors done and the significant numbers of times it was done require an expedited investigation by a Special Prosecutor. After the FBI and Department of Justice whitewash of the Clinton email crimes, they certainly cannot be trusted to quickly or impartially investigate Hillary Clinton's crimes.

Some former prosecutors have even suggested that the coordination between the pay-for-play State Department and the corrupt Clinton Foundation constitute a clear example of a RICO (Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization) enterprise.

The Justice Department is required to appoint an independent Special Prosecutor because it has proven itself to be a political arm of the White House.

[Aug 22, 2016] Twenty Years Since Welfare Reform How Has America Fared - The Atlantic by Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer

Notable quotes:
"... there has been a sharp rise in the number of households with children reporting incomes of less than $2 per person per day, a fact we documented in our book, $2 a Day ..."
"... What it did in reality was essentially kill the U.S. cash welfare system. (We use the term "cash welfare" to distinguish it from other forms of assistance, such as housing vouchers and food stamps, which have pre-designated uses.) ..."
"... Prior to August 22, 1996, families such as that one-families with little or no cash income-were entitled by law to a check from the government, thanks to AFDC. The program had many flaws. Yet it provided a cash floor that could have eased the hardships of folks at the end of their ropes. ..."
"... We've traveled to many different parts of the country getting to know people in need. While greedy, heartless landlords were sometimes a source of their troubles, their biggest problem-by far-has been the lack of access to a cash safety net-money-when failing to find or keep a job. In 21st-century America, a family needs at least some cash to have any chance at stability. Only money can pay the rent (though a minority of families get subsidies via a housing voucher). Only money buys socks, underwear, and school supplies. Money is what's needed to keep the utilities on. Each of the families we followed-technically eligible if our reading of the rules is right-weren't getting that money from TANF. ..."
"... Yet these desperately needy families either didn't know the program existed, felt the stigma and hassle weren't worth it, or had been rebuffed at the welfare office. ..."
"... Why has TANF left so many needy families behind? Its advocates argue that it reduces dependency and promotes work. Its critics contend that the time limits and work requirements it imposes are too punitive. Yet a careful look under the hood reveals that both of these claims fail to grasp the fundamental nature of what TANF has become. ..."
"... Built into the very core of TANF are perverse incentives for states to shed families from the welfare rolls. If they do so, they get to keep the money and use it for other things. And outside of what's spent on cash aid, there is virtually no meaningful oversight on how the rest of the money is spent. ..."
"... What are states doing with their TANF dollars if they aren't providing cash welfare to families? Some states, such as Ohio, spend a considerable portion on child care, no doubt a boon to the working poor, yet folks not in jobs or in work programs aren't eligible. Likewise other states, such as Wisconsin, use some of their block grant to fund state tax credits that benefit the working poor. ..."
"... When TANF is used to pay for giveaways for the non-poor or to plug budget holes, it becomes welfare for states and not for people. ..."
"... What states spend astonishingly little on-besides cash assistance-is helping the poor find employment. In 2014, Ohio-which is about at the national average here-allocated only 8 percent of combined federal and state TANF funding to vital "hand-up" activities linking recipients to jobs. ..."
"... Ronald Regan brought the image of the infamous-albeit mythical-welfare queen into the national consciousness. Bill Clinton probably owes his first term in office to his promise to "end welfare as we know it," and possibly his second to signing the reform into law. Both politicians railed against AFDC's so-called "perverse disincentives." TANF offered states a lot of flexibility to innovate, to allow a flowering of new ideas to help the poor. But that's not what the country got. Instead it got a new kind of welfare queens: states. States, not people, are using TANF to close the holes in their budgets. It is states, not people, who are falling prey to the "perverse disincentives" of welfare. ..."
Aug 20, 2016 | theatlantic.com
America's poorest are still dealing with the consequences of the legislation that Bill Clinton signed into law two decades ago today. As recently as April of this year, former president Bill Clinton defended the welfare reform bill he signed into law on August 22, 1996-twenty years ago today-as one of the great accomplishments of his presidency. The bill scrapped the welfare program known as Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) and created a new one that lasts to this day-Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). There was a grandiose idea behind the change: TANF was no simple safety net; it was also meant to be a springboard to self-sufficiency through employment, which it encouraged recipients to find work by imposing work requirements and limiting how long they could receive benefits.

Today, across the country, welfare is-at best-a shadow of its former self. In much of the Deep South and parts of the West, it has all but disappeared. In the aftermath of welfare reform, there has been a sharp rise in the number of households with children reporting incomes of less than $2 per person per day, a fact we documented in our book, $2 a Day. As of 2012, according to the most reliable government data available on the subject, roughly 3 million American children spend at least three months in a calendar year living on virtually no money. Numerous other sources of data confirm these findings. According to the most recent data available (2014), TANF rolls are now down to about 850,000 adults with their 2.5 million children-a whopping decline of 75 percent from 1996. TANF was meant to "replace" AFDC. What it did in reality was essentially kill the U.S. cash welfare system. (We use the term "cash welfare" to distinguish it from other forms of assistance, such as housing vouchers and food stamps, which have pre-designated uses.)

Cleveland, where the Republicans hosted their convention this year, is one of the poorest cities in the country and a place where the effects of this reform can be seen most plainly. What has happened to welfare in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland and its inner suburbs, is reflective of its fate elsewhere in the nation. Currently, the county's TANF-to-poverty ratio (the fraction of poor families with children who are actually receiving help from the program) sits at 22 percent-right about at Ohio's, and the nation's, average. (In some states, it is dramatically lower, such as Georgia, where it is just six, and Texas, where it is five.)

What's happened to poor people as a result? Since 2013, we've spent considerable time in the city trying to find out. Each year, we catch up with several families who, in 2013, had spent at least three months living without money income exceeding $2 per person per day. To deepen our perspective, we also spend time trying to understand what's going on for the city's poorest, more broadly speaking. Earlier this month, one of us-Kathryn-spent a day talking to supplicants at a west-side food pantry. She spent an afternoon walking the streets of one neighborhood, striking up casual conversations with residents as they took out the garbage or sat on their porches. Yet the toughest experience was when Kathryn went for a ride-along with bailiffs assigned to the Cleveland Housing Court as they went about their daily rounds, evicting a family from their west-side apartment mid-meal.

Prior to August 22, 1996, families such as that one-families with little or no cash income-were entitled by law to a check from the government, thanks to AFDC. The program had many flaws. Yet it provided a cash floor that could have eased the hardships of folks at the end of their ropes.

TANF ought to be able to help-albeit temporarily, as the name implies. Yet many of the people we have studied have never received it. One woman, a high-school graduate and a mother of two, told us she doesn't think it's worth it. She believes that in order to meet the program's requirements, she would have to work full time at a make-work job, leaving her no time to find legitimate employment.

Others have tried to get it and failed. When one mother we know lost her job at Walmart after her only means of transportation failed, she initially refused to apply for TANF out of pride, insisting that she was a worker, not a leach on the government. Finally, after months of fruitless job search, plus a list of health diagnoses a mile long, she broke down and applied. Since then, she has been sent away three times, all for no legitimate reason we, as TANF experts, can discern. Now, she, her daughter, and her fiancé are tripled-up with friends in a house that lacks heat and running water but offers a free roof over her head.

And many more aren't even aware TANF is available. During her visit to the west-side food pantry a few weeks ago, Kathryn met families camping in unfinished basements of friends, a couple who survived a Cleveland winter while sleeping in a tent (they advised finding a thick mattress to keep your body off the ground and to keep a candle burning), and a family in the process of breaking apart-the three children parceled off to relatives-until a laid-off Ford assembly line worker and his partner of 14 years, who cleaned suburban homes until her car was repossessed, can secure stable jobs and a place to live. When we asked why they didn't apply for TANF, we were met with blank stares. If our experiences across the city this summer are any guide, many poor Clevelanders-even those in desperate straits-don't even realize the program exists.

We've traveled to many different parts of the country getting to know people in need. While greedy, heartless landlords were sometimes a source of their troubles, their biggest problem-by far-has been the lack of access to a cash safety net-money-when failing to find or keep a job. In 21st-century America, a family needs at least some cash to have any chance at stability. Only money can pay the rent (though a minority of families get subsidies via a housing voucher). Only money buys socks, underwear, and school supplies. Money is what's needed to keep the utilities on. Each of the families we followed-technically eligible if our reading of the rules is right-weren't getting that money from TANF.

How did they survive? Nearly all had sold plasma from time to time, some regularly. In 2014, so-called "donations" hit an all-time high at 32.5 million, triple the rate recorded a decade prior. They collected tin cans for an average yield of about $1 an hour. They traded away their food stamps, usually at the going rate of 50 or 60 cents on the dollar. Some traded sex for cash or-more commonly-the payment of their cell phone bill, a room to stay in, a meal, or some other kind of help. One 15-year-old was lured into a sexual relationship with her teacher on the promise of food. Yet these desperately needy families either didn't know the program existed, felt the stigma and hassle weren't worth it, or had been rebuffed at the welfare office.

Some would argue that families are better off without cash welfare. Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned that welfare was "a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit." Yet even Ron Haskins, one of the Republican architects of the program, recognizes that the problem of "disconnected mothers"-those neither working nor on welfare-is "a serious policy issue, that its magnitude is increasing, and that in two decades the nation has not figured out how to address the problem."

Why has TANF left so many needy families behind? Its advocates argue that it reduces dependency and promotes work. Its critics contend that the time limits and work requirements it imposes are too punitive. Yet a careful look under the hood reveals that both of these claims fail to grasp the fundamental nature of what TANF has become.

To put it plainly, TANF is not really a welfare program at all. Peter Germanis, a conservative expert on welfare policy and former Reagan White House aide, describes it best, as a "fixed and flexible funding stream"-think slush fund-for states, provided by what are known as "block grants." Yes, some block-grant dollars are used to provide cash aid to struggling families. But three of every four dollars allocated to TANF is directed toward other purposes.

How can this be? After the 1996 welfare reform bill was signed into law, states were no longer obligated to give out a dime to those in need. The rules governing TANF are so flexible that states can potentially eliminate cash handouts all together. What's more, TANF's rules threaten to penalize states that continue to provide cash assistance, such as California, Minnesota, Oregon, and Vermont. It is easier to comply with TANF regulations by simply pushing people off the rolls, as Cuyahoga County has done.

Built into the very core of TANF are perverse incentives for states to shed families from the welfare rolls. If they do so, they get to keep the money and use it for other things. And outside of what's spent on cash aid, there is virtually no meaningful oversight on how the rest of the money is spent.

If past is prologue, the dollars devoted to cash assistance will only continue to dwindle. Even in 2006, TANF had far greater reach than it does now. Meanwhile, counts of the number of families knocking on the doors of the nation's food pantries have reached the highest point ever recorded. "Donations" of blood plasma in exchange for cash have tripled in the last decade. School-aged children are increasingly likely to be homeless or doubled up. In sum, on many measures, child and family wellbeing has taken a nosedive.

Welfare reform is certainly not the only factor driving these trends. An increasingly perilous low-wage labor market and a growing affordable-housing crisis are critical drivers too. Yet a simple thought experiment brings the role of welfare reform in focus. Imagine a world in which states are prohibited by law from denying any family who meets eligibility criteria. Now envision a world in which denying a family in need is perfectly legal, and states who do so get to keep the cash. This is America before and after welfare reform. On the eve of welfare reform, roughly seven in 10 poor families claimed cash aid; only about two in 10 now do so. If the safeguards governing AFDC were in place today, this sort of extreme poverty would be a fraction of what it is now.

What are states doing with their TANF dollars if they aren't providing cash welfare to families? Some states, such as Ohio, spend a considerable portion on child care, no doubt a boon to the working poor, yet folks not in jobs or in work programs aren't eligible. Likewise other states, such as Wisconsin, use some of their block grant to fund state tax credits that benefit the working poor.

But the remainder goes to an assortment of other activities not necessarily benefitting the impoverished at all. Michigan funds college scholarships for young adults with no children, under the rationale that doing so may reduce teen pregnancy. Texas spends a large chunk of its block grant on its child welfare-system, an expense the state would have to assume responsibility for otherwise. When TANF is used to pay for giveaways for the non-poor or to plug budget holes, it becomes welfare for states and not for people.

What states spend astonishingly little on-besides cash assistance-is helping the poor find employment. In 2014, Ohio-which is about at the national average here-allocated only 8 percent of combined federal and state TANF funding to vital "hand-up" activities linking recipients to jobs.

Ronald Regan brought the image of the infamous-albeit mythical-welfare queen into the national consciousness. Bill Clinton probably owes his first term in office to his promise to "end welfare as we know it," and possibly his second to signing the reform into law. Both politicians railed against AFDC's so-called "perverse disincentives." TANF offered states a lot of flexibility to innovate, to allow a flowering of new ideas to help the poor. But that's not what the country got. Instead it got a new kind of welfare queens: states. States, not people, are using TANF to close the holes in their budgets. It is states, not people, who are falling prey to the "perverse disincentives" of welfare.

[Aug 21, 2016] Ukraine Releases More Details on Payments for Trump Aide, Paul Manafort

What a bunch of neoliberal piranha, devouring the poorest country in Europe, where pernneers exist on $1 a day or less, with the help of installed by Washington corrupt oligarchs (Yanukovich was installed with Washington blessing and was controlled by Washington, who was fully aware about the level of corruption of its government; especially his big friend vice-president Biden).
Notable quotes:
"... Mr. Kalyuzhny was also a founding board member of a Brussels-based nongovernmental organization, the European Center for a Modern Ukraine, that hired the Podesta Group, a Washington lobbying firm that received $1.02 million to promote an agenda generally aligned with the Party of Regions. ..."
"... Because the payment was made through a nongovernmental organization, the Podesta Group did not register as a lobbyist for a foreign entity. A co-founder of the Podesta Group, John D. Podesta, is chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign, and his brother, Tony Podesta, runs the firm now. ..."
"... The Podesta Group, in a statement, said its in-house counsel determined the company had no obligation to register as a representative of a foreign entity in part because the nonprofit offered assurances it was not "directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed or subsidized in whole or in part by a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party." ..."
"... On Monday, Mr. Manafort issued a heated statement in response to an article in The New York Times that first disclosed that the ledgers - a document described by Ukrainian investigators as an under-the-table payment system for the Party of Regions - referenced a total of $12.7 million in cash payments to him over a five-year period. ..."
"... In that statement, Mr. Manafort, who was removed from day-to-day management of the Trump campaign on Wednesday though he retained his title, denied that he had personally received any off-the-books cash payments. "The suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly and nonsensical," he said. ..."
Aug 18, 2016 | The New York Times

MOSCOW - The Ukrainian authorities, under pressure to bolster their assertion that once-secret accounting documents show cash payments from a pro-Russian political party earmarked for Donald J. Trump's campaign chairman, on Thursday released line-item entries, some for millions of dollars.

The revelations also point to an outsize role for a former senior member of the pro-Russian political party, the Party of Regions, in directing money to both Republican and Democratic advisers and lobbyists from the United States as the party tried to burnish its image in Washington.

The former party member, Vitaly A. Kalyuzhny, for a time chairman of the Ukraine Parliament's International Relations Committee, had signed nine times for receipt of payments designated for the Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, according to Serhiy A. Leshchenko, a member of Parliament who has studied the documents. The ledger covered payments from 2007 to 2012, when Mr. Manafort worked for the party and its leader, Viktor F. Yanukovych, Ukraine's former president who was deposed.

Mr. Kalyuzhny was also a founding board member of a Brussels-based nongovernmental organization, the European Center for a Modern Ukraine, that hired the Podesta Group, a Washington lobbying firm that received $1.02 million to promote an agenda generally aligned with the Party of Regions.

Because the payment was made through a nongovernmental organization, the Podesta Group did not register as a lobbyist for a foreign entity. A co-founder of the Podesta Group, John D. Podesta, is chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign, and his brother, Tony Podesta, runs the firm now.

The role of Mr. Kalyuzhny, a onetime computer programmer from the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, in directing funds to the companies of the chairmen of both presidential campaigns, had not previously been reported. Mr. Kalyuzhny was one of three Party of Regions members of Parliament who founded the nonprofit.

The Associated Press, citing emails it had obtained, also reported Thursday that Mr. Manafort's work for Ukraine included a secret lobbying effort in Washington that he operated with an associate, Rick Gates, and that was aimed at influencing American news organizations and government officials.

Mr. Gates noted in the emails that he conducted the work through two lobbying firms, including the Podesta Group, because Ukraine's foreign minister did not want the country's embassy involved. The A.P. said one of Mr. Gates's campaigns sought to turn public opinion in the West against Yulia Tymoshenko, a former Ukrainian prime minister who was imprisoned during Mr. Yanukovych's administration.

The Podesta Group, in a statement, said its in-house counsel determined the company had no obligation to register as a representative of a foreign entity in part because the nonprofit offered assurances it was not "directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed or subsidized in whole or in part by a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party."

Reached by phone on Thursday, a former aide to Mr. Kalyuzhny said he had lost contact with the politician and was unsure whether he remained in Kiev or had returned to Donetsk, now the capital of a Russian-backed separatist enclave.

Ukrainian officials emphasized that they did not know as yet if the cash payments reflected in the ledgers were actually made. In all 22 instances, people other than Mr. Manafort appear to have signed for the money. But the ledger entries are highly specific with funds earmarked for services such as exit polling, equipment and other services.

On Monday, Mr. Manafort issued a heated statement in response to an article in The New York Times that first disclosed that the ledgers - a document described by Ukrainian investigators as an under-the-table payment system for the Party of Regions - referenced a total of $12.7 million in cash payments to him over a five-year period.

In that statement, Mr. Manafort, who was removed from day-to-day management of the Trump campaign on Wednesday though he retained his title, denied that he had personally received any off-the-books cash payments. "The suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly and nonsensical," he said.

Mr. Manafort's statement, however, left open the possibility that cash payments had been made to his firm or associates. And details from the ledgers released Thursday by anticorruption investigators suggest that may have occurred. Three separate payments, for example, totaling nearly $5.7 million are earmarked for Mr. Manafort's "contract."

Another, from October 2012, suggests a payment to Mr. Manafort of $400,000 for exit polling, a legitimate campaign outlay.

Two smaller entries, for $4,632 and $854, show payments for seven personal computers and a computer server.

The payments do not appear to have been reported by the Party of Regions in campaign finance disclosures in Ukraine. The party's 2012 filing indicates outlays for expenses other than advertising of just under $2 million, at the exchange rate at the time. This is less than a single payment in the black ledger designated for "Paul Manafort contract" in June of that year for $3.4 million.

Ukrainian investigators say they consider any under-the-table payments illegal, and that the ledger also describes disbursements to members of the central election committee, the group that counts votes.


Correction: August 20, 2016

Because of an editing error, an article on Friday about the political activities in Ukraine of Donald J. Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, misidentified the office once held by Yulia V. Tymoshenko, a rival of Mr. Manafort's client, the former president Viktor F. Yanukovych. Ms. Tymoshenko served as prime minister of Ukraine, not its president.

[Aug 21, 2016] Foundation Ties Bedevil Hillary Clinton's Presidential Campaign

Notable quotes:
"... Edward G. Rendell, a former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, said the foundation should be disbanded if Mrs. Clinton wins, and he added that it would make sense for the charity to stop taking foreign donations immediately. ..."
"... Begun in 1997, the foundation has raised roughly $2 billion and is overseen by a board that includes Mr. Clinton and the couple's daughter, Chelsea. ..."
"... This foundation made the Clinton's very rich. When a foundation only gives ten to fifteen percent of their proceeds to the ones they are helping one should know there is something wrong. ..."
"... Large sums of money from powerful foreign entities given to powerful political entities are never given for "free." Even if they come without specific stipulations, they instill within the recipient a sense of reciprocity and empathy that may not have existed before. ..."
"... The Clintons are highly manipulative career politicians who continually display that they believe they are above the law of the proletariat. They will do whatever they believe benefits them without regard for the rest of us. ..."
"... Regarding the foundation, I would love to see a report on what percentage of these funds are actually being used for "good causes" versus supporting the Clinton lifestyle.. ..."
"... I am sorry, there is absolutely nothing anyone can say that will make me believe for even a nano second, that someone from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia simply decided out of the goodness of their heart, to donate 10 million bucks to an American charity. ..."
"... After her stint at State Department, Hillary completely misread the sentiment of American voters when she returned to campaign. She thought America was going to wrap her in a big "Welcome Back" snugly blanket. What she found were unexpected insurgencies in Bernie and Trump- and a public who wasn't so eager to greet her- especially when they realized she didn't have a message, platform or offer a simple reason as to WHY she wants to become President. Throw in the foundation and her establishment ties to Wall Street and Big Pharma- She suddenly isn't so appealing. ..."
"... Mr. Trump, who the Times always castigates for his shady business practices, is a cheap street corner hustler compared to the Clintons. ..."
"... Trump and Hillary show the total bankruptcy of our major political parties and the ruling political establishment. I'm voting Green, there may be a chance of saving our democracy yet. ..."
"... The presence or absence of "direct" connections between either Clinton and their donors suggests a touching naivete. Being at dinner at the Clinton's home, seeing someone at dinner there ... this is how connections are made and made to work, not through "direct orders from the boss!" This is a web of shameless corruption in which an ex-president parlays his reputation to boost him and his wife into the ranks of the 1%. ..."
"... The donors have given to gain access or future favors of or through the Clintons. That's clear. These nations/individuals don't do anything charitable in their own nations. They want something in return and the Clintons' being the politicians that they are as well as being hawks about money, have always known that. They chose the money. It's the basis for many foundations run by people that have already accomplished their goals and who next expect to get paid or who desire more power by association than even money can buy. ..."
"... The money raking Foundation and the Goldman Sachs speeches, all while they must have absolutely certain that Hillary would be running for President, speak the delusional sense of entitlement usually reserved for royalty. ..."
"... the clinton hire their political team via these donations and pay for there expenses including huge travel expenses...not bad for public service. ..."
"... That is untrue. They can travel, live in luxury, pay their daughter and friends, and use trust assets for all kinds of personal stuff in the name of charity. Who do you think paid for Bill and Chelsea's trip to Africa? They aren't know for giving any away either! ..."
"... Bribery is corporatized these days ..."
"... Makes no sense. After a certain number, simple greed seems like insufficient motivation. You can't live long enough to spend it all! So what do the Clinton's want -- and more directly, why do they insist on sabotaging any good that comes their way? The country doesn't need their drama ..."
"... It's a charity. The Clintons got very rich while running it. That's an issue. Then the fact that Hillary was Secretary of State while the Clintons were raking in the foreign contributions. That was a clear conflict of interest and it should never have been allowed. And if it wasn't a conflict then why are the Clintons backing away from the idea now? ..."
"... Just because Trump is a kook it doesn't mean the Clintons aren't crooked and they too should be nowhere near another term in the White House. Newsflash: Hillary and Bill Clinton are not trustworthy ..."
"... They have always sought money and power where ever it was, and foundations are an excellent tax dodge for wealthy people to pay their relatives and friends tax free salaries while wielding enormous power through grants. ..."
"... Sure, their foundation has theoretically been devoted to "good works" but it also gives the founders a very cushy life style, access to the highest levels of government (and graft) around the world, and a ready source of donors for Hillary's political campaigns. ..."
"... Hillary has operated with such conflicts of interest since she was First Lady of Arkansas, working for a law firm which handled services for the largest financial services firm in the state. Don't feel sorry for these "maligned" victims. ..."
"... It's deja vu all over again! ..."
"... The "foundation" spends about 10% on actual "charity" work. Watch "Heist" and "Clinton Cash" and so many other printed sources to see what true pay-to-play self-enrichment on a mammoth scale looks like. ..."
"... They are CROOKS with ZERO concern for anyone but themselves. Look at Haiti for openers. A country still in ruin, but Hillary's brother has a first-ever seat on a Gold Mining operation in Haiti... and as Sec. of State, she pushed back a raise for workers from 61Cents back to 31Cents per hour. How can anyone with a heart vote for these carpetbaggers? ..."
"... The article fails to mention that almost none of the money actually goes to charity. Nonprofits like this are excellent vehicles for avoiding taxes since the money can be spent on salaries and "business expenses" like travel. ..."
"... This particular nonprofit looks too much like a money laundering operation for the benefit of the Clintons. Either the donors were expecting some sort of payback or they thought they were donating to charity. In either case, something is wrong with this. ..."
www.nytimes.com

Aug 20, 2016 | The New York Times

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia donated more than $10 million. Through a foundation, so did the son-in-law of a former Ukrainian president whose government was widely criticized for corruption and the murder of journalists. A Lebanese-Nigerian developer with vast business interests contributed as much as $5 million.

... ... ...

The Clinton Foundation has accepted tens of millions of dollars from countries that the State Department - before, during and after Mrs. Clinton's time as secretary - criticized for their records on sex discrimination and other human-rights issues. The countries include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Brunei and Algeria.

... ... ...

...Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a conservative group that has sued to obtain records from Mrs. Clinton's time at the State Department, said that "the damage is done."

"The conflicts of interest are cast in stone, and it is something that the Clinton administration is going to have to grapple with," Mr. Fitton said. "It will cast a shadow over their policies."

... ... ...

Edward G. Rendell, a former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, said the foundation should be disbanded if Mrs. Clinton wins, and he added that it would make sense for the charity to stop taking foreign donations immediately.

Begun in 1997, the foundation has raised roughly $2 billion and is overseen by a board that includes Mr. Clinton and the couple's daughter, Chelsea.

... ... ...

Victor Pinchuk , a steel magnate whose father-in-law, Leonid Kuchma, was president of Ukraine from 1994 to 2005, has directed between $10 million and $25 million to the foundation. He has lent his private plane to the Clintons and traveled to Los Angeles in 2011 to attend Mr. Clinton's star-studded 65th birthday celebration.

... ... ...

In July 2013, the Commerce Department began investigating complaints that Ukraine - and by extension Mr. Pinchuk's company, Interpipe - and eight other countries had illegally dumped a type of steel tube on the American market at artificially low prices.

A representative for Mr. Pinchuk said the investigation had nothing to do with the State Department, had started after Mrs. Clinton's tenure and been suspended in July 2014. He added that at least 100 other people had attended the dinner party at Mrs. Clinton's house and that she and Mr. Pinchuk had spoken briefly about democracy in Ukraine.


C Tracy, WV

This foundation made the Clinton's very rich. When a foundation only gives ten to fifteen percent of their proceeds to the ones they are helping one should know there is something wrong.

The foundation should bedevil the Clinton's, it is a sham. Money and power is the driving force behind the Clintons' to say they are in favor of helping women and gays while at the same time taking money from countries that treat women as no more than property and kill or imprison gays is at least immoral. This is just another millstone around Hillary's political neck.


JW, Shanghai 1 hour ago

Large sums of money from powerful foreign entities given to powerful political entities are never given for "free." Even if they come without specific stipulations, they instill within the recipient a sense of reciprocity and empathy that may not have existed before.

It is impossible for Clinton to have taken so much money from these groups and to not feel somewhat beholden to them.

The Clintons are highly manipulative career politicians who continually display that they believe they are above the law of the proletariat. They will do whatever they believe benefits them without regard for the rest of us.

I am ashamed that this is the best we have to choose from.

Regarding the foundation, I would love to see a report on what percentage of these funds are actually being used for "good causes" versus supporting the Clinton lifestyle.. .

#Election2016 #RaceToTheBottom


karenpk, Chicago 1 hour ago

I am sorry, there is absolutely nothing anyone can say that will make me believe for even a nano second, that someone from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia simply decided out of the goodness of their heart, to donate 10 million bucks to an American charity.

Ditto for the others. I really have a problem with how brazen these politicians are, and how we simply turn a blind eye to them, as well as the wealthy investors that own them. Oh, that's how politicians are. Well, if we acted like that, we would be unemployed, then thrown in jail. What makes them special, other than their own self proclamation? Nothing.

Aaron, Ladera Ranch, CA 1 hour ago

After her stint at State Department, Hillary completely misread the sentiment of American voters when she returned to campaign. She thought America was going to wrap her in a big "Welcome Back" snugly blanket. What she found were unexpected insurgencies in Bernie and Trump- and a public who wasn't so eager to greet her- especially when they realized she didn't have a message, platform or offer a simple reason as to WHY she wants to become President. Throw in the foundation and her establishment ties to Wall Street and Big Pharma- She suddenly isn't so appealing.

The U.S. does not control the prices on prescription drugs they way other nations do and we pay 50% more than other developed nations. This is what Hillary will fight to maintain, that along with a huge defense budget, perpetual warfare and global conflict. It's the status quo and it's disgusting. I'll vote for Trump just to spite Hillary.

Roy Brophy, Minneapolis, MN 1 hour ago

" American officials have long worried about Saudi Arabia's suspected role in promoting a hard-line strain of Islam, which has some adherents who have been linked to violence."

Like the Saudis who planed and carried out the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11?

Mr. Trump, who the Times always castigates for his shady business practices, is a cheap street corner hustler compared to the Clintons.

The only reason Trump sounds crazier than Hillary is that she is a more practiced liar. After the utter failure of Afghanistan and Iraq, which she and the Times supported, she went blazing into Libya and did the same thing with the same results.

Trump and Hillary show the total bankruptcy of our major political parties and the ruling political establishment. I'm voting Green, there may be a chance of saving our democracy yet.

JO, CO 1 hour ago

The presence or absence of "direct" connections between either Clinton and their donors suggests a touching naivete. Being at dinner at the Clinton's home, seeing someone at dinner there ... this is how connections are made and made to work, not through "direct orders from the boss!" This is a web of shameless corruption in which an ex-president parlays his reputation to boost him and his wife into the ranks of the 1%.

Does this mean Donald would make an acceptable president? No. But neither does Hillary. Maybe better that we consider going the route of SCOTUS-1 and leave the Oval (almost typed Offal) Office empty for four years!

Hanan, New York City 2 hours ago

The donors have given to gain access or future favors of or through the Clintons. That's clear. These nations/individuals don't do anything charitable in their own nations. They want something in return and the Clintons' being the politicians that they are as well as being hawks about money, have always known that. They chose the money. It's the basis for many foundations run by people that have already accomplished their goals and who next expect to get paid or who desire more power by association than even money can buy.

There will be no way around this for Clinton. Trump has a similar problem with monied interests all over the world. In both instances, not good choices nor good odds that whomever succeeds will not be plagued by unending issues due to conflicts that will be posed. exposed and/or links to their money and debts. Trump calls it "pay for play" regarding Clinton. As for Trump and all his huge deals, its called getting played while Trump gets paid.

Fred McTaggart, Kalamazoo, MI 2 hours ago

The actions that Bill Clinton is promising after the election are a tacit admission that the Foundation represents an enormous conflict of interest. But by now such actions are meaningless. They should have been taken before Hillary Clinton started campaigning for U.S. Senator and certainly before she accepted a position as Secretary of State.

Stan Continople , Brooklyn 4 hours ago

The money raking Foundation and the Goldman Sachs speeches, all while they must have absolutely certain that Hillary would be running for President, speak the delusional sense of entitlement usually reserved for royalty. Just because she's also a "policy wonk" does not make her any less deranged than Trump. Who knows when her last remaining ties to reality may finally snap - along with that macabre smile?

Majortrout, is a trusted commenter Montreal 4 hours ago

I'm amazed that the NYTimes has written this article. When Mrs. Clinton was running for the top spot for the DNC, all we read was negativity against Bernie Sanders, with very little written about Benghazi,her private e-mail server, and other "suggested improprieties". When she finally won the nomination for POTUS, all we read in the NYTimes was negativity against Donald Trump, and again hardly anything negative news against Mrs. Clinton.

How about that?

Now with have this issue, and it isn't going to go away so fast.

"If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck"


Elephant lover, is a trusted commenter New Mexico 5 hours ago

The donations are to a trust. The trust does not benefit the Clintons. It benefits the poor. How is this corrupt?

Just Sayin, New York 13 minutes ago

the clinton hire their political team via these donations and pay for there expenses including huge travel expenses...not bad for public service.

retiredseal83 , Coronado, CA 13 minutes ago

That is untrue. They can travel, live in luxury, pay their daughter and friends, and use trust assets for all kinds of personal stuff in the name of charity. Who do you think paid for Bill and Chelsea's trip to Africa? They aren't know for giving any away either!

ExPeterC, is a trusted commenter Bear Territory 6 hours ago

Bribery is corporatized these days

paula, is a trusted commenter new york 6 hours ago

Makes no sense. After a certain number, simple greed seems like insufficient motivation. You can't live long enough to spend it all! So what do the Clinton's want -- and more directly, why do they insist on sabotaging any good that comes their way? The country doesn't need their drama -- but Trump is simply too horrible to contemplate.

Billy, up in the woods down by the river 7 hours ago

It's a charity. The Clintons got very rich while running it. That's an issue. Then the fact that Hillary was Secretary of State while the Clintons were raking in the foreign contributions. That was a clear conflict of interest and it should never have been allowed. And if it wasn't a conflict then why are the Clintons backing away from the idea now?

Just because Trump is a kook it doesn't mean the Clintons aren't crooked and they too should be nowhere near another term in the White House. Newsflash: Hillary and Bill Clinton are not trustworthy

SAK, New Jersey 7 hours ago

The donations to the foundation has bad appearance. Saudis or Qataris desiring to be charitable to Africans could send the money to African charities rather than route through Clinton foundation. It is very typical of Saudis. They donated generously to the favorite charity of Bush family. The results are obvious. Despite their bad human rights record and discrimination against women, beheadings and disseminating extremist version of Islam though their funding of mosques and madressas in Muslim world, Saudi Arabia remains a strategic partner. US continues to supply arms, intelligence and advice on military operations in Yemen. There is no doubt Saudis have bought influence through donations.

Deus02, Toronto 5 hours ago

Not fear, but considerable and continuing concern about her credibility going forward. While Hillary continually touts herself as a progressive democrat, it would seem neither yourself nor the NYT got the memo about her recent four person presidential transition team headed up by Russ Salazar, former Secretary of the Interior AND Washington corporate lobbyist whom coincidentally is a profracking, fossil fuel AND supporter of the TPP. You couldn't ask for a more establishment pro corporate type than him.

He will also, as part of a Clinton administration, head the team that is responsible for the hiring of up to 4000 new employees and one can only guess where they will come from? Any wonder why many Sanders supporters and Independents STILL do not find her trustworthy and are reluctant to vote for her?

The fact remains, that any other democratic candidate without Clinton's baggage, at this juncture, would be beating Trump by at least 20 points, a landslide.

susan, California 7 hours ago

???? Their foundation ties bedevil her? That make it seem like she is being treated unfairly by circumstances beyond their control. Nothing could be further from the truth - the Clintons brought all of these problems on themselves. They have always sought money and power where ever it was, and foundations are an excellent tax dodge for wealthy people to pay their relatives and friends tax free salaries while wielding enormous power through grants.

Sure, their foundation has theoretically been devoted to "good works" but it also gives the founders a very cushy life style, access to the highest levels of government (and graft) around the world, and a ready source of donors for Hillary's political campaigns.

Hillary has operated with such conflicts of interest since she was First Lady of Arkansas, working for a law firm which handled services for the largest financial services firm in the state. Don't feel sorry for these "maligned" victims. They created the situation(s) which invited all the criticism, and, incredibly, continue to do so. It takes a long time to raise billions of dollars for their closely held foundation - they are not about to let it go until they have another source of revenue and means of attracting wealthy donors - the Presidency of the United States. It's deja vu all over again!

Deus02, Toronto 1 hour ago

Yep, the Saudis are going to implement a significant human rights program in the Kingdom and the 500K that Trans Canada donated to the Clinton Foundation are going to announce they no longer wish to build the Keystone XL pipeline.

Yeah right!


Pier Pezzi , Orlando 41 minutes ago

The "foundation" spends about 10% on actual "charity" work. Watch "Heist" and "Clinton Cash" and so many other printed sources to see what true pay-to-play self-enrichment on a mammoth scale looks like. Then vote for anyone but Clinton.

They are CROOKS with ZERO concern for anyone but themselves. Look at Haiti for openers. A country still in ruin, but Hillary's brother has a first-ever seat on a Gold Mining operation in Haiti... and as Sec. of State, she pushed back a raise for workers from 61Cents back to 31Cents per hour. How can anyone with a heart vote for these carpetbaggers?

Don B , Massachusetts 8 hours ago

The article fails to mention that almost none of the money actually goes to charity. Nonprofits like this are excellent vehicles for avoiding taxes since the money can be spent on salaries and "business expenses" like travel.

That isn't always objectionable: The Monterey Aquarium was set up that way but it was funded by a rich man to provide a career for his daughter. This particular nonprofit looks too much like a money laundering operation for the benefit of the Clintons. Either the donors were expecting some sort of payback or they thought they were donating to charity. In either case, something is wrong with this.

[Aug 21, 2016] The Shameful Foundation of the Clintons Power by Eric Ruder

Notable quotes:
"... But beyond the Republican bluster, there is a substantial critique of the Clinton Foundation: At its core, it fuses fundraising, influence-peddling, Washington networking, "humanitarian" causes and an endless grasp for power and money. ..."
"... Though taking care to adhere to the letter of the law, the foundation comes close to the line in many cases -- for example, soliciting donations by offering face time with the Clintons in ways that seem suspiciously like a political campaign for elected office, but not exactly like that, because that would be a violation of the law. ..."
"... Using methods like this, the Clinton Foundation raised some $2 billion since its inception 15 years ago. ..."
"... "Nearly half of the major donors who are backing Ready for Hillary, a group promoting her 2016 presidential bid, as well as nearly half of the bundlers from her 2008 campaign, have given at least $10,000 to the foundation, either on their own or through foundations or companies they run," according to the Post . ..."
"... As part of that agreement, the Clinton Foundation reported that prior to 2008, Saudi Arabia had contributed between $10 million and $25 million to its coffers -- a strange patron of a foundation that promotes itself as a fierce advocate for women's rights. But as should be obvious, how the money is used isn't generally as important to the governments, corporations and corporate executives contributing as the influence they buy. ..."
"... Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy ..."
"... The Clinton Foundation has staffers and programs in dozens of countries working on countless issues. But it's perhaps best known for its high-profile role in the reconstruction of Haiti after a devastating earthquake struck there in January 2010 . ..."
"... In this respect, the Clinton Foundation's operations in Haiti bore a striking resemblance to the Bush administration's arrogant colonial posture toward the occupation of Iraq -- right down to the way the Bush administration deployed recent Ivy League graduates to carry out central elements of the U.S. empire's plans for occupation and reconstruction. ..."
"... First, they had no background in development -- they didn't know what they were talking about in aid or humanitarianism. Second, they didn't even realize it. They had come to Haiti in their suits convinced they were going to fix the place, and then they looked really confused when we would try to explain to them why the ideas they came up with on the back of an envelope on the plane over wouldn't work. ..."
"... Indeed, the iconic accomplishments of the Clinton Foundation in Haiti today are an industrial park built to help foreign-owned clothing manufacturers exploit low-wage Haitian labor; trailers to house schools for Haiti's next generation of workers; and a luxury hotel for wealthy corporate executives who need a place to rest their weary heads as they seek out new business opportunities. ..."
"... But a year after its opening, the park had only produced 1,500 jobs. "Hundreds of smallholder farmers were coaxed into giving up more than 600 acres of land for the complex, yet nearly 95 percent of that land remains unused," according to an Al Jazeera report published in September 2013 . ..."
"... But the Clinton Foundation did see at least one project through to completion, under the auspices of the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. The fund invested $2 million to complete the construction of a luxury hotel in Pétionville. ..."
August 20, 2016 | Socialist Worker

Bill Clinton looks on as Hillary Clinton campaigns at the Broad Street Market in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, July 29, 2016. (Photo: Ruth Fremson / The New York Times)

The stated mission of the Clinton Foundation, set up at the end of Bill Clinton's second term in the White House, is to "alleviate poverty, improve global health, strengthen economies, and protect the environment."

But far more important to its operations is the Clinton Foundation's unstated mission: to further entrench the already formidable power of the Clinton family.

For more than two decades, both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have lived very public lives ensconced in the upper echelons of America's political establishment. Since its founding in 2001, the Clinton Foundation served as a bridge between Bill Clinton's administration and Hillary Clinton's drive to conquer the White House again.

The foundation itself has been the subject of countless Republican-inspired inquiries and attacks, including a new IRS investigation of its finances announced in the midst of the Democratic National Convention, though it was overshadowed by Donald Trump's nonstop buffoonery.

In the rush to tarnish the Clintons by any means necessary, the right typically substitutes spin for substance -- such as the erroneous accusation that the foundation spends only about 6 percent of its revenue on projects in the field.

But beyond the Republican bluster, there is a substantial critique of the Clinton Foundation: At its core, it fuses fundraising, influence-peddling, Washington networking, "humanitarian" causes and an endless grasp for power and money.

Though taking care to adhere to the letter of the law, the foundation comes close to the line in many cases -- for example, soliciting donations by offering face time with the Clintons in ways that seem suspiciously like a political campaign for elected office, but not exactly like that, because that would be a violation of the law.

After Hillary Clinton stepped down as Secretary of State in 2013 to focus her attention on campaigning for the White House, she officially rejoined the Clinton Foundation. As theWashington Post reported in 2015:

[T]he organization has stepped up its solicitation efforts in anticipation of soon losing one of its chief fundraisers [Hillary] to the campaign trail -- building a $250 million endowment designed to provide some long-term stability.

The recent efforts have at times looked like a political campaign. A contest offered foundation donors the chance to win a free trip to New York to attend a Clinton gala and have a photo taken with the former first couple. Hillary and Chelsea Clinton hosted a "Millennium Network" event in 2013 aimed at cultivating a younger generation of philanthropists. According to an invitation, there were six tiers of donations, ranging from $150 for individuals to $15,000 for a couple seeking a photograph with Hillary Clinton.

***

Using methods like this, the Clinton Foundation raised some $2 billion since its inception 15 years ago.

"Nearly half of the major donors who are backing Ready for Hillary, a group promoting her 2016 presidential bid, as well as nearly half of the bundlers from her 2008 campaign, have given at least $10,000 to the foundation, either on their own or through foundations or companies they run," according to the Post.

The list of Clinton Foundation donors includes blue-chip corporations such as Coca Cola and Verizon, Wall Street players like Goldman Sachs and American military contractors.

But some of the foundation's biggest donors are foreign governments, which are barred by federal election law from giving directly to candidates for public office. According to longtime Democratic operative David Sirota:

Federal law designates the Secretary of State as "responsible for the continuous supervision and general direction of sales" of arms, military hardware and services to foreign countries. In practice, that meant that Clinton was charged with rejecting or approving weapons deals -- and when it came to Clinton Foundation donors, Hillary Clinton's State Department did a whole lot of approving.

While Clinton was Secretary of State, her department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors. That figure from Clinton's three full fiscal years in office is almost double the value of arms sales to those countries during the same period of President George W. Bush's second term.

Fully one-third of foundation donors giving more than $1 million at a time are foreign governments. When the Obama administration vetted Clinton for the post of Secretary of State in 2008, it barred foreign governments that had previously given to the foundation from increasing their donations, in order to deflect accusations about purchasing influence from America's highest-ranking diplomat.

As part of that agreement, the Clinton Foundation reported that prior to 2008, Saudi Arabia had contributed between $10 million and $25 million to its coffers -- a strange patron of a foundation that promotes itself as a fierce advocate for women's rights. But as should be obvious, how the money is used isn't generally as important to the governments, corporations and corporate executives contributing as the influence they buy.

You might think that Hillary Clinton would find it troubling to accept money from sources such as Saudi Arabia. But that's precisely the point, according to Michael Hudson, author of Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy:

Nobody, I think, in American history has merged their public service as Secretary of State or president with their private gains to the extent that Hillary really has. And by that I mean the Clinton Foundation, overall.

Here's the problem, you can imagine. She's going to Saudi Arabia, she's going to Europe, she's going to the Near Eastern countries. Saudi Arabia has asked her -- and this is all very public -- we want more arms. We want to buy arms in America...

Hillary's in a position to go to Raytheon, to Boeing, and say, look, do I have a customer for you. Saudi Arabia would love to buy your arms. Maybe we can arrange something. I'm going to do my best. By the way, you know, my foundation is -- you know, I'm a public-spirited person and I'm trying to help the world. Would you like to make a contribution to my foundation?

Well, lo and behold, the military-industrial complex is one of the big contributors to the Clinton Foundation, as is Saudi Arabia, and many of the parties who are directly affected by her decisions.

***

The Clinton Foundation has staffers and programs in dozens of countries working on countless issues. But it's perhaps best known for its high-profile role in the reconstruction of Haiti after a devastating earthquake struck there in January 2010.

The foundation's Haitian initiatives, like similar operations elsewhere, are distinguished by an allegiance to the free market and a corporation-centric solution to social problems.

In this respect, the Clinton Foundation's operations in Haiti bore a striking resemblance to the Bush administration's arrogant colonial posture toward the occupation of Iraq -- right down to the way the Bush administration deployed recent Ivy League graduates to carry out central elements of the U.S. empire's plans for occupation and reconstruction.

According to an unnamed UN official who talked to journalist Janet Reitman for a 2011 report in Rolling Stone, there was a "dual problem" with the Clinton Foundation staffers:

First, they had no background in development -- they didn't know what they were talking about in aid or humanitarianism. Second, they didn't even realize it. They had come to Haiti in their suits convinced they were going to fix the place, and then they looked really confused when we would try to explain to them why the ideas they came up with on the back of an envelope on the plane over wouldn't work.

Indeed, the iconic accomplishments of the Clinton Foundation in Haiti today are an industrial park built to help foreign-owned clothing manufacturers exploit low-wage Haitian labor; trailers to house schools for Haiti's next generation of workers; and a luxury hotel for wealthy corporate executives who need a place to rest their weary heads as they seek out new business opportunities.

***

In 2012, Bill and Hillary Clinton personally attended the opening ceremony of the Caracol Industrial Park, which was supposed to create some 60,000 jobs for Haitians longing for decent employment. Among the celebrities who attended the opening were Sean Penn and Ben Stiller, according to the Washington Examiner.

But a year after its opening, the park had only produced 1,500 jobs. "Hundreds of smallholder farmers were coaxed into giving up more than 600 acres of land for the complex, yet nearly 95 percent of that land remains unused," according to an Al Jazeera report published in September 2013.

The Clinton Foundation disgracefully contracted with Clayton Homes -- the same firm sued by the U.S. government for supplying trailers reeking of formaldehyde fumes to Hurricane Katrina refugees -- to provide trailers to serve as schools for the children of the town of Léogâne, according to a report in the Nation by Isabel Macdonald and Isabeau Doucet.

Warren Buffet, owner of the investment firm Berkshire Hathway, which in turns owns Clayton Homes, was a prominent supporter of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Buffet co-hosted a fundraiser that raked in more than $1 million for her campaign.

But the Clinton Foundation did see at least one project through to completion, under the auspices of the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. The fund invested $2 million to complete the construction of a luxury hotel in Pétionville.

The Oasis Hotel "symbolizes Haiti 'building back better' and sends a message to the world that Haiti is open for business," according to Paul Altidor, vice president of the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund. "For Haiti's recovery to be sustainable, it must attract investors, businesses and donors, all of whom will need a business-class, seismically safe hotel."

But these trickle-down visions of development are precisely what angers Haitians about the colonial arrogance of the West's reconstruction efforts. "All the money that went to pay the salaries of foreigners and to rent expensive apartments and cars for foreigners while the situation of the country was degrading -- there was something revolting about it," former Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis told the New York Times in 2012:

The practices of the Clinton Foundation illustrate the total embrace of neoliberalism and the free market by the Clinton clan -- to the family's enormous financial benefit.

Remember that the next time you hear another liberal blowhard complain about how anyone who says you're acting out of "privilege" if you aren't ready to vote for Hillary Clinton. In reality, the Clintons themselves represent the pinnacle of privilege, fused with the power of the U.S. government and its foreign policy agenda.

Challenging the Clinton establishment is part and parcel of challenging the privileges of those who stand atop the global capitalist system.

Eric Ruder is in the editorial board of the International Socialist Review. He is also a frequent contributor to Socialist Worker.

[Aug 20, 2016] Hillary Clinton ordered to answer written questions in civil lawsuit by Kurtis Lee

Notable quotes:
"... Judicial Watch wanted Clinton to answer questions in person about whether she used the server to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests. But U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled her written responses would be sufficient. ..."
"... The lawsuit already has obtained several previously unreleased emails that suggested some of Clinton's aides had sought to help the Clinton Foundation, a charity run by her husband and daughter, while she was still secretary of State. ..."
"... Clinton faces several civil lawsuits stemming from her use of a private server, and damaging new emails could yet surface before election day. ..."
Aug 19, 2016 | www.latimes.com

... ... ...

Judicial Watch wanted Clinton to answer questions in person about whether she used the server to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests. But U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled her written responses would be sufficient.

The group has until Oct. 14 to submit the questions, and Clinton must respond within 30 days.

... ... ...

The lawsuit already has obtained several previously unreleased emails that suggested some of Clinton's aides had sought to help the Clinton Foundation, a charity run by her husband and daughter, while she was still secretary of State.

In one message, a top Clinton aide appeared to try to help a wealthy donor get a meeting with the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, after a Clinton Foundation executive had requested it.

Clinton faces several civil lawsuits stemming from her use of a private server, and damaging new emails could yet surface before election day.

... ... ...

[Aug 18, 2016] Hillary Victory Fund

Notable quotes:
"... Between the creation of the victory fund in September and the end of [June], the fund had brought in $142 million, . . . 44 percent [to] DNC ($24.4 million) and Hillary for America ($37.6 million), . . . state parties have kept less than $800,000 of all the cash brought in by the committee - or only 0.56 percent. ..."
"... Beyond the transfers, much of the fund's $42 million in direct spending also appears to have been done to directly benefit the Clinton campaign, as opposed to the state parties ..."
"... The fund has paid $4.1 million to the Clinton campaign for "salary and overhead expenses" to reimburse it for fundraising efforts. And it has directed $38 million to vendors such as direct marketing company Chapman Cubine Adams + Hussey and digital consultant Bully Pulpit Interactive - both of which also serve the Clinton campaign - for mailings and online ads that sometimes closely resemble Clinton campaign materials. ..."
crookedtimber.org

bruce wilder 08.03.16 at 1:08 am

Layman @ 79

I am not interested in a prolonged back and forth, but I will lay out a bare outline of facts. I do not find much support for your characterization of these arrangements, which give new meaning to the fungibility of funds. I think it is fair and accurate to describe the HVF transfer arrangements as a means of circumventing campaign financing limits and using the State parties to subsidize the Clinton campaign. Court rulings have made aggregate fund raising legal and invites this means of circumventing the $2700 limit on individual Presidential campaign donations. Whether the circumvention is legal - whether it violates the law to invite nominal contributions to State Parties of $10,000 and channel those contributions wholly to operations in support of Clinton, while leaving nothing in State Party coffers is actually illegal, I couldn't say; it certainly violates the norms of a putative joint fundraising effort. It wasn't hard for POLITICO to find State officials who said as much. The rest of this comment quotes POLITICO reports dated July 2016.

Hillary Victory Fund, which now includes 40 state Democratic Party committees, theoretically could accept checks as large as $436,100 - based on the individual limits of $10,000 per state party, $33,400 for the DNC, and $2,700 for Clinton's campaign.

Between the creation of the victory fund in September and the end of [June], the fund had brought in $142 million, . . . 44 percent [to] DNC ($24.4 million) and Hillary for America ($37.6 million), . . . state parties have kept less than $800,000 of all the cash brought in by the committee - or only 0.56 percent.

. . . state parties have received $7.7 million in transfers, but within a few days of most transfers, almost all of the cash - $6.9 million - was transferred to the DNC . . .

The only date on which most state parties received money from the victory fund and didn't pass any of it on to the DNC was May 2, the same day that POLITICO published an article exposing the arrangement.

Beyond the transfers, much of the fund's $42 million in direct spending also appears to have been done to directly benefit the Clinton campaign, as opposed to the state parties.


The fund has paid $4.1 million to the Clinton campaign for "salary and overhead expenses" to reimburse it for fundraising efforts. And it has directed $38 million to vendors such as direct marketing company Chapman Cubine Adams + Hussey and digital consultant Bully Pulpit Interactive - both of which also serve the Clinton campaign - for mailings and online ads that sometimes closely resemble Clinton campaign materials.

JM Hatch 08.03.16 at 2:23 am

@41 Lee Arnold: Are you referring to the Warren Buffet who owns Fruit-of-the-Loom? The same company which had Hillary's State Dept bust up a minimum wage law for Haiti's textile industry? The same company which then donated to the Clinton Foundation for aid that never arrived to Haiti? If not, then who is this Warren Buffet?

[Aug 16, 2016] Just a few (25) of the scandals, lies, and criminal activity of Hillary Clinton

Notable quotes:
"... It is worth reviewing the history of the Clinton Gang. "Just a few (25) of the scandals, lies, and criminal activity of Hillary Clinton." ..."
endingthefed.com
x | Aug 14, 2016 9:52:08 AM | 6
It is worth reviewing the history of the Clinton Gang. "Just a few (25) of the scandals, lies, and criminal activity of Hillary Clinton."

http://endingthefed.com/hillarys-camp-freaking-out-as-this-video-goes-viral-no-way-to-stop-it-now.html

[Aug 15, 2016] Did Companies Countries Buy State Dept. Access by Donating to Clinton Foundation?

Notable quotes:
"... Fractured Lands in the NYT Magazine: this is getting the full MSM `serious journalism' treatment. Strangely, in 40,000 words it mentions Saudi Arabia essentially once, Bahrain once, in the phrase, `an arc across the Arab world from Mauritania to Bahrain', and Qatar not at all. ..."
"... So the three MENA countries most responsible for supporting extremism in their own neighborhood (and underwriting it elsewhere as well) are left off the hook. ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com
August 12, 2016 at 7:17 pm

Two good stories on Democracy Now today:

Did Companies & Countries Buy State Dept. Access by Donating to Clinton Foundation?

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/12/did_companies_countries_buy_state_dept

(Now that Bernie is out of the way, Amy can point out some of the problems with Hillary)

"Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart": NYT Mag Examines Region Since 2003 U.S. Invasion

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/12/fractured_lands_how_the_arab_world

allan ,, August 12, 2016 at 8:07 pm

Fractured Lands in the NYT Magazine: this is getting the full MSM `serious journalism' treatment. Strangely, in 40,000 words it mentions Saudi Arabia essentially once, Bahrain once, in the phrase, `an arc across the Arab world from Mauritania to Bahrain', and Qatar not at all.

So the three MENA countries most responsible for supporting extremism in their own neighborhood (and underwriting it elsewhere as well) are left off the hook.

Kim Kaufman ,, August 12, 2016 at 11:31 pm

He stated in the beginning that he's only dealing with six countries and Saudi Arabia wasn't one of them. I started to read it but didn't get very far.

abynormal ,, August 12, 2016 at 9:13 pm

had to ck that out too…" Although definitions, names, and borders can vary, generally the regions of Asia include West Asia (which is part of the Middle East), the Caucasus (sometimes also considered as part of the Middle East), Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia (also called the Indian Subcontinent), and Southeast Asia. West Asia is sometimes referred to as the Middle East, with is actually a misnomer since the cultural region we define as the Middle East often included countries outside of Asia, such as Egypt in Africa and Cyprus in Europe. West Asia specifically includes the countries within the region of Asia bordered by the Mediterranean and Red Seas to the West and the Persian Gulf, the Gulfs of Aden and Oman, and the Arabian Sea to the South.

Countries within West Asia include Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Just northeast of Turkey lies the Caucasus, a mountainous region wedged between the Black Sea to the West and the Caspian Sea to the East. The Caucasus includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Russia. Central Asia is located just north of Iran and Afghanistan and south of Russia, consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. East Asia defines the region between Central Asia, Russia, and the Pacific Ocean roughly up to the beginning of the Tropic of Cancer."…and i'm still confused.

[Aug 14, 2016] Clinton foundation corruption scandal

Notable quotes:
"... About Hillary's cute lawerly language–just to be clear, isn't it neoliberal dogma that by definition all "trade deals" increase jobs and wages. ..."
"... In effect this statement can be accurately summed up as "I support the TPP." I wonder–are a lot of people being taken in by this crap? Wouldn't it be better to just outright lie? I mean it's not like Trump has been letting this language go by unchallenged; he'll be pretty merciless about it in the debates coming up. ..."
"... The problem is, is Trump smart enough to understand that? Is he patient and disciplined enough to make that "parsing problem" a basic part of his message and keep discussing it? ..."
"... I know Trump is shrewd and cunning and educated about high-level money-grubbing and handing off his losses to others. But does he have any higher-order intelligence? Does he think longer and deeper and can he show that in any debates Hillary cannot avoid showing up for? Do they educate for that at Wharton? ..."
"... Bill did usher in the – pay to play – model imo like none before him. ..."
August 12, 2016 | naked capitalism
Corruption

"EXCLUSIVE: Joint FBI-US Attorney Probe Of Clinton Foundation Is Underway" [Daily Caller]. "Multiple FBI investigations are underway involving potential corruption charges against the Clinton Foundation, according to a former senior law enforcement official. The investigation centers on New York City where the Clinton Foundation has its main offices, according to the former official who has direct knowledge of the activities. The New York-based probe is being led by Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Bharara's prosecutorial aggressiveness has resulted in a large number of convictions of banks, hedge funds and Wall Street insiders."

Normally, I view the Daily Caller with great skepticism, based on past fabrications (then again, Judy Miller). That said, this one was vouched for on the Twitter by reporters I have respect for. And with Clinton owning both political establishments, it's hard to see where else the (sadly) single source could turn. Interestingly, Bharara hasn't issued a denail as of this writing, altough they declined comment. Here's a rehash from LawNewz. So we'll see how this plays out.

"Clinton team tells supporters to dismiss email questions as 'more bark than bite'" [Yahoo News] (talking points for Brock trolls and reputable allies, if any, attached). Notice there are two issues with "her damned email." (1) Clinton's privatization of the server as such, with the associated security issues. (2) Corruption, enabled by the privatization: Clinton's conflation of the private interests of the Clinton Foundation with the public actions of the State Department under Clinton's leadership.

The privatized server enables corruption by severing the evidentiary chain between private communications (said to be yoga lessons and Chelsea's wedding, but, as we now know, more than that) and putatively public actions. The content of the 40 emails not turned over by Clinton, and now revealed by Judicial Watch, re-connects the links in the evidentiary chain. Of course, Clinton's talking points are designed to obfuscate the distinction.

Jim Haygood, August 12, 2016 at 2:14 pm

This just in:

"Of the [Clintons'] $1,042,000 in charitable cash contributions, exactly $1 million went to, you guessed it, the Clinton Family Foundation."

It takes a Harambe to trample a village.

temporal, August 12, 2016 at 2:56 pm

That is sort of the way it's done for most of the rich that make charitable contributions. Give presents to friends wait for other presents to return and pay less taxes. The Clintons apparently decided that honesty was the best policy and skipped all that trusting others to pass the dutchie.

  1. lyman alpha blob

    RE: Joint FBI-US Attorney Probe Of Clinton Foundation

    This morning I saw an article saying that the DOJ has rebuffed the FBI request to investigate the Clinton Foundation. Quick search turns up a lot of articles – here's one from the Washington Times:

    "The Obama administration rejected requests from three FBI field offices that wanted to open public corruption probes of the Clinton Foundation, according to a report that added to headaches for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

    Alerted by banks to suspicious transactions, the FBI wanted to investigate conflicts of interest involving foreign donors to the foundation while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state. But the Justice Department put the kibosh on the it, CNN reported."

    So now I'm confused – aren't US Attorneys part of the DOJ? Can anyone shed some light on this?

    Reply
    1. ggm

      My twitter is saying Bharara could claim jurisdiction and the probe is an end run around DOJ. It is all based on one anonymous source for now, grain of salt and so forth.

There seems to be a lot of rich people on the board as well as hanging around as employees at TCFF. That million won't go far. Maybe they'll pass on a couple of bucks to Haiti or send them some used furniture.

Paid Minion, August 12, 2016 at 3:28 pm

Another example of "charitable donations"– A big chunk of the "Warbird Restoration" business.

  • -Millionaire buys and restores WWII airplane. (The price of which has been driven into the millions of dollars by rich guys bidding against each other)
  • -"Donates" airplane to "charitable/non-profit" organization, dedicated to "honoring the memory…………"
  • -The guy that donates gets a tax writeoff, then flies it on the tax-deductible donations.

Yeah, when the guy kicks the bucket, the airplane goes to the charity. But, being dead, and having received a 10-20 year tax writeoff, why does he care at that point?

It would take twenty years to find and document all of the little scams for rich people that have been written into the tax code.

Seems like the tax code gives out $100 of "incentives" for every $5 rich people spend.

RMO, August 13, 2016 at 1:49 am

Being an aviation nut I've noticed that many warbirds have gone WAY up in price over the last decade. They've never been cheap to own (even when they were available as surplus in large quantities the operating costs could be amazingly high) but now you have to be a multi-millionaire at least to buy something like a P-51. A lot of classic cars and sailing yachts have gone the same way. The extremely wealthy seem to have decided these things are desirable and the prices rocket into the stratosphere. I suppose I can consider myself fortunate that the type of flying that I love the most (soaring) is also one of the least expensive ways of getting off the ground. It's also one of the few forms of flying that let one go wingtip-to-wingtip with eagles and hawks on a regular basis.

fajensen, August 14, 2016 at 1:24 pm

Maybe the purchase of a carefully restored vintage Flakvierling 38 is more appropriate?

If they are flying over your land … you could put some authenticity into the Squillionaire WWII flyboy experience ;-)

Foppe, August 12, 2016 at 2:34 pm

fwiw, on the topic of elite corruption/pay2play/hillary: When I recently tried to talk about this with someone who takes himself slightly too seriously, who sees his interests as aligned with the professional classes, self-identifying as a "pragmatist", and who seems constitutionally unable to conceive of the notion that highly educated people could be as corrupt as they (often) are incompetent, I found that it was pretty much impossible to get him to even acknowledge that Hillary's SoS/CF corruption was problematic.

Because "that's always how it goes/what happens, we shouldn't kid ourselves" and "at least we know about this" (apparently the fact that quite a bit of effort was being expended to make it harder for us to find out about this didn't faze him either, perhaps because of ideas he harbors about how that's necessary because "the masses wouldn't understand" or whatnot).

Utterly bizarre, this unwillingness to engage with the facts, because of beliefs someone holds about how not doing so is the pragmatic option, in someone who also identifies as a (hard) scientist.

hemeantwell, August 12, 2016 at 2:55 pm

I've been reading around in some of the mid-20th c. lit on the psychology of fascism - "Prophets of Deceit," "The Inability to Mourn" and others in the genre - and that sort of "realism" was thought of as a key component in bringing about acceptance of, and then sympathy with, fascism. Once corruption and related forms of power asymmetries are accepted, there's not much left to maintain a principled critical standpoint. You're just left with your own narrow self interest and an openness to appreciating the skill with which the game is played. Hitler was quite a politician and, wowzers, Mussolini sure had some chutzpah, that March on Rome was awesome!

cnchal

No price is too high when paying with loot.

As an old-style Leninist party in a modern world, the CCP is confronted by two major challenges: first, how to maintain "ideological discipline" among its almost 89 million members in a globalized world awash with money, international travel, electronically transmitted information, and heretical ideas. Second, how to cleanse itself of its chronic corruption, a blight that Xi has himself described as "a matter of life and death."

The primary reason the Party is so susceptible to graft is that while officials are poorly paid, they do control valuable national assets. So, for example, when property development deals come together involving real estate (all land belongs to the government) and banking (all the major banks also belong to the government), officials vetting the deals find themselves in tempting positions to supplement their paltry salaries by accepting bribes or covertly raking off a percentage of the action. Since success without corruption in China is almost a non sequitur, officials and businessmen (and heads of state-owned enterprises are both) are all easily touched by what Chinese call "original sin" (yuanzui), namely, some acquaintance with corruption.

The more anti corruption pressure Jinping applies, the greater the flood of loot coming out of China. Canada is getting swamped.

jgordon

About Hillary's cute lawerly language–just to be clear, isn't it neoliberal dogma that by definition all "trade deals" increase jobs and wages.

In effect this statement can be accurately summed up as "I support the TPP." I wonder–are a lot of people being taken in by this crap? Wouldn't it be better to just outright lie? I mean it's not like Trump has been letting this language go by unchallenged; he'll be pretty merciless about it in the debates coming up.

MyLessThanPrimeBeef

If she is so far ahead, she should be able to risk embracing the deal openly and not have to borrow a page from Obama's playbook about privately calming his supporters, back in 2008, about his public position on NAFTA.

different clue

The problem is, is Trump smart enough to understand that? Is he patient and disciplined enough to make that "parsing problem" a basic part of his message and keep discussing it?

I know Trump is shrewd and cunning and educated about high-level money-grubbing and handing off his losses to others. But does he have any higher-order intelligence? Does he think longer and deeper and can he show that in any debates Hillary cannot avoid showing up for? Do they educate for that at Wharton?

[Aug 14, 2016]
August 12, 2016 at 3:52 pm

RE: Clinton's drive to assimilate the Republican establishment

IMNSHO this is the recipe for the gridlock you're looking for Lambert and may even rid us of both Trump and Clinton. Not sure what the Dems were thinking they'd accomplish by targeting Repulicans to vote for Clinton. While some might hold there nose and pull the lever for her out of disgust for Trump, it certainly does not follow that they will also vote for down-ticket Dems. It seems asinine to me to expect that they would.

More likely the result is a Clinton presidency backed by a Republican Congress. I'd say it would be great if they'd then impeach her but one has to be careful what one wishes for. I don't see a Kaine presidency as much of an improvement and I suspect repubs would be more likely to cooperate with him than they would Clinton.

Lambert Strether Post author , August 12, 2016 at 4:00 pm

> what the Dems were thinking

1) Ka-ching

2) Bipartisanship, DLC style (Grand Bargain, TPP, war).

3) Kick the left. Even though every day is kick the left day, some days are more delicious than others.

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , August 12, 2016 at 5:12 pm

I'll just remark that American politics right now is like a deep-fried Twinkie.

  • Disgusting and unhealthy? Check
  • Gooey and slimy inside? Check
  • Fried by too much heat? Check
  • Full of airy, spongey cake with no substance? Check
  • Zero nutritional content? Check
Steve C , August 12, 2016 at 8:10 pm

If all those establishment Republicans are rejecting Trump and embracing Hillary, he can't be so bad and she can't be so good.

different clue , August 12, 2016 at 11:54 pm

Why would this cause gridlock? Wouldn't this cause Trade Agreements and Grand Bargains? The elite mainstreamers will get all those done first and then get around to Impeachment and stuff if they need to amuse themselves. But they will see to first things first . . . if its Clinton and a Republan Senate and House.

OIFVet , August 12, 2016 at 3:59 pm

Hillary Clinton is all about selfless service… If Hillary Clinton becomes president, it will cost her millions:

If Clinton is elected president in November, she'll earn a salary of $400,000 but forgo any income from speeches (until she leaves office, anyway). That could cost the Clintons $10 million per year, based on the speech income Hillary Clinton averaged as a private citizen in 2013 and 2014. That's $40 million during a four-year term.

This is so inspiring! Let's take up a collection fund for Hillary, call it the 'Pantsuit Fund'. It's the least we can do…

PS No word on what portion of this "lost" income would be funneled into the Clinton Foundation instead…

Roger Smith , August 12, 2016 at 4:08 pm

As one door closes, another opens they say…

aab , August 12, 2016 at 7:15 pm

But the money paid to her openly after leaving the State Department was just a down payment for the presidency. So it's really more like she got $20+ million spread out over eight years (or twelve, if you want to factor in the depressing possibility of a second term) plus her cumulative White House salary of $1.6 million (or again, $3.2 over eight presidential years). And all that money paid to Bill, Chelsea and her husband was ALSO a down payment on the presidency. How many millions was that?

The violin I am playing for them all is sub-atomic in size.

Skippy , August 12, 2016 at 10:13 pm

Bill did usher in the – pay to play – model imo like none before him.

Disheveled Marsupial…. The layers of gate keepers to gain audience must have been commensurate to hot groupies servicing roadies and security staff… endless blow jobs and other sex acts committed in pursuit of entering the inner sanctum… where eternal bliss resides…

different clue , August 12, 2016 at 11:58 pm

The income wouldn't be foregone, only deferred. She would expect anywhere up to billions of dollars after leaving office if she got enough done for the OverClass while IN office.

Merely delayed . . . not denied.

Watch how much money Obama harvests in the years ahead. That will be the template.

Lambert Strether Post author , August 12, 2016 at 4:05 pm

That's innovative. At the end of the day, are there any synergies?

jgordon , August 12, 2016 at 4:40 pm

I have sinking feeling of horror even contemplating that someone as bloodthirsty as Hillary actually has a shot of being president. That the "left" are the ones who let things get this far is incredibly ironic. Or not. Maybe they've always been bloodthirsty warmonger hungry for chaos and destruction in their hearts.

Plenue , August 12, 2016 at 4:53 pm

"over the last 15 years, have lost two major wars, set the Mediterranean littoral on fire, created a refugee crisis that's destabilizing our largest military protectorate, and blown many thousands of far away brown people to pink mist (but that's not racist, no siree. We have credentials)."

Serious men in suits, sitting around a table, having serious conversations: who do we bomb today? How much 'collateral damage' do the PR guys deem is acceptable?

At no point will the idea that not bombing is a genuine option come up. Nor will the fact that (for some strange reason) people don't like being bombed and we're actually making more enemies than we're eliminating. I'm reminded of the South Park episode where the leaders of the Vatican have a meeting about how they can cover up raping children in the future. Simply not raping children never occurs to them as a choice.

ian , August 13, 2016 at 4:29 pm

I was both surprised, and not surprised that 90-some percent of her charitable donations went to the Clinton Foundation.
Talk about hiding in plain sight.

[Aug 14, 2016] The System is Rigged (Only Not in the Way Trump Thinks)

The main factor in rigging the system is pack of rabid gdogs called neoliberal MSM, which attack Trump 24 x 7, throwing our of the window any pretence about objectivity. They dissect each his phrase and create face skandals. One after another. They give a pass Hillary without even analysing her positions and her record (always dismal, often criminal, as in the term "war criminal"). Bastards...
www.counterpunch.org
It would be difficult to imagine a more implausible tribune of the people than Donald Trump.

It is harder still to think of him as an elected official of any kind, much less a President.

But the man does have certain strengths. He is shrewd, for example; and to be shrewd, he must be at least somewhat in touch with reality.

To the extent that he is, he has to be wondering what the hell he was thinking when he threw his hat into the ring.

... ... ...

As it became clear that Trump was doing better in the primaries than anyone had expected, the Republican establishment did try to derail his campaign - in league with the plutocrats who back them and Fox News. They failed spectacularly.

They were unable to rig the election because too many of the people that used to listen to them finally realized that they were being used, and refused to go along.

The only candidate who can rightfully claim that the primary elections were rigged against his candidacy is Bernie Sanders. Circumstantial evidence of this had been overwhelming from Day One; the DNC emails that Wikileaks published established the point definitively.

No wonder that Democrats don't want to talk about the content of those emails; that they'd rather deflect attention to unsubstantiated allegations about Russian hacking.

[Aug 14, 2016] Finally the Eruption of the Clinton Foundation Scandal

www.counterpunch.org
After Trump's asinine quip about a 2nd amendment "solution" to stopping Clinton's presidential run, her campaign manager, Robby Mook, had this to say:

"What Trump is saying is dangerous. A person seeking to be the President of the United States should not suggest violence in any way."

A presidential candidate should not suggest violence in any way?!? Really?

This coming from a high-level supporter of a candidate who…

…has supported every war during her political career?

…supported the use of civilian-butchering cluster bombs by Israel in Gaza?

…supported the brutal invasions by the Saudi dictatorship of Bahrain and Yemen?

…enthusiastically pushed for the bombing of Libya that turned it into a failed state?

…threatened use of nuclear weapons vs. Iran?

…supported the military coups against the elected governments in Honduras and Egypt, turning both into violence-ridden basket cases?

…adores as her mentor the arch war criminal Henry Kissinger, orchestrator of the tortures and killings of 10s of thousands?

Tell me, please, Clinton supporters, how is this not "suggest[ing] violence in any way."

Is it because threats of violence don't count when they're promoted against human beings who aren't Americans? Go ahead, probe the deeply caustic, Trump-like racism behind that assumption.

Last Friday, four days before Trump issued his violent threat and a few weeks after the constitution-waiving stunt at the Democratic convention, the ACLU and a federal court finally forced the release of the Obama administration's patently unconstitutional guidelines [2] for killing people with drones ( nearly 90% of whom were not the intended targets).

And yesterday, while the Republican sociopath was issuing his threat, the Obama State Department approved the sale of more than $1 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia , no doubt to continue its bloody invasion of Yemen, where the UN recently estimated that two-thirds of the civilian casualties are caused by Saudi air strikes.

Where was the Democratic and Republican outrage against those very real, violent threats?

When Clinton wins the November election, will we stoop ever farther into an Orwellian world as our first "feminist" president continues to shovel billions in arms to arguably the most anti-feminist dictatorship on the planet? Where violence against people doesn't count as violence due to their nationality and/or the color of their skin?

If you're outraged about Trump's barbarous suggestion of 2 nd Amendment "solutions" to elections, please don't stop there. Get your blood boiling and then also, and just as forcefully, challenge Clinton's own barbarous "solutions."

As journalist John Pilger recently noted ,

"A third of the members of the United Nations have felt Washington's boot, overturning governments, subverting democracy, imposing blockades and boycotts. Most of the presidents responsible have been liberal – Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama…"

"One of the more violent presidents, Obama gave full reign to the Pentagon war-making apparatus of his discredited predecessor. He prosecuted more whistleblowers – truth-tellers – than any president. He pronounced Chelsea Manning guilty before she was tried. Today, Obama runs an unprecedented worldwide campaign of terrorism and murder by drone."

"In 2009, Obama promised to help "rid the world of nuclear weapons" and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. No American president has built more nuclear warheads than Obama."

So please, no more sermonizing about stopping violence while taking a pass on condemning our government, which then and now, is "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

[Aug 14, 2016] Judicial Watch Uncovers Clinton Emails With Pay to Play Revelations

Notable quotes:
"... Clinton's top aides' favors for and interactions with the Clinton Foundation seem in violation of the ethics agreements that Hillary Clinton agreed to in order to be appointed and confirmed as Secretary of State. For example, Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton on January 5, 2009, wrote in a letter to State Department Designated Agency Ethics Official James H. Thessin: ..."
"... "For the duration of my appointment as Secretary if I am confirmed, I will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties in which The William J. Clinton Foundation (or the Clinton Global Initiative) is a party or represents a party…." ..."
"... The emails reveal that Clinton campaign adviser and pollster Mark Penn advised Clinton on NATO and piracy. Another major Clinton fundraiser, Lana Moresky, also pushed Clinton to hire someone for a position at State. Clinton directed Abedin to follow up and "help" the applicant and told Abedin to "let me know" about the job issue. ..."
"... The emails show that Hillary Clinton relied on someone named "Justin " (presumably Justin Cooper, a Bill Clinton and Clinton Foundation employee), to set up her cell phone voicemail, rather than having State Department personnel handle it. This was in a February 11, 2009, email from Clinton aide Lauren Jiloty to Clinton, using Clinton's [email protected] address. ..."
www.yahoo.com

oteyokwa, 16 hours ago

Remember how Hillary Clinton repeatedly assured us all that she had turned over all work-related emails? And that she avoided any conflicts of interest with her Clinton Foundation?

Well, this week we released 296 pages of State Department records containing 44 email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department. This brings the known total to 171 of new Clinton emails that were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over. These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, "as far as she knew," all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.

The new documents reveal that in April 2009 controversial Clinton Foundation official Doug Band pushed for a job for an associate. In the email, Band tells Hillary Clinton's former aides at the State Department, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, that it is "important to take care of [Redacted]. Band is reassured by Abedin that, "Personnel has been sending him options." Band was co-founder of Teneo Strategy with Bill Clinton and a top official of the Clinton Foundation, including its Clinton Global Initiative.

Included is a 2009 email in which Band directs Abedin and Mills to put Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire and Clinton Foundation donor Gilbert Chagoury in touch with the State Department's "substance person" on Lebanon. Band notes that Chagoury is "key guy there [Lebanon] and to us," and insists that Abedin call Amb. Jeffrey Feltman to connect him to Chagoury.

Chagoury, a foreign national, is a close friend of former President Bill Clinton and a top donor to the Clinton Foundation. He has appeared near the top of the Foundation's donor list as a $1 million to $5 million contributor, according to foundation documents. He also pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative. According to a 2010 investigation by PBS Frontline, Chagoury was convicted in 2000 in Switzerland for laundering money from Nigeria, but agreed to a plea deal and repaid $66 million to the Nigerian government.

Clinton's top aides' favors for and interactions with the Clinton Foundation seem in violation of the ethics agreements that Hillary Clinton agreed to in order to be appointed and confirmed as Secretary of State. For example, Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton on January 5, 2009, wrote in a letter to State Department Designated Agency Ethics Official James H. Thessin:

"For the duration of my appointment as Secretary if I am confirmed, I will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties in which The William J. Clinton Foundation (or the Clinton Global Initiative) is a party or represents a party…."

As preparation for Hillary's upcoming visit to Asia, Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, on Feb. 11, 2009, sends Hillary a copy of his upcomingtestimony before Congress in which he would condemn any U.S. efforts to criticize Chinese monetary policy or enact trade barriers. Several days later, Hillary asked Abedin about Roach possibly "connecting" with her while she was in Beijing: "I forwarded you my email to him about connecting in Beijing. Can he come to the embassy or other event?" Morgan Stanley is a long-time financial supporter of the Clintons.

The emails also reveal that Abedin left then-Secretary Clinton's daily schedule, a presumably sensitive document, on a bed in an unlocked hotel room. An email on April 18, 2009, during a conference in Trinidad and Tobago, from aide Melissa J. Lan to Huma Abedin asks for the Secretary's "day book binders." Abedin replies: "Yes. It's on the bed in my room. U can take it. My door is open. I'm in the lobby.Thx." Moreover, the emails show the annoyance of another Clinton aide that the schedule was sent to an authorized State Department email address and not to an unsecured non-state.gov account.

The emails reveal that Clinton campaign adviser and pollster Mark Penn advised Clinton on NATO and piracy. Another major Clinton fundraiser, Lana Moresky, also pushed Clinton to hire someone for a position at State. Clinton directed Abedin to follow up and "help" the applicant and told Abedin to "let me know" about the job issue.

The emails show that Hillary Clinton relied on someone named "Justin " (presumably Justin Cooper, a Bill Clinton and Clinton Foundation employee), to set up her cell phone voicemail, rather than having State Department personnel handle it. This was in a February 11, 2009, email from Clinton aide Lauren Jiloty to Clinton, using Clinton's [email protected] address.

This is the ninth set of records produced for Judicial Watch by the State Department from the non-state.gov email accounts of Huma Abedin.

The documents were produced under a court order in a May 5, 2015, Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit against the State Department (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00684)) requiring the agency to produce "all emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013, using a 'non-state'.gov email address."

It's no wonder Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin hid emails from the American people, the courts and Congress. They show that the Clinton Foundation, Clinton donors, and operatives worked with Hillary Clinton in potential violation of the law.

These revelations have created a national firestorm in the media, as even the liberal media grasp the significance of the Clinton Foundation's pay for play relationship with the Clinton State Department. See these major stories in the New York Post and The New York Times or this major editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

[Aug 14, 2016] Bill Might Have Just Stirred Up More Trouble For Hillary

www.thepoliticalinsider.com
Do the Clinton's not realize when they've won something? Bill at least doesn't.

After the FBI absolved Hillary of any wrong-doing but still chastised her for her carelessness, you would think that Bill and Hill would want to move away from a scandal has plagued them, right?

Not according to Bill, who may have just gotten Hillary in more trouble with the FBI:

Via The New York Post:

Bill Clinton is accusing the FBI director of serving up "the biggest load of bull I've ever heard" - marking the first significant public comments from the husband of the Democratic nominee on the scandal that's plagued his wife's campaign for over a year.

The Clinton's are notorious for holding grudges for decades, so it is safe to say that FBI Director Comey is in for a bit of trouble if Hillary ever gets into office.

I don't know why you'd even want to bring this up. You won. Do you really want people to look further into the FBI investigation and Hillary's emails? I don't think so.

Bill, August 13, 2016 at 9:56 pm

Comey had better watch out. People who cross Bill and Killary have a disturbing habit of dying mysteriously.

[Aug 13, 2016] FBI Mutiny Feds Said To Launch Clinton Foundation Corruption Probe Despite DoJ Objections

Notable quotes:
"... At the time, three field offices were in agreement an investigation should be launched after the FBI received notification from a bank of suspicious activity from a foreigner who had donated to the Clinton Foundation , according to the official. ..."
"... The Department of Justice had looked into allegations surrounding the foundation a year earlier after the release of the controversial book "Clinton Cash," but found them to be unsubstantiated and there was insufficient evidence to open a case. ..."
"... Some also expressed concern the request seemed more political than substantive, especially given the timing of it coinciding with the investigation into the private email server and Clinton's presidential campaign. ..."
"... The official said involvement of the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York "would be seen by agents as a positive development as prosecutors there are generally thought to be more aggressive than the career lawyers within the DOJ ." ..."
"... The former official said the investigation is being coordinated between bureau field offices and FBI managers at headquarters in Washington, D.C. The unusual process would ensure senior FBI supervisors, including Director James Comey, would be kept abreast of case progress and of significant developments. ..."
"... What a joke. The FBI already has their statement prepared. "No reasonable prosecutor would prosecute Hillary over these obvious felonies that Hillary committed. Gotta go to a Hillary fundraiser now. Have a great day and keep trusting us!" ..."
"... FBI = F ucked B eyond I magination. Zero credibility these days, and deserving of zero respect with another "nothing to see here" no doubt forthcoming. ..."
"... Give it up already. As much as anyone may want to see Hillary behind bars or even just "lose" the election, it's just wishful thinking. Everyone with eyes to see and ears to hear can clearly tell that the fix is in. Hillary will NOT be prosecuted for anything and Trump will NOT be allowed to win the "election", regardless what the actual "vote" count may be. ..."
"... It is all just political theater and most plebes don't even realize that tbey are simply unwitting pawns in the play. ..."
"... in my years of reading zh, most folks were on board with the assessment that, THERE ARE NOT 2 PARTYS! ..."
"... and to further that, the 'candidates' are chosen well ahead of time, by TPTB. ..."
Zero Hedge
Having detailed Clinton-appointee Loretta Lynch's DoJ push-back against the FBI's Clinton Foundation probe, it seems Director Comey has decided to flex his own muscles and save face as DailyCaller reports, multiple FBI investigations are underway involving potential corruption charges against the Clinton Foundation , according to a former senior law enforcement official.

As we previously noted , a US official has told CNN...

At the time, three field offices were in agreement an investigation should be launched after the FBI received notification from a bank of suspicious activity from a foreigner who had donated to the Clinton Foundation , according to the official.

FBI officials wanted to investigate whether there was a criminal conflict of interest with the State Department and the Clinton Foundation during Clinton's tenure .

But...

The Department of Justice had looked into allegations surrounding the foundation a year earlier after the release of the controversial book "Clinton Cash," but found them to be unsubstantiated and there was insufficient evidence to open a case.

As so as a result...

DOJ officials pushed back against opening a case during the meeting earlier this year .

Some also expressed concern the request seemed more political than substantive, especially given the timing of it coinciding with the investigation into the private email server and Clinton's presidential campaign.

However, as DailyCaller reports, The FBI is undertaking multiple investigations involving potential corruption changes against The Clinton Foundation...

The investigation centers on New York City where the Clinton Foundation has its main offices , according to the former official who has direct knowledge of the activities.

Prosecutorial support will come from various U.S. Attorneys Offices - a major departure from other centralized FBI investigations.

The New York-based probe is being led by Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

The official said involvement of the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York "would be seen by agents as a positive development as prosecutors there are generally thought to be more aggressive than the career lawyers within the DOJ ."

...

The former official said the investigation is being coordinated between bureau field offices and FBI managers at headquarters in Washington, D.C. The unusual process would ensure senior FBI supervisors, including Director James Comey, would be kept abreast of case progress and of significant developments.

The reliance on U.S. attorneys would be a significant departure from the centralized manner in which the FBI managed the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private server and email addresses.

That investigation was conducted with agents at FBI headquarters, who coordinated with the Department of Justice's National Security Division (NSD).

While Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for Bharara, said he would "decline comment," and FBI spokeswoman Samantha Shero said, "we do not have a comment on investigative activity," we wonder if the unusual procedures and the tone of that comment suggests a mutinous FBI standing up to the politicized DoJ?

nuubee Aug 12, 2016 9:22 AM

This is just posturing by the FBI to try to retain some integrity in the public eye after Comey's flaccid surrender.

LowerSlowerDela... -> ThanksChump Aug 12, 2016 9:43 AM

What a joke. The FBI already has their statement prepared. "No reasonable prosecutor would prosecute Hillary over these obvious felonies that Hillary committed. Gotta go to a Hillary fundraiser now. Have a great day and keep trusting us!"

erkme73 -> Mr. Universe Aug 12, 2016 10:21 AM

My next paycheck says FBI will find corruption, and some low-ranking assistant at the Clinton Foundation will be the fall guy. Comey will be unable to prove to a standard that any reasonable prosecutor would pursue, whether HRC had any knowledge, or intent.

HopefulCynic -> erkme73 Aug 12, 2016 10:29 AM

Another FBI Exoneration? FBI will prosecute?

CuttingEdge -> HopefulCynic Aug 12, 2016 10:58 AM

FBI = F ucked B eyond I magination. Zero credibility these days, and deserving of zero respect with another "nothing to see here" no doubt forthcoming.

And given Hillary Clinton is the most openly corrupt venal slime ever to crawl the face of the planet, with a weight of evidence against her in the public domain so overwhelming it makes OJ look angelic; their inability to make a case makes them look just plain laughable as a law enforcement organisation.

Fucking joke, the lot of 'em.

wombats -> Four chan Aug 12, 2016 11:23 AM

Give it up already. As much as anyone may want to see Hillary behind bars or even just "lose" the election, it's just wishful thinking. Everyone with eyes to see and ears to hear can clearly tell that the fix is in. Hillary will NOT be prosecuted for anything and Trump will NOT be allowed to win the "election", regardless what the actual "vote" count may be.

It is all just political theater and most plebes don't even realize that tbey are simply unwitting pawns in the play.

Get used to another 4 (maybe 8) years of the shitshow to continue unabated as Merika circles the drain.

Hate to say it but it's the reality one must face.

nmewn -> centerline Aug 12, 2016 7:39 PM

It's just so much absolute bullshit..."investigations"...give me a fucking break, investigating what?!

The NSA/DHS/CIA has all of it and I mean ALL OF IT, they collect everything sent electronically...emails, texts, phone calls...everything.

Here let me help...it's in Bluffdale...Utah...just go knock on the fucking door.

ThanksChump -> wombats Aug 12, 2016 11:33 AM

Someone has their smile on upside-down.

As I see it, Hillary will accelerate a financial and/or social collapse of the US. Trump will slow it down, at worst, or prevent it altogether if he chooses to outright default.

Either path results in a much-needed reset. Trump's path will be less bloody.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. SS, DD.

Manthong -> ThanksChump Aug 12, 2016 12:35 PM

They need to lock up Lynch for obstruction of justice.

apocalypticbrother -> Manthong Aug 12, 2016 2:00 PM T

that is a pretty short list of who should be locked up. USA has the jails and hopefully some day those jails will be full of crimanals instead of weed smokers.

Blankenstein -> Manthong Aug 12, 2016 3:47 PM

They need to impeach Obama since it is his administration that is obstructing justice.

Chris Dakota -> wombats Aug 12, 2016 2:35 PM

Democrats don't care if Hillary is mentally ill, dying, criminal or anything. Because it isn't about her, it is about The Agenda.

Don't waste your time talking to these traitors.

gonetogalt -> wombats Aug 12, 2016 5:36 PM

You think Merika will circle for 4 more years??? Hear that giant sucking sound? Think Vortex.

Mr. President -> wombats Aug 12, 2016 7:40 PM

Absolutely bruddah.

Hillary for the win (and NO, I don't want that. , but it's gonna be.) It's funny , well ..funny sad.. that in my years of reading zh, most folks were on board with the assessment that, THERE ARE NOT 2 PARTYS!

and to further that, the 'candidates' are chosen well ahead of time, by TPTB. (If people know what that means)..I think a lot of newcomers just arrow up comments that have arrows up, without knowing half of the content )

(Ya with me so far?)

[Aug 12, 2016] Meet the Hookers for Hillary

I wonder for how many of them Slick Willie was a patron ;-).
Notable quotes:
"... According to the National Task Force on Prostitution , it's estimated that well over 1 million people in the U.S. have worked as prostitutes - or roughly 1 percent of American women. If this campaign is a success, that could translate into some serious voting power. ..."
The Daily Beast


"Everyday Americans need a champion," Hillary Clinton proclaimed in her YouTube video. "And I want to be that champion."

Yes, few were surprised when Hilary Clinton announced her campaign for the 2016 U.S. presidential race, but many were surprised by some of her early supporters. Since that announcement, the lovable ladies of Nevada's renowned Moonlite Bunny Ranch have come out in support of our former first lady in a serious, potentially large-scale campaign called "Hookers for Hillary." These Everyday Americans have chosen their candidate.

... ... ...

Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof agrees. "With Obamacare the girls were able to buy good health insurance and without it they weren't able to. Since Day One when I bought the brothel in 1992 no legal prostitute could get health insurance," says Hof.

According to the National Task Force on Prostitution, it's estimated that well over 1 million people in the U.S. have worked as prostitutes - or roughly 1 percent of American women. If this campaign is a success, that could translate into some serious voting power.

[Aug 05, 2016] Hillary on the USA nuclear weapon use

Notable quotes:
"... I think that we should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel. Of course I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States, but I would do the same with other countries in the region. ..."
"... Because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society, because whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program in the next 10 years during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. ..."
"... The warmongering neocon woman gets a little careless in the second part of her statement, forgetting "nuclear" and reverting to the 2008 declaration. Worse, she says that even if they don't have nukes quite yet, an attack on Holy Israel means it's "glow-in-the-dark" time in Iran. ..."
"... It really is a tragic thing to be talking about. That's the way the Madeleine Albright ***** – the one who has declared that any woman who doesn't vote for Hillary will go to hell – put it when speaking of 500,000 dead Iraqi kids. Darned shame, but it had to be done. ..."
"... Don't even think about a possibility why Hillary might be so devoted to Israel. When she was in the Senate the woman went to a prayer breakfast with some of the most repulsive of the Conservative Republicans. Nobody at all is talking about Hillary's religion. If she is one of the Rapture types, her access to nukes would mean an End-Timer finally has a chance to force God to get off the pot and start with the Second Coming. ..."
"... Just think of it – the First and the Last woman president. ..."
"... You are right. She is a huge danger. Not only due to her frail health, age and history of blood clots. As Huma Abedin noted in her deposition, she often is "confused". Which means that she does not have "normal" level of situational awareness. ..."
"... After the dissolution of the USSR and the "triumphal march" of neoliberalism, the US elite by-and-large lost the sense of self-preservation. ..."
"... Like sociopaths she has no self-control, no sense of self-preservation, no boundaries. ..."
angrybearblog.com
Zachary Smith August 5, 2016 6:55 pm

Hillary 2008: "George Stephanopoulos: "Senator Clinton, would you [extend our deterrent to Israel]?"

Hillary Clinton: "Well, in fact I think that we should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel. Of course I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States, but I would do the same with other countries in the region."

Massive Retaliation has always had the meaning of a 'massive' nuclear attack.

Hillary 2016: "MR. CUOMO: Iran: some language recently. You said if Iran were to strike Israel, there would be a massive retaliation. Scary words. Does massive retaliation mean you'd go into Iran? You would bomb Iran? Is that what that's supposed to suggest?

SEN. CLINTON: Well, the question was if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, what would our response be? And I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran. And I want them to understand that.

Because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society, because whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program in the next 10 years during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.

That's a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that, because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish, and tragic."

The warmongering neocon woman gets a little careless in the second part of her statement, forgetting "nuclear" and reverting to the 2008 declaration. Worse, she says that even if they don't have nukes quite yet, an attack on Holy Israel means it's "glow-in-the-dark" time in Iran.

It really is a tragic thing to be talking about. That's the way the Madeleine Albright ***** – the one who has declared that any woman who doesn't vote for Hillary will go to hell – put it when speaking of 500,000 dead Iraqi kids. Darned shame, but it had to be done.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/04/iran-a24.html

https://votesmart.org/public-statement/335164/abc-good-morning-america-transcript#.V6UUn5Ma3ow

But move on – it's the insane Trump who can't be trusted with nukes.

Don't even think about a possibility why Hillary might be so devoted to Israel. When she was in the Senate the woman went to a prayer breakfast with some of the most repulsive of the Conservative Republicans. Nobody at all is talking about Hillary's religion. If she is one of the Rapture types, her access to nukes would mean an End-Timer finally has a chance to force God to get off the pot and start with the Second Coming.

Just think of it – the First and the Last woman president.

likbez , August 5, 2016 11:29 pm

Hi Zachary,

> Just think of it – the First and the Last woman president.

You are right. She is a huge danger. Not only due to her frail health, age and history of blood clots. As Huma Abedin noted in her deposition, she often is "confused". Which means that she does not have "normal" level of situational awareness.

For some specialties like airplane pilots this is a death sentence. Unfortunately, if elected, she can take the country with her.

While the USSR existed, as bad as it was for people within its borders, it was a blessing for the people of the USA, as it kept the elite in check and frightful to behave in "natural, greedy and delusional "Masters of the Universe" way".

After the dissolution of the USSR and the "triumphal march" of neoliberalism, the US elite by-and-large lost the sense of self-preservation.

If you read what Hillary utters like "no fly zone" in Syria and other similar staff, to me this looks like a sign of madness, plain and simple. No reasonable politician should go of the cliff like that, if stakes are not extremely high.

And MSM try to sell her as a more reasonable politician then Trump. In reality she is like Kelvin absolute zero. You just can't go lower. The only hope is that she is a puppet and it does not matter what she utters.

But if we take her statements about Syria and Russia at face value, she is either dangerously ignorant or (more probably) is a female sociopath.

Like sociopaths she has no self-control, no sense of self-preservation, no boundaries.

So her arrogant and reckless behavior as for "getting rich quick" and with the private "bathroom" email server is a sign of more general and more dangerous tendency.

Neocons are still way too powerful. They dominate MSM and essentially dictate the agenda.

So we can only pray to God to spare us.

[Aug 05, 2016] Hillary Clinton to be Indicted on Federal Racketeering Charges [] Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization

Notable quotes:
"... The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) is a United States Federal Law passed in 1970 that was designed to provide a tool for law enforcement agencies to fight organized crime. RICO allows prosecution and punishment for alleged racketeering activity that has been executed as part of an ongoing criminal enterprise. ..."
"... money laundering ..."
www.globalresearch.ca
Will the FBI present a recommendation to the Attorney General under RICO. According to author Frank Huguenurd "Activity considered to be racketeering may include bribery, counterfeiting, money laundering, embezzlement, illegal gambling, kidnapping, murder, drug trafficking, slavery, and a host of other nefarious business practices."
.
Will the FBI be charging Bill and Hillary Clinton as well as the Clinton Foundation on Racketeering charges under RICO?
.
Highly unlikely. Hillary is protected by the Attorney General who is a "protégée" of the Clintons.
.
(M.Ch. GR Editor, July 6, 2016)
.
.
* * *
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) is a United States Federal Law passed in 1970 that was designed to provide a tool for law enforcement agencies to fight organized crime. RICO allows prosecution and punishment for alleged racketeering activity that has been executed as part of an ongoing criminal enterprise.
.

Activity considered to be racketeering may include bribery , counterfeiting, money laundering , embezzlement, illegal gambling, kidnapping, murder, drug trafficking, slavery, and a host of other nefarious business practices.

James Comey and The FBI will present a recommendation to Loretta Lynch, Attorney General of the Department of Justice, that includes a cogent argument that the Clinton Foundation is an ongoing criminal enterprise engaged in money laundering and soliciting bribes in exchange for political, policy and legislative favors to individuals, corporations and even governments both foreign and domestic.

... ... ...

Here's what we do know. Tens of millions of dollars donated to the Clinton Foundation was funneled to the organization through a Canadian shell company which has made tracing the donors nearly impossible. Less than 10% of donations to the Foundation has actually been released to charitable organizations and $2M that has been traced back to long time Bill Clinton friend Julie McMahon (aka The Energizer ). When the official investigation into Hillary's email server began, she instructed her IT professional to delete over 30,000 emails and cloud backups of her emails older than 30 days at both Platte River Networks and Datto, Inc . The FBI has subsequently recovered the majority, if not all, of Hillary's deleted emails and are putting together a strong case against her for attempting to cover up her illegal and illicit activities.

A conviction under RICO comes when the Department of Justice proves that the defendant has engaged in two or more examples of racketeering and that the defendant maintained an interest in, participated in or invested in a criminal enterprise affecting interstate or foreign commerce. There is ample evidence already in the public record that the Clinton Foundation qualifies as a criminal enterprise and there's no doubt that the FBI is privy to significantly more evidence than has already been made public.

Under RICO, the sections most relevant in this case will be section 1503 (obstruction of justice), section 1510 (obstruction of criminal investigations) and section 1511 (obstruction of State or local law enforcement). As in the case with Richard Nixon after the Watergate Break-in, it's the cover-up of a crime that will be the Clintons' downfall. Furthermore, under provisions of title 18, United States Code: Section 201, the Clinton Foundation can be held accountable for improprieties relating to bribery. The FBI will be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that through the Clinton Foundation, international entities were able to commit bribery in exchange for help in securing business deals, such as the uranium-mining deal in Kazakhstan.

[Aug 05, 2016] Meet Neocon "Doughnut Dolly" Victoria Nuland by Wayne MADSEN

Notable quotes:
"... Nuland would survive the controversy over the October 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission/CIA facility in Benghazi, Libya. Initially, many conservative Republicans criticized Nuland for her role in providing ambassador to the UN Susan Rice with "talking points" explaining away the failure of the U.S. to protect the compound from an attack that killed U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. personnel. All it took was a tap on the shoulder from Nuland's husband Kagan and his influential friends in the neo-con hierarchy for the criticism of his wife to stop. And stop it did as Nuland was confirmed, without Republican opposition, to be the new Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, a portfolio that gave her a clear mandate to interfere in the domestic policies of Ukraine and other countries, including Russia itself. ..."
"... Although McCain was defeated by Obama in 2008, Kagan's influence was preserved when his wife became a top foreign policy adviser to Obama. The root of this control by neo-cons of the two major U.S. political parties is the powerful Israel Lobby and is the reason why in excess of 95 percent of neo-cons are also committed Zionists. ..."
"... Kagan's writings and pronouncements from Brookings have had a common thread: anti-Vladimir Putin rhetoric and a strong desire to see Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, Bashar al Assad falling in Syria and thus eliminating a Russian ally, no further expansion of Shanghai Cooperation Organization membership and the eventual collapse of the counter-NATO organization, and the destabilization of Russia's southern border region by radical Salafists and Wahhabists funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Qatar, not coincidentally, hosts a Brookings Institution office that advises the Qatari government. ..."
18.12.2013 | www.strategic-culture.org

Nuland would survive the controversy over the October 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission/CIA facility in Benghazi, Libya. Initially, many conservative Republicans criticized Nuland for her role in providing ambassador to the UN Susan Rice with "talking points" explaining away the failure of the U.S. to protect the compound from an attack that killed U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. personnel. All it took was a tap on the shoulder from Nuland's husband Kagan and his influential friends in the neo-con hierarchy for the criticism of his wife to stop. And stop it did as Nuland was confirmed, without Republican opposition, to be the new Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, a portfolio that gave her a clear mandate to interfere in the domestic policies of Ukraine and other countries, including Russia itself.

Kagan began laying the groundwork for his wife's continued presence in a Democratic administration when, in 2007, he switched sides from the Republicans and aligned with the Democrats. This was in the waning days of the Bush administration and, true to form, neo-cons, who politically and family-wise hail from Trotskyite chameleons, saw the opportunity to continue their influence over U.S. foreign policy.

With the election of Obama in 2008, Kagan was able to maintain a PNAC presence, through his wife, inside the State Department. Kagan, a co-founder of PNAC, monitors his wife's activities from his perch at the influential Brookings Institution. And it was no surprise that McCain followed Nuland to Maidan Square. Kagan was one of McCain's top foreign policy advisers in the 2008 campaign, even though he publicly switched to the Democrats the year before. Kagan ensured that he kept a foot in both parties. Although McCain was defeated by Obama in 2008, Kagan's influence was preserved when his wife became a top foreign policy adviser to Obama. The root of this control by neo-cons of the two major U.S. political parties is the powerful Israel Lobby and is the reason why in excess of 95 percent of neo-cons are also committed Zionists.

Kagan's writings and pronouncements from Brookings have had a common thread: anti-Vladimir Putin rhetoric and a strong desire to see Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, Bashar al Assad falling in Syria and thus eliminating a Russian ally, no further expansion of Shanghai Cooperation Organization membership and the eventual collapse of the counter-NATO organization, and the destabilization of Russia's southern border region by radical Salafists and Wahhabists funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Qatar, not coincidentally, hosts a Brookings Institution office that advises the Qatari government.

But dominance of U.S. foreign policy does not end with Nuland and her husband. Kagan's brother, Fred Kagan, is another neo-con foreign policy launderer. Residing at the American Enterprise Institute, Fred Kagan was an "anti-corruption" adviser to General David Petraeus. Kagan held this job even as Petraeus was engaged in an extra-marital affair, which he corruptly covered up. Fred Kagan's wife is Kimberly Kagan. She has been involved in helping to formulate disastrous U.S. policies for the military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Fred and Kimberly have also worked on U.S. covert operations to overthrow the government of Iran. No family in the history of the United States, with the possible exception of John Foster and Allen Dulles, has had more blood on its hands than have the Kagans. And it is this family that is today helping to ratchet up the Cold War on the streets of Kyiv.

Victoria Nuland is, indeed, the proper "Doughnut Dolly" for the paid George Soros, U.S. Agency for International Development, National Endowment for Democracy, and Freedom House provocateurs on Maidan Square. Political prostitutes representing so many causes, from nationalistic Ukrainian fascists to pro-EU globalists, require a symbol. There is no better symbol for the foreign-made "Orange Revolution II" than the biscuit-distributing Victoria Nuland.

Her unleavened biscuits have found the hungry mouths of America's "Three Stooges" of ex-boxer and political opportunist Vitaly Klitschko, globalist Arseny Yatsenyuk, and neo-Nazi Oleg Tyagnibok.

Wayne MADSEN Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club

[Aug 05, 2016] Nuland is a Democrat? Boy they let anybody in

US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Vicrotia Nuland was appointed by Hillary nu the forigh policy is domain of the President, so she executed policy hatched by "Obama the neocon", who is great admirer of books by Robert Kagan...
Notable quotes:
"... Nuland is a Democrat? Boy they let anybody in. I only ask because she's supposed to be a Bush holdover but maybe worked for the Clintons before that? ..."
"... Nuland started out with Bill Clinton, then moved on to Dick Cheney . She certainly is nimble! ..."
"... Because of her marriage to Kagan, most Europeans believe she's a Republican, but her hawkish approach to Russia isn't entirely unique within the Obama administration. ..."
"... FP professionals don't need no stinkin' party affiliations. They are the other half of the "Double Government" that most voters have never heard of. You know, the half that makes sure foreign policy is consistent from one administration (and party) to the next. Works great! ..."
"... You start out wherever your opportunity lies. Once established you can follow your heart. Where does her heart lead her when Cheney leaves office? Drum roll… Why, it's Hillary! ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com

Carolinian , August 4, 2016 at 2:43 pm

Paul Wolfowitz is leaning Clinton. Nuff said.

Lambert Strether Post author , August 4, 2016 at 2:50 pm

Following along with his good friend, Republican Robert Kagan (married, in good bipartisan power couple fashion, to Victoria Nuland, rumored to be inline for Clinton's Secretary of State, but I don't think so. Not even Clinton could be that crazy).

Carolinian , August 4, 2016 at 3:20 pm

Nuland is a Democrat? Boy they let anybody in. I only ask because she's supposed to be a Bush holdover but maybe worked for the Clintons before that?

Lambert Strether Post author , August 4, 2016 at 3:33 pm

Nuland started out with Bill Clinton, then moved on to Dick Cheney . She certainly is nimble!

I can't find a link that makes her party affiliation explicit. Foreign Policy :

Because of her marriage to Kagan, most Europeans believe she's a Republican, but her hawkish approach to Russia isn't entirely unique within the Obama administration.

But FP does not then go on to clarify. I assumed she was a Democrat because of the Clinton connection. My bad!

Carla , August 4, 2016 at 3:59 pm

FP professionals don't need no stinkin' party affiliations. They are the other half of the "Double Government" that most voters have never heard of. You know, the half that makes sure foreign policy is consistent from one administration (and party) to the next. Works great!

John k , August 4, 2016 at 4:14 pm

You start out wherever your opportunity lies. Once established you can follow your heart. Where does her heart lead her when Cheney leaves office? Drum roll… Why, it's Hillary!
Hugoodanode?

NotTimothyGeithner , August 4, 2016 at 4:45 pm

It's probably bias, but my sense is Republicans love to parade anyone who is Jewish or not white in front of cameras who can say, "im a Republican" without drooling or dying a little on the inside. Since Nuland is Jewish, the GOP would have her on their book tour if she was suspected Republican especially given the GOP obsession with winning Florida Jewish retirees.

If Nuland was a Republican, we would know.

[Aug 05, 2016] Obama's Failed Foreign Policy Change The American Conservative by Philip Giraldi

Notable quotes:
"... Interestingly, in a self-promoting recent review of Henry Kissinger's new book World Order, Clinton both defines her own Kissinger-esque foreign policy strategy and also concedes that it is more-or-less the same as Obama's. Clinton wrote that Kissinger's world view "largely fits with the broad strategy behind the Obama administration's effort over the past six years to build a global architecture of security and cooperation for the 21st century." ..."
"... Clinton inevitably confuses leadership with hegemony, clearly believing as one of her predecessors at State put it, that America is the "indispensable nation." Nor can she discern that few outside the beltway actually believe the hype. It would be difficult to make the case that the United States either stands for justice or is willing to tolerate any kind of international order that challenges American interests. ..."
"... Any plan to "destroy" ISIS without serious consideration of what that might entail means that the U.S. will inevitably assume the leadership role. Because air strikes cannot defeat any insurgency, and the moderate Syrian rebels waiting to be armed are a fiction, the Obama plan invites escalation and will make the Islamist group a poster child for those who want to see Washington fail yet again in the Middle East. ..."
"... Yanukovych, an admittedly corrupt autocrat, nevertheless became Prime Minister after a free election. Nuland, who is the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department, provided open support to the Maidan demonstrators opposed to Yanukovych's government, to include media friendly appearances passing out cookies on the square to encourage the protesters. ..."
"... The replacement of the government in Kiev was only the prelude to a sharp break and escalating conflict with Moscow over Russia's attempts to protect its own interests in Ukraine, most particularly in Crimea. ..."
"... And make no mistake about Nuland's broader intention to expand the conflict and directly confront Russia. In Senate testimony in May she cited how the administration is "providing support to other frontline states like Moldova and Georgia." Frontline? Last week Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel seemed to confirm that the continued expansion of NATO is indeed administration policy, saying that Georgia would be next to join in light of "Russia's blatant aggression in Ukraine." ..."
"... The president also reportedly is an admirer of her husband's articles and books which argue that the U.S. must maintain its military power to accommodate its "global responsibilities." So in response to the question "Why does Victoria Nuland still have her job?" the answer must surely be because the White House approves of what she has been doing, which should give everyone pause. ..."
www.theamericanconservative.com

A new administration only gave interventionism a confused, humanitarian face-lift.

President Barack Obama presents something of a dilemma. I voted for him twice in the belief that he was basically a cautious operator who would not rush into a new war in Asia, unlike his Republican opponents who virtually promised to attack Iran upon assuming office. Unfortunately, Obama's second term has revealed that his instinct nevertheless is to rely on America's ability to project military power overseas as either a complement to or a substitute for diplomacy that differs only from George W. Bush in its style and its emphasis on humanitarian objectives.

That the president is indeed cautious has made the actual process of engagement different, witness the ill-fated involvement in Libya and the impending war-without-calling-it-war in Syria and Iraq, both of which are framed as having limited objectives and manageable risk for Washington even when that is not the case. Obama's foreign and security policy is an incremental process mired in contradictions whereby the United States continues to involve itself in conflicts for which it has little understanding, seemingly doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past thirteen years but without the shock and awe.

Obama's actual intentions might most clearly be discerned by looking at his inner circle. Three women are prominent in decision making relating to foreign policy: Samantha Power at the United Nations, Susan Rice heading the National Security Council, and Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett in the White House. One might also add Hillary Clinton who, as Secretary of State, operated far more independently than her successor John Kerry, putting her own stamp on policy much more than he has been able to do. Where Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel fits into the decision making is unclear, but it is notable that both he and Kerry frequently appear to be somewhat out of sync with the White House.

What does the Obama team represent? Certain things are obvious. They are hesitant to involve the United States in long, drawn out military adventures like Iraq and Afghanistan but much more inclined to intervene than was George W. Bush when there is an apparent humanitarian crisis, operating under the principle of responsibility to protect or R2P. That R2P is often a pretext for intervention that actually is driven by other less altruistic motives is certainly a complication but it is nevertheless the public face of much of American foreign policy, as the nation is currently witnessing regarding ISIS.

Hillary Clinton has criticized Obama foreign policy because on her view he did not act soon enough on ISIS and "Great nations need organizing principles, and 'don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle." Her criticism is odd as she was a formulator of much of what the president has been doing and one should perhaps assume that her distancing from it might have something to do with her presidential ambitions. Interestingly, in a self-promoting recent review of Henry Kissinger's new book World Order, Clinton both defines her own Kissinger-esque foreign policy strategy and also concedes that it is more-or-less the same as Obama's. Clinton wrote that Kissinger's world view "largely fits with the broad strategy behind the Obama administration's effort over the past six years to build a global architecture of security and cooperation for the 21st century."

Now if all of that is true, and it might just be putting lipstick on a pig to create an illusion of coherency where none exists, then the United States might just be engaging in a sensible reset of its foreign policy, something like the Nixon Doctrine of old. But the actual policy itself suggests otherwise, with the tendency to "do stupid stuff" prevailing, perhaps attributable to another Clinton book review assertion of "a belief in the indispensability of continued American leadership in service of a just and liberal order."

Clinton inevitably confuses leadership with hegemony, clearly believing as one of her predecessors at State put it, that America is the "indispensable nation." Nor can she discern that few outside the beltway actually believe the hype. It would be difficult to make the case that the United States either stands for justice or is willing to tolerate any kind of international order that challenges American interests.

And the arrogance that comes with power means that the country's leadership is not often able to explain what it is doing. Currently, the administration has failed to make any compelling case that the United States is actually threatened by ISIS beyond purely conjectural "what if" scenarios, suggesting that the policy is evolving in an ad hoc but risk-averse fashion to create the impression that something is actually being accomplished. Any plan to "destroy" ISIS without serious consideration of what that might entail means that the U.S. will inevitably assume the leadership role. Because air strikes cannot defeat any insurgency, and the moderate Syrian rebels waiting to be armed are a fiction, the Obama plan invites escalation and will make the Islamist group a poster child for those who want to see Washington fail yet again in the Middle East.

The tendency to act instead of think might be attributable to fear of appearing weak with midterm elections approaching, but it might also be due to the persistence of neoconservative national security views within the administration, which brings us to Victoria Nuland. Nuland, many will recall, was the driving force behind efforts to destabilize the Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych, an admittedly corrupt autocrat, nevertheless became Prime Minister after a free election. Nuland, who is the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department, provided open support to the Maidan demonstrators opposed to Yanukovych's government, to include media friendly appearances passing out cookies on the square to encourage the protesters.

A Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton protégé who is married to leading neocon Robert Kagan, Nuland openly sought regime change for Ukraine by brazenly supporting government opponents in spite of the fact that Washington and Kiev had ostensibly friendly relations. It is hard to imagine that any U.S. administration would tolerate a similar attempt by a foreign nation to interfere in U.S. domestic politics, particularly if it were backed by a $5 billion budget, but Washington has long believed in a global double standard for evaluating its own behavior.

Nuland is most famous for her foul language when referring to the potential European role in managing the unrest that she and the National Endowment for Democracy had helped create. To be sure, her aggressive guidance of U.S. policy in Eurasia is a lot more important than whatever plays out in Syria and Iraq over the remainder of Obama's time in office in terms of palpable threats to actual American interests. The replacement of the government in Kiev was only the prelude to a sharp break and escalating conflict with Moscow over Russia's attempts to protect its own interests in Ukraine, most particularly in Crimea.

Victoria Nuland is playing with fire. Russia, as the only nation with the military capability to destroy the U.S., is not a sideshow like Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Backing Moscow into a corner with no way out by using threats and sanctions is not good policy. Washington has many excellent reasons to maintain a stable relationship with Moscow, including counter-terrorism efforts, and little to gain from moving in the opposite direction. Russia is not about to reconstitute the Warsaw Pact and there is no compelling reason to return to a Cold War footing by either arming Ukraine or permitting it to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

And make no mistake about Nuland's broader intention to expand the conflict and directly confront Russia. In Senate testimony in May she cited how the administration is "providing support to other frontline states like Moldova and Georgia." Frontline? Last week Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel seemed to confirm that the continued expansion of NATO is indeed administration policy, saying that Georgia would be next to join in light of "Russia's blatant aggression in Ukraine."

In 2009 President Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." In retrospect it was all hat and no cattle given the ongoing saga in Afghanistan, the reduction of a relatively stable Libya to chaos, meddling in Ukraine while simultaneously threatening Russia, failure to restrain Israel and the creation of an Islamic terror state in the Arab heartland. Not to mention "pivots" and additional developments in Africa and Asia. It is not a record to brag about and it certainly does not suggest that the administration is as strategically agile as Hillary Clinton would like to have one believe.

Victoria Nuland is a career civil servant and cannot easily be fired but she could be removed from her top-level policy position and sent downstairs to head the mailroom at the State Department. It would send the message that aggressive democracy promotion is not U.S. policy, but President Obama has kept her on the job. The president also reportedly is an admirer of her husband's articles and books which argue that the U.S. must maintain its military power to accommodate its "global responsibilities." So in response to the question "Why does Victoria Nuland still have her job?" the answer must surely be because the White House approves of what she has been doing, which should give everyone pause.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

[Aug 05, 2016] Clinton's Hawk-in-Waiting The American Conservative by Philip Giraldi

May 19, 2016 | www.theamericanconservative.com

If Hillary wins the White House, expect Victoria Nuland to be at her side.

The other day, a question popped up on a Facebook thread I was commenting on: "Where is Victoria Nuland?" The short answer, of course, is that she is still holding down her position as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.

But a related question begs for a more expansive response: Where will Victoria Nuland be after January? Nuland is one of Hillary Clinton's protégés at the State Department, and she is also greatly admired by hardline Republicans. This suggests she would be easily approved by Congress as secretary of state or maybe even national-security adviser-which in turn suggests that her foreign-policy views deserve a closer look.

Nuland comes from what might be called the First Family of Military Interventionists. Her husband, Robert Kagan, is a leading neoconservative who co-founded the Project for the New American Century in 1998 around a demand for "regime change" in Iraq. He is currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, an author, and a regular contributor to the op-ed pages of a number of national newspapers. He has already declared that he will be voting for Hillary Clinton in November, a shift away from the GOP that many have seen as a clever career-enhancing move for both him and his wife.

Robert's brother, Fred, is with the hawkish American Enterprise Institute, and his sister-in-law, Kimberly, is the head of the Institute for the Study of War, which is largely funded by defense contractors. The Kagans work to encourage military action, both through their positions in government and by influencing the public debate through think-tank reports and op-eds. It is a family enterprise that mirrors the military-industrial complex as a whole, with think tanks coming up with reasons to increase military spending and providing "expert" support for the government officials who actually promote and implement the policies. Defense contractors, meanwhile, benefit from the largesse and kick back some money to the think tanks, which then develop new reasons to spend still more on military procurement.

The Kagans' underlying belief is that the United States has both the power and the obligation to replace governments that are considered either uncooperative with Washington (the "Leader of the Free World") or hostile to American interests. American interests are, of course, mutable, and they include values like democracy and the rule of law as well as practical considerations such as economic and political competition. Given the elasticity of the interests, many countries can be and are considered potential targets for Washington's tender ministrations.

For what it's worth, President Obama is reportedly an admirer of Robert Kagan's books, which argue that the U.S. must maintain its military power to accommodate its "global responsibilities." The persistence of neoconservative foreign-policy views in the Obama administration has often been remarked upon, though Democrats and Republicans embrace military interventionism for different reasons. The GOP sees it as an international leadership imperative driven by American "exceptionalism," while the Dems romanticize "liberal intervention" as a sometimes-necessary evil undertaken most often for humanitarian reasons. But the result is the same, as no administration wants to be seen as weak when dealing with the outside world. George W. Bush's catastrophic failures in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to bear fruit under a Democratic administration, while Obama has added a string of additional "boots on the ground" interventions in Libya, Syria, Yemen, the Philippines, and Somalia.

And Nuland herself, many will recall, was the driving force behind efforts to destabilize the Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych in 2013-14. Yanukovych, admittedly a corrupt autocrat, nevertheless assumed office after a free election. In spite of the fact that Washington and Kiev ostensibly had friendly relations, Nuland provided open support for the Maidan Square demonstrators opposed to Yanukovych's government, passing out cookies to protesters on the square and holding photo ops with a beaming Sen. John McCain.

Nuland started her rapid rise as an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. Subsequently, she was serially promoted by secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, attaining her current position in September 2013. But it was her behavior in Ukraine that made her a media figure. It is hard to imagine that any U.S. administration would tolerate a similar attempt by a foreign nation to interfere in domestic politics, particularly if it were backed by a $5 billion budget, but Washington has long adhered to a double standard when evaluating its own behavior.

Nuland is most famous for using foul language when referring to the potential European role in managing the unrest in Ukraine that she and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) had helped create. She even discussed with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt who the new leader of Ukraine ought to be. "Yats is the guy" she said (referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk), while pondering how she would "glue this thing" as Pyatt simultaneously considered how to "midwife" it. Their insecure phone call was intercepted and leaked, possibly by the Russian intelligence service, though anyone equipped with a scanner could have done the job.

The inevitable replacement of the government in Kiev, actually a coup but sold to the media as a triumph for "democracy," was only the prelude to a sharp break-and escalating conflict-with Moscow over Russia's attempts to protect its own interests in Ukraine. The new regime in Kiev, as corrupt as its predecessor and supported by neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists, was consistently whitewashed in the Western media, and the conflict was depicted as "pro-democracy" forces resisting unprovoked "Russian aggression."

Indeed, the real objective of interfering in Ukraine was, right from the start, to install a regime hostile to Moscow. Carl Gershman, the head of the taxpayer-funded NED, called Ukraine "the biggest prize" in the effort to topple Russian President Vladimir Putin, who "may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself." But Gershman and Nuland were playing with fire in their assessment, as Russia had vital interests at stake and is the only nation with the military capability to destroy the U.S.

And make no mistake about Nuland's clear intention to expand the conflict and directly confront Moscow. In Senate testimony in May of 2014, she noted how the Obama administration was "providing support to other frontline states like Moldova and Georgia."

Nuland and her neoconservative allies celebrated their "regime change" in Kiev oblivious to the fact that Putin would recognize the strategic threat to his own country and would react, particularly to protect the historic Russian naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea. Barack Obama responded predictably, initiating what soon became something like a new Cold War against Russia, risking escalation into a possible nuclear confrontation. It was a crisis that would not have existed but for Nuland and her allies.

Though there was no evidence that Putin had initiated the Ukraine crisis and much evidence to the contrary, the U.S. government propaganda machine rolled into action, claiming that Russia's measures in Ukraine would be the first step in an invasion of Eastern Europe. Former Secretary of State Clinton dutifully compared Putin to Adolf Hitler. And Robert Kagan provided the argument for more intervention, producing a lengthy essay in The New Republic entitled "Superpowers Don't Get to Retire," in which he criticized President Obama for failing to maintain American dominance in the world. The New York Times revealed that the essay was apparently part of a joint project in which Nuland regularly edited her husband's articles, even though this particular piece attacked the administration she worked for.

As the situation in Ukraine continued to deteriorate in 2014, Nuland exerted herself to scuttle several European attempts to arrange a ceasefire. When NATO Commander Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove was cited as being in favor of sending more weapons to the Ukrainian government to "raise the battlefield cost for Putin," Nuland commented, "I'd strongly urge you to use the phrase 'defensive systems' that we would deliver to oppose Putin's 'offensive systems.'"

To return to the initial question of where Victoria Nuland is, the long answer would be that while she is not much in the news, she is continuing to provide support for policies that the White House apparently approves of. Late last month, she was again in Kiev. She criticized Russia for its lack of press freedom and its "puppets" in the Donbas region while telling a Ukrainian audience about a "strong U.S. commitment to stand with Ukraine as it stays on the path of a clean, democratic, European future. … We remain committed to retaining sanctions that apply to the situation in Crimea until Crimea is returned to Ukraine." Before that, she was in Cyprus and France discussing "a range of regional and global issues with senior government officials."

But one has to suspect that, at this point, she is mainly waiting to see what happens in November. And wondering where she might be going in January.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

[Aug 01, 2016] Clinton, Trump, Epstein And The Lolita Express

Notable quotes:
"... The pedophile scandals among the U.K.'s elite and officialdom are now well know even among the snoozers and comatose. But the snoozers can't connect the dots that infestations of pedophiles and perverts in government is by design. A number of U.K. police investigators have been openly murdered over the years for stumbling onto high-level pedophiles. ..."
"... As I have often mentioned on these pages previously, I do believe pedophiles and various other perverts are actively recruited into positions of power so that they can be compromised and controlled by the criminal cabal. ..."
winteractionables.com

ProPeace | Jul 28, 2016 10:04:50 PM | 45

Did I already mention this?

Clinton, Trump, Epstein And The Lolita Express | Winter Watch

The case of well-connected Jewish billionaire Jeffrey Epstein made a splash about a year ago. Convicted of sex with under-aged girls, since then related news has been largely suppressed. Epstein is in a position to compromise high level people by providing under-aged girls for the likes of Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton. Dossiers and lewd photos with teenyboppers may be called upon as needed.

I actually believe these activities are a requirement for entrance into the Crime Syndicate inner circle. In fact, this goes along way in explaining how an obscure Arkansas governor who can't keep it in his pants can go on to become president of the United States and his wife the leading presidential candidate now. According to John Perkins in Confession of an Economic Hitman, the motives of psychopaths at the top of pyramid are sex, money and power.

Now it has been revealed that Bill Clinton was in reality a dedicated regular reveler on Epstein's jet, Lolita Express. The mainstream media has suddenly "discovered" that instead of being an infrequent "acquaintance" of Epstein, Clinton was listed on the flight logs 26 times in just three years. One wonders why such a story wasn't revealed much earlier?

Curiously, faux nationalist Donald Trump also has some Epstein involvement, including a rape accusation (at an Epstein party) that so far has gotten little Dominant Media (aka MSM) play. Trump's other friends were described here.

In addition, another one-two punch story is emerging of Clinton Foundation slush funds being used for "investments" with Bill's alleged mistress, and yet another member of the Tribe, Julia Tauber McMahon, known as "The Energizer." With the sleaze coming in all directions, is the takedown of the Clintons at hand; and if so, why and by whom? Is somebody else is in the wings to replace Hillary? Does the Epstein slime blob end up slurping Trump?

The pedophile scandals among the U.K.'s elite and officialdom are now well know even among the snoozers and comatose. But the snoozers can't connect the dots that infestations of pedophiles and perverts in government is by design. A number of U.K. police investigators have been openly murdered over the years for stumbling onto high-level pedophiles.

As I have often mentioned on these pages previously, I do believe pedophiles and various other perverts are actively recruited into positions of power so that they can be compromised and controlled by the criminal cabal. For more background on this general topic, see "Belgium's Dutoux Pedophile and Child Rape Case: A Road Map for Deep-State Criminality," "Crime Syndicate Sexual Entrapment Operations" and "Wikispooks: Covert Blackmail Ops."

In exploring sex offender Epstein's background story, what's particularly interesting is how out of the blue this former math teacher was given important positions in the organization of Jewish cabalist multi-billionaire Ace Greenberg during the 1970s and '80s. As you may recall, the Greenberg syndicate included Bear Stearns, the firm that nearly brought down the world economy. Greenberg was the plutocrat who took down Elliott Spitzer by way of a scandal. As the U.K.'s Independent reports:

Among [Epstein's] pupils was the son of Bear Stearns chairman Ace Greenberg. In 1976, after a few years teaching the children of the wealthy, he accepted a job offer from Mr. Greenberg that allowed him to oversee their money.

Four years later, he was made a partner, but by 1982 he had left to set up his own boutique investment company, J. Epstein and Co. He reportedly only accepted clients prepared to invest a minimum of $1 billion, though many profiles of Epstein admit a lack of hard, verifiable facts about his business have added to the air of mystery."

Epstein was not just a run-of-the-mill sex offender but someone with friends in high places that he liked to entertain in a certain manner and who shared his proclivities.

Also notable and named in a lawsuit involving Epstein is the well-known Zionist Israeli Hasbara mouthpiece and Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, who represented Epstein in his 2007 sex-offender case.

The claim from Jane Doe No. 3 (who joined three others) alleges that Dershowitz himself participated in sex acts with underage girls. As Epstein's legal representation, Dershowitz then arranged a secret non-prosecution agreement (NPA) with the federal government in the cases of JD No. 1 and No. 2. According to the complaint, Dershowitz managed to influence immunity from prosecution for all co-conspirators, including himself. Prince Andrew also attempted to influence the U.S. judicial process in the matter through lobbyist ties. Epstein served 13 months under State charges.

[Aug 01, 2016] Progressive Leaders Urge Voters To Wait To #DemExit Until After State Primaries

Notable quotes:
"... Progressives who are fed up with the Democratic leadership's adherence to the status quo are calling for a major #DemExit on July 29. ..."
www.inquisitr.com

Progressives who are fed up with the Democratic leadership's adherence to the status quo are calling for a major #DemExit on July 29. However, progressive groups, such as Black Men for Bernie, are urging voters to stay in the party until they have a chance to vote in their states' primaries, especially if they live in closed or semi-closed primary states.

Abstaining from #DemExit until after state and local primaries is especially important for Florida, which has a closed primary. On August 30, Professor and legal expert Tim Canova has a chance to unseat Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, whose tenure as the head of the Democratic Party has been fraught with controversy and more recently, allegations of election fraud and rigging.

A mass exodus, therefore, could sabotage progressives' own agenda to elect officials who are challenging incumbents and establishment candidates. As of now, 23 states and territories have local and state primaries up until September 13, so it is imperative for current members of the Democratic party to stay until they've voted and then commit to #DemExit.

[Aug 01, 2016] Law Enforcement Officials, Medical Professionals: Theres Something Seriously Wrong With Hillary Clintons Health

Notable quotes:
"... As a precaution however, it was decided to continue her on daily anticoagulation. ..."
www.breitbart.com

Jan 6, 2016

the former First Lady took a long bathroom break, but now a law-enforcement source with inside connections is alleging that Clinton was missing from the stage due to health issues stemming from a previous brain injury.

These long-lasting symptoms stemming from a concussion and blood clot, according to a neurologist, suggest Clinton is suffering from post-concussion syndrome, which can severely impact her cognitive abilities.

All that said, however, Clinton's campaign maintained to Breitbart News that she is in good health and can serve as President of the United States.

"Strong source just told me something I suspected. Hillary's debate 'bathroom break' wasn't that, but flare up of problems from brain injury," wrote John Cardillo on Twitter .

Cardillo, who previously worked as an officer who provided VIP security details for the New York Police Department (NYPD), told Breitbart News that he knows of two additional sources who have commented about Clinton's health problems, which have even impacted her ability to walk to her car after delivering a speech.

"I got this from both a [federal agent] … and I also got it from a New York [NYPD] guy who worked security at a Hillary event in New York City," Cardillo told Breitbart News, adding:

These are two people that aren't just personal friends. I worked with one and then post law-enforcement worked with another on some related things. So, these aren't anonymous people. These are good friends. Both of them told me the same thing, that after her speeches, whether she did a talk or a policy speech, she had to sit behind – she would come off the podium backstage – and have to sit and rest before making it back to the car because she was so fatigued, dizzy and disoriented.

Cardillo said these two security officials don't know each other and do not live in the same state, but "their stories were almost identical."

One of the men told him that Clinton was "very pale, kind of disoriented. He said she looked like she was about to faint. She was very pale, almost sweaty."

Cardillo said one of the incidents occurred while she was Secretary of State. The event worked by the NYPD official was roughly a year ago.

Veteran Republican strategist Roger Stone, who previously worked with GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, told Breitbart News that he has also heard about Clinton's long-term health problems.

"A number of New York Democrats, very prominent, well-known, wealthy New York Democrats, told me last year that Hillary had very significant health issues and that they were surprised that she was running in view of her health problems and her lack of stamina," Stone told Breitbart News. "So far, she's run a very controlled campaign,"

"I don't think she has the physical stamina to be president," he stated. "I have no doubt that Marco Rubio won't call her on it, but Trump certainly would."

"We also know that in the emails, of course, Huma Abedin… says that she is easily confused," Stone added, referencing Clinton's close confidant Abedin comment in an email , "She's often confused," referring to Clinton.

Trump, Stone's former boss, certainly hasn't been shy in questioning whether Clinton has the "stamina" to be president.

"She goes out and she sees you guys for about 10 minutes, she sees you for a little while, it's all rehearsed and staged," Trump said in a recent interview on Fox News' Media Buzz.

"They'll pick a couple of people out of the audience that are like, you know, 100 percent. She'll sit around a little plastic table, they'll talk to the people for a while. It's ridiculous," Trump added. "And then she goes away for five or six days and you don't see her. She goes to sleep."

Neurologist Dr. Daniel Kassicieh, D.O., reviewed news reports of Clinton's head injury in light of the recent information revealed from the security sources that are raising questions about her current health status.

Kassicieh, who has run his own Sarasota, Florida, practice for 20 years, is a board-certified neurologist and the medical director of the Florida Headache and Movement Disorder Center. He is a doctor of osteopathic medicine, which is similar to a medical doctor but can involve at a minimum of 100 more classroom hours of specific training. That additional training is focused on the osteopathic-or the musculoskeletal system-aspects of medicine. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology (FAAN) and a Fellow of the American College of Neuro-psychiatrists (FACN). Kassicieh is a registered Republican in Sarasota, but his purely medical analysis is troubling for Clinton.

"They were trying to poo-poo this off as a minor concussion, but I would just say that reading it and trying to take all the politics out of it, and just read it purely from a medical standpoint," Kassicieh explained:

Considering the point of what happened with Hillary over this time period… the timeline… and then what has happened here more recently… the break at the debate, I saw that and even the commentators that were sitting there made a comment that, 'Gee, that seems awful long for a break.' Just looking at it from a neurological standpoint, the risk factors for developing post-concussion syndrome, one of them is age, and she was 65 when this happened… just from a physiologic standpoint that's an older individual. Being female is a risk factor for post-concussion syndrome as well.

"For someone who has treated many post-concussion syndrome patients and that's what I really believe she's suffering from based on reading these reports and reading what's happened," Kassicieh said. "I think she has latent post-concussion syndrome , and I can understand that as a politician they would want to be covering that up." He stated:

I would say as a neurologist having seen many post-concussion syndrome patients that I would not want a president who I knew had post-concussion syndrome being president because their super high-level cognitive abilities are clearly impaired and even their routine multitasking high-stress abilities are affected because post-concussion syndrome patients in general don't tolerate even moderate work, stress-related environments.

Kassicieh added that if suffering from post concussion syndrome, Clinton's symptoms could appear "well beyond a year" after her concussion.

"A transverse sinus thrombosis [blood clot] is a rare condition of a clot forming in the venous sinus cavities surrounding the brain," Kassicieh told Breitbart News, referencing an ABC News report from 2012 that detailed Clinton's head injury and blood clot following a fall. He explained:

These venous sinuses drain blood out of the brain. The [injury] incidence is only about 3 per 1,000,000 adults. The transverse sinus is less commonly affected than the main sagittal venous sinus. The cause of transverse sinus clots is not well understood although trauma and dehydration have been described as risk factors. Mrs. Clinton suffered from both.

Dr. Nicholas C. Bambakidis also analyzed the facts for Breitbart News. He is the director of cerebrovascular and skull base surgery, and the program director of neurological surgery at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, and a professor of neurosurgery and radiology at the CWRU School of Medicine in Cleveland,

"These types of clots are usually formed spontaneously without an obvious cause," Bambakidis said in an email:

They can be associated with dehydration, a predisposition to blood clotting disorders, are more common in women and may be associated with oral contraceptive medication, severe head trauma, brain surgery, or infection. If untreated, they can progress and lead to bleeding in the brain or swelling, and a stroke or even death. The treatment is generally anticoagulation and treatment of any underlying cause.

Bambakidis said that if treated early and quickly, there are no longstanding issues with a person's health.

"Typically, if caught early and treated adequately (as seems to have been done in this incident) there is a full recovery without any consequences (normal cognition, memory, etc)," he said.

Dr. Jane Orient, the executive director of the politically conservative Association of American Physicians and Surgeons also reviewed the 2012 ABC News report about Clinton's concussion and blood clot. She said she thought the ABC report appeared medically accurate.

"Factors predisposing to clots include air travel, dehydration, hormones, immobilization as during surgery, blood abnormalities, cancer," Orient said. "Concussions can cause long-term damage including cognitive problems, even when standard studies including CT or MRI look normal."

"Not saying Mrs. Clinton has any of the above–just speaking generally and hypothetically," she clarified.

One former member of Orient's group is Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), an ophthalmologist. He was a member of AAPS for more than 20 years before his election to the U.S. Senate. He is now also running for president on the Republican side in 2016.

Neurologist Kassicieh agreed with Orient about the possibility of Clinton suffering from long-term cognitive symptoms.

"Concussions in older adults can be more serious, resulting in a condition known as post-concussion syndrome. This condition can be characterized by symptoms of persistent dizziness, complaints of memory difficulties, forgetfulness, loss of ability to focus on complex tasks or concepts and indecisiveness," Kassicieh explained. He added, "Latent depression and overt anxiety are also common in this condition."

Kassicieh noted that although a Clinton spokesperson told the press that Clinton "got over this quickly," another ABC report quotes former President Bill Clinton saying that his wife's injury "required six months of very serious work to get over."

"Other reports in the same article show an interesting timeline for Hillary over the next several months, showing that she was not fully functional in her capacity as [Secretary of State]," Kassicieh added:

As a neurologist, I would interpret these and more recent events involving Hillary as possibly showing signs of post-concussion syndrome. This condition could have serious impact on the cognitive and intellectual functioning of an individual, particularly a high level job as [President of the United States].

Dr. Drew Pinsky, nationally syndicated radio talk show host heard on KABC radio "Dr. Drew Midday Live," also spoke to Breitbart News about Clinton's health and explained that experiencing symptoms for more than a year after a head injury is very serious.

"In my clinical experience, it's very common for them to have six months and even up to a year of exercise intolerance, and sort of [needing] frequent rest, and can easily get overwhelmed," he said of head injury patients. "But after a year, that's something else."

He said symptoms like Clinton's, as an elderly person in her 60s, "are very serious."

"Those are not trivial symptoms," Pinsky stressed:

If my patient came in with that, the first thing I would do is put them on a treadmill. I would get a sleep study, make sure they don't have sleep apnea. I would do all sorts of metabolic studies and make sure there wasn't something metabolic. I would actually do some extensive cancer screenings. Why is this person suddenly having exercise intolerance?

Pinsky added that if Clinton is overworking herself, "I hope she has a medical team attending to her."

Breitbart News sent a detailed set of questions regarding these questions raised by law enforcement and medical professionals to Clinton's campaign.

The specific questions sent to Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Clinton, include:

1.) Does Secretary Clinton have difficulty with fatigue, dizziness and being disoriented? Does she have difficulty after speeches and during debates continuing for lengthy periods of time–or for instance walking back to her car after events?

2.) Is she suffering from latent post concussion syndrome?

3.) Is she being completely honest with the public about her health? Does she have a clean bill of health?

4.) Is she able to conduct high level cognitive abilities on the same level she has been able to throughout her life? Is she able to conduct routine multitasking high stress abilities on the same level she has been able to throughout her life?

5.) Does she have or did she have a transverse sinus thrombosis, or blood clot?

6.) Is she capable of serving as President of the United States with these conditions and symptoms?

7.) Has she done tests with a doctor on a treadmill? Has she gotten a doctor-supervised sleep study? Has she worked with a doctor on metabolic studies? Has she gotten cancer screenings?

8.) Does she have a medical team attending to her? What are the details of that?

In response, Merrill told Breitbart News that Clinton's doctors have already answered the questions in Clinton's health statement.

"These questions are all addressed in her health statement," Merrill told Breitbart News, referring to a letter from Clinton's doctor, Dr. Lisa Bardack-the chair of internal medicine at the Mount Kisco Medical Group in New York.

The letter, labeled a "healthcare statement" and dated on July 28, 2015-which was released along with Clinton's tax filings-is two full pages long and includes a complete description from Dr. Bardack clearing Clinton as fit to serve as president.

"This letter summarizes the health history and current medical evaluation of Hillary Rodham Clinton," Dr. Bardack wrote. "I am an internist and the Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the Mount Kisco Medical Group in Mount Kisco, New York. I have served as Mrs. Clinton's personal physician since 2001, during which time I have been involved in all aspects of her healthcare."

The letter states that Clinton is a "healthy 67-year-old female whose current medical conditions include hypothyroidism and seasonal pollen allergies."

"Her past medical history is notable for a deep vein thrombosis in 1998 and in 2009, an elbow fracture in 2009 and a concussion in 2012," Dr. Bardack continues.

"In December of 2012, Mrs. Clinton suffered a stomach virus after traveling, became dehydrated, fainted and sustained a concussion," the doctor wrote:

During follow-up evaluations, Mrs. Clinton was found to have a transverse sinus venous thrombosis and began anti-coagulation therapy to dissolve the clot. As a result of the concussion, Mrs. Clinton also experienced double vision for a period of time and benefitted from wearing glasses with a Fresnel Prism. Her concussion symptoms, including the double vision, resolved within two months and she discontinued the use of the prism. She had follow-up testing in 2013, which revealed complete resolution of the effects of the concussion as well as total dissolution of the thrombosis. Mrs. Clinton also tested negative for all clotting disorders. As a precaution however, it was decided to continue her on daily anticoagulation.

The letter continues by detailing her current medication list, which includes Armour Thyroid-a hormone used to treat an under-active thyroid– plus various antihistamines, Vitamin B12 and the blood-thinner Coumadin.

"She was also advised in 1998 to take Lovenox, a short-acting blood thinner, when she took extended flights; this medication was discontinued when she began Coumadin," Dr. Bardack continued:

Her Coumadin dose is monitored regularly and she has experienced no side effects from her medications. She takes no other medications on a regular basis and has no known drug allergies. She does not smoke and drinks alcohol occasionally. She does not use illicit drugs or tobacco products. She eats a diet rich in lean protein, vegetables and fruits. She exercises regularly, including yoga, swimming, walking and weight training.

Dr. Bardack noted that Clinton's family history also complicates matters: her father "lived into his 80s and died after having a stroke" while her mother "lived into her 90s and passed away after having congestive heart failure." One of her brothers-it's not clear whether it's Tony or Hugh Rodham, according to this letter-"had premature heart disease," Dr. Bardack wrote.

"Due to her family history, she underwent a full cardiac evaluation, which was negative," the doctor wrote. "She had a coronary calcium score of zero and a normal carotid ultrasound."

She's also had cancer screenings: "Her routine health maintenance is up to date, and has included a normal colonoscopy, gynecologic exam, mammogram, and breast ultrasound."

She had a physical on March 21, 2015, which revealed, according to Dr. Bardack, that Clinton was in top-notch health.

"In summary, Mrs. Clinton is a healthy female with hypothyroidism and seasonal allergies, on long-term anticoagulation," Dr. Bardack wrote. "She participates in a healthy lifestyle and has had a full medical evaluation, which reveals no evidence of additional medical issues or cardiovascular disease. Her cancer screening evaluations are all negative. She is in excellent physical condition and fit to serve as President of the United States."

Clinton's own campaign manager Robby Mook wouldn't commit during a mid-June 2015 interview on CBS's Face The Nation to release Clinton's full health records.

"I will let Hillary decide that," Mook replied when John Dickerson asked him if Clinton would release her full healthcare records. "But I can tell you she has been hitting the campaign trail hard."

The letter from Clinton's doctor-not her full healthcare records, but just a mere statement-came after that Mook interview.

[Aug 01, 2016] Hillary Clinton's health issues are drastically worse than she has revealed publicly

Jun 23, 2016 | nypost.com

Hillary Clinton's health issues are drastically worse than she has revealed publicly - and the potential presidential candidate tried to keep her medical information private for fear that it would damage her bid for the White House in 2016, according to a new book.

The 66-year-old former secretary of state has suffered more fainting spells than publicly known, is prone to have blood clots, and may be at serious risk of a stroke, according to the book, "Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas," by Edward Klein.

Modal Trigger
The medical scare that forced Clinton to be rushed to New York-Presby­terian Hospital on Dec. 30, 2013, revealed how serious the situation is.

"She has to be carefully monitored for the rest of her life," doctors warned former President Bill Clinton before Hillary was released from the hospital, according to the book.

The book claims Hillary was taken to New York­Presbyterian after a fainting spell and concussion that she suffered in her seventh-floor office at the State Department - not at her home, as claimed.

Hillary was initially treated at a State Department facility and was transferred to her home to recover. Bill Clinton, however, insisted Hillary be flown to New York City and be treated by specialists there, Klein claims.

During her visit to the Manhattan hospital, the presumed 2016 Democratic front-runner was diagnosed with several problems, including the clots.

Hillary had a right transverse venous thrombosis, or a blood clot, between her brain and skull.

"The unique thing about clotting in the brain is that it could have transformed into a stroke," a cardiac specialist with knowledge of Hillary's condition says in the book.

The clots are especially a threat while flying, when blood pools while sitting, and she did a lot of flying while at the State Department.

In addition to a 2005 fainting spell during a speech in Buffalo, Hillary also fainted while boarding her plane in Yemen in 2009, which caused her to fall and fracture her elbow.

Meanwhile, coming after Hillary's recent comments that she was "dead broke" when she left the White House, she played the poor card again, telling The Guardian that she is not "truly well off" when compared to the super rich.

"We pay ordinary income tax," she told the paper, "unlike a lot of people who are truly well off, not to name names; and we've done it through dint of hard work."

[Aug 01, 2016] Campaign Cover-Up? Hillary Clinton Facing 'Mounting Health Issues,' Political Insider Claims: 'Blinding Headaches,' Near-Fainting Fits Worse! by

radaronline.com

Among her issues are "blinding headaches" that have "frequently plagued her," he claimed. As Radar reported, other insiders have claimed she has had a series of strokes and may be suffering from MS.

In fact, the friend claimed, Clinton even turned to sleeping pills like Ambien and Lunesta in her desperation, but they offered no relief. Said the friend, "She said they made her less sharp the next day.

"There were incidents on the campaign trail when she felt faint and nearly swooned," he claimed. "Those incidents were kept secret."

[Aug 01, 2016] Susan Sarandon: Hillary Clintons Health Issues Could Prevent Her from Getting Dem Nomination

www.breitbart.com

Clinton's health has long been an issue in this year's election cycle, most recently when the candidate disappeared from the ABC Democratic presidential debate stage in December for an extended period of time for what her campaign said was an extended bathroom break.

Breitbart News previously reported that a law enforcement source believed the extended break stemmed from a flare-up of a previous brain injury, though the Clinton campaign refuted the report.

[Jul 31, 2016] I watched Clinton Cash TWICE last night rather than watch the Democrratic Sh*tShow!

www.youtube.com

CorporatistNation

@xxSJWxx @Calvinus @CorporatistNation I think that xxSJWxx misunderstood where I am at... I AGREE 100% that Hillary should go down for racketeering etc... Watch Clinton Cash!!! What I said was... IF THE VOTES WERE ACTUALLY "COUNTED"... WE WOULD HAVE A DIFFERENT NOMINEE... E.G., BERNIE SANDERS... The Votes were NOT counted and so we have this unethical sociopath named Hillary who in my opinion is also a Meglomaniac... who WILL start World War Three given half a chance. So lets hope that there is a judge somewhere with courage and integrity who will indict her.
IF you want to be FULLY informed on The Clinton Foundation, The Clinton Global Initiative and just what scoundrels Bill and Hill are... Then you MUST watch "Clinton Cash!"
I watched "Clinton Cash" TWICE last night rather than watch the "Sh*tShow!" #Vote2DefeatHER#VoteJillNOTHill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LYRUOd_QoM

[Jul 31, 2016] The Clintons and the Bankers

www.nakedcapitalism.com
sgt_doom , July 29, 2016 at 2:30 pm

When one really examines the overall plan, the overall structure of the design of the banksters, it really shouldn't be that difficult to reduce inequality:

The Clintons and the Bankers

1992: The Blackstone Group, at that time the wealthiest private equity firm (private bank) in the world, would provide presidential candidate, Bill Clinton, with free office space to solicit campaign donations. (Blackstone Group was founded by David Rockefeller protégé, Peter G. Peterson, with Rockefeller family seed money.)

1993: In response to a request from the JP Morgan Bank, the Group of 30 (lobbyists for the central bankers founded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1978) publishes a paper promoting the widespread adoption of credit derivatives, with the caveat that "legal risk" should be removed. (Members of the G30 includes Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, whose first position after college was with Kissinger Associates, founded by Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller's right-hand man.)

1993: Mortgage Bankers Association publishes a paper outlining the structure and concept of MERS, or Mortgage Electronic Registry System, a necessity for rapid mortgage securitizations (credit derivatives) and shuffling home loans between lenders so that homeowners couldn't find the actual owner.

1993: The SEC - under Clinton - will drop the requirement for investment firms to report on the identity of the major shareholders. (This is to obscure the ownership - if you don't know who the owners are, you won't know who owns everything.)

Next, President Clinton's aiding and abetting the bankers:

Clinton will sign NAFTA (actually version 2.0, after LBJ's Border Industrialization Program) which includes a clause to allow for the foreign ownership of Mexican banks - previously only allowed to be Mexican-owned.

Within one year 90% of Mexican banks are foreign owned, principally by US banks.

Next, Clinton will sign the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act, allowing for full interstate banking - a major step in the cartel formation.

Next up, Clinton signs the Telecommunications Act of 1996, allowing for the consolidation of corporate media and reconstitution of AT&T into one entity.
The Investment Company Act of 1996 is signed into law, allowing for unlimited number of investors per hedge fund or similar funds. The combination of the potential for an unlimited number of credit default swaps, and an unlimited number of commodity futures purchases, and an unlimited number of investors per fund, allows for ultra-speculation.

Next the Big Three: the REIT Modernization Act, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act - these together will set the stage for the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, the global economic meltdown (and kill the New Deal entirely).

1997: Years after this date, investigative gumshoe reporter, Greg Palast, would uncover a secret 1997 memorandum between Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, urging for the inclusion of the "credit derivatives-acceptance clause" in the WTO's Financial Services Agreement (so that the various governmental signatories around the world would accept Wall Street's fantasy finance Ponzi scheme).

The legal advisors in the creation of the Mortgage Electronic Registry System - or MERS - were the attorneys at Covington & Burling, the same law firm from which Eric Holder, President Obama's choice for attorney general to contain the banker meltdown, came from.

So Covington & Burling, which has long enjoyed a strategic partnership with Kissinger Associates, was the legal advisor of record, and their man, Eric Holder, was appointed by the president to insure no bankers were prosecuted, and this entire criminal conspiracy would not be exposed. President Obama also appointed Judith ("Jami") Miscik, then president and vice-chair of Kissinger Associates, to his Intelligence Advisory Board.

And the then CEO of Fannie Mae, the fellow who promoted the large-scale adoption of mortgage securitizations, James Johnson, had a longstanding relationship with David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger; Johnson was the business contact for the American Friends of Bilderberg, Inc. (directors: David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Richard Perle, et al.).

armchair , July 29, 2016 at 3:40 pm

So, I just looked at the wordles that Lambert used in the Kitchen Table post and I didn't see the word 'liberal' anywhere. However, if you made a wordle from Rush Limbaugh's broadcast career, 'liberal' would be one of the bigger words. I guess Thomas Frank is attacking 'liberals' from the left? One thing is for sure, the word is dirtier than ever. It just makes me want to use it more and more. It's so dirty!

Everyone at Davos calls themselves [neo]liberals. The Joint Chiefs of Staff go into the woods and do primal screams, "we're liberals and we're going to turn the Middle East into glass!!!! We're so liberal!!" That's what they're doing at the Bohemian Grove. They all gather around Henry Kissinger and sing about being liberals in their hearts.

hunkerdown , July 29, 2016 at 3:46 pm

Davos People are the quintessential [neo]liberals. USians are as liberal as they are Christian: they only say it in order to be accepted by people who have been told that only self-described liberals are worthy...

[Jul 28, 2016] Cosmopolitan Magazine The Clintons Are "Good Marriage Role Models"

Notable quotes:
"... The Clintons and the Reality of a Long Marriage ..."
www.newsbusters.org
Only the sex-obsessed writers at Cosmopolitan could try that line out... In the article The Clintons and the Reality of a Long Marriage, the women's magazine attempts to make the case that the Clinton marriage is actually one that everyone should look up to. Apparently, hating philandering men is no longer a part of the feminist agenda. At least, as long as one's wife is running for president.

... ... ...

But virtuous Hillary Clinton stuck by her man! She "could have put her husband's recklessness behind her like a bad haircut and moved on to continue her change-making and achievements without him too. But she stayed." And now, the sweet old couple "get to be doting grandparents together, mutually supporting each other in their latest acts, and potentially becoming the first married to couple to ever both be President, which will make a good Christmas letter."

Hillary shouldn't be painted as "a doormat, a punching bag, a fool" for staying married to Bill. It's a sign of strength and nobility! Or a savvy politician who is trying to be elected President.

The writer's marital counseling goes on. "In the Clinton's marriage model, you screw up. You forgive. You grow. And you grow old, together, making new memories and celebrating old ones with the same person you've known since she was "a girl," someone you fell in love with many years ago in the spring."

As gag-inducing as this is, it can't be a surprise. A serial adulterer who's still a popular national figure and married? That's Cosmo's idea of a hero.

[Jul 26, 2016] Hillary Clintons AIPAC speech was a symphony of craven, delusional pandering by Michelle Goldberg

Notable quotes:
"... Clinton would want to widen the gulf between AIPAC and Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee. "We need steady hands, not a president who says he's neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday, and who knows what on Wednesday, because everything is negotiable," she said to applause, out-hawking the man who is running on a platform of Middle Eastern war crimes. ..."
"... In doing so, she offered a bridge to #NeverTrump neoconservatives like Max Boot and Robert Kagan, who has already written that, should Trump be the nominee, "the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... It is a strange, strange spectacle, this yearly AIPAC conference, where U.S. politicians from across the political spectrum are compelled to stand in front of a bunch of Israeli flags and proclaim unquestioning fealty to a foreign ethno-state. ..."
"... This year of all years, Clinton could have afforded to show a bit of courage before AIPAC. Jews will vote Democratic no matter what. Sixty-nine percent of them voted for Obama in 2012, despite the well-known tension between him and Netanyahu. ..."
"... Her correspondence with adviser Sid Blumenthal-a man loathed by the Israel lobby for not disavowing his anti-Zionist son, Max-suggests that she's aware of the damage Netanyahu is doing to the cause of peace in the Middle East. But if she is, she doesn't care about it enough to take even a tiny political risk, to tell a crowd something other than exactly what it wants to hear. Either Clinton's AIPAC speech was driven by belief, or it was driven by cynicism. It's hard to say which is worse. ..."
www.slate.com | 791 Comments
>

ny presidential candidate speaking to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, during an election year is going to bow to the hawkish elements of the Israel lobby. Hillary Clinton's keynote speech at AIPAC's annual meeting Monday, however, was more debased than it needed to be, promising that under her administration, Israel will be spared even the mild rebukes it has suffered under President Obama. A symphony of pandering, it attempted to outflank Donald Trump on the right and will end up outraging a large chunk of the left.

As Joe Biden acknowledged in his AIPAC speech on Sunday, Israel's "steady and systematic process of expanding settlements, legalizing outposts, seizing land" is making a two-state solution impossible. The settlements are pushing Israel toward a one-state reality, in which Jews rule over the Arabs with whom they are geographically intermingled. Clinton's speech, however, barely nodded toward this reality, and when it did, it was with a promise to protect Israel from the consequences of flouting international law. Advertisement

Here is the entirety of Clinton's remarks about settlements:

"Everyone has to do their part by avoiding damaging actions, including with respect to settlements. Now, America has an important role to play in supporting peace efforts. And as president, I would continue the pursuit of direct negotiations. And let me be clear-I would vigorously oppose any attempt by outside parties to impose a solution, including by the U.N. Security Council."

She spent significantly more time railing against the "alarming" Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement , which is gaining traction on college campuses nationwide. Pledging to "take our alliance to the next level," Clinton said that one of the first things she'd do in office is invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House. That was a barely veiled rebuke to Obama, who never treated Benjamin Netanyahu with the deference the prime minister felt entitled to. Before the speech, some had hoped that Clinton might offer a word of solidarity or encouragement to beleaguered progressives in Israel. She gave them nothing. It's understandable that Clinton would want to widen the gulf between AIPAC and Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee. "We need steady hands, not a president who says he's neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday, and who knows what on Wednesday, because everything is negotiable," she said to applause, out-hawking the man who is running on a platform of Middle Eastern war crimes.

In doing so, she offered a bridge to #NeverTrump neoconservatives like Max Boot and Robert Kagan, who has already written that, should Trump be the nominee, "the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be." Anti-Trump neoconservatives, however, are a minuscule group of people. And in seeking their approval, Clinton has further alienated left-wing voters, particularly young ones. Polls show that Americans under 30 are far more critical of Israel than are older voters. Liberal Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians than they do with Israel. There is already deep suspicion of Clinton's foreign-policy instincts among Bernie Sanders' supporters; Clinton doesn't need to give them new reasons to distrust her.

It is a strange, strange spectacle, this yearly AIPAC conference, where U.S. politicians from across the political spectrum are compelled to stand in front of a bunch of Israeli flags and proclaim unquestioning fealty to a foreign ethno-state.

This year of all years, Clinton could have afforded to show a bit of courage before AIPAC. Jews will vote Democratic no matter what. Sixty-nine percent of them voted for Obama in 2012, despite the well-known tension between him and Netanyahu. Unlike Obama, Clinton is going to be running against a demagogue with German roots who plays footsie with white supremacists and reportedly kept a volume of Hitler's speeches beside his bed. She'll have all the Jewish support she needs without sucking up to the Likud. So why is she doing it?

Her correspondence with adviser Sid Blumenthal-a man loathed by the Israel lobby for not disavowing his anti-Zionist son, Max-suggests that she's aware of the damage Netanyahu is doing to the cause of peace in the Middle East. But if she is, she doesn't care about it enough to take even a tiny political risk, to tell a crowd something other than exactly what it wants to hear. Either Clinton's AIPAC speech was driven by belief, or it was driven by cynicism. It's hard to say which is worse.

Michelle Goldberg is a columnist for Slate and the author, most recently, of The Goddess Pose .

[Jul 25, 2016] Clinton left his secret service goons behind when he went on Lolita jet trips

www.theguardian.com
RecordStoreGuy , 2016-07-25 16:31:01
have to disagree with Bernie, DWS didn't do the right thing - she just got caught, the right thing would have been to put a stop to planted stories with no attribution and ensure a level playing field. Anyone US side want to tell me if the thing about Bill Clinton meeting Epstein on numerous occasions is actually true?
DrKropotkin -> RecordStoreGuy , 2016-07-25 16:43:39
It's true, they travelled in Epstein's private jet, which was called "Lolita" (not very subtle).

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/14/bill-clinton-ditched-secret-service-on-multiple-lo /

He also left his secret service goons behind when he went on these trips.

[Jul 25, 2016] Breaking: Hillary Clinton Suffers Seizure During Interview by Patric Kerouac

July 25, 2016 | www.molonlabemedia.com

his does not look like a common seizure, unless seizures are so common to her that she already knows how to control it. It is strange, but the lady behind her is even more strange, she keeps looking at the journalists, she glances at Hillary but shows no surprise at all, nor try to help. It is almost as if she is part of it.

The expression of one reporter seems to be pure fear:

[Jul 25, 2016] The Clinton Foundation

Notable quotes:
"... Well, it's obvious that Hillary wanted to keep some information from the public finding out. The information that she wanted to keep from the public probably didn't concern national security so much as her own private dealings. Nobody, I think, in American history has merged their public service as secretary of state or president with their private gains to the extent that Hillary really has. And by that I mean the Clinton Foundation, overall. ..."
"... She's going to Saudi Arabia, she's going to Europe, she's going to the Near Eastern countries. Saudi Arabia has asked her–and this is all very public–we want more arms. We want to buy arms in America. We know that Saudi Arabia is one of the major contributors to the Clinton Foundation. ..."
"... Well, lo and behold, the military-industrial complex is one of the big contributors to the Clinton Foundation, as is Saudi Arabia, and many of the parties who are directly affected by her decisions. Now, my guess is what she didn't want people to find out, whether on Freedom of Information Act or others, are the lobbying she's doing for her own foundation, which in a way means her wealth, her husband's wealth, Bill Clinton's wealth, and the power that both of them have by getting a quarter billion dollars of grants into the foundation during her secretary of state. ..."
"... We don't have any evidence one way or the other. So certainly there is no evidence. There is only the appearance of what looks to me to be an inherent conflict of interest with the foundation. ..."
The Unz Review

On Thursday morning, the media fest and political fest around Hillary Clinton's email scandal continued, as the head of the FBI, James Comey, spoke at a congressional House oversight committee. Here's a little clip of what was said there. But let me just foreshadow–maybe the emails aren't the real issue that should be in front of these hearings. Now, here's the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Jason Chaffetz, questioning James Comey and a bit of his answer.

JASON CHAFFETZ: It seems to a lot of us that the average Joe, the average American, that if they had done what you laid out in your statement, that they'd be in handcuffs. And I think there is a legitimate concern that there is a double standard. Your name isn't Clinton, you're not part of the powerful elite, that Lady Justice will act differently.

JAMES COMEY: I believe this investigation was conducted consistent with the highest traditions of the FBI. Our folks did it in an apolitical and professional way. There are two things that matter in a criminal investigation of a subject. And so when I look at the facts we gathered here–as I said, I see evidence of great carelessness. But I do not see evidence that is sufficient to establish that Secretary Clinton, or those with whom she was corresponding, both talked about classified information on email, and knew when they did it they were doing something that was against the law. So give that assessment of the facts and my understanding of the law, my conclusion was, and remains, no reasonable prosecutor would bring this case. No reasonable prosecutor would bring the second case in 100 years focused on gross negligence.

JAY: Now joining us from New York is Michael Hudson. Michael's a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. His latest book is Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy. Thanks for joining us, Michael.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be back here, Paul.

JAY: First, let's talk a little bit about what we just heard. The chairman of the House Oversight Committee says, is there a double standard here? Somebody else might be in handcuffs, and Hillary Clinton's not being charged. I guess a lot of people are asking that question. The FBI director says this doesn't rise to the level of criminality; it's carelessness. I don't know the law well enough. I'm certainly not a lawyer. But it seems to me that the deliberate, willful decision to use a private server–and some people have said one of the reasons could be to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests–and I don't know if that rises to the level of criminality. But it's sure wrong.

HUDSON: Well, it's obvious that Hillary wanted to keep some information from the public finding out. The information that she wanted to keep from the public probably didn't concern national security so much as her own private dealings. Nobody, I think, in American history has merged their public service as secretary of state or president with their private gains to the extent that Hillary really has. And by that I mean the Clinton Foundation, overall.

Here's the problem, you can imagine. She's going to Saudi Arabia, she's going to Europe, she's going to the Near Eastern countries. Saudi Arabia has asked her–and this is all very public–we want more arms. We want to buy arms in America. We know that Saudi Arabia is one of the major contributors to the Clinton Foundation. On the other hand, Hillary's in a position to go to Raytheon, to Boeing, and say look, do I have a customer for you. Saudi Arabia would love to buy your arms. Maybe we can arrange something. I'm going to do my best. By the way, you know, my foundation is–you know, I'm a public-spirited person and I'm trying to help the world. Would you like to make a contribution to my foundation?

Well, lo and behold, the military-industrial complex is one of the big contributors to the Clinton Foundation, as is Saudi Arabia, and many of the parties who are directly affected by her decisions. Now, my guess is what she didn't want people to find out, whether on Freedom of Information Act or others, are the lobbying she's doing for her own foundation, which in a way means her wealth, her husband's wealth, Bill Clinton's wealth, and the power that both of them have by getting a quarter billion dollars of grants into the foundation during her secretary of state.

JAY: As far as we know, there's no direct evidence that she did precisely what you're saying. And

That they actually say–"Give money to the foundation; I will facilitate such-and-such a contract." There's no evidence of that, correct?

HUDSON: That's right. And partly there's no evidence because her private emails are not subject to [inaud.]. They're not subject to finding out this. We don't have any evidence one way or the other. So certainly there is no evidence. There is only the appearance of what looks to me to be an inherent conflict of interest with the foundation.

JAY: And there's no direct evidence that any abnormal amount of money has gone to Bill Clinton, in terms of fees and expenses. One can assume he's well-compensated. But it does have charitable status, it has to file a 990. They are under charitable law regulations, and so far I don't know of any reporting that says that they have violated the–.

HUDSON: You're right. The advantage of being under charitable law is it's in a foundation that–you can look at it in effect as your savings account. And you can treat it–you can do with a foundation whatever you want.

Now, if you or I had a quarter billion dollars, what we'd want to do is influence policy. Influence the world. Well, that's what they want to do. They want to use the foundation to support policies that they want. And here we're not dealing with unexplained enrichment. This isn't money that comes into them that goes into an offshore account in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands. It's hidden in plain sight. It's all the foundation. It's tax-exempt. It's legitimate. So she's somehow been able to legitimize a conflict of interest, and what that used to be called corruption in office. Or at least the appearance of what could be corruption in office.

And the fact is, that is what there has been a blacked-out screen painted over it, and we don't have any idea what she's been saying to these affected parties that not only has she been dealing with, the secretary of state, but it turned out to be major contributors to her and Bill's foundation.

JAY: Now, the reason the emails rose to such prominence is because it was the potential of criminal charges. That seems to have ended now. The Clinton foundation certainly has been reported upon in various places in the mainstream press. It never rose to the same level of attention as the emails. But why do you think that is? Because you think there's enough fodder there that that could have been quite a media fest. Feast, I should say.

HUDSON: Well, there's no direct link between the foundation that says it's existing to promote various social purposes, and Hillary's actions as secretary of state. But there's such overlap there. I can't think of any public official at cabinet level or above, in memory who's ever had an overlapping between a foundation that they had and had control, personally, and their public job. So there's never been so great a blurring of categories.

JAY: So why isn't this a bigger issue in the media? Corporate media?

HUDSON: I don't–I think the media are supporting Hillary. And that's a good question. Why are they supporting her so much with all of this? Why aren't they raising this seemingly obvious thing? I think the media want two things that Hillary wants. They want the trade agreements to essentially turn over policy to, trade policy to corporations, and regulatory policy to–.

JAY: You're talking about TTIP and [TTP].

HUDSON: [They're neocons.] They're the agreement of politics. If the media agree with her politics and says, okay, we want to back her because she's backing the kind of world we want, a neocon world, a neoliberal world, then they're going to say, this is wonderful. We can now distract attention onto did she leak a national secret. Well, the secrets that are really important aren't the national classification secrets. They're the personal, personal, the big-picture secrets. And it's the big picture we don't have a clue of as a result of all of these erasures.

JAY: Okay, thanks very much for joining us, Michael.

HUDSON: Good to be here.

JAY: And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.

[Jul 24, 2016] Prominent neocons chickenhawks jump the ship and join Hillary camp

Notable quotes:
"... ...if you are a hard-core promoter of wars like Robert Kagan, Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, Jamie Weinstein, Max Boot, Eliot Cohen, Richard Perle, George Shultz, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and many others, you have either endorsed or said very positive things about Hillary Clinton. How to explain this? ..."
"... But if you believe that the U.S. military is a force for good that hardly ever kills anyone worthy of redemption, that the chief role of the military is to rescue poor innocents from evil by overthrowing tyrants and spreading democracy by drone missile, if you believe air wars are more humane because in air wars nobody gets hurt, if you think presidents checking off kill lists on Tuesdays is ideal as long as it's the right presidents doing it, if you cheer for diversity in the U.S. military and want the Selective Service expanded to force every 18-year-old woman to register for the draft, if you believe Honduras and Ukraine and Libya had it coming or you have no idea what I'm referring to, if you think suggesting the abolition of NATO or a halt to overthrowing governments is crazy talk, and if you believe a good heavy bombing campaign of Syria would be the perfect way to demonstrate that we care about Syrians and value them as human beings, you just might be a Democrat. ..."
"... I've studied the marketing of wars , and the most successful war marketing campaigns in the United States include, in order from most to least necessary: ..."
"... The demonization of an entire foreign population. ..."
"... The demonization of a particular foreign person. ..."
"... The pretense of urgency, inevitability, and ideally of the state of being already underway. ..."
"... The pretense of upholding the rule of law. ..."
"... The pretense of humanitarianism. ..."
"... Point #7 will pick up a section of the population's support, even among people opposed to some of the other justifications. But alone it won't work. Points #1 and #2 can do well without #7. Any of these points can be strengthened or undone by partisanship if the war is labeled the possession of one political party or the other. And once the war is really up and rolling, a new justification slides into the #1 spot, namely the need to "support the troops" by killing more of them. ..."
www.informationclearinghouse.info

RNC War Party, DNC War Makers by David Swanson

...if you are a hard-core promoter of wars like Robert Kagan, Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, Jamie Weinstein, Max Boot, Eliot Cohen, Richard Perle, George Shultz, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and many others, you have either endorsed or said very positive things about Hillary Clinton. How to explain this? Are the most rabid war supporters on one side and the most dependable war makers getting nominated by the other? Well, maybe.

But if you believe that the U.S. military is a force for good that hardly ever kills anyone worthy of redemption, that the chief role of the military is to rescue poor innocents from evil by overthrowing tyrants and spreading democracy by drone missile, if you believe air wars are more humane because in air wars nobody gets hurt, if you think presidents checking off kill lists on Tuesdays is ideal as long as it's the right presidents doing it, if you cheer for diversity in the U.S. military and want the Selective Service expanded to force every 18-year-old woman to register for the draft, if you believe Honduras and Ukraine and Libya had it coming or you have no idea what I'm referring to, if you think suggesting the abolition of NATO or a halt to overthrowing governments is crazy talk, and if you believe a good heavy bombing campaign of Syria would be the perfect way to demonstrate that we care about Syrians and value them as human beings, you just might be a Democrat.

Yes, Hillary Clinton is the most dependable war monger nominated by a major party in the United States in many years. She has the most consistent and lengthy record of doing what she's paid to do, of marketing U.S. weaponry abroad, of manufacturing justifications for wars, of lobbying branches of the U.S. government and foreign governments to support wars. And she'll do so while keeping up a pretense of abiding by some selection of laws.

... ... ...

I've studied the marketing of wars , and the most successful war marketing campaigns in the United States include, in order from most to least necessary:

  1. The pretense of a threat to anyone in the United States, most powerfully if it is a threat of torture or rape or death by hand or knife. It need not be the least bit realistic.
  2. The demonization of an entire foreign population.
  3. The demonization of a particular foreign person.
  4. Revenge.
  5. The pretense of urgency, inevitability, and ideally of the state of being already underway.
  6. The pretense of upholding the rule of law.
  7. The pretense of humanitarianism.

Point #7 will pick up a section of the population's support, even among people opposed to some of the other justifications. But alone it won't work. Points #1 and #2 can do well without #7. Any of these points can be strengthened or undone by partisanship if the war is labeled the possession of one political party or the other. And once the war is really up and rolling, a new justification slides into the #1 spot, namely the need to "support the troops" by killing more of them.

[Jul 19, 2016] Republican Platform Unexpectedly Calls For A Return To Glass-Steagall

Notable quotes:
"... Manafort mentioned the return of Glass-Steagall specifically as a counterpoint against Hillary Clinton, arguing it was Democrats that were the ones actually beholden to big banks. "We believe the Obama-Clinton years have passed legislation that has been favorable to the big banks, which is why you see all the Wall Street money going to her," he said. "We are supporting the small banks and Main Street." ..."
"... Good! Screw the Clintons and crony capitalism. ..."
"... Bob Rubin already cashed the checks....Mission Accomplished. ..."
"... Laugh Track Deafening) ..."
"... How different would it be now if everyone in that photo had died simultaneously BEFORE Clinton signed it? ..."
"... Panic attacks and violent pangs on Wall Street tomorrow? Or will they just pour billions more into the Clinton corruption campaign? ..."
"... Hang the Clintons, Bushes, and all the damned banksters with them. Then your reforms might mean something ..."
Zero Hedge
While we know better than to trust politician promises, we were surprised to read that today the GOP joined the Democrats in calling for a repeal of Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 pushed through by none other than Bill Clinton, and will seek a return to Glass-Steagall, the banking law launched in 1933 in the aftermath of the Great Depression meant to prohibit commercial banks from engaging in the investment business, and which according to many was one of the catalysts that led to the Global Financial Crisis.

According to The Hill, Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's campaign manager, told reporters gathered in Cleveland Monday that the GOP platform would include language advocating for a return of that law, which was repealed under President Bill Clinton, husband of, well you know...

"We also call for a reintroduction of Glass-Steagall, which created barriers between what big banks can do," he said.

Including that language in the GOP platform comes shortly after Democrats agreed to similar language in their own, calling for an "updated and modernized version" of the law.

However before anyone gets their hopes up, recall that a party platform is not binding but is thought to reflect the values of the party.... until the values change as a result of Wall Street "incentives" because if there is one thing US "commercial banks" can not afford it is a separation of their depository and investment activities.

The GOP platform has not yet been officially released, although the convention is expected to approve it later Monday. Nonetheless, the embrace of Glass-Steagall by both parties is a telling indication of how unpopular Wall Street remains with the public, years after the financial crisis.

Manafort mentioned the return of Glass-Steagall specifically as a counterpoint against Hillary Clinton, arguing it was Democrats that were the ones actually beholden to big banks. "We believe the Obama-Clinton years have passed legislation that has been favorable to the big banks, which is why you see all the Wall Street money going to her," he said. "We are supporting the small banks and Main Street."

HRH of Aquitaine Jul 18, 2016 5:15 PM

Good! Screw the Clintons and crony capitalism.

onewayticket2 -> HRH of Aquitaine, Jul 18, 2016 5:19 PM

Bob Rubin already cashed the checks....Mission Accomplished.

Love,

sandy weil

ps.... So did I. Thanks Clintons

macholatte -> onewayticket2, Jul 18, 2016 5:24 PM

Just break-up the banks into little itsy-bitsy pieces so they can't hurt anyone anymore. – Mother Goose

JRobby -> macholatte, Jul 18, 2016 5:32 PM

What!!!! Is sanity breaking out!???!!!

Guess the big public utility banks are going to get broken up? (Laugh Track Deafening)

How different would it be now if everyone in that photo had died simultaneously BEFORE Clinton signed it?

californiagirl -> Timmay •Jul 18, 2016 7:10 PM

Panic attacks and violent pangs on Wall Street tomorrow? Or will they just pour billions more into the Clinton corruption campaign?

Perimetr -> californiagirl •Jul 18, 2016 7:24 PM

Hang the Clintons, Bushes, and all the damned banksters with them. Then your reforms might mean something.

[Jul 03, 2016] Claims by bodyguard about Monica Lewinsky hurt Hillary Clintons White House bid

Notable quotes:
"... The U.S. Navy stewards who served as butlers at the White House were usually the first to discover physical evidence of Clinton's philandering, says Byrne. ..."
"... According to Byrne, the lipstick was clearly not the shade worn by Lewinsky or Hillary. He believed it belonged to a young White House receptionist who was also having an affair with Clinton. ..."
"... Identifying for the first time something he says was dubbed the 'jogging list', he recalls how, early in Clinton's first administration, women 'dressed as if they were going clubbing or working out' would wait by the White House south-east gate for him to take his daily exercise. ..."
"... His bodyguards would collect their names and carry out security checks on them. 'Agents . . . insinuated that this list was used by President Clinton to try to meet these women,' says Byrne. ..."
"... The account chimes with previous claims that the Clintons fought on at least one occasion over his affair with Lewinsky. Byrne gilds Mrs Clinton's aggressive image by recounting how - some years later - she and her husband visited the Secret Service's firing range. ..."
"... For Hillary - gaining in the polls over Donald Trump and potentially just months away from becoming America's first female President - 11th-hour revelations about how the Clintons behaved in the White House last time round may be enough to have her hurling more than vases and Bibles. ..."
Daily Mail Online

The U.S. Navy stewards who served as butlers at the White House were usually the first to discover physical evidence of Clinton's philandering, says Byrne.

One, who he names as Nel, shared that evidence with Byrne, revealing that over a period of time, he had been finding and secretly cleaning White House embossed towels stained with lipstick.

Anxious to protect the presidency from embarrassment, Nel was washing them by hand rather than sending them to the laundry.

According to Byrne, the lipstick was clearly not the shade worn by Lewinsky or Hillary. He believed it belonged to a young White House receptionist who was also having an affair with Clinton.

... ... ..

There were many other women besides Lewinsky, Eleanor Mondale and the unnamed receptionist, says Byrne.

Identifying for the first time something he says was dubbed the 'jogging list', he recalls how, early in Clinton's first administration, women 'dressed as if they were going clubbing or working out' would wait by the White House south-east gate for him to take his daily exercise.

His bodyguards would collect their names and carry out security checks on them. 'Agents . . . insinuated that this list was used by President Clinton to try to meet these women,' says Byrne.

He recalls an incident in December 1997 when he heard on his two-way radio that Monica Lewinsky was at one of the White House gates.

The guard had been instructed to delay her entrance . . . because Mr Clinton was already ensconced with Eleanor Mondale. Suspecting the truth, Lewinsky - according to Byrne - furiously gestured at herself and told the guard: 'What's he want with her when he has this?' (Mondale's affair with Clinton was strongly rumoured at the time although she denied it. She died of brain cancer in 2011.)

Was Hillary aware of his philandering? Byrne suspects that she knew about some of her husband's affairs but not Lewinsky, who, at 22, was young enough to be their daughter.

... ... ...

The account chimes with previous claims that the Clintons fought on at least one occasion over his affair with Lewinsky. Byrne gilds Mrs Clinton's aggressive image by recounting how - some years later - she and her husband visited the Secret Service's firing range.

Mrs Clinton chose an old Thompson sub-machine-gun and, 'smiling ear-to-ear' let rip, pumping bullets into the male target's crotch area. Witnesses laughed, looked away in embarrassment or glanced at the President, says Byrne.

Almost as ferocious as the Clintons' fight related by Byrne is the current battle between the Democrats and Republicans over this explosive book.

And it's not just historic allegations being thrown around. Even at 69, Mr Clinton's sex life is still proving controversial, with his charity foundation recently facing questions over a $2 million donation to a company partly owned by a woman alleged to be his mistress.

The Clinton camp has dismissed the memoir as 'fantasy' without addressing specific claims. Also, some media supporters have noted that some of Byrne's claims contradict what he told the 1998 official inquiry that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment.

(Others argue that Byrne, who clearly likes Mr Clinton much more than his wife, was lying to protect him at the time, but feels no such qualms about damaging Hillary).

Some former Secret Service agents allege Byrne was too low-ranking to see everything he claims, and accuse him of recycling old rumours.

Others, however, have rushed to his defence.

Dan Emmett, a respected former agent and Secret Service historian, says Byrne spent 'many hundreds of hours' just feet from the President, adding: 'He was without question in a position to see and hear at least some of the things he claims.'

For Hillary - gaining in the polls over Donald Trump and potentially just months away from becoming America's first female President - 11th-hour revelations about how the Clintons behaved in the White House last time round may be enough to have her hurling more than vases and Bibles.

[Jun 28, 2016] Republicans Are Pushing a New Clinton Sex Scandal

Notable quotes:
"... On Monday, Raffi Williams, deputy press secretary for the Republican Party, tweeted, "Woman Suing Jeffrey Epstein For Sexual Slavery Claimed Bill Clinton Must Have Known" and linked to a post that in turn referred to a Daily Mail story from 2011. The Drudge Report went for the more sensational "BUBBA AND THE PALM BEACH PEDOPHILE" and linked to the same story. Conservative viral news sites Twitchy and IJReview piled on, as did pundits at conservative websites, including Breitbart and the Blaze . ..."
"... But unsealed court documents revealed that he had been the subject of a much larger federal probe into alleged prostitution and could have faced 10 years in prison or more, if the case had gone forward. After his guilty plea, two of his alleged victims, who had were underage at the time of their encounter with Epstein, sued him in federal court, claiming that he had a "sexual preference and obsession for underage girls" and that he had sexually assaulted them (and many others). Epstein has consistently denied criminal wrongdoing and downplayed his 2008 conviction, telling the New York Post that he is " not a sexual predator ." ..."
"... Clinton's relationship with Epstein is old news. It's long been publicly known that Clinton and other notable figures hobnobbed with Epstein. Still, the new headlines the case has generated have given GOPers a fresh opportunity to try to link Clinton to a sex scandal. Williams, the GOP spokesman, was attempting to draw attention to a three-year-old story that does not implicate Clinton in any lawbreaking. That article, which relies on court documents, recounts the story of Virginia Roberts, who alleged that she became Epstein's sex slave at the age of 15 and that Clinton had once had dinner with Epstein and two girls whom she believed were underage (but she didn't know their ages). But, according to the Daily Mail, Roberts said that "as far as she knows, the ex-President did not take the bait." Roberts did say that she believed Clinton had to have been aware of Epstein's alleged illegal activities, but provided no evidence to support her assumption. ..."
Jan 07, 2015 | motherjones.com
Conservatives think they've found new ammunition for their campaign against the Clintons-a new Clinton sex scandal. Or sort of.

On Monday, Raffi Williams, deputy press secretary for the Republican Party, tweeted, "Woman Suing Jeffrey Epstein For Sexual Slavery Claimed Bill Clinton Must Have Known" and linked to a post that in turn referred to a Daily Mail story from 2011. The Drudge Report went for the more sensational "BUBBA AND THE PALM BEACH PEDOPHILE" and linked to the same story. Conservative viral news sites Twitchy and IJReview piled on, as did pundits at conservative websites, including Breitbart and the Blaze.

What has the right in a tizzy is a six-year-old lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein, a former Democratic donor who has been accused of luring underage girls to his island resort to give massages before ultimately sexually assaulting them. Epstein, a billionaire hedge fund manager, pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting an underage woman and served 13 months in prison. But unsealed court documents revealed that he had been the subject of a much larger federal probe into alleged prostitution and could have faced 10 years in prison or more, if the case had gone forward. After his guilty plea, two of his alleged victims, who had were underage at the time of their encounter with Epstein, sued him in federal court, claiming that he had a "sexual preference and obsession for underage girls" and that he had sexually assaulted them (and many others). Epstein has consistently denied criminal wrongdoing and downplayed his 2008 conviction, telling the New York Post that he is "not a sexual predator."

Last week a new anonymous allegation was introduced in the case, with a court filing charging that Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth's second son, had sexually abused an underage girl when he was a guest at Epstein's house in the US Virgin Islands. (Prince Andrew has denied any wrongdoing.) And on Monday, The Smoking Gun resurfaced old court documents revealing that Epstein's phone book included telephone numbers and email addresses for Bill Clinton. ("Now that Prince Andrew has found himself ensnared in the sleazy sex slave story of wealthy degenerate Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton can't be too far behind," the site declared.)

Clinton's relationship with Epstein is old news. It's long been publicly known that Clinton and other notable figures hobnobbed with Epstein. Still, the new headlines the case has generated have given GOPers a fresh opportunity to try to link Clinton to a sex scandal. Williams, the GOP spokesman, was attempting to draw attention to a three-year-old story that does not implicate Clinton in any lawbreaking. That article, which relies on court documents, recounts the story of Virginia Roberts, who alleged that she became Epstein's sex slave at the age of 15 and that Clinton had once had dinner with Epstein and two girls whom she believed were underage (but she didn't know their ages). But, according to the Daily Mail, Roberts said that "as far as she knows, the ex-President did not take the bait." Roberts did say that she believed Clinton had to have been aware of Epstein's alleged illegal activities, but provided no evidence to support her assumption.

Clinton and Epstein were indeed once close. The former president used Epstein's private jet. And the presence of numerous teenage girls on the financier's private island might have struck a visitor as unusual or even troublesome.

[Jun 28, 2016] Democratic donor lobbied Secretary of State Hillary Clintons office for board appointment despite lack of experience

This just one case of Clinton's family corruption and probably not the most outrageous one. It is now more clear why she deleted so many emails. Clinton faces many questions about whether she helped her family foundation collect millions of dollars from questionable people, countries and organizations when she was secretary of state.
Notable quotes:
"... A major Democratic donor personally lobbied then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's office for a seat on a sensitive government intelligence board, telling one of her closest aides that if appointed he would make Clinton "look good." ..."
"... The emails shed new light on how Fernando got a spot on the International Security Advisory Board . He resigned in 2011, days after his appointment and after his selection was questioned. ..."
"... In recent weeks, emails obtained by Citizens United show the appointment perplexed the State Department's professional staff, according to ABC News , and that dozens of State Department officials worked overtime to quickly obtain Fernando's security clearance, according to Fox News . ..."
"... Reines appeared to mock the appointment by responding to Samuelson: "Not the most compelling response I've ever seen since it's such a dense topic the board resolves around. Couldn't he have landed a spot on the President's Physical Fitness Council?" ..."
Jun 27, 2015 | mcclatchydc.com

Rajiv Fernando lobbied top Clinton aide for a seat on sensitive intelligence board. He had little experience in the field and resigned after appointment was scrutinized. The Chicago businessman donated to Clinton, Obama and the Clinton Foundation.

A major Democratic donor personally lobbied then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's office for a seat on a sensitive government intelligence board, telling one of her closest aides that if appointed he would make Clinton "look good."

Rajiv Fernando acknowledged that he may not have the experience to sit on a board that would allow him the highest levels of top-secret access, but he assured deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin in newly released 2009 emails that he was talking to two professors who were "getting me up to speed on the academics behind the field."

Fernando, who contributed to Clinton, her family's foundation and Barack Obama, described himself as one of "Hillary's people" and mentioned that he recently had sent an ailing Clinton flowers to wish her a speedy recovery.

The emails shed new light on how Fernando got a spot on the International Security Advisory Board. He resigned in 2011, days after his appointment and after his selection was questioned.

... ... ...

In recent weeks, emails obtained by Citizens United show the appointment perplexed the State Department's professional staff, according to ABC News, and that dozens of State Department officials worked overtime to quickly obtain Fernando's security clearance, according to Fox News.

Reines appeared to mock the appointment by responding to Samuelson: "Not the most compelling response I've ever seen since it's such a dense topic the board resolves around. Couldn't he have landed a spot on the President's Physical Fitness Council?"

Fernando founded Chopper Trading, a high-frequency trading firm that was acquired by the Chicago firm DRW Trading Group in 2015. In an economic speech last year, Clinton criticized high-frequency traders. Providence, Rhode Island, sued Chopper Trading and other financial companies, charging they'd defrauded the city, which managed funds for its employees.

[Jun 13, 2016] Why Trump Is Panicking

Notable quotes:
"... National Review ..."
"... If Donald Trump, as seems more than likely, prevails in the GOP primary, then a number of neocons may defect to the Clinton campaign. Already Robert Kagan announced in the Washington Post ..."
"... The impulse of the neocons to return to the Democratic Party should not be wholly surprising. In 1972, for example, Robert L. Bartley, the editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... For its part, neoconservatism has always had a nationalistic streak. But Trump represents everything that the neocons believed that they had purged from the GOP. He represents continuity with the Buchananite wing, the belief that America should tend to its own knitting before launching hopeless wars abroad. When it comes to foreign policy, however, the second generation of neocons such as Kagan does not trace its lineage back to Ohio Senator Robert Taft but to the one that Republicans in the early 1950s reviled: the Truman administration. ..."
The National Interest
Anyone looking for further converts to the Hillary Clinton campaign might do well to look at the Marco Rubio campaign. If Clinton is the leading liberal hawk, Rubio is the foremost neocon candidate. In 2014 National Review published an article about him titled "The neocons return."

Whether it's Cuba or Iran or Russia, he stakes out the most intransigent line: "I disagree with voices in my own party who argue we should not engage at all, who warn we should heed the words of John Quincy Adams not to go 'abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.'" Not surprisingly, he's surrounded himself with neocon advisers, ranging from Max Boot to Jamie Fly to Elliott Abrams.

If Donald Trump, as seems more than likely, prevails in the GOP primary, then a number of neocons may defect to the Clinton campaign. Already Robert Kagan announced in the Washington Post on Thursday that he intends to back Hillary Clinton if Donald Trump receives the GOP nomination. The fact is that the loyalty of the neocons has always been to an ideology of American exceptionalism, not to a particular party.

This is what separates the neocon conversion to Clinton from previous examples of Republicans endorsing Barack Obama. Colin Powell wasn't making an ideological statement. He was making a practical one, based on his distaste for where the GOP was headed. For the neocons this is a much more heartfelt moment. They have invested decades in trying to reshape the GOP into their own image, and were quite successful at it. But now a formidable challenge is taking place as the GOP reverts to its traditional heritage.

The impulse of the neocons to return to the Democratic Party should not be wholly surprising. In 1972, for example, Robert L. Bartley, the editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, wrote that the fledgling neoconservatives represented "something of a swing group between the two major parties." He was right. The neoconservatives had their home in the Democratic Party in the 1960s. Then they marched rightward, in reaction to the rise of the adversary culture inside the Democratic Party. George McGovern's run for the presidency in 1972, followed by the Jimmy Carter presidency, sent them into the arms of Ronald Reagan and the GOP.

But it wasn't until the George W. Bush presidency that the neocons became the dominant foreign policy force inside the GOP. They promptly proceeded to wreck his presidency by championing the war in Iraq. Today, having wrecked it, they are now threatening to bolt the GOP and support Hillary Clinton rather than Donald Trump for the presidency.

Something like this scenario is what I predicted in the New York Times in July 2014. Trump wasn't around then as a force inside the GOP. But already it seemed clear that some of the leading neocons such as Kagan were receptive to Clinton. Now, in a Washington Post column, Kagan has gone all in.

He decries Republican obstructionism, antipathy to Obama, and the rise of Trump. The tone is apocalyptic. According to Kagan,

"So what to do now? The Republicans' creation will soon be let loose on the land, leaving to others the job the party failed to carry out. For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be."

This itself represents a curious case of neocon hyperbole. Kagan is an eloquent writer, but he elides the fact that many of Trump's positions are not all that different from what the GOP has espoused in the past when it comes to domestic issues. It is on foreign affairs where Trump represents a marked shift and it is this that truly troubles the neocon wing.

Trump has made it clear that he's dubious about foreign interventions. He's indicated that he would treat with Russian president Vladimir Putin. His entire foreign policy credo, such as it is, seems to have a Jacksonian pedigree-don't tread on me.

For its part, neoconservatism has always had a nationalistic streak. But Trump represents everything that the neocons believed that they had purged from the GOP. He represents continuity with the Buchananite wing, the belief that America should tend to its own knitting before launching hopeless wars abroad. When it comes to foreign policy, however, the second generation of neocons such as Kagan does not trace its lineage back to Ohio Senator Robert Taft but to the one that Republicans in the early 1950s reviled: the Truman administration.

Here we come full circle. The origins of the neocons are in the Democratic Party. Should Clinton become the Democratic nominee and Trump the Republican one, a number of neocons may make common cause with Clinton. Watch Rubio's ranks first.

Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of the National Interest.

[Jun 13, 2016] Neocon Kagan Endorses Hillary Clinton

Notable quotes:
"... Prominent neocon Robert Kagan has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, saying she represents the best hope for saving the United States from populist billionaire Donald Trump, who has repudiated the neoconservative cause of U.S. military interventions in line with Israel's interests. ..."
"... Then referring to himself, he added, "For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The [Republican] party cannot be saved, but the country still can be." ..."
"... Kagan, who I've known since the 1980s when he was a rising star on Ronald Reagan's State Department propaganda team (selling violent right-wing policies in Central America), has been signaling his affection for Clinton for some time, at least since she appointed him as an adviser to her State Department and promoted his wife Victoria Nuland, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, to be the State Department's chief spokesperson. Largely because of Clinton's patronage, Nuland rose to assistant secretary of state for European affairs and oversaw the provocative "regime change" in Ukraine in 2014. ..."
"... "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else." ..."
"... Now, Kagan, whose Project for the New American Century wrote the blueprint for George W. Bush's disastrous Iraq War, is now abandoning the Republican Party in favor of Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... While Kagan's op-ed surely makes some accurate points about Republicans, his endorsement of Hillary Clinton raises a different issue for Democrats: Do they want a presidential candidate who someone as savvy as Kagan knows will perpetuate neocon strategies around the world? Do Democrats really trust Hillary Clinton to handle delicate issues, such as the Syrian conflict, without resorting to escalations that may make the neocon disasters under George W. Bush look minor by comparison? ..."
"... Perhaps Robert Kagan's endorsement of Hillary Clinton and what that underscores about the likely foreign policy of a second Clinton presidency might finally force war or peace to the fore of the campaign. ..."
"... America's Stolen Narrative, ..."
Feb 25, 2016 | Consortiumnews

Exclusive: Hillary Clinton's cozy ties to Washington's powerful neocons have paid off with the endorsement of Robert Kagan, one of the most influential neocons. But it also should raise questions among Democrats about what kind of foreign policy a President Hillary Clinton would pursue, writes Robert Parry.

Prominent neocon Robert Kagan has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, saying she represents the best hope for saving the United States from populist billionaire Donald Trump, who has repudiated the neoconservative cause of U.S. military interventions in line with Israel's interests.

In a Washington Post op-ed published on Thursday, Kagan excoriated the Republican Party for creating the conditions for Trump's rise and then asked, "So what to do now? The Republicans' creation will soon be let loose on the land, leaving to others the job the party failed to carry out."

Then referring to himself, he added, "For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The [Republican] party cannot be saved, but the country still can be."

While many of Kagan's observations about the Republican tolerance and even encouragement of bigotry are correct, the fact that a leading neocon, a co-founder of the infamous Project for the New American Century, has endorsed Clinton raises questions for Democrats who have so far given the former New York senator and Secretary of State mostly a pass on her pro-interventionist policies.

The fact is that Clinton has generally marched in lock step with the neocons as they have implemented an aggressive "regime change" strategy against governments and political movements that don't toe Washington's line or that deviate from Israel's goals in the Middle East. So she has backed coups, such as in Honduras (2009) and Ukraine (2014); invasions, such as Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011); and subversions such as Syria (from 2011 to the present) all with various degrees of disastrous results.

Yet, with the failure of Republican establishment candidates to gain political traction against Trump, Clinton has clearly become the choice of many neoconservatives and "liberal interventionists" who favor continuation of U.S. imperial designs around the world. The question for Democrats now is whether they wish to perpetuate those war-like policies by sticking with Clinton or should switch to Sen. Bernie Sanders, who offers a somewhat less aggressive (though vaguely defined) foreign policy.

Sanders has undermined his appeal to anti-imperialist Democrats by muting his criticism of Clinton's "regime change" strategies and concentrating relentlessly on his message of "income inequality" for which Clinton has disingenuously dubbed him a "single-issue candidate." Whether Sanders has the will and the time to reorient his campaign to question Clinton's status as the new neocon choice remains in doubt.

A Reagan Propagandist

Kagan, who I've known since the 1980s when he was a rising star on Ronald Reagan's State Department propaganda team (selling violent right-wing policies in Central America), has been signaling his affection for Clinton for some time, at least since she appointed him as an adviser to her State Department and promoted his wife Victoria Nuland, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, to be the State Department's chief spokesperson. Largely because of Clinton's patronage, Nuland rose to assistant secretary of state for European affairs and oversaw the provocative "regime change" in Ukraine in 2014.

Later in 2014, Kagan told The New York Times that he hoped that his neocon views which he had begun to call "liberal interventionist" would prevail in a possible Hillary Clinton administration. The Times reported that Clinton "remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes" and quoted Kagan as saying:

"I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else."

Now, Kagan, whose Project for the New American Century wrote the blueprint for George W. Bush's disastrous Iraq War, is now abandoning the Republican Party in favor of Hillary Clinton.

... ... ...

While Kagan's op-ed surely makes some accurate points about Republicans, his endorsement of Hillary Clinton raises a different issue for Democrats: Do they want a presidential candidate who someone as savvy as Kagan knows will perpetuate neocon strategies around the world? Do Democrats really trust Hillary Clinton to handle delicate issues, such as the Syrian conflict, without resorting to escalations that may make the neocon disasters under George W. Bush look minor by comparison?

Will Clinton even follow the latest neocon dream of "regime change" in Moscow as the ultimate way of collapsing Israel's lesser obstacles - Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian resistance? Does Clinton have the wisdom to understand that neocon schemes are often half-baked (remember "the cakewalk" in Iraq) and that the risk of overthrowing Vladimir Putin in Moscow might lead not to some new pliable version of Boris Yeltsin but to a dangerous Russian nationalist ready to use the nuclear codes to defend Mother Russia? (For all Putin's faults, he is a calculating adversary, not a crazy one.)

The fact that none of these life-and-death foreign policy questions has been thoroughly or intelligently explored during the Democratic presidential campaign is a failure of both the mainstream media moderators and the two candidates, Sanders and Clinton, neither of whom seems to want a serious or meaningful debate about these existential issues.

Perhaps Robert Kagan's endorsement of Hillary Clinton and what that underscores about the likely foreign policy of a second Clinton presidency might finally force war or peace to the fore of the campaign.

[For more on the powerful Kagan family, see Consortiumnews.com's "A Family Business of Perpetual War."]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

[Jun 03, 2016] 2016 Election Why Some of the Smartest Progressives I Know Will Vote for Trump over Hillary by Yves Smith

Notable quotes:
"... Finally, there is the stench of corruption, dating back to Hillary's impossible-by any legitimate means-trick of parlaying $1,000 into $100,000 in a series of commodities trades in 1978. The Clintons and their backers seriously expect the rubes to believe that large financial firms happily forked over their hefty speaking fees purely out of interest in what they had to say, or that Middle Eastern and Taiwanese moneybags gave big bucks to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary was secretary of state out of their deep belief in the foundation's lofty goals. Why has Hillary refused to release the transcripts of her Goldman speeches, wiped her server and foot-dragged on releasing allegedly personal emails? ..."
"... If my readers are representative, Clinton and the Democratic Party are about to have a long-overdue day of reckoning. ..."
June 01, 2016 | POLITICO Magazine
hy do progressives reject Hillary Clinton? The highly educated, high-income, finance-literate readers of my website, Naked Capitalism , don't just overwhelmingly favor Bernie Sanders. They also say "Hell no!" to Hillary Clinton to the degree that many say they would even vote for Donald Trump over her.

And they don't come by these views casually. Their conclusions are the result of careful study of her record and her policy proposals. They believe the country can no longer endure the status quo that Clinton represents-one of crushing inequality, and an economy that is literally killing off the less fortunate-and any change will be better. One reader writes :

Story Continued Below

"If Clinton is the nominee 9 out of 10 friends I polled will [do one of three things]:

A. Not vote for president in November.
B. Vote for Trump.
C. Write in Bernie as a protest vote.

"We are all fifty-somethings with money and college educations. Oh, and we are all registered Democrats."

Or as another reader puts it :

"I don't want to vote for Trump. I want to vote for Bernie. But I have reached the point where I feel like voting for Trump against Clinton would be doing my patriotic duty. … If the only way to escape a trap is to gnaw off my leg, I'd like to think I'd have the guts to do it."

To be sure, not all of my Sanders-supporting readers would vote for Trump. But only a minority would ever vote for Clinton, and I'd guess that a lot of them would just stay home if she were the nominee. Many of my readers tend to be very progressive, and they have been driven even further in that direction by their sophisticated understanding of the inequities of Wall Street, especially in the run-up to and the aftermath of the financial crisis, when no senior executives went to jail, the biggest banks got bigger, and Hillary paid homage to Goldman Sachs. True progressives, as opposed to the Vichy Left, recognize that the Clintons only helped these inequities along. They recognize that, both in the 1990s and now, the Clintons do not and have never represented them. They believe the most powerful move they can take to foster change is to withhold their support.

Some of them also have very reasoned arguments for Trump. Hillary is a known evil. Trump is unknown. They'd rather bet on the unknown, since it will also send a big message to Team Dem that they can no longer abuse progressives. I personally know women in the demographic that is viewed as being solidly behind Hillary-older, professional women who live in major cities-who regard Trump as an acceptable cost of getting rid of the Clintons.

Who does Naked Capitalism represent? The site, which I describe as "fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and power," receives 1.3 million to 1.5 million page views a month and has amassed approximately 80 million readers since its launch in 2006. Its readership is disproportionately graduate school-educated, older, male and high income. Despite the overall predominance of male readers, many of the fiercest critics of Clinton in the commentariat are women, with handles like HotFlash, Katniss Everdeen, Martha r, Portia, Bev and Pat.

What they also object to is that the larger bloc of Sanders voters has been treated with abuse and contempt by the Clinton camp, despite the fact that their positions-such as strengthening Social Security and Medicare, stronger educational funding and higher minimum wages-have for decades polled by solid majorities or, at worst, ample pluralities in the electorate at large.

By contrast, the Democratic Party in the Clinton and Obama administrations has consistently embraced and implemented policies that strip workers of economic and legal rights to benefit investors and the elite professionals that serve them. Over time, the "neoliberal" economic order-which sees only good, never bad, in the relentless untrammeling of capital and the deregulation of markets-has created an unacceptable level of economic insecurity and distress for those outside the 1 percent and the elite professionals who serve them.

The result is that the U.S. economy is becoming lethal to the less fortunate, according to the New York Times , which reported this week that U.S. death rates have risen for the first time in a decade. The increase in death rates among less educated whites since 2001 is roughly the size of the AIDS epidemic. One cause, the opioid epidemic, resulted from Purdue Pharma overselling the effectiveness of reformulated OxyContin, then recommending higher dosages when it failed to work properly, which experts deemed a prescription for creating addicts, according to a number of lawsuits. This was permitted by the U.S. government, leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths. Despite President Barack Obama's Panglossian claim that the economy is doing well, the spike in suicides to levels over those during the financial crisis belies that .

Yet the Clinton campaign is in such denial about this that it has become vitriolic in its verbal and tactical attacks on Sanders and his supporters-rather than recognizing that the stunning success of his campaign is proof of their abject policy failures. The message is clear: The Clintons believe, as Bill himself put it, that the true progressives have nowhere to go.

But in fact, they've been leaving. The Clinton and Obama administrations presided over the worst losses in congressional and state races in modern history in 1994, 2010 and 2012. And voter preferences were clear. Under Obama, it was the Blue Dog, Third Way Democrats who were turfed out, while candidates with strong stances on economic justice kept their seats. Similarly, as political scientist Tom Ferguson pointed out in a Roosevelt Institute paper , Obama's loss of a Senate majority when Republican Scott Brown won in Massachusetts was the result of his focus on bailing out banks rather than aiding distressed homeowners (or forcing mortgage services to give modifications to borrowers who still had adequate income, as banks had done historically). The level of votes for Brown was strongly correlated with the amount of foreclosures in those particular districts.

True progressives know that the Clinton and Obama presidencies have brought inequality to Gilded Era, banana-republic levels. They know that Obama's policies, which the Clintons embrace, have had all of the post-crisis income gains accrue to the top 1 percent . In addition, corporate profits have risen to nearly double the ratio to GDP that Warren Buffett deemed unsustainably high in the early 2000s. Unlike China, they've also ushered in an era of high unemployment and underemployment, as reflected in unheard-of low levels of labor force participation and unemployment among the young in a nominal expansion.

The Clintons' dismal record, which Hillary cannot run away from, speaks for itself. And this is what makes many progressives I know unable to support her, even if she wins the nomination. Consider the reasons why they feel this way:

Social Security . Bill Clinton made a deal with Newt Gingrich to privatize Social Security, but Monica Lewinsky derailed his plans . Sanders has promised to strengthen Social Security. By contrast, Clinton wants to "preserve" it, which includes means-testing. That would put Social Security on a path to being a welfare program, not a universal safety net, making it vulnerable in the long run. Bill Clinton's ending of welfare is an illustration of the regular pattern, dating back to England's Poor Law of 1834, of gutting safety nets for the poor.

Climate change . Sanders calls for a full-bore, Marshall-Plan level commitment to reducing carbon output. Hillary talks about climate change but pushed for fracking in Europe while secretary of state. The Clintons remain firmly committed to fracking, which ruins water supplies and releases large amounts of methane.

Minimum wage. Inflation-adjusted minimum wage increases under Clinton were negligible-virtually identical to those under George H.W. Bush. Obama promised a minimum wage increase to $9.50 an hour and failed to act in the first four years of his presidency. Sanders wants to raise minimum wages to $15 an hour, while Clinton stands pat with the administration plan to increase wages to $12 an hour by 2020.

Trade deals . Bill Clinton ushered in NAFTA, which was touted as positive for growth and employment, and is now widely acknowledged to have cost nearly a million jobs. Even one of its chief promoters, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, now deems it to have been a failure for American workers. Hillary consistently backed the Trans-Pacific Partnership until Sanders made an issue of it, and she's recently returned to supporting it. The potential growth and income gains from this agreement and its European sister, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, are only marginally positive, while the loss of national sovereignty would be enormous. These agreements would enable foreign investors to challenge laws for labor, environmental and consumer protection, for threatening future profits.

Health care . Sanders wants single-payer, government-provided health care. Around the world, single payer has uncontestably demonstrated that it delivers better results overall at vastly lower cost. Obamacare took single payer off the table, instead rearranging the current costly, clumsy system while guaranteeing profits for health insurers and Big Pharma. Clinton at most has offered patches, but the pressure from Sanders has compelled her to suggest an early buy-in for Medicare.

That's before we get to the Clintons' loyalty to the Robert Rubin and neoliberal fetish of balanced budgets, which most economists say are not necessary. The recent European experience with austerity shows how disastrous that approach is, particularly in the wake of a financial crisis. Hillary's hawkishness means an even greater commitment to military spending, so voters are assured to get more guns and less butter were she to become president.

The Sanders supporters I interact with also reject Hillary's trickle-down feminism as a substitute for economic and social justice. Clinton is correct when she points out that there is a glass-ceiling issue for women. There are fewer female CEOs, billionaires and senators. Women in the elite don't have it as good as men. But pray tell, what is having more women, or Hispanics or blacks, in top roles going to do for nurses and hospital orderlies, or the minority group members disproportionately represented in low-wage jobs like part-time fast food workers? Class mobility has become close to nonexistent in America. If you are born in one of the lower-income cohorts, you are almost certain to stay there.

As a woman who broke through an important glass ceiling on Wall Street-Christina Mohr, the first woman to become partner in mergers and acquisitions at Lazard-told a shocked group at Radcliffe seeking better career opportunities for women many years ago: "Nothing will change until women own the means of production." And that sort of change comes from the bottom up.

Then there are questions of competence. Hillary has a résumé of glittering titles with disasters or at best thin accomplishments under each. Her vaunted co-presidency with Bill? After her first major project, health care reform, turned into such a debacle that it was impossible to broach the topic for a generation, she retreated into a more traditional first lady role. As New York senator, she accomplished less with a bigger name and from a more powerful state than Sanders did . As secretary of state, she participated and encouraged strategically pointless nation-breaking in Iraq and Syria. She bureaucratically outmaneuvered Obama, leading to U.S. intervention in Libya, which he has called the worst decision of his administration. And her plan to fob her domestic economic duties off on Bill comes off as an admission that she can't handle being president on her own.

Mind you, these issues are all topics in the current debates. But what is as important, but not as obvious, is the way that most citizens have been stripped of legal and economic protections. As economist Michael Hudson put it, "Most inequality does not reflect differing levels of productivity, but distortions resulting from property rights or other special privileges." The Clinton era brought in weaker anti-trust enforcement, which allowed companies to accumulate more market share and with it, more ability to extract rents. Binding arbitration, which strips employees and consumers of their right to a day in court, has become widespread. Pensions, which used to be sacrosanct (and still are if you are a CEO), are regularly renegotiated. Banks got away with predatory servicing and wrongful foreclosures. Not only was the 2012 National Mortgage Settlement a "get out of liability almost free" card so large that it was tantamount to a second bailout, but banks were not required to fix their faulty servicing platforms, assuring that they'd revert to foreclosure abuses again when delinquencies rise. And let us not forget that senior bankers are a protected class, exempt from prosecution.

Finally, there is the stench of corruption, dating back to Hillary's impossible-by any legitimate means-trick of parlaying $1,000 into $100,000 in a series of commodities trades in 1978. The Clintons and their backers seriously expect the rubes to believe that large financial firms happily forked over their hefty speaking fees purely out of interest in what they had to say, or that Middle Eastern and Taiwanese moneybags gave big bucks to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary was
secretary of state out of their deep belief in the foundation's lofty goals. Why has Hillary refused to release the transcripts of her Goldman speeches, wiped her server and foot-dragged on releasing allegedly personal emails?

The Sanders voters in Naked Capitalism 's active commentariat also explicitly reject lesser-evilism, the cudgel that has previously kept true lefties somewhat in line. They are willing to gamble, given that outsider presidents like Jimmy Carter and celebrity governors like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura didn't get much done, that a Trump presidency represents an acceptable cost of inflicting punishment on the Democratic Party for 20 years of selling out ordinary Americans.

The Clintons, like the Bourbons before the French Revolution, have ensconced themselves in such a bubble of operative and media sycophancy that they've mistakenly viewed escalating distress and legitimate demands from citizens as mere noise. Sanders voters are taking their cue from Talleyrand, the statesman who navigated the Revolution and the turbulent 50 years that followed with remarkable success: "I have never abandoned a party before it abandoned itself."

If my readers are representative, Clinton and the Democratic Party are about to have a long-overdue day of reckoning.

[May 17, 2016] Hillary Clinton Unbelievably Nasty, Mean Enabler Of Pervy Prez Bill, Trump Slams

May 17, 2016 | radaronline.com

Hillary Clinton is an "unbelievably nasty, mean enabler," and Donald Trump isn't going to let her get away with it!

The presumptive GOP nominee went on a blistering Twitter rant Tuesday, after a Clinton Super Pac released its first attack aids aimed at him.

"Amazing that Crooked Hillary can do a hit ad on me concerning women when her husband was the WORST abuser of woman in U.S. political history," Trump wrote.

The presumptive GOP nominee was referring to Bill's numerous trysts with women over the years. Trump accused Hillary of being the reason for Bill's infidelities, and shamed her for mistreating the women Bill cheated with.

"And just remember this," Trump said. "She was an unbelievably nasty, mean enabler, and what she did to a lot of those women is disgraceful."

So what did Bill have to say about being called the WORST abuser of woman in U.S. political history? When MSNBC asked him for a comment during a campaign event in Puerto Rico, the former president smiled and at first declined to say anything. Then he sidestepped the issue.

"No I won't [comment]," Clinton said. "I think people are smart enough to figure this out without my help."

But that didn't stop the Trump tweets from firing! Later in the day, Trump lashed out again at the Clintons for their economic policies.

[Apr 30, 2016] Watch Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, and Phil Gramm Have a Love Fest Over Repeal of Glass Steagall

Notable quotes:
"... Summers also gives a pean to the fact that big bad government was no longer such a big presence in the financial markets (Treasury bonds outstanding were going down) meant that financial players were out there, doing a marvelous job of allocating. This was two years after Greenspan had already voiced doubts about the dot-com bubble with his "irrational exuberance" remark. ..."
"... At 14:00, Bill Clinton takes the stage, and at around 16:00, he turns his pitch on how great the economy is. He cites productivity gains that were later called into question (I recall a Barrons article in 1999 or 2000 that identified that all of the productivity gains for the previous period (a quarter? a year?) were entirely due to increases in computer manufacturing, and that in turn was due to hedonic price adjustments. In other words, the Barrons article raised big red flags about the extent of the New Economy productivity miracle. ..."
"... One commentor at Daily Bail pointed out how Clinton later attempted to deny his enthusiasm for shredding Glass Steagall. From Bill Clinton on deregulation: 'The Republicans made me do it!' at the Columbia Journalism Review in 2013: ..."
"... The large point is the Clintons have been loyal followers of the Robert Rubin school of thinking, that bankers should run the economy, not just ours but everywhere. And he and his acolytes have been extremely successful in promoting finance-friendly policies around the world. And despite the wreckage of the global financial crisis, there has been little change in either the fealty to neoliberal ideology or the power of financiers. But both are seen as less and less legitimate by broader society, which is a key first step in reducing their influence. ..."
"... Can never say it enough, SCUMBAGS all. ..."
"... Hey Bill, all you had to do was veto all and we'd still be 'Great' ..."
"... In the case of Gramm-Leach, it's hard to see how a veto would have made any difference except on a purely symbolic level – it passed both Houses with veto-proof majorities (90-8, with 2 not voting in the Senate; 362-57, with 15 not voting in the House). It's pretty disingenuous of ol' Bill to blame those Evil Republicans for it, though, since 84% of Senate Democrats and 75% of House Democrats voted in favor of it. ..."
"... Can't watch more than a minute of Larry and 20 secs of Phil. Comparing laws condoning slavery to those protecting working people from the rentiers, enough to make one vomit. There are humans, and there are humanoids, these are the latter. I'll skip listening to the used-car salesman from AK. ..."
"... Doublespeak, lies, and mainstream media haigography allow the neoliberal leaders to continue to remain influential across the nation. Closed political systems mean that real outside challenges to the status quo remain very difficult. The rise of Sanders and unfortunately Trump speak to the poor job that our leaders have done since the recent economic collapse and an awakening in the people that the status quo will no longer do. Perhaps after another feckless Clinton administration spars with an increasingly right wing Congress we'll get an actual change. ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com
April 28, 2016 by Yves Smith Michael M. Thomas insisted, correctly, that we post on a wee bit of history unearthed by Daily Bail : a video showing the key actors in the passage of the bill that formally ended Glass Steagall patting each other on the back. Well, almost all of the key actors. Most of the speakers make a point of singling out former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin as a moving force, along with former New York Senator Al Damato.

Mind you, despite the self-congratulatory tone of this meeting, Glass Steagall was a dead letter when it was formally dismantled. The only reason for taking the final step of tearing it down was that the insurer Travelers had cheekily struck a deal to buy Citigroup, and Glass Steagall stood in the way. Glass Steagall had been breached when Credit Suisse invested in bulge bracket investment bank First Boston in 1988, which enabled the bank to take a majority interest in 1990 as part of a rescue. During the 1990s, financial regulators liberalized the rules under which banks could engage in investment banking activities, to the point that it merely took a little attention to certain structural and accounting niceties for banks to operate largely unfettered.

This clip is a reminder of the ideology that got us into our current mess: rising inequality and debt levels, a global meltdown that led to the greatest looting of the public purse in history, followed by stagnation and deflation that is too widely blamed on the march of technology and not on poor policies and overt corruption. And this thinking is very much alive.

You'll see Phil Gramm, at the outset, praise "free markets" even though that is an intellectually incoherent notion and depict the New Deal reforms as the result of Depression-bottom lack of faith. At around 12:00, Larry Summers tells the audience how great it is that the Federal government has been running a surplus. In fact, the Federal government acting as a fiscal drag meant some other sector had to dissave, as in borrow and spend, to make up for that to keep the economy from contracting. Since businesses had already gotten in the habit of being overly short-termist, it was consumers who were increasingly taking up the slack. And as we know now, high levels of consumer debt are a negative for growth. Yet that was the driver of the Clinton "prosperity".

Summers also gives a pean to the fact that big bad government was no longer such a big presence in the financial markets (Treasury bonds outstanding were going down) meant that financial players were out there, doing a marvelous job of allocating. This was two years after Greenspan had already voiced doubts about the dot-com bubble with his "irrational exuberance" remark.

At 14:00, Bill Clinton takes the stage, and at around 16:00, he turns his pitch on how great the economy is. He cites productivity gains that were later called into question (I recall a Barrons article in 1999 or 2000 that identified that all of the productivity gains for the previous period (a quarter? a year?) were entirely due to increases in computer manufacturing, and that in turn was due to hedonic price adjustments. In other words, the Barrons article raised big red flags about the extent of the New Economy productivity miracle.

But even allowing for the fact that some and probably most of the gains were real, you'll see Clinton try to sell a Big Lie: that productivity gains were tied to increased worker prosperity. As numerous commentators pointed out, that story had stopped being true as of roughly 1976. Businesses once did share the benefits of productivity gains with workers, but as labor bargaining power weakened, kept it for themselves. Clinton continues with his canards, praising "open borders" as keeping inflation low. The mechanism by which inflation is contained is by restricting wage growth. A prosperous, full employment economy will feature strong growth in pay levels, and will at some point lead to pricing pressure (mind you, profit levels in the US are now so far outside historical norms that businesses could go a long way in increasing wages if they weren't so greedy). So his low inflation story is again at odds with his effort to depict everything as rosy for average workers.

One commentor at Daily Bail pointed out how Clinton later attempted to deny his enthusiasm for shredding Glass Steagall. From Bill Clinton on deregulation: 'The Republicans made me do it!' at the Columbia Journalism Review in 2013:

Bill Clinton sat down with Fareed Zakaria last week ….Clinton's comment about his record on regulation is an actual newsmaker, because it's a giant whopper:

What happened? The American people gave the Congress to a group of very conservative Republicans. When they passed bills with the veto proof majority with a lot of Democrats voting for it, that I couldn't stop, all of a sudden we turn out to be maniacal deregulators. I mean, come on. I know Senator Warren said the other day, admitted when she introduced a bill to reinstate the division between commercial and investment banks, she admitted that the repeal of Glass-Steagall did not cause one single solitary financial institution to fail.

This is, to be kind, bullshit….Clinton installed Robert Rubin and Larry Summers in the Treasury, which resulted in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which officially did in Glass-Steagall and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which left the derivatives market a laissez-faire Wild West (not to mention a disastrous strong dollar policy that was a critical and underrated factor in the bubble). He also reappointed Ayn Rand-acolyte Alan Greenspan, who has as much responsibility as anyone for creating the crisis, as Fed chairman-twice….his administration actively encouraged the big deregulatory legislation, and squashed its own dissenters, like Brooksley Born, who saw disaster ahead.

There's even more detail in the CJR story, in case you'd ever need to cite it to Clintonistas.

The large point is the Clintons have been loyal followers of the Robert Rubin school of thinking, that bankers should run the economy, not just ours but everywhere. And he and his acolytes have been extremely successful in promoting finance-friendly policies around the world. And despite the wreckage of the global financial crisis, there has been little change in either the fealty to neoliberal ideology or the power of financiers. But both are seen as less and less legitimate by broader society, which is a key first step in reducing their influence.

1 Kings , April 28, 2016 at 4:45 am

Can never say it enough, SCUMBAGS all.

Yeah, NAFTA, GATT, Telecom Act, 'Crime' Bill, Steagall, CFMA. etc.all because the bad Repubs made me.
Hey Bill, all you had to do was veto all and we'd still be 'Great', as Trump would say. Instead, well, we know you and your wife enjoy the perks, and the power, and the cash, the cash, the cash…

Roger Smith , April 28, 2016 at 11:06 am

That is not even the worst part. He ultimately blamed the citizens for it. What a pathetic piece of trash.

Propertius , April 28, 2016 at 5:15 pm

Hey Bill, all you had to do was veto all and we'd still be 'Great'

In the case of Gramm-Leach, it's hard to see how a veto would have made any difference except on a purely symbolic level – it passed both Houses with veto-proof majorities (90-8, with 2 not voting in the Senate; 362-57, with 15 not voting in the House). It's pretty disingenuous of ol' Bill to blame those Evil Republicans for it, though, since 84% of Senate Democrats and 75% of House Democrats voted in favor of it.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1999/roll570.xml
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=106&session=1&vote=00354&TB_iframe=true&width=720&height=540

Yes, he should have vetoed it anyway.

JoeK , April 28, 2016 at 5:44 am

Can't watch more than a minute of Larry and 20 secs of Phil. Comparing laws condoning slavery to those protecting working people from the rentiers, enough to make one vomit. There are humans, and there are humanoids, these are the latter. I'll skip listening to the used-car salesman from AK.

Larry , April 28, 2016 at 5:57 am

And it bears repeating that Obama was nothing but an extension of the Clinton administration as evidenced both in overt policy, double speak, and appointment of Clinton era heads of departments who descended from the tree of Rubin.

Doublespeak, lies, and mainstream media haigography allow the neoliberal leaders to continue to remain influential across the nation. Closed political systems mean that real outside challenges to the status quo remain very difficult. The rise of Sanders and unfortunately Trump speak to the poor job that our leaders have done since the recent economic collapse and an awakening in the people that the status quo will no longer do. Perhaps after another feckless Clinton administration spars with an increasingly right wing Congress we'll get an actual change.

James Levy , April 28, 2016 at 6:05 am

I think we miss something if we ignore the post-Soviet collapse as part of this. America was going to rule the world and it was going to do so through control of the global financial system. To do that, it needed mega financial institutions even less transparent and responsible than the IMF and World Bank. An alliance for private sector gain and global dominance more massive than anything Walter Wriston could have dreamed of was created to enhance American power and push the Washington Consensus.

The American state and American corporations would strengthen and flourish. Millions of Americans would not. They would be the collateral damage in the drive for global domination. The whole Washington duopoly was on board. They neither knew nor cared what the cost would be for average Americans. Hey, given the ideology of the Republicans and Democrats, anyone who could not pull themselves up by their bootstraps ("compete!") via will (Republican) or education (Democrats) wasn't worth shit anyway. Welcome to Social Darwinian post-Soviet America.

RUKidding , April 28, 2016 at 11:15 am

Good points which bear repeating. This is a lot of the motivation, and those that are in "the club" have done very nicely. For the proles? Who cares? F*ck 'em.

Alex morfesis , April 28, 2016 at 6:49 am

I would rather be living in philadelphia…bill has always struck me as a modern day version of william claude dukenfield….

John Wright , April 28, 2016 at 9:18 am

For the younger generations reading this , Alex is referring to the legendary comic/actor W.C. Fields, who died in 1946.

The comparison of W.C to Bill Clinton is apt.

W.C Fields played the part of a grifter/con-man and gave us such memorable advice as:

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again".. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it":

"A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money"

"Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against"

"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit."

"Everybody's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer."

Here's some history on the Philly quote: from https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/W._C._Fields

"Here lies W. C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia."

"This was an epitaph Fields proposed for himself in a 1925 article in Vanity Fair. It refers to his long standing jokes about Philadelphia (his actual birthplace), and the grave being one place he might actually not prefer to be."

Fields was not fond of Philadelphia.

My late father was a fan of W.C and liked to quote him from time to time.

flora , April 28, 2016 at 10:58 am

The wonderful political cartoonist Pat Oliphant often drew Clinton as W.C.Fields.

fosforos , April 28, 2016 at 11:43 am

How did Clinton screw Sanders? By channeling W.C. Fields: "Never give a sucker an even break"

Propertius , April 28, 2016 at 5:19 pm

My favorite Fields quote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHgv4McMJUk

John Wright , April 28, 2016 at 10:19 am

For Phil Gramm, financial deregulation was a family affair as his wife, Wendy, was heading the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 to 1993.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Lee_Gramm

"After a lobbying campaign from Enron, the CFTC exempted it from regulation in trading of energy derivatives. Subsequently, (Wendy) Gramm resigned from the CFTC and took a seat on the Enron Board of Directors and served on its Audit Committee. While on the board of directors she received donations from Enron to support the Mercatus Center."

She is now "a distinguished senior scholar at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, a free-market think tank based in Washington D.C."

Wendy Gramm is certainly "distinguished" for derivatives deregulation AND not seeing any problem with Enron's books while serving on the audit committee.

Mike G , April 28, 2016 at 8:51 pm

It would be staggering to count how many billions/trillions of dollars the corrupt crony-capitalist Gramms have cost the American economy while bloviating about "free markets".

run75441 , April 28, 2016 at 10:33 pm

I was thinking of Wendy also. Where is Greenspan mentioned in this? It is worth mentioning the Senators who voted against this:

"Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, voted against the legislation. He was joined by seven Democrats: Barbara Boxer of California, Richard H. Bryan of Nevada, Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, Mr. Dorgan and Mr. Wellstone. "

and then there is the Cassandra Booksley Born, CFTC Chair who warned against it also.

JEHR , April 28, 2016 at 10:23 am

Nice Onion video. These people are praising a bill (and its precedents) that will bring financial disaster to every saver and pensioner in the western world. Dante was prescient in creating the eighth and ninth circles where the fraudulent and treacherous people reside, closest to Satan himself. The speakers in the video are prime users of Newspeak. Clinton manifests himself as, to quote Shakespeare , ""Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch!"

What I never can understand is why politicians (who are the government) attack the government (themselves) as obstructionist and unnecessary to their world because the financiers want to be the government which would mean that all actions and laws would be for the creation of more wealth for the already wealthy–a world of horror which we are now getting a taste of!

oh , April 28, 2016 at 3:50 pm

hay un lugar especial en el infierno reservado para esta gente

WorldBLee , April 28, 2016 at 4:52 pm

For anyone who needs translation, the comment above says "There's a special place in hell reserved for these people." And indeed, I wish there was!

RUKidding , April 28, 2016 at 11:16 am

Thanks for the post and history lesson. I cannot bear to watch it. Have to watch my blood pressure. But good to keep laying it out there in the hopes that some may actually learn from history.

I held my nose and voted for Clinton the first time but refused to do so the second time. Won't do it a third time, either. Gimme a break from these rapacious pillaging Clintons!! Ugh.

Vatch , April 28, 2016 at 11:42 am

Although the final repeal in 1999 of the Glass Steagall separation of banking functions was mostly symbolic, I think it eased the way for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act a year later. That abomination made the regulation of Credit Default Swaps illegal, which was troublesome, to say the least.

Yves Smith Post author , April 28, 2016 at 10:15 pm

Good point.

Benedict@Large , April 28, 2016 at 1:14 pm

One thing I learned very early on and found most, even very smart people never get is that while technicians can be indispensable to a effort's success, they have to be very carefully bounded, as they are convinced (and very convincing) that the technically perfect word is identical to the perfect world. In a technically perfect world filled with technically perfect people, restrictions such as Glass-Steagall are unnecessary and perhaps even absurd. That's just not where we live.

shinola , April 28, 2016 at 1:48 pm

A tidbit from the late '90's: Travelers was one of the companies represented by the insurance agency I worked for at the time. Months before the repeal of GS, the regular Travelers rep. along with the regional VP were making the rounds of agency visits with trunk loads of Travelers logo freebies (pens, mouse pads, mugs, jackets, etc.) Agency personnel were encouraged to take as much of anything they might want because the branded items were now obsolete – a new logo for Travelers/Citi. had already designed and new stuff was already in the works.

I asked the VP if perhaps this might be premature & his reply was no, the word was out at Travelers that "the wheels have been greased."

Don Lowell , April 28, 2016 at 3:01 pm

Who's who of rotten dungbags. Sandy Weil [Traveler's] made 550 million one year.

shinola , April 28, 2016 at 3:15 pm

The same Travelers VP I mentioned above, a long time insurance man, also opined that the main reason for the merger was so that "Sandy Weil could become the highest paid corporate exec. in the U.S."

Schofield , April 28, 2016 at 4:54 pm

To make life flourish relies on optimizing signaling both biological and money based. Since hardly anybody understands this parasites like the Clinton's and know-thing's like Trump get voted into office.

sierra7 , April 28, 2016 at 5:47 pm

Thx for the great piece…
Haven't the stomach to watch the video…
Even now I can't watch any of the contemporary news that includes BC…..
Just thinking of the names in the piece makes me want to scream bloody murder…..
I felt the same way in 2007 when learning who Obama was bringing into office with him "on his team"…..I said we are now really finished as a nation…..
Capitalism is a "game"; all games need rules………..
I believe we have gone too far this time; a totally false supported economy will continue until we will have a collapse that will be horrendous. It will make the Depression look like a picnic. We have not dealt with the elephant in the room: "un-corralled greed".
Nice to read all the comments; makes me feel I'm not "alone".
(caveat: was a Democrat for years; rebelled in 1980……denounced them as I tried to lead a local Democrat Club group when I learned of Obama's advisers; went non-partisan)

Jacob , April 28, 2016 at 11:01 pm

"This is, to be kind, bullshit….Clinton installed Robert Rubin and Larry Summers in the Treasury, which resulted in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which officially did in Glass-Steagall and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which left the derivatives market a laissez-faire Wild West (not to mention a disastrous strong dollar policy that was a critical and underrated factor in the bubble)."

The statement is nonsense because it fails to establish a direct cause-and-effect link between or among Clinton, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and the creation of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Thank goodness their names are on the act, otherwise it would be difficult to disprove the nonsense that's being circulated about it. Neither Rubin, Summers nor Clinton wrote the GLB act. It was written by the Republican senators whose names are on the Act: Senators Gramm, Leach and Bliley. It was veto-proof, as Clinton indicates, because the majority of Congress approved it. The article attempts to connect something that's not connectable and thus fails to convince me that Clinton, Rubin and Summers created the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

1 Kings , April 29, 2016 at 5:24 am

Last time I checked Presidents, the Secretary of Treasury, and other non-elected scum(Summers) do not 'officially' write bills, nor are able to put their names on one. Of course lobbying for it, publicly and private, sitting next to Phil Gramm in some DC restaurant rehearsing the spin, and then gushing over the moment when signing it is a 'connection' in the real world.

Phil , April 29, 2016 at 3:34 am

Within the context of present day events, the video is cringe-worthy. I was a Clinton supporter at the time – too busy with work to follow detail. It's embarrassing to admit that.

I could never stand Phil Gramm (actually hated him with a passion!) and eventually came to loathe Larry Summers. Clinton is a really smart guy, and I think he really believed a lot of his rhetoric at the time. Clinton was a power broker who didn't really see everything behind the curtain (no pun intended), or far enough into the future result of his actions (perhaps his major fatal flaw?)

What the (above) video reminds me of is a scene from a great old Peter O'Toole movie (The Ruling Class), where "Jack" (O'toole) a paranoid madman who believes he is the Second Coming is made the UK's national leader. O'Toole lets out a gurgle of pure unadulterated madness as he realizes he is IN CHARGE and can finally realize his gargantuan fantasies (man, could O'Toole ACT!) here –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xz88K9YJOE (((watch for 20 seconds, then skip to the following BRILLIANT segment)))

https://youtu.be/1Xz88K9YJOE?t=3m51s

where Jack addresses the House of Lords,seen as mad 'Jack' sees them – alternately royal-robed and proper and alternately cobwebbed bunch of mummified corpses, representative of the musty rot of the privilege that Jack will use at his pleasure to realize his mad fantasies.

Mad, unadulterated,finally realized POWER!! That's what we're witnessing in this election cycle in a way that, in reality, approaches the madness of O'Toole's character.

Felix_47 , April 29, 2016 at 9:47 am

Does anyone really think that Bill really knew anything about the consequences. I think he was simply going along with what he was being fed by Rubin et. al. He was more likely focused on who he was going to sleep with next…..and she might have been planted to feed him a little pillow talk to help Weill make his billions.

[Mar 23, 2016] Presidents Bush and Clinton and the CIA Drug Trade - Golden Age of Gaia

by Steve Beckow

Sally Denton and Roger Morris

I said earlier that I thought the deployment of a sizeable military force to Costa Rica for a drug interdiction was a cover story.

I should add that I can think of one circumstance which could make the use of the U.S. military in a drug-interdiction operation appropriate.

Consider that the CIA may be the central power in the drug trade worldwide. Consider that two U.S. Presidents – George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton – stand accused of being at the apex of that drug trade, Bush while he was CIA Director and Clinton while he was Governor of Arkansas.

Clinton not only allowed the use of Mena Airport as the entry point for CIA cocaine shipments; he also himself was said to have received some of them personally from drug smuggler Barry Seal, who was later assassinated. Bush oversaw the use of El Salvador's Ilopango Airport as the CIA hub for the drug trade, had many meetings with drug smugglers, and was alleged to have made many large-sum payoffs personally.

To break the CIA's hold on the drug trade, the only force that I can think of that could be used would be the American military. That is the only circumstance that I can see that would make the deployment of a sizeable American force to a friendly and benign country like Costa Rica explicable: To break the grip of the CIA – or perhaps to be in place to intervene locally should an operation be planned in the United States to clamp down on the CIA domestically.

Seem far-fetched?

Maybe. We shall see.

I don't have time any more to redo the research I did years ago in which Barry Seal says Clinton met him at Mena airport and personally took possession of a container full of cocaine. I don't have time to track down material on the CIA's role in the torture and execution of DEA agent Enrique Camarena in Mexico or on the torture and murder of Chip Tatum, like Seal a drug smuggler turned whistleblower, or on the key role of Ilopango airport in El Salvador in the CIA drug trade.

So to give you some evidence on these matters, I reproduce an article that was slated to be published in the Washington Post in, I believe, January 1995 exposing Clinton and his Mena connection to the drug trade and Bush and his role in it.

The article was cancelled by the Post at the last minute, undoubtedly for the same reasons that many investigations of all these matters over the years were suppressed. (Let's hope they don't cancel the publication of this latest investigative scoop on black defense contractors.)

The article is followed by a comment from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on its suppression by the Post.

It's a long article and I don't expect you to read it all, but I furnish it as proof of the connection to … no, the leadership in … the drug trade of Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush.

For heaven's sake, the next time we have a HAARP-induced earthquake or hurricane, don't give your hard-earned money to former Presidents Bush and Clinton. Light a cigar with it instead. It will do as much good.

The Crimes of Mena

www.whatreallyhappened.com/

Reposted at http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/the_crimes_of_mena.htm

The Suppressed Article

This is the article which had been scheduled to appear in the Washington Post. After having cleared the legal department for all possible questions of inaccurate statements, the article was scheduled for publication when just as the presses were set to roll, Washington Post Managing Editor Bob Kaiser (Like George Bush, a member of the infamous "Skull & Bones Fraternity), killed the article without explanation.

According to the sidebar which appeared with the Penthouse Magazine version of this story, Bob Kaiser refused to even meet with Sally Denton and Roger Morris, hiding in his office while his secretary made excuses.

This is the story that couldn't be suppressed. An investigative report into a scandal that haunts the reputations of three presidents – Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.

THE CRIMES OF MENA

By Sally Denton and Roger Morris

Barry Seal – gunrunner, drug trafficker, and covert C.I.A. operative extraordinaire – is hardly a familiar name in American politics. But nine years after he was murdered in a hail of bullets by Medellin cartel hit men outside a Salvation Army shelter in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he has come back to haunt the reputations of three American presidents.

Seal's legacy includes more than 2,000 newly discovered documents that now verify and quantify much of what previously had been only suspicion, conjecture, and legend. The documents confirm that from 1981 to his brutal death in 1986, Barry Seal carried on one of the most lucrative, extensive, and brazen operations in the history of the international drug trade, and that he did it with the evident complicity, if not collusion, of elements of the United States government, apparently with the acquiescence of Ronald Reagan's administration, impunity from any subsequent exposure by George Bush's administration, and under the usually acute political nose of then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton.

The newly unearthed papers show the real Seal as far more impressive and well-connected than the character played by Dennis Hopper in a made-for-TV movie some years ago, loosely based on the smuggler's life. The film portrayed the pudgy pilot as a hapless victim, caught in a cross fire between bungling but benign government agencies and Latin drug lords.

The truth sprinkled through the documents is a richer – and altogether more sinister – matter of national and individual corruption. It is a tale of massive, socially devastating crime, of what seems to have been an official cover-up to match, and, not least, of the strange reluctance of so-called mainstream American journalism to come to grips with the phenomenon and its ominous implications – even when the documentary evidence had appeared.

The trail winds back to another slightly bruited but obscure name – a small place in western Arkansas called Mena.

Of the many stories emerging from the Arkansas of the 1980s that was crucible to the Clinton presidency, none has been more elusive than the charges surrounding Mena. Nestled in the dense pine and hardwood forests of the Ouachita Mountains, some 160 miles west of Little Rock, once thought a refuge for nineteenth-century border outlaws and even a hotbed of Depression-era anarchists, the tiny town has been the locale for persistent reports of drug smuggling, gunrunning, and money laundering tracing to the early eighties, when Seal based his aircraft at Mena's Intermountain Regional Airport.

From first accounts circulating locally in Arkansas, the story surfaced nationally as early as 1989 in a *Penthouse* article called "Snowbound," written by the investigative reporter John Cummings, and in a Jack Anderson column, but was never advanced at the time by other media. Few reporters covering Clinton in the 1992 campaign missed hearing at least something about Mena.

But it was obviously a serious and demanding subject – the specter of vast drug smuggling with C.I.A. involvement – and none of the major media pursued it seriously During 1992, the story was kept alive by Sarah McClendon, *The Nation*, and *The Village Voice*.

Then, after Clinton became president, Mena began to reappear. Over the past year, CBS News and *The Wall Street Journal* have reported the original, un-quieted charges surrounding Mena, including the shadow of some C.l.A. (or "national security") involvement in the gun and drug traffic, and the apparent failure of then governor Clinton to pursue evidence of such international crime so close to home.

"Seal was smuggling drugs and kept his planes at Mena," *The Wall Street Journal* reported in 1994. "He also acted as an agent for the D.E.A. In one of these missions, he flew the plane that produced photographs of Sandinistas loading drugs in Nicaragua. He was killed by a drug gang [Medellin cartel hit men] in Baton Rouge. The cargo plane he flew was the same one later flown by Eugene Hasenfus when he was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of contra supplies.

In a mix of wild rumor and random fact, Mena has also been a topic of ubiquitous anti-Clinton diatribes circulated by right-wing extremists – an irony in that the Mena operation was the apparent brainchild of the two previous and Republican administrations.

Still, most of the larger American media have continued to ignore, if not ridicule, the Mena accusations. Finding no conspiracy in the Ouachita's last July, a *Washington Post* reporter typically scoffed at the "alleged dark deeds," contrasting Mena with an image as "Clan destination, Arkansas … Cloak and Dagger Capital of America."

Noting that *The New York Times* had "mentioned Mena primarily as the headquarters of the American Rock Garden Society," the *Columbia Journalism Review* in a recent issue dismissed "the conspiracy theories" as of "dubious relevance."

A former Little Rock businessman, Terry Reed, has coauthored with John Cummings a highly controversial book, Compromised: Clinton, Bush, and the C.I.A., which describes a number of covert activities around Mena, including a C.I.A. operation to train pilots and troops for the Nicaraguan Contras, and the collusion of local officials. Both the book and its authors were greeted with derision.

Now, however, a new mass of documentary evidence has come to light regarding just such "dark deeds" – previously private and secret records that substantiate as never before some of the worst and most portentous suspicions about what went on at Mena, Arkansas, a decade ago.

Given the scope and implications of the Mena story, it may be easy to understand the media's initial skepticism and reluctance. But it was never so easy to dismiss the testimony arid suspicions of some of those close to the matter: Internal Revenue Service Agent Bill Duncan, Arkansas State Police investigator Russell Welch, Arkansas Attorney General J. Winston Bryant, Congressman Bill Alexander, and various other local law-enforcement officials and citizens.

All of these people were convinced by the late eighties that there existed what Bryant termed "credible evidence" of the most serious criminal activity involving Mena between 1981 and 1986. They also believed that the crimes were committed with the acquiescence, if not the complicity, of elements of the U.S. government. But they couldn't seem to get the national media to pay attention.

During the 1992 campaign, outside advisers and aides urged former California governor Jerry Brown to raise the Mena issue against Clinton – at least to ask why the Arkansas governor had not done more about such serious international crime so close to home. But Brown, too, backed away from the subject. I'll raise it if the major media break it first," he told aides. "The media will do it, Governor," one of them replied in frustration, "if only you'll raise it."

Mena's obscure airport was thought by the I.R.S., the F.B.I., U.S. Customs, and the Arkansas State Police to be a base for Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal, a self-confessed, convicted smuggler whose operations had been linked to the intelligence community. Duncan and Welch both spent years building cases against Seal and others for drug smuggling and money laundering around Mena, only to see their own law-enforcement careers damaged in the process.

What evidence they gathered, they have said in testimony and other public statements, was not sufficiently pursued by the then U.S. attorney for the region, J. Michael Fitzhugh, or by the I.R.S., Arkansas State Police, and other agencies. Duncan, testifying before the joint investigation by the Arkansas state attorney general's office and the United States Congress in June 1991, said that 29 federal indictments drafted in a Mena-based money-laundering scheme had gone unexplored. Fitzhugh, responding at the time to Duncan's charges, said, "This office has not slowed up any investigation … [and] has never been under any pressure in any investigation."

By 1992, to Duncan's and Welch's mounting dismay, several other official inquiries into the alleged Mena connection were similarly ineffectual or were stifled altogether, furthering their suspicions of government collusion and cover-up. In his testimony before Congress, Duncan said the I.R.S. "withdrew support for the operations" and further directed him to "withhold information from Congress and perjure myself."

Duncan later testified that he had never before experienced "anything remotely akin to this type of interference…. Alarms were going off," he continued, "and as soon as Mr. Fitzhugh got involved, he was more aggressive in not allowing the subpoenas and in interfering in the investigative process."

State policeman Russell Welch felt he was "probably the most knowledgeable person" regarding the activities at Mena, yet he was not initially subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. Welch testified later that the only reason he was ultimately subpoenaed at all was because one of the grand jurors was from Mena and "told the others that if they wanted to know something about the Mena airport, they ought to ask that guy [Welch] out there in the hall."

State Attorney General Bryant, in a 1991 letter to the office of Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation, wondered "why no one was prosecuted in Arkansas despite a mountain of evidence that Seal was using Arkansas as his principle staging area during the years 1982 through 1985."

What actually went on in the woods of western Arkansas? The question is still relevant for what it may reveal about certain government operations during the time that Reagan and Bush were in the White House and Clinton was governor of Arkansas.

In a mass of startling new documentation – the more than 2,000 papers gathered by the authors from private and law-enforcement sources in a year-long nationwide search – answers are found and serious questions are posed.

These newly unearthed documents – the veritable private papers of Barry Seal – substantiate at least part of what went on at Mena.

What might be called the Seal archive dates back to 1981, when Seal began his operations at the Intermountain Regional Airport in Mena. The archive, all of it now in our possession, continues beyond February 1986, when Seal was murdered by Colombian assassins after he had testified in federal court in Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami for the U.S. government against leaders of the Medellin drug cartel.

The papers include such seemingly innocuous material as Seal's bank and telephone records; negotiable instruments, promissory notes, and invoices; personal correspondence address and appointment books; bills of sale for aircraft and boats; aircraft registration, and modification work orders.

In addition, the archive also contains personal diaries; handwritten to-do lists and other private notes; secretly tape-recorded conversations; and cryptographic keys and legends for codes used in the Seal operation.

Finally, there are extensive official records: federal investigative and surveillance reports, accounting assessments by the I.R.S. and the D.E.A., and court proceedings not previously reported in the press – testimony as well as confidential pre-sentencing memoranda in federal narcotics-trafficking trials in Florida and Nevada – numerous depositions, and other sworn statements.

The archive paints a vivid portrait not only of a major criminal conspiracy around Mena, but also of the unmistakable shadow of government complicity. Among the new revelations:

Mena, from 1981 to 1985, was indeed one of the centers for international smuggling traffic. According to official I.R.S. and D.E.A. calculations, sworn court testimony, and other corroborative records, the traffic amounted to thousands of kilos of cocaine and heroin and literally hundreds of millions of dollars in drug profits. According to a 1986 letter from the Louisiana attorney general to then U.S. attorney general Edwin Meese, Seal "smuggled between $3 billion and $5 billion of drugs into the U.S."

Seal himself spent considerable sums to land, base, maintain, and specially equip or refit his aircraft for smuggling. According to personal and business records, he had extensive associations at Mena and in Little Rock, and was in nearly constant telephone contact with Mena when he was not there himself. Phone records indicate Seal made repeated calls to Mena the day before his murder. This was long after Seal, according to his own testimony, was working as an $800,000-a-year informant for the federal government.

A former member of the Army Special Forces, Seal had ties to the Central Intelligence Agency dating to the early 1970s. He had confided to relatives and others, according to their sworn statements, that he was a C.I.A. operative before and during the period when he established his operations at Mena. In one statement to Louisiana State Police, a Seal relative said, "Barry was into gunrunning and drug smuggling in Central and South America … and he had done some time in El Salvadore [sic]." Another then added, "lt was true, but at the time Barry was working for the C.I.A."

In a posthumous jeopardy-assessment case against Seal – also documented in the archive – the I.R.S. determined that money earned by Seal between 1984 and 1986 was not illegal because of his "C.I.A.-D.E.A. employment."

The only public official acknowledgment of Seal's relationship to the C.I.A. has been in court and congressional testimony, and in various published accounts describing the C.I.A.'s installation of cameras in Seal's C-123K transport plane, used in a highly celebrated 1984 sting operation against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.

Robert Joura, the assistant special agent in charge of the D.E.A.'s Houston office and the agent who coordinated Seal's undercover work, told *The Washington Post* last year that Seal was enlisted by the C.I.A. for one sensitive mission – providing photographic evidence that the Sandinistas were letting cocaine from Colombia move through Nicaragua. A spokesman for then Senate candidate Oliver North told *The Post* that North had been kept aware of Seal's work through "intelligence sources."

Federal Aviation Administration registration records contained in the archive confirm that aircraft identified by federal and state narcotics agents as in the Seal smuggling operation were previously owned by Air America, Inc., widely reported to have been a C.I.A. proprietary company. Emile Camp, one of Seal's pilots and a witness to some of his most significant dealings, was killed on a mountainside near Mena in 1985 in the unexplained crash of one of those planes that had once belonged to Air America.

According to still other Seal records, at least some of the aircraft in his smuggling fleet, which included a Lear jet, helicopters, and former U.S. military transports, were also outfitted with avionics and other equipment by yet another company in turn linked to Air America.

Among the aircraft flown in and out of Mena was Seal's C-123K cargo plane, christened Fat Lady. The records show that Fat Lady, serial number 54-0679, was sold by Seal months before his death. According to other files, the plane soon found its way to a phantom company of what became known in the Iran-Contra scandal as "the Enterprise," the C.I.A.-related secret entity managed by Oliver North and others to smuggle illegal weapons to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels. According to former D.E.A. agent Celerino Castillo and others, the aircraft was allegedly involved in a return traffic in cocaine, profits from which were then used to finance more clandestine gunrunning.

F.A.A. records show that in October 1986, the same Fat Lady was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of arms destined for the Contras. Documents found on board the aircraft and seized by the Sandinistas included logs linking the plane with Area 51 – the nation's top-secret nuclear-weapons facility at the Nevada Test Site.

The doomed aircraft was co-piloted by Wallace Blaine "Buzz" Sawyer, a native of western Arkansas, who died in the crash. The admissions of the surviving crew member, Eugene Hasenfus, began a public unraveling of the Iran-Contra episode.

An Arkansas gun manufacturer testified in 1993 in federal court in Fayetteville that the C.I.A. contracted with him to build 250 automatic pistols for the Mena operation. William Holmes testified that he had been introduced to Seal in Mena by a C.I.A. operative, and that he then sold weapons to Seal.

Even though he was given a Department of Defense purchase order for guns fitted with silencers, Holmes testified that he was never paid the $140,000 the government owed him. "After the Hasenfus plane was shot down," Holmes said, "you couldn't find a soul around Mena."

Meanwhile, there was still more evidence that Seal's massive smuggling operation based in Arkansas had been part of a C.I.A. operation, and that the crimes were continuing well after Seal's murder. In 1991 sworn testimony to both Congressman Alexander and Attorney General Bryant, state police investigator Welch recorded that in 1987 he had documented "new activity at the [Mena] airport with the appearance of … an Australian business [a company linked with the C.I.A.], and C-130s had appeared…."

At the same time, according to Welch, two F.B.I. agents officially informed him that the C.I.A. "had something going on at the Mena Airport involving Southern Air Transport [another company linked with the C.I.A.] … and they didn't want us [the Arkansas State Police] to screw it up like we had the last one."

The hundreds of millions in profits generated by the Seal trafficking via Mena and other outposts resulted in extraordinary banking and business practices in apparent efforts to launder or disperse the vast amounts of illicit money in Arkansas and elsewhere. Seal's financial records show from the early eighties, for example, instances of daily deposits of $50,000 or more, and extensive use of an offshore foreign bank in the Caribbean, as well as financial institutions in Arkansas and Florida.

According to I.R.S. criminal investigator Duncan, secretaries at the Mena Airport told him that when Seal flew into Mena, there would be stacks of cash to be taken to the bank and laundered." One secretary told him that she was ordered to obtain numerous cashier's checks, each in an amount just under $10,000, at various banks in Mena and surrounding communities, to avoid filing the federal Currency Transaction Reports required for all bank transactions that exceed that limit.

Bank tellers testified before a federal grand jury that in November 1982, a Mena airport employee carried a suitcase containing more than $70,000 into a bank. "The bank officer went down the teller lines handing out the stacks of $1,000 bills and got the cashier's checks."

Law-enforcement sources confirmed that hundreds of thousands of dollars were laundered from 1981 to 1983 just in a few small banks near Mena, and that millions more from Seal's operation were laundered elsewhere in Arkansas and the nation.

Spanish-language documents in Seal's possession at the time of his murder also indicate that he had accounts throughout Central America and was planning to set up his own bank in the Caribbean.

Additionally, Seal's files suggest a grandiose scheme for building an empire. Papers in his office at the time of his death include references to dozens of companies, all of which had names that began with Royale. Among them: Royale Sports, Royale Television Network, Royale Liquors, Royale Casino, S.A., Royale Pharmaceuticals, Royale Arabians, Royale Seafood, Royale Security, Royale Resorts … and on and on.

Seal was scarcely alone in his extensive smuggling operation based in Mena from 1981 to 1986, commonly described in both federal and state law-enforcement files as one of the largest drug-trafficking operations in the United States at the time, if not in the history of the drug trade. Documents show Seal confiding on one occasion that he was "only the transport," pointing to an extensive network of narcotics distribution and finance in Arkansas and other states. After drugs were smuggled across the border, the duffel bags of cocaine would be retrieved by helicopters and dropped onto flatbed trucks destined for various American cities.

In recognition of Seal's significance in the drug trade, government prosecutors made him their chief witness in various cases, including a 1985 Miami trial in absentia of Medellln drug lords; in another 1985 trial of what federal officials regarded as the largest narcotics-trafficking case to date in Las Vegas; and in still a third prosecution of corrupt officials in the Turks and Caicos Islands. At the same time, court records and other documents reveal a studied indifference by government prosecutors to Seal's earlier and ongoing operations at Mena.

In the end, the Seal documents are vindication for dedicated officials in Arkansas like agents Duncan and Welch and local citizens' groups like the Arkansas Committee, whose own evidence and charges take on new gravity – and also for *The Nation*, *The Village Voice*, the Association of National Security Alumni, the venerable Washington journalists Sarah McClendon and Jack Anderson, Arkansas. reporters Rodney Bowers and Mara Leveritt, and others who kept an all-too-authentic story alive amid wider indifference.

But now the larger implications of the newly exposed evidence seem as disturbing as the criminal enormity it silhouettes. Like his modern freebooter's life, Seal's documents leave the political and legal landscape littered with stark questions.

What, for example, happened to some nine different official investigations into Mena after 1987, from allegedly compromised federal grand juries to congressional inquiries suppressed by the National Security Council in 1988 under Ronald Reagan to still later Justice Department inaction under George Bush?

Officials repeatedly invoked national security to quash most of the investigations. Court documents do show clearly that the C.I.A. and the D.E.A. employed Seal during 1984 and 1985 for the Reagan administration's celebrated sting attempt to implicate the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime in cocaine trafficking.

According to a December 1988 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, "cases were dropped. The apparent reason was that the prosecution might have revealed national-security information, even though all of the crimes which were the focus of the investigation occurred before Seal became a federal informant."

Tax records show that, having assessed Seal posthumously for some $86 million in back taxes on his earnings from Mena and elsewhere between 1981 and 1983, even the I.R.S. forgave the taxes on hundreds of millions in known drug and gun profits over the ensuing two-year period when Seal was officially admitted to be employed by the government.

To follow the l.R.S. Iogic, what of the years, crimes, and profits at Mena in the early eighties, before Barry Seal became an acknowledged federal operative, as well as the subsequently reported drug-trafficking activities at Mena even after his murder – crimes far removed from his admitted cooperation as government informant and witness?

"Joe [name deleted] works for Seal and cannot be touched because Seal works for the C.I.A.," a Customs official said in an Arkansas investigation into drug trafficking during the early eighties. "A C.I.A. or D.E.A. operation is taking place at the Mena airport," an F.B.I. telex advised the Arkansas State Police in August 1987, 18 months after Seal's murder. Welch later testified that a Customs agent told him, "Look, we've been told not to touch anything that has Barry Seal's name on it, just to let it go."

*The London Sunday Telegraph* recently reported new evidence, including a secret code number, that Seal was also working as an operative of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the period of the gunrunning and drug smuggling.

Perhaps most telling is what is so visibly missing from the voluminous files. In thousands of pages reflecting a man of meticulous organization and planning, Barry Seal seems to have felt singularly and utterly secure – if not somehow invulnerable – at least in the ceaseless air transport and delivery into the United States of tons of cocaine for more than five years. In a 1986 letter to the D.E.A., the commander and deputy commander of narcotics for the Louisiana State Police say that Seal "was being given apparent free rein to import drugs in conjunction with D.E.A. investigations with so little restraint and control on his actions as to allow him the opportunity to import drugs for himself should he have been so disposed."

Seal's personal videotapes, in the authors' possession, show one scene in which he used U.S. Army paratroop equipment, as well as military like precision, in his drug-transporting operation. Then, in the middle of the afternoon after a number of dry runs, one of his airplanes dropped a load of several duffel bags attached to a parachute. Within seconds, the cargo sitting on the remote grass landing strip was retrieved by Seal and loaded onto a helicopter that had followed the low-flying aircraft. "This is the first daylight cocaine drop in the history of the state of Louisiana," Seal narrates on the tape. If the duffel bags seen in the smuggler's home movies were filled with cocaine – as Seal himself states on tape – that single load would have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Perhaps the videos were not of an actual cocaine drop, but merely the drug trafficker's training video for his smuggling organization, or even a test maneuver. Regardless, the films show a remarkable, fearless invincibility. Barry Seal was not expecting apprehension.

His most personal papers show him all but unconcerned about the very flights and drops that would indeed have been protected or "fixed," according to law-enforcement sources, by the collusion of U.S. intelligence.

In an interview with agent Duncan, Seal brazenly "admitted that he had been a drug smuggler."

If the Seal documents show anything, an attentive reader might conclude, it is that ominous implication of some official sanction. Over the entire episode looms the unmistakable shape of government collaboration in vast drug trafficking and gunrunning, and in a decade-long cover-up of criminality.

Government investigators apparently had no doubt about the magnitude of those crimes. According to Customs sources, Seal's operations at Mena and other bases were involved in the export of guns to Bolivia, Argentina, Peru, and Brazil, as well as to the Contras, and the importation of cocaine from Colombia to be sold in New York, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, and other cities, as well as in Arkansas itself.

Duncan and his colleagues knew that Seal's modus operandi included dumping most of the drugs in other southern states, so that what Arkansas agents witnessed in Mena was but a tiny fragment of an operation staggering in its magnitude. Yet none of the putative inquiries seems to have made a serious effort to gather even a fraction of the available Seal documents now assembled and studied by the authors.

Finally, of course, there are somber questions about then governor Clinton's own role vis-a-vis the crimes of Mena.

Clinton has acknowledged learning officially about Mena only in April 1988, though a state police investigation had been in progress for several years. As the state's chief executive, Clinton often claimed to be fully abreast of such inquiries. In his one public statement on the matter as governor, in September 1991 he spoke of that investigation finding "linkages to the federal government," and "all kinds of questions about whether he [Seal] had any links to the C.l.A…. and if that backed into the Iran-Contra deal."

But then Clinton did not offer further support for any inquiry, "despite the fact," as Bill Plante and Michael Singer of CBS News have written, "that a Republican administration was apparently sponsoring a Contra-aid operation in his state and protecting a smuggling ring that flew tons of cocaine through Arkansas."

As recently as March 1995, Arkansas state trooper Larry Patterson testified under oath, according to *The London Sunday Telegraph*, that he and other officers "discussed repeatedly in Clinton's presence" the "large quantities of drugs being flown into the Mena airport, large quantities of money, large quantities of guns," indicating that Clinton may have known much more about Seal's activities than he has admitted.

Moreover, what of the hundreds of millions generated by Seal's Mena contraband? The Seal records reveal his dealings with at least one major Little Rock bank. How much drug money from him or his associates made its way into criminal laundering in Arkansas's notoriously freewheeling financial institutions and bond houses, some of which are reportedly under investigation by the Whitewater special prosecutor for just such large, unaccountable infusions of cash and unexplained transactions?

"The state offers an enticing climate for traffickers," I.R.S. agents had concluded by the end of the eighties, documenting a "major increase" in the amount of large cash and bank transactions in Arkansas after 1985, despite a struggling local economy.

Meanwhile, prominent backers of Clinton's over the same years – including bond broker and convicted drug dealer Dan Lasater and chicken tycoon Don Tyson – have themselves been subjects of extensive investigative and surveillance files by the D.E.A. or the F.B.I. similar to those relating to Seal, including allegations of illegal drug activity that Tyson has recently acknowledged publicly and denounced as "totally false."

"This may be the first president in history with such close buddies who have NADDIS numbers," says one concerned law-enforcement official, referring to the Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Intelligence System numbers assigned those under protracted investigation for possible drug crimes.

The Seal documents are still more proof that for Clinton, the Arkansas of the eighties and the company he kept there will not soon disappear as a political or even constitutional liability.

"I've always felt we never got the whole story there," Clinton said in 1991.

Indeed. But as president of the United States, he need no longer wonder – and neither should the nation. On the basis of the Seal documents (copies of which are being given to the Whitewater special prosecutor in any case), the president should ask immediately for a full report on the matter from the C.I.A., the D.E.A., the F.B.I., the Justice Department, and other relevant agencies of his own administration – including the long-buried evidence gathered by I.R.S. agent Duncan and Arkansas state police investigator Welch. President Clinton should also offer full executive-branch cooperation with a reopened congressional inquiry, and expose the subject fully for what it says of both the American past and future.

Seal saw himself as a patriot to the end. He had dictated his own epitaph for his grave in Baton Rouge: "A rebel adventurer the likes of whom in previous days made America great." In a sense his documents may now render that claim less ironic than it seems.

The tons of drugs that Seal and his associates brought into the country, officials agree, affected tens of thousands of lives at the least, and exacted an incalculable toll on American society. And for the three presidents, the enduring questions of political scandal are once again apt: What did they know about Mena? When did they know it? Why didn't they do anything to stop it?

The crimes of Mena were real. That much is now documented beyond doubt. The only remaining issues are how far they extended, and who was responsible.

From the July 1995 issue of *Penthouse*
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

On The Above

THE LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
29 JANUARY 1995
ARKANSAS DRUG EXPOSE MISSES THE POST
BY AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD IN WASHINGTON

IT MIGHT almost be called The Greatest Story Never Told. The article was typeset and scheduled to run in today's edition of The Washington Post.

It had the enthusiastic backing of the editors and staff of the Sunday Outlook section, where it was to appear after eleven weeks of soul-searching and debate.

Lawyers had gone through the text line by line.

Supporting documents had been examined with meticulous care. The artwork and illustrations had been completed. The contract with the authors had been signed. Leonard Downie, the executive editor of the newspaper, had given his final assent.

But on Thursday morning the piece was cancelled. It had been delayed before – so often, in fact, that its non-appearance was becoming the talk of Washington – but this time the authors were convinced that the story was doomed and would never make it into the pages of what is arguably the worlds most powerful political newspaper. They have withdrawn it in disgust, accusing the Post of a cover-up of the biggest scandal in American history.

In stark contrast, the managing editor, Robert Kaiser, left a message on my answering machine saying that there was really nothing to "this non-existent story".

In a subsequent conversation, he dismissed the article as a reprise of rumors and allegations. "I am confident that it doesn't have any great new revelations," he said.

Others are less confident. A copy of the article passed to The Sunday Telegraph – not, it should be stressed, by its authors – appears to be absolutely explosive.

Based on an archive of more than 2,000 documents, it says that western Arkansas was a center of international drug smuggling in the early 1980s – perhaps even the headquarters of the biggest drug trafficking operation in history. It asks whether hundreds of millions of dollars
in profits made their way "into criminal laundering in Arkansas's notoriously free-wheeling financial institutions and bond houses".

The activities were mixed up with a U.S. intelligence operation at the Mena airport in Arkansas that was smuggling weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras. Bill Clinton is not specifically accused of involvement, but he was Governor of Arkansas at the time. The piece also notes that some of his prominent backers had been the subject of extensive investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, and had been assigned files in NADDIS – the Narcotics & Dangerous Drugs Intelligence System.

The article makes clear that the alleged scandal is not confined to the activities of the Arkansas political machine and Mr. Clinton. It embraces the highest levels of the federal government over several years. "For three Presidents of both parties – Messrs. Reagan, Bush and Clinton – the old enduring questions of political scandal are once again apt," the article concludes. "What did they know about Mena? When did they know it? Why didn't they do anything to stop it?"

It is clear that The Washington Post took the article extremely seriously. It was to be run at full length – roughly 4,000 words, taking up several pages in an almost unprecedented spread across the Sunday Outlook section.

The authors, Dr. Roger Morris and Sally Denton, were told that they were being offered the highest fee ever paid for a contribution to Outlook. They are veteran investigators with established reputations. Morris worked for the National Security Council staff at the White House during the Johnson and Nixon Administrations. He has taught at Harvard and has written a series of acclaimed books on foreign policy.

Denton is the former head of news agency UPI's special investigative unit, and is the author of the Bluegrass Conspiracy, which exposed the involvement of Kentucky political and law enforcement figures in an international arms and drug smuggling ring.

Their research is concentrated on the activities of Barry Seal, a legendary smuggler who operated from a company called Rich Mountain Aviation in the Ouachita Mountains west of Little Rock. They have his bank and telephone records, invoices, appointment books, handwritten notes, personal diaries and secretly-recorded conversations, as well as extensive police records and surveillance reports.

Among other allegations they make are:

– Seal was using his fleet of aircraft to export weapons to Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil in addition to the Nicaraguan Contras.

– The planes were carrying cocaine back up to Arkansas on the return journey for sale in New York, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis and other cities.

– Seal had ties to the CIA and felt that he could smuggle with impunity.

– Nine separate attempts to investigate Mena, by both state and federal authorities, were stymied.

"Over the entire episode looms the unmistakable dark shape of U.S. government complicity in vast drug trafficking and gun-running," the article says.

The broad picture is not new to readers of The Sunday Telegraph [DSO – thanks to the heroic efforts of the author of this article], which published a story making some of the same points on October 9th last year.

[DSO – headlined "Smugglers Linked to Contra Arms Deals", that article, also by Evans-Pritchard, is partially displayed with caption with the present article]. The Wall Street Journal has also done original reporting on the subject.

[Mar 20, 2016] Hillary Clinton: No Better Investment A Corporation Can Make

Mar 17, 2016 | www.youtube.com

Big business loves bribing the Clintons. They get great returns on investment. In the last forty years the Clintons have received over three billion from big money interests. Cenk Uygur, host of the The Young Turks, breaks it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

"Over four decades of public life, Bill and Hillary Clinton have built an unrivaled global network of donors while pioneering fundraising techniques that have transformed modern politics and paved the way for them to potentially become the first husband and wife to win the White House.

The grand total raised for all of their political campaigns and their family's charitable foundation reaches at least $3 billion, according to a Washington Post investigation.

Their fundraising haul, which began with $178,000 that Bill Clinton raised for his long-shot 1974 congressional bid, is on track to expand substantially with Hillary Clinton's 2016 White House run, which has already drawn $110 million in support. "*

Read more here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphi...

[Feb 13, 2016] Democratic debate: the five biggest moments

Notable quotes:
"... Watch the very good summary below of American involvement in Iraq, 2003-2014, done by PBS Frontline . It specifically states that during the 2007 Surge to stabilize an Iraq that had been de-stabilized by the American invasion, the US gave about $400 million to the progenitor of ISIS, the Sunni Sons of Iraq . ..."
"... The unintended consequences of the American (and British) invasion was the creation of ISIS, funded by the American taxpayer. Sanders voted against those consequences ; Clinton, the old Klingon war-bird that she is, voted for them. ..."
"... Wow. Almost completely biased yet again. Did you watch the actual debate? Do these 5 points strike you as the main ones? I am Hillary Clinton and I approved this article. PS Obama? Kissinger? Both rate as crucial talking points last night and Hillary and no decent answer to Bernie on either ..."
"... I would love to see those transcripts, and have in fact written to her suggesting that she release them. I understand that Goldman Sachs paid good money to hear those speeches, and might like them to remain private, but I think it would be better for the nation, since she is running, for people to know what she said. ..."
"... Sanders catches Clinton on her advice from Henry Kissinger , Hillary doubles down on her assertion that getting advice from war criminals is good policy. I guess if she could get advice from Josef Mengele about Health care shed do that too? ..."
"... Lamest line of the night - when Hillary tried to make a big deal about there being a majority of women on stage . Sorry Hill, but that kind of sexism is just as offensive as if you said majority of straight people on stage . You come across like some gender supremacist. ..."
"... Im sorry, but as a woman and a feminist, I find this one of the most offensive things I have ever read! In what fucking universe is Hillary Clinton one of the most accomplished women in the world ? ..."
"... She was a bright student who chose to sacrifice her own career and tone down her own ambitions and persona to become the political wife so the man she married could have the career he wanted, then, once he left office, coatailed on his connections and name recognition to win a (open-goal) U.S. Senate Seat, in which she did nothing brave or revolutionary or remarkable and which she then abandoned for a decent presidential run of her own (I voted for her in 2008, as it happens) in which she threw in the towel far too early and easily in the face of the party establishment ordering her to. Her reward for this was a post as U.S. Secretary of State, where she distinguished herself by helping implement a series of foreign policy disasters (Libya alone she haunt her for the rest of her life, and no, I dont mean the irrelevant Benghazi incident, but the complete destruction of what was once one of the most stable countries in the region)... ..."
"... Killary proclaims listening to and following a war criminal and her neocon cohorts is somehow a good thing. ..."
"... Killary says may many past mistakes having nothing to do with my future ones. ..."
"... Faux-identity politics has run its course. ..."
"... Really believe Republicans havent changed? Eisenhower had a 92% income tax on the rich, supported unions and warned of our industrial military. Your bible thumping party would crucify Eisenhower and Jesus today. Conservatives golden rule is help the rich . ..."
"... Hillary Clinton has never had an original opinion on anything her whole political life. When she opens her mouth, all that comes out is a endless stream of views which safeguards the interests of the many wealthy organizations and institutions she has supported over the decades. ..."
"... And really, what does Clinton have other than serving a pretty disastrous tenure as Obamas Secretary of State? (At least Kerry, for all his faults, c.f. Ukraine, managed the Iran deal - all Clinton did was manage to utterly destroy Libya.) ..."
"... The only reason that Republicans find any support is because America is dumbing down. Based on my own observation because I happen to live in a very red state, by and large, Republican voters are willfully uninformed. Put a Republican in the Oval Office and our education system will not improve. Nor will the collective IQ of the American populace jump any curves. ..."
"... Ill take Sanders proven judgment over Clintons shoot first; ask questions later approach. ..."
"... Clinton, who received $225,000 for her appearance, praised the diversity of Goldmans workforce and the prominent roles played by women at the blue-chip investment bank and the tech firms present at the event. She spent no time criticizing Goldman or Wall Street more broadly for its role in the 2008 financial crisis. ..."
"... For some reason I have a feeling that the big banks wouldnt be asking Mr . Sanders to speak at their events. ..."
"... So if the Commander in Chief should be, first of all, a courageous person, who would you rather entrust the defense of the United States and the safety of its citizens; to Bernie Sanders or to Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... she voted for gw bushs disastrous war. that is not slavishly denigrating clinton, thats just a fact. she caved on the most important foreign policy issue since vietnam. ..."
"... This debate solidified my desire that Hillary NOT be Commander in Chief. She really did scare me that she would be too eager to go to war. The way she kept saying the words Commander in Chief, it made me feel she couldnt wait to get her fingers on the button. ..."
"... Why anyone would believe corporate clone Hillary Clinton is beyond me. Hillary Clinton has two guiding principles: the advancement of Hillary Clinton, and the enrichment of Hillary Clinton. ..."
www.theguardian.com
smkngman, 2016-02-13 00:55:28
Please!

The biggest moment was when Bernie responded to,
"Journalists have asked who you do listen to on foreign policy, and we have yet to know who that is."

Aside from the "Journalists have asked" bull, his reply was most certainly the biggest moment of the entire debate!

"Well it ain't Henry Kissinger,"

According to Google, this moment created the BIGGEST spike of internet searches during the debate.

RobertHickson2014, 2016-02-12 22:57:04
Hypothetically, if Hillary is 500 delegates short of winning the nomination, while Bernie is only short 200, and 600 of the 700 Supers break her way....

A scenario like that could very well happen; the DNC needs to abolish the Super Delegates once and for all to remove the prospect of a rigged nomination process.

EDVDGN -> imipak, 2016-02-12 18:45:58
Watch the very good summary below of American involvement in Iraq, 2003-2014, done by PBS' "Frontline". It specifically states that during the 2007 "Surge" to stabilize an Iraq that had been de-stabilized by the American invasion, the US gave about $400 million to the progenitor of ISIS, the Sunni "Sons of Iraq".

The "unintended consequences" of the American (and British) invasion was the creation of ISIS, funded by the American taxpayer. Sanders voted against those "consequences"; Clinton, the old Klingon war-bird that she is, voted for them.

Of course, daughter Chelsea, didn't have to get all dirty and bloody herself by going to fight her mother's war, but your sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers did. Vote for more of that with Clinton.

"Losing Iraq", PBS, "Frontline", 7/29/14, 1 ½ hours
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/losing-iraq /

uples, 2016-02-12 18:20:20
Wow. Almost completely biased yet again. Did you watch the actual debate? Do these 5 points strike you as the main ones? I am Hillary Clinton and I approved this article. PS Obama? Kissinger? Both rate as crucial talking points last night and Hillary and no decent answer to Bernie on either
kattw -> dochi1958, 2016-02-12 17:00:19
I would love to see those transcripts, and have in fact written to her suggesting that she release them. I understand that Goldman Sachs paid good money to hear those speeches, and might like them to remain private, but I think it would be better for the nation, since she is running, for people to know what she said.

... ... ...

Marcedward, 2016-02-12 16:18:17
Big Moments:

1) Hillary tries to mention a local African American killed by police, forgets the name mid sentence and struggles to get it out of her mouth. Came across as very rehearsed, especially when it turns out the victims mom was in the audience, being used by the Clinton Campaign for an obvious photo opportunity. Clinton wins the HAM HANDED Award.

2) Hillary tries to go after Sanders for disagreeing with Obama and comes across like an inside the beltway clueless blithering idiot. She claims progressive creds, but she's totally unaware of how disappointing Obama has been to the Left. Hillary exposed as another Washington Insider, again.

3) Sanders command of the agenda while all Clinton could do is follow his lead quipping "me too!" Clearly Sanders is in control of this race, Clinton is not, one is a leader, one is not. Hillary should just step down for the good of the country and the party

4) Sanders catches Clinton on her "advice from Henry Kissinger", Hillary doubles down on her assertion that getting advice from war criminals is good policy. I guess if she could get advice from Josef Mengele about Health care she'd do that too?

5) Hillary wearing what looked to be a Star Trek (the original series) Admiral's uniform - was that a nod to trekkies? I couldn't tell if it was a Star Fleet or a Romulan top. Anyway, cred for Hillary for shouting out to Trekkies.

6) Lamest line of the night - when Hillary tried to make a big deal about there being a "majority of women on stage". Sorry Hill, but that kind of sexism is just as offensive as if you said "majority of straight people on stage". You come across like some gender supremacist.

SocalAlex -> kattw, 2016-02-12 15:13:11

of one of the most accomplished women in the world

I'm sorry, but as a woman and a feminist, I find this one of the most offensive things I have ever read! In what fucking universe is Hillary Clinton "one of the most accomplished women in the world"?

She was a bright student who chose to sacrifice her own career and tone down her own ambitions and persona to become the "political wife" so the man she married could have the career he wanted, then, once he left office, coatailed on his connections and name recognition to win a (open-goal) U.S. Senate Seat, in which she did nothing brave or revolutionary or remarkable and which she then abandoned for a decent presidential run of her own (I voted for her in 2008, as it happens) in which she threw in the towel far too early and easily in the face of the party establishment ordering her to. Her reward for this was a post as U.S. Secretary of State, where she "distinguished" herself by helping implement a series of foreign policy disasters (Libya alone she haunt her for the rest of her life, and no, I don't mean the irrelevant Benghazi incident, but the complete destruction of what was once one of the most stable countries in the region)...

Sorry, Clinton may well be an intelligent and competent woman, but by what stretch of the imagination is she "one of the most accomplished women in the world"? The U.S. perhaps - through arguably not even - but the world? Seriously? And then you have the gall to claim Sanders supporters are delusional?

Women like Angela Merkel or Christine Lagarde (like them or loathe them) could and would eat the likes of Clinton for breakfast, and they accomplished what they have without any husband's help!

om Voloshen, 2016-02-12 15:12:45
1. Killary plays the sex card.
2. Killaty says little about her famaly's policy toward jailing nearly a third of all black men and foreclosing on so many of their homes due to Bill's passing GlassSteagall.
3. Killary conveniently leaves out the fact that all key Latino and minority interest groups supported Bernie's no vote.
4. Killary proclaims listening to and following a war criminal and her neocon cohorts is somehow a good thing.
5. Killary says may many past mistakes having nothing to do with my future ones.
ocalAlex -> Reality_Man, 2016-02-12 14:55:18
Both Cruz and Rubio are as white as Clinton and Sanders. And having parents who were part of the upper-class who fled Cuba after the Revolution doesn't remotely reflect the personal histories of the vast majority of Hispanic-Americans. (Nor, for that matter, does being the son of a wealthy Kenyan student and middle-class white mother reflect the reality of 99% of African-Americans.)

Faux-identity politics has run its course. It was never as instrumental in Obama's election(s) as was made out in the first place, and many of the minority for whom it was have learned their lesson.

As the Republicans are painfully aware and Clinton is learning, blacks and Latinos and women and young people aren't stupid - they will ultimately rather vote for the "old white man" who represents their interests than the person they have slightly more of a genetic or cultural link to who doesn't!

RobertHickson2014, 2016-02-12 14:33:36
Hillary learned her lessons well from that douche bag, Henry Kissinger. Here are some of his 'foreign policy' quotes.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/here-are-the-top-10-most-callous-and-inhumane-henry-kissinger-quotes /

SocalAlex -> Adrian, 2016-02-12 14:30:17
Well, Sanders was the first Senator to announce he was boycotting Netanyahu's speech to Congress last year, and while he's certainly adopted a more mainstream line towards Israel in recent years, he's still never spoken at or accepted support from AIPAC and makes it quite clear in his policy brief that he believes Israel needs to end the siege of Gaza and withdraw from the West Bank .

Clinton, on the other hand, is an AIPAC darling who doesn't even "believe" Gaza is under siege and merely has some mealy-mouthed platitudes to offer about how settlement expansion in the West Bank is not "helpful". (And one of her largest individual campaign donors is an Israeli-American billionaire who she has assured she will, if elected, do everything in her power to crack down on the BDS movement!)

At least Obama treated the extremist bunch who are now in power in Israel exactly how they deserved.

You mean even more $100s of billions in U.S. "aid" than they were already getting and complete diplomatic cover for their assault on Gaza and other assorted war crimes? If you think that's tough love, I'd hate to see how your children turn out!

*For more background see thisAl-Jazeera English piece or the Electronic Intifada's exhaustive coverage.

Sanders is far from perfect on this issue, but he's about as "progressive" as it is possible for any high-profile U.S. politician to be. (And I really hope you weren't implying the fact that he is Jewish makes him more likely to be pro-Israel - that is precisely the kind of crap which helps those opposed to Palestinian rights paint all of us campaigning for them in a bad light...)

nnedjo -> kattw, 2016-02-12 14:26:01

Of course, Clinton distances herself from her supporters by running a tight campaign

Of course, that's the way how it works, Clinton left to her supporters to do the dirty work, and then she distances herself from them, and continue to play an angel.
newellalan -> Reality_Man, 2016-02-12 14:21:17
Really believe Republicans haven't changed? Eisenhower had a 92% income tax on the rich, supported unions and warned of our industrial military. Your bible thumping party would crucify Eisenhower and Jesus today. Conservatives golden rule is "help the rich".
mouchefisher -> kattw, 2016-02-12 14:12:57
You either misunderstood my comment, or you're being disingenuous.

What I find strange is The Guardian's evident pro-Clinton bias, even though it pretends to be a progressive paper. Sanders is obviously the true progressive, not Clinton. So yes, it does make me (and many, many other readers of The Guardian) wonder.

ajreddish, 2016-02-12 14:12:07
Hillary Clinton has never had an original opinion on anything her whole political life. When she opens her mouth, all that comes out is a endless stream of views which safeguards the interests of the many wealthy organizations and institutions she has supported over the decades.

At least when Bernie Sanders opens his mouth on any issue, there's no puppet strings moving furiously up and down in the background.

SocalAlex -> DennisLaw , 2016-02-12 14:10:16
What foreign policy credentials/experience did Obama have? (Or W. Bush or Bill Clinton for that matter?)

And really, what does Clinton have other than serving a pretty disastrous tenure as Obama's Secretary of State? (At least Kerry, for all his faults, c.f. Ukraine, managed the Iran deal - all Clinton did was manage to utterly destroy Libya.)

Agi Tater -> imipak , 2016-02-12 14:03:26
The only reason that Republicans find any support is because America is dumbing down. Based on my own observation because I happen to live in a very red state, by and large, Republican voters are willfully uninformed. Put a Republican in the Oval Office and our education system will not improve. Nor will the collective IQ of the American populace jump any curves.

Sanders' one weakness is he does not articulate a clear foreign policy. On the other hand, these are complex issues that can't be reduced to talking points. Further, Sanders' voting record on these issues is solid. Unlike Clinton he did vote against the war in Iraq. And he predicted the unintended consequence of instability and thus ISIS. Clinton has far more experience but she pretends her vote for a disastrous war in Iraq has no connection to ISIS. That's a serious lack of judgment and/or honesty on her part.

I'll take Sanders' proven judgment over Clinton's "shoot first; ask questions later" approach.

Agi Tater, 2016-02-12 13:38:25
This article is not balanced and thus disappointing. Same with Graves' opinion piece stating that Sanders "squandered" his lead. Absurd.

Everything that comes out of Clinton's mouth is a strategic ploy for votes. She will say whatever she and her advisors think she must say to get elected. If she is elected, she will maintain the status quo, at least when it comes to the economy and campaign financing. Those are the two areas that must be reformed before we can see any real progress.

Anyone who believes that Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street criminals are funding Clinton's campaign because she's going to follow through with the real economic reforms that she's now promising (copying Sanders) and that will eliminate their fraudulent business models is a fucking idiot. What Wall Street type is going to donate to a candidate who's going to level the playing field and thus destroy their business model? Are people really that stupid? (rhetorical question) Let's see those transcripts from her speeches that she clearly does not want voters to see.

The truth is, Clinton's talking points have shifted and evolved to match Sanders' positions that voters find attractive. This is a matter of record. She's an Establishment politician and will be to the end. Sander is the real deal.

Murphy1983, 2016-02-12 13:36:57
From Politico Feb. 9, 2016:

NEW YORK - "When Hillary Clinton spoke to Goldman Sachs executives and technology titans at a summit in Arizona in October of 2013, she spoke glowingly of the work the bank was doing raising capital and helping create jobs, according to people who saw her remarks.

"Clinton, who received $225,000 for her appearance, praised the diversity of Goldman's workforce and the prominent roles played by women at the blue-chip investment bank and the tech firms present at the event. She spent no time criticizing Goldman or Wall Street more broadly for its role in the 2008 financial crisis.

"'It was pretty glowing about us," one person who watched the event said. "It's so far from what she sounds like as a candidate now. It was like a rah-rah speech. She sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director.' "

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/clinton-speeches-218969#ixzz3ztCCKaHe

sharethewealth -> kattw, 2016-02-12 13:34:37
It's a tough question to ask, given the American track record on foreign policy. Who would you listen to? American interests overseas have never been, shall we say, altruistic; more self serving and clandestine. It's no wonder Bernie is focusing his attention on the national socio/political climate. It seems ironic to think that any government can influence foreign policy in a positive way while issues such a racism and a living wage are so rampantly out of balance in their own nation.
Elfeesh, 2016-02-12 13:29:10
So your "5 things we learned" is actually "A positive spin on 4 things about Clinton and one thing Sanders said", whilst totally failing to mention the fact that Clinton outright lied about things that Bernie had said in an attempt to make it seem like he actively opposes Obama, or that she said, verbatim, that she wouldn't allow child refugees to settle in the US and to send them back AS A MESSAGE.

This paper's coverage is getting more and more biased by the minute as its journalists realise that "kooky old Sanders" is actually getting some traction with the American people. That article by Lucia Gravesis a disgrace and cherry picks the one liners Sanders came back to Hillary's attacks with, as though its somehow terrible for someone to defend themselves with witty and quick comebacks.

Just FYI Guardian, your readership is actually half intelligent and can see through your biased BS, just as the general electorate can see through the crappy CNN and PBS coverage given to Sanders. You say that Clinton "won" the debate, yet it seems that most people disagree(Note the person saying this is an Associated Press journalist) and there is more than one source to suggest that, in Nevada a focus group say Sanders' won by a 25-9 margin and even Chris Matthews, who for the longest time has been struggling to say "Bernie Sanders" without the "Democratic Socialist" prefix, says that Bernie beat Hillary at her own game. Finally, and I'm afraid I don't have a link for this one, CNN and PBS' own coverage of the debate cut to a room in South Carolina filled with a focus group of women of mixed age and race. (Please note SC is supposed to be Clinton's version of New Hampshire where she'll stomp all over Sanders) Almost all people in the group said Bernie had done the best in the debate, and the one black woman they interviewed (again, black women is supposedly Clinton's demographic) said that Sanders was the most convincing out of the two, though she remained undecided.

People would start taking this paper seriously again if you guys actually paid attention to whats going on, instead of just closing your eyes to all the evidence and continuing to hammer out ridiculous articles bigging up your chosen candidate. There's a reason people aren't even bothering to read your coverage anymore, and instead go straight to the comments to see what people are actually thinking.

DrKropotkin -> Serv_On , 2016-02-12 13:19:41
"Bernie should give a pledge that he will never take a red cent for a speech ever ever ever"

It's not about cents - it's hundreds of thousands per hour and behind closed doors, which is an unsubtle way to bribe a future president. Sanders did give a speech recently to a University that paid him $1,800. Transcripts are available and he donated all of the money to charity.

Anatoliy Asanov -> Serv_On, 2016-02-12 13:13:08
For some reason I have a feeling that the big banks wouldn't be asking Mr . Sanders to speak at their events.
Zendjan -> elterrifico, 2016-02-12 13:12:17
She makes Lucrezia Borgia look like Mother Teresa.
DrKropotkin -> Reality_Man, 2016-02-12 13:08:57
In both primaries Sanders beat the polls by 5-8%. Nationally he is now just 2 points off Clinton according to the latest poll.

The MSMBS has created a reality bubble around Clinton, but nobody takes print media or TV news seriously anymore, everybody knows they have to use multiple sources online to get a real balanced picture. So everyday more and more people are learning about Sanders and liking what they see - a consistent advocate for progressive policies even when it was neither profitable nor popular to be one.

In particular voters are learning about his anti segregation campaigning in the 1960's and his pro gay rights positions in the 1980's. When they look at Clinton's past they see a calculating fair weather supporter on these issues, possibly based on the latest polling.

Also, her pockets full of Wall Street money is really damaging her and when she tries to defend it she comes across as disingenuous (at best).

ouKnightedStates -> EbenezerSeattle, 2016-02-12 13:04:38
It's amazing. Three articles in the Guardian praising her "vote in 2002 not a plan for ISIS 2016" line as a winner. Vote in 2002 caused ISIS in 2016!
Stetson Meyers, 2016-02-12 12:58:36
She is hiding behind Obama. Defending him while bringing up the fact that he took Wall Street money does nothing to endear me to you. It makes me angry at Obama.
elterrifico, 2016-02-12 12:55:25
If Hillary wants low blow then let's talk about

The rose law firm and the missing subpoenaed files that a cleaning crew found in the living quarters while slick Willie Clinton was president.

Cattlegate and how Hillary claims she made millions on cattle futures from a wall street article that the wall street journal said didn't exist.

Lets talk about all the people how suspiciously died who were connected to the Clinton's and who had information to Clinton wrong doings.

I bet that would shut Hillary's sleazy mouth

DrKropotkin, 2016-02-12 12:49:52
From ATL:

"Clinton dropped this critique on the senator from Vermont: "Journalists have asked who you do listen to on foreign policy, and we have yet to know who that is." "

Let me finish the Guardian's reporting for them:

Sanders quickly responds "Well it ain't Henry Kissinger" - the audience applauds and laughs.

Janosik53 -> UNOINO, 2016-02-12 12:27:30
Exactly. ISIS is part of the unintended consequences that were created by the West's Middle East adventure. "Blowback" as the security services have it. The same thing could be said about the U.S. backing of the mujahadeen in Afghanistan, the better to scupper the Soviets. Elements of the mujahadeen morphed into the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Bin Laden was a CIA asset at one time.

Bernie remembers what happened, Hillary dismisses it with the "2002 vote" quip. Hillary is a tactician, Bernie is a strategist. I think a moral strategist makes a better C-in-C than a bought and paid for tactician.

pretzelattack -> Yunnaan, 2016-02-12 12:08:39
the point is electing a republican lite to deal with republican intransigence makes no sense whatever. she will work with them to advance the neoliberal austerity agenda, which hurts the middle class, and everybody else but the kind of people who pay her so much money to give a canned speech.
nnedjo, 2016-02-12 12:03:37
Let me get this straight. You have politicians who all his life was not afraid to swim against the mainstream, neither he worried that it could jeopardize his political career.

And on the other hand, you have a careerist politician, which the whole of her life was "turning with the wind", climbed the ladder of political power, both in its Democratic Party and in the state too, and finally ended up with hundreds of millions of dollars on her private account, gained thanks to its political influence.

So if the Commander in Chief should be, first of all, a courageous person, who would you rather entrust the defense of the United States and the safety of its citizens; to Bernie Sanders or to Hillary Clinton.

Anatoliy Asanov -> SenseCir, 2016-02-12 12:01:54
The same plan she and the establiment was shoving down our throats and digging in in our pockets... And Putin wouldn't be Putin if US weren't prowling around the world. Why is Saudi Arabia is our ally?
mouchefisher, 2016-02-12 11:45:30
I think I'll soon just start skipping The Guardian's articles completely, and head straight to the comments.
The articles read like pro-Clinton adverts, which seems strange coming from a self-proclaimed progressive news source...
Fortunately, we do have The Nation, The Atlantic, Salon, Alternet, etc.
Adrian, 2016-02-12 10:29:34
Am I the only one who's wondering why Bernie Sanders is not being asked a single question about his position on the Palestinian problem, on the recent events involving Netanyahu and the Israeli lobby in the USA trying to derails the Iran nuclear deal and so on?

I don't think we need now at the White House someone willing to follow Netanyahu's lead in the Middle East... At least Obama treated the extremist bunch who are now in power in Israel exactly how they deserved.

devin42 -> Marcedward, 2016-02-12 09:50:47
Hey, Guardian writers. I don't know if you ever come into the comments - but realise this. We aren't morons. This isn't the Mail. We can see through it. A great many of us watched the debates, follow the campaigns, know the facts from other sources. The internet is great like that, as corporate media no longer has an exclusive stranglehold on framing and spin.

The constituents of your 'paper' are not easily hoodwinked and most, as you can see, find the spin disgusting. You're going to keep haemorrhaging readers unless you either refocus on integrity in journalism (unlikely, considering who's on the board), or fully commit to being a pseudo-intellectual Buzzfeed. Best of luck.

pretzelattack -> Philman, 2016-02-12 09:43:42
she voted for gw bush's disastrous war. that is not slavishly denigrating clinton, that's just a fact. she caved on the most important foreign policy issue since vietnam.
EDVDGN, 2016-02-12 09:23:32
The American Public Broadcasting System's (PBS) "NewsHour" reports:*
  • --The cost of US health care is more than 2 1/2 times the average of 33 other countries,
  • --There are fewer doctors per person in the US than in 33 other countries. In 2010, the U.S. had 2.4 doctors per 1,000 people; international average, 3.1.
  • --Hospital beds in the U.S. were 2.6 per 1,000 people in 2009; international average, 3.4.
  • --US life expectancy increased 9 years between 1960 and 2010, but 15 years in Japan, over 11 years on average in 33 other countries.

In other news, some of Clinton's speaker fees from Wall Street, 2013-15**:

  • Goldman Sachs $675,000
  • Deutsche Bank $485,000
  • Golden Tree Asset Management $275,000
  • Ameriprise $225,000
  • Apollo Management Holdings $225,000
  • Bank of America $225,000
  • Fidelity Investments $225,000
  • Morgan Stanley $225,000
  • UBS $225,000
  • Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce $150,000

TOTAL: $2,935,000

Thus, our health care system is expensive and sub-par, but a resounding and understandable "No, we can't" from Clinton on universal health care, and many other issues.
_____________________________________
*"Health Costs: How the U.S. Compares With Other Countries", PBS
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries /
**"Hillary Clinton Got Paid More for 12 Speeches to Wall Street Banks than Most Americans Make in a Lifetime",
http://humansarefree.com/2016/01/hillary-clinton-got-paid-more-for-12.html

FeatherWood, 2016-02-12 09:19:32
This debate solidified my desire that Hillary NOT be Commander in Chief. She really did scare me that she would be too eager to go to war. The way she kept saying the words "Commander in Chief," it made me feel she couldn't wait to get her fingers on the button.

When Hillary praised President Obama and criticized Bernie for some mild critiques he'd made of the president, it was an utterly transparent ploy for the votes of African-Americans in South Carolina. So obvious that I was a bit disgusted. Hillary and President Obama have a rocky history. Any comments Bernie has made are tame compared to the stuff Hillary said about him during the 2008 campaign. I really wonder if people will buy Hillary trying to wrap herself so closely with Obama.

Sandra Bowen -> CDKBM180715, 2016-02-12 09:03:56
Hillary wears a new outfit every campaign day. Sanders' has 2 suits, 1 blazer. Looks say a lot about a person
SirWillis -> CDKBM180715, 2016-02-12 08:30:10
At least try to understand what he is saying. He's saying her smile is false, he's not commenting on her looks. Her smile is false, it's not natural, and I have no doubt she was coached to smile in the way focus groups decided was the most electable. Trouble is a genuine smile is hard to fake.

Please try to understand these things, context is everything.

CanadianAtheist, 2016-02-12 08:19:57

Clinton drops a well-tuned response to Sanders' criticism of her vote in support of the Iraq war: "I don't believe that a vote in 2002 is a plan to defeat Isis in 2016."


But it is a reflection of her judgement. We condemn Republicans, journalists, academics, etc. who supported the Iraq War, but we are supposed to give Clinton a pass? Let's also not forget that she supported the troop increase in Afghanistan and pushed for military action in Libya.
CanadianAtheist -> crap_in, 2016-02-12 08:14:00
According to congress.gov Sanders has sponsored 780 pieces of legislation and cosponsored 5428.
noraak15 -> noraak15, 2016-02-12 06:50:20
To be clear this is in relation to this being Obama's fault.

As for the Dems doing their best to lose a winnable election you may be right but Sanders really has hit the nail on the head. It doesn't matter who wins no change will occur until the big money and special interests are reined in and that won't happen unless and until there is a president backed by a movement of ordinary people demanding change that is so large and undeniable that politicians in Washington realize that unless they accede to the people's demands (as presented by the President) and get behind the President in respect of such change they will actually lose their seats... only incumbents fearful of losing their seats will vote for anything other than what the lobbyists tell them to. Only then will change happen. I'd bet there is more certainty that won't happen then Villa making a surprising comeback and not being relegated.

noraak15 -> EssoBlue, 2016-02-12 06:38:54
For the same reason they voted for Blair and Bush Dubya and Clinton and Bush Sr... Poor people, the same people I honestly want to help as a responsible socialist democrat, are essentially stupid and generally vote against their own interests hence the number of blue collar workers in the US flocking to Donald Trump rallies. It defies belief but there it is, that and the fact that smart people who aren't only out for themselves have better things to do like discover gravitational waves, perform your surgery, teach and other less snazzy things then simply make money.
Peter Kinnaird -> Serv_On, 2016-02-12 06:35:45
On the contrary. The economy crashed because the unfettered free markets failed. You don't need someone who "understands" or in other words supports the free market status quo, you need someone who understands the flaws of the markets and the need for regulation.
noraak15 -> Serv_On, 2016-02-12 06:31:26
Uh? You do realize it was the deregulation of Wall Street that led to the collapse right? You do realize Wall Street aready leads the government by the nose don't you (the very reason Sanders quite rightly states that any reform will be impossible no matter who is elected President unless they have a groundswell of popular support beneath them)? You are aware that laws and trade agreements are written by Wall Street lawyers and that Wall Street is regulated by Wall Street lawyers due to the continuous rotating door between government agencies and Wall Street? You do understand that QE and bailouts were at the behest of and in the interest of Wall Street bound to create asset bubbles they can make a lot of money insider trading on then exit and leave pension funds on the hook and not designed to save the economy don't you?

Oh why do I bother you believe in "continuous growth" generated by perfect rationale markets and of course unicorns and leprechauns waiting with your pot of gold.

EssoBlue, 2016-02-12 05:30:29
Why anyone would believe corporate clone Hillary Clinton is beyond me. Hillary Clinton has two guiding principles: the advancement of Hillary Clinton, and the enrichment of Hillary Clinton.

Lest we forget, in 2008 Hillary Clinton ran as a gun-loving churchgoer against Barack Obama.

PlayaGiron, 2016-02-12 05:20:01
Only the graun can make the exposure of Clinton's ties to the butcher Kissinger into a win for Team Hillary.

Watch the video and you will the crowd totally backs Sanders during the exchange

Nice to see the Guardian still has war criminal Kissinger's back.

Too bad we are seeing through your corporatist propaganda.

joeblow9999, 2016-02-12 05:09:13
Hillary appeared desperate and her attacks came off as unimaginative and sleazy. More and more she is appearing to be a liability to the nomination.

[Feb 12, 2016] Theres A Special Place at The Hague for Madeleine Albright

Notable quotes:
"... Too bad she is a neocon monster. ..."
"... Albright doesn't have a whole lot of empathy for those who find themselves on the disadvantageous side of American foreign policy. She neither came down wholly for or wholly against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But that might just have been silly partisan politics and not due to any actual concern for the lives of Iraqi civilians. In 1996, Albright stated that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to American sanctions was justified. ..."
"... From Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide ..."
"... Unlike Rwanda, Albright was involved in every step of Clinton's Balkan policy, although she was not his Secretary of State until 1997. Before that, she was U.S. Ambassador to the UN, and served as president of the Center for National Policy . She is a former student of Zbigniew Brzezinski . ..."
"... Albright actively advocated policies that led to American military action in 1999, and placed all of the blame for the situation on the Belgrade government . (Does that ring a bell?) Albright's contention was that "a little bombing" would encourage Milosevic to sign Rambouillet Peace Accords, which would allow for the NATO occupation of Kosovo. ..."
"... The Clinton Administration demanded Milosevic's removal from power , and in 2000, Albright rejected Vladimir Putin's offer to try to use his influence to defuse the situation. ..."
"... War may have been the American end game in the Balkans from the start. In 1992, the American ambassador torpedoed Bosnian secession peace negotiations by convincing Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic to refuse to sign the peace accords. The ensuing catastrophic civil war, which ended in 1995, was blamed on Bosnian Serbs and Milosevic. Colin Powell recalled, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he was pressured by Albright in 1992 to use military force on Bosnia. ..."
"... Albright has never wavered from her stance on the Balkans. In 2012, she got into a shouting match with pro-Serbian activists over her role in that conflict , calling the protesters "dirty Serbs." ..."
russia-insider.com

Madeleine Albright proves to the young, aspiring women of America that warmongering psychopathy has no glass ceiling.

Former U.S. Secretary of State under Bill Clinton Madeleine Albright thinks there is "a special place in hell" for young women if they don't vote for Hillary Clinton.

Despite overwhelming evidence that most young American women who still plan to remain involved in the electoral process would rather go to hell than vote for Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, from her seat of war criminal wisdom, has informed the naive lasses that support for Bernie Sanders will land them in the VIP room in a superstitious underground torture chamber.

By repurposing her own original quote, Albright has proven yet once again that she is an expert on hell's admission standards because she's probably going there.

Of course it should come to no surprise that Albright is stumping for Hillary Clinton. After all, she was Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, the first female to hold the office. And sure, Albright has an interesting bio. She and her family, fleeing Czechoslovakia from approaching German army, escaped to Serbia, and she survived the Nazi Blitzkrieg of London.

Too bad she is a neocon monster.

Although she personally experienced the horrors of WWII, and had family members who died in the Nazi death camps, Albright doesn't have a whole lot of empathy for those who find themselves on the disadvantageous side of American foreign policy. She neither came down wholly for or wholly against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But that might just have been silly partisan politics and not due to any actual concern for the lives of Iraqi civilians. In 1996, Albright stated that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to American sanctions was justified.

When is genocide justified? Or when does it simply not matter?

Let's ask the Rwandans.

Although the Clinton Administration's stated purpose for intervening in the Balkans was to stop genocide, the Rwandan genocide in 1994 continued unabated. From Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide:

"Rather than respond with appropriate force, the opposite happened, spurred by the murders of the Belgian Blue Berets and Belgium's withdrawal of its remaining troops. Exactly two weeks after the genocide began – following strenuous lobbying for total withdrawal led by Belgium and Britain, and with American UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright advocating the most token of forces and the United States adamantly refusing to accept publicly that a full-fledged, Convention defined genocide was in fact taking place – the Security Council made the astonishing decision to reduce the already inadequate UNAMIR force to a derisory 270 men" (10.11)

"The lesson to be learned from the betrayal at ETO and other experiences was that the full potential of UNAMIR went unexplored and unused, and, as result, countless more Rwandans died than otherwise might have. If anyone in the international community learned this lesson at the time, it was not evident at the UN. For the next six weeks, as the carnage continued, the UN dithered in organizing any kind of response to the ongoing tragedy. The Americans, led by US Ambassador Madeleine Albright, played the key role in blocking more expeditious action by the UN.[18] On May 17, the Security Council finally authorized an expanded UNAMIR II to consist of 5,500 personnel.[19] But there is perhaps no distance greater on earth than the one between the Security Council chambers and the outside world. Once the decision to expand was finally made, as we will soon show in detail, the Pentagon somehow required an additional seven weeks just to negotiate a contract for delivering armed personnel carriers to the field; evidently it proved difficult to arrange the desired terms for "maintenance and spare parts."[20] When the genocide ended in mid-July with the final RPF victory, not a single additional UN soldier had landed in Kigali." 10.16

Unlike Rwanda, Albright was involved in every step of Clinton's Balkan policy, although she was not his Secretary of State until 1997. Before that, she was U.S. Ambassador to the UN, and served as president of the Center for National Policy. She is a former student of Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Not only did Albright support Clinton's bombing, she was a key figure in the conflict and in the ousting of Slobodan Milosevic. Time went so far as to call the Balkan campaign "Madeleine's War." Despite her assertions that the bombing of Yugoslavia was a humanitarian mission, it is irrefutable at this point in history that the U.S. pretext for military intervention was fabricated.

Albright actively advocated policies that led to American military action in 1999, and placed all of the blame for the situation on the Belgrade government. (Does that ring a bell?) Albright's contention was that "a little bombing" would encourage Milosevic to sign Rambouillet Peace Accords, which would allow for the NATO occupation of Kosovo.

The Clinton Administration demanded Milosevic's removal from power, and in 2000, Albright rejected Vladimir Putin's offer to try to use his influence to defuse the situation.

War may have been the American end game in the Balkans from the start. In 1992, the American ambassador torpedoed Bosnian secession peace negotiations by convincing Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic to refuse to sign the peace accords. The ensuing catastrophic civil war, which ended in 1995, was blamed on Bosnian Serbs and Milosevic. Colin Powell recalled, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he was pressured by Albright in 1992 to use military force on Bosnia.

Albright has never wavered from her stance on the Balkans. In 2012, she got into a shouting match with pro-Serbian activists over her role in that conflict, calling the protesters "dirty Serbs."

Dirty Serbs, huh? And she wants to tell idealistic young American women, who still believe in the American democratic process, how to vote? Yay, feminism!

[Oct 09, 2015] Hillary Clintons Lame Wall Street Reform Plan by James Kwak

Oct 09, 2015 | The Baseline Scenario
Hillary Clinton is competing for the nomination of a party whose progressive base thinks, with considerable justification, that her husband is to blame for letting Wall Street run amok-and that Barack Obama, under whom she served, did too little to rein in the bankers who torpedoed the global economy. On top of that, she faces a competitor who says what the people actually think: that the system is rigged, that big banks should be restrained, and that people should go to jail.

So she has no choice but to try to appear tough on Wall Street-but she has to do that without simply jettisoning twenty-five years of "New Democrat" friendliness to business and without alienating the financial industry donors she is counting on. So the "plan" she announced yesterday has two messages. On the one hand, she wants to show that she has the right approach to taming Wall Street. Unfortunately, it's just more of the same: another two dozen or so regulatory tweaks, mainly of the arcane variety, that will produce more of the massive, loophole-ridden rules that Dodd-Frank gave us.

Or, that could be the point. Her second message is a promise to the financial industry that, instead of real structural reforms, she will continue the technocratic incrementalism of the Geithner era-which has left the megabanks more or less the way they were on the eve of the financial crisis. Maybe, for her base, that's a feature, not a bug.

For more, see my latest column for The Atlantic.

  1. BRUCE E. WOYCH | October 9, 2015 at 10:00 pm

    http://michael-hudson.com/
    http://michael-hudson.com/2015/09/killing-the-host-the-book/
    The Table of Contents is as follows:

    Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy

    Introduction: The Twelve Themes of this Book

    The Parasite, the Host, and Control of the Economy's Brain

    I. From the Enlightenment to Neo-Rentier Economies

    1. The Financial Sector's Rise to Power
    2. The Long Fight to Free Economies from Feudalism's Rentier Legacy
    3. The Critique and Defense of Economic Rent, from Locke to Mill
    4. The All-Devouring "Miracle of Compound Interest"
    5. How the 1% holds the 99% in Exponentially Deepening Debt
    6. Rentiers Sponsor Rent-Free National Income Statistics
    7. The Failed Attempt to Industrialize Banking

    II. Wall Street as Central Planner

    1. The Stock Market as a Predatory Arena
    2. From the Stock Market's Origins to Junk Bonding
    3. Finance vs. Industry: Two Opposite Sides of the Balance Sheet
    4. The Bubble Sequence: From Asset-Price Inflation to Debt Deflation
    5. The Bankers Saw It Coming, but Economists averted their Eyes
    6. The Bailout Coup of 2008: Saving Wall Street instead of the Economy
    7. The Giveaways get More Deeply Politicized and Corrupt
    8. Wall Street Pretends to Insure against the Crash
    9. Bailing out of Goldman via AIG
    10. Wall Street Takes Control and Blocks Debt Writedowns
    11. From Democracy to Oligarchy

    III. Austerity as a Privatization Grab

    1. Europe's Self-imposed Austerity
    2. The Neoliberal Conquest of Post-Soviet Latvia
    3. Creation of the Troika and its pro-Rentier Agenda
    4. High Finance turns Greek Democracy to "Junk"
    5. Installing Technocrats as Proconsuls
    6. The Troika's Road to Debt Serfdom
    7. Creditor Colonialism: U.S. Courts Block Debt Writedowns
    8. Financial Austerity or a Clean Slate?
    9. Finance as War
    10. Is the Mode of Parasitism overshadowing the Mode of Production?

    IV. There Is An Alternative

    1. The Fight for the 21st Century
  2. BRUCE E. WOYCH | October 9, 2015 at 10:19 pm

    William K. Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One,…http://billmoyers.com/guest/william-k-black/
    He developed the concept of "control fraud"-frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a "weapon,"

[Jul 14, 2015] Underaged sex with Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew...and Bill Clinton...? (If the claims are true, Hillary is OVER.)

Cannonfire

Wow.

A court filing in a civil case in Florida last week included new allegations against Jeffrey E. Epstein, a businessman who pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution, and two other high-profile men: a member of the British Royal family and an American lawyer.

The motion filed in United States District Court in the Southern District of Florida alleges that Mr. Epstein forced a teenage girl to have sexual relations with several men, including Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth's second son, and Alan M. Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. Both men have denied the allegations.

Jeffrey Epstein is not just a businessman. He's a billionaire, and he has already been convicted of soliciting underaged prostitution.

About the royal: Some of you may argue that if there was an encounter, the Prince may have been unaware of the girl's age. He has people. People who make arrangements for him. One can see how such a fellow might hear the same knock on the door that Neil Bush once heard. Perhaps, upon opening the door, his first reaction was something other than "May I see your ID, Miss?"

That scenario seems plausible. However, as we shall see, that scenario is not what has been alleged.

We will get to the Prince in a bit. For now, let's focus on Dershowitz.

On Saturday, Mr. Dershowitz said he "categorically and unequivocally" denied all of the allegations. He said he would file disbarment proceedings against the lawyers who filed the motion, Bradley J. Edwards, a lawyer in Florida, and Paul G. Cassell, a former federal judge and a law professor at the University of Utah.

"They are lying deliberately, and I will not stop until they're disbarred," Mr. Dershowitz said in a phone interview.

The very predictability of that furious reaction means that no lawyer would have filed such charges against Dershowitz frivolously. Cassell has an impressive resume. He's not a young go-getter out to make a name for himself.

I understand that there are a lot of women who have made iffy claims against famous people. But this case seems different. Epstein has already pled guilty. Moreover, Dershowitz was part of Epstein's legal team.

The full court filing was published on Mondoweiss a couple of days ago. We learn that the complainant, Jane Doe #3, was 15 years of age,and that she was recruited by an Epstein associate named Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of Robert Maxwell (the late news tycoon and known Mossad asset). The photo to the left shows the Prince with the girl who seems to have been Jane Doe #3. Allegedly, the shot was taken by Epstein. (Note: In what follows, the term NPA refers to non-prosecution agreement.)
Epstein then became enamored with Jane Doe #3, and with the assistance of Maxwell converted her into what is commonly referred to as a "sex slave." Epstein kept Jane Doe #3 as his sex slave from about 1999 through 2002, when she managed to escape to a foreign country and hide out from Epstein and his co-conspirators for years. From 1999 and 2002, Epstein frequently sexually abused Jane Doe #3, not only in West Palm Beach but also in New York, New Mexico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, in international airspace on Epstein's private planes, and elsewhere.

Epstein also sexually trafficked the then-minor Jane Doe, making her available for sex to politically-connected and financially-powerful people. Epstein's purposes in "lending" Jane Doe (along with other young girls) to such powerful people were to ingratiate himself with them for business, personal, political and financial gain, as well as to obtain potential blackmail information.

One such powerful individual that Epstein forced then-minor Jane Doe #3 to have sexual relations with was former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, a close friend of Epstein's and well-known defense attorney. Epstein required Jane Doe #3 to have sexual relations with Dershowiz on numerous occasions while she was a minor, not only in Flroida but also on private planes, in New York, New Mexico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In addition to being a participant in the abuse of Jane Doe #3 and other minors, Dershowitz was an eye-witness to the sexual abuse of many other minors by Epstein and several of Epstein's co-conspirators. Dershowitz would later play a significant role in negotiating the NPA on Esptein's behalf. Indeed, Dershowitz helped negotiate an agreement that provided immunity from federal prosecution in the Southern District of Florida not only to Epstein, but also to "any potential co-conspirators of Epstein." NPA at 5. Thus, Dershowitz helped negotiate an agreement with a provision that provided protection for himself against criminal prosecution in Florida for sexually abusing Jane Doe #3. Because this broad immunity would have been controversial if disclosed, Dershowitz (along with other memebers of Epstein's defense team) and the Government tried to keep the immunity provision secret from all of Epstein's victims and the general public, even though such secrecy violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act.

There's a third named participant in these doings, one Jean Luc Brunel, a close Epstein friend and a scout for various modelling agencies.
He would bring young girls (ranging from ages as young as twelve) to the United States for sexual purposes and farm them out to his friends, especially Epstein. Brunel would offer the girls "modeling" jobs. Many of the girls came from poor countries or impoverished backgrounds, and he lured them in with a promise of making good money.
The Government was well aware of Jane Doe #3 when it was negotiating the NPA, as it listed her as a victim in the attachment to the NPA. Moreover, even a rudimentary investigation of Jane Doe #3's relationship with Epstein would have revealed the fact that she had been trafficked throughout the United States and internationally for sexual purposes. Nonetheless, the Government secretly negotiated a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein precluding any Federal prosecution in the Southern District of Florida of Epstein and his co-conspirators. As with Jane Doe #1 and Jane Doe #2, the Government concealed the non-prosecution agreement from Jane Doe #3 -- all in violation of her rights under the CVRA -- to avoid Jane Doe #3 from raising powerful objections to the NPA that would have shed tremendous light on Epstein and other powerful individuals that would likely have prevented it from being conlcuded in the secretive manner in which it was.
The document also mentions a Jane Doe #4, an impoverished sixteen year old who was told that she could make $300 by giving a "massage" to an old man in Palm Beach.

This matter seems very serious. We have too many details, too many corroborating witnesses (in the form of four Jane Does). We have a photo. We have reports of the existence of many, many more photos. The hugger-mugger involving the NPA seems downright ghastly -- yet all too credible.

Frankly, I would not rule out the possibility that Epstein was working for an intelligence agency -- either Mossad or one of our own. The Maxwell connection points to Mossad.

This whole business has "honeytrap" written all over it.

The Clinton connection.

The Daily Mail discloses that one of Epstein's, er, protegees was a woman named Johanna Sjoberg. Since the story links her to Prince Andrew, it is tempting suppose that she is the aforementioned Jane Doe #3. However, British newspapers have named another young woman, Virginia Roberts.
Miss Sjoberg worked for Epstein for four years, often massaging him as he lay on a couch in his giant bathroom making phone calls to friends such as Bill Clinton and Cate Blanchett.

He kept a little black book, containing the numbers of all his masseuses by a phone in the bathroom, she said. She left after he started becoming 'more aggressive' in his demands that she 'do sexual things to him'.

She said she was aware that the girls recruited by Epstein and his acolytes were not paid just for massages but for 'sexual favours'.

Virginia Roberts revealed that as a 17-year-old 'erotic masseuse', she was flown by Epstein to London to meet Prince Andrew,

Miss Sjoberg said: 'I'm not surprised he was sending girls abroad. I just did not think they were so young.'

The Prince strongly denies any claim of impropriety, of course.

What about Epstein and Clinton? Obviously, there is nothing wrong in taking a man's phone call, even a call from someone like Epstein. However...

Bill Clinton was also named dozens of times in lawsuits against Epstein and was alleged to have flown on his private jet more than 10 times.

Flight logs in lawsuits detailed that between 2002 and 2005 the former US President traveled around the world courtesy of his friend and stopped at Epstein's Caribbean island Little St James where young girls were supposedly kept as sex slaves.

Clinton was deemed to be so close to Epstein that he was nearly deposed during the investigation into his paedophilia.

Before he was jailed Epstein's other acquaintances are said to have been former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak; former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.

Let's make the obvious point. If there is any evidence of wrongdoing against Bill Clinton, then Hillary's chances at the nomination are over. A candidacy can withstand many things, but a statutory rape scandal involving one's spouse? No.

More on the Clinton link here:

Over the years, the casually-dressed, globe-trotting financier, who was said to log more than 600 flying hours a year, has been linked with Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker and Manhattan-London society figure Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late media titan Robert Maxwell.

Epstein reportedly flew Tucker and Spacey to Africa on his private jet as part of a charitable endeavour. Clinton, meanwhile, flew on multiple occasions in the same plane to Epstein's private Caribbean island, Little St James, between 2002 and 2005 as he developed his philanthropic post-presidential career. It would later be alleged in court that Epstein organised orgies on that same private island in the US Virgin Islands.

Reports in the US media say many of the A-list names broke off any links with the former maths teacher after his arrest and conviction in 2008 of having sex with an underage girl whom he had solicited. His arrest followed an 11-month undercover investigation at a mansion in Florida's Palm Beach that Epstein owned.

In 2008, he pleaded guilty to a single charge of soliciting prostitution and was handed a 18-month jail sentence. He served 13 months in jail and was obliged to register as a sex offender. A 2011 report in the New York Post said that he celebrated his release from jail and his return to a property he maintains in New York – a 45,000-sq-foot eight-storey mansion on East 71st Street – with Prince Andrew.

The story goes on to give much useful information about Epstein's business dealings.

More here:

The financier, who was jailed for 18 months in 2008 after pleading guilty to solicitation for prostitution, kept a sickening stash of images on a computer seized at his Palm Beach mansion in 2006.
The six-year-old papers, seen by the Sunday People, state: "Some of the photographs in the defendant's possession were taken with hidden cameras set up in [Epstein's] home in Palm Beach.

"On the Day of his arrest, police found two hidden cameras and photographs of ­underage girls on a computer in the defendant's home.

"[He] may have taken lewd ­photographs of Jane Doe 102 with his hidden cameras and transported [them] to his other residences and elsewhere."

Court papers also allege that Maxwell presented nude pictures of her she had taken herself to Epstein as a birthday present.

They add that Roberts' claims that she was forced to tell Epstein all about her sexual encounters so he could use the information to "blackmail" the royal.

She further claims she was sex-trafficked to "many other powerful men, including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well known Prime Minister, and other world leaders".

And now let's play our game: Who was that Prime Minister?

To-neeeeee...! If that's you, you're gonna have to say so many rosaries that even the Virgin Mary will get sick of hearing your voice.

This scandal places our right-wing media in a bind. Obviously, the right-wingers will want to leap on anything that dirties the Clinton name. On the other hand, anything that reeks of Mossad involvement is untouchable.

[May 09, 2015] Nomi Prins The Clintons & Their Banker Friends

May 08, 2015 | Zero Hedge
In the coming months, however many hours Clinton spends introducing herself to voters in small-town America, she will spend hundreds more raising money in four-star hotels and multimillion-dollar homes around the nation. The question is: "Can Clinton claim to stand for 'everyday Americans,' while hauling in huge sums of cash from the very wealthiest of us?" This much cannot be disputed: Clinton's connections to the financiers and bankers of this country - and this country's campaigns - run deep. As Nomi Prins questions, who counts more to such a candidate, the person you met over that chicken burrito bowl or the Citigroup partner you met over crudités and caviar?

Via TomDispatch.com,

The Clintons and Their Banker Friends
The Wall Street Connection (1992 to 2016)

[This piece has been adapted and updated by Nomi Prins from chapters 18 and 19 of her book All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power, just out in paperback (Nation Books).]

The past, especially the political past, doesn't just provide clues to the present. In the realm of the presidency and Wall Street, it provides an ongoing pathway for political-financial relationships and policies that remain a threat to the American economy going forward.

When Hillary Clinton video-announced her bid for the Oval Office, she claimed she wanted to be a "champion" for the American people. Since then, she has attempted to recast herself as a populist and distance herself from some of the policies of her husband. But Bill Clinton did not become president without sharing the friendships, associations, and ideologies of the elite banking sect, nor will Hillary Clinton. Such relationships run too deep and are too longstanding.

To grasp the dangers that the Big Six banks (JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley) presently pose to the financial stability of our nation and the world, you need to understand their history in Washington, starting with the Clinton years of the 1990s. Alliances established then (not exclusively with Democrats, since bankers are bipartisan by nature) enabled these firms to become as politically powerful as they are today and to exert that power over an unprecedented amount of capital. Rest assured of one thing: their past and present CEOs will prove as critical in backing a Hillary Clinton presidency as they were in enabling her husband's years in office.

In return, today's titans of finance and their hordes of lobbyists, more than half of whom held prior positions in the government, exact certain requirements from Washington. They need to know that a safety net or bailout will always be available in times of emergency and that the regulatory road will be open to whatever practices they deem most profitable.

Whatever her populist pitch may be in the 2016 campaign -- and she will have one -- note that, in all these years, Hillary Clinton has not publicly condemned Wall Street or any individual Wall Street leader. Though she may, in the heat of that campaign, raise the bad-apples or bad-situation explanation for Wall Street's role in the financial crisis of 2007-2008, rest assured that she will not point fingers at her friends. She will not chastise the people that pay her hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop to speak or the ones that have long shared the social circles in which she and her husband move. She is an undeniable component of the Clinton political-financial legacy that came to national fruition more than 23 years ago, which is why looking back at the history of the first Clinton presidency is likely to tell you so much about the shape and character of the possible second one.

The 1992 Election and the Rise of Bill Clinton

Challenging President George H.W. Bush, who was seeking a second term, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton announced he would seek the 1992 Democratic nomination for the presidency on October 2, 1991. The upcoming presidential election would not, however, turn out to alter the path of mergers or White House support for deregulation that was already in play one iota.

First, though, Clinton needed money. A consummate fundraiser in his home state, he cleverly amassed backing and established early alliances with Wall Street. One of his key supporters would later change American banking forever. As Clinton put it, he received "invaluable early support" from Ken Brody, a Goldman Sachs executive seeking to delve into Democratic politics. Brody took Clinton "to a dinner with high-powered New York businesspeople, including Bob Rubin, whose tightly reasoned arguments for a new economic policy," Clinton later wrote, "made a lasting impression on me."

The battle for the White House kicked into high gear the following fall. William Schreyer, chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch, showed his support for Bush by giving the maximum personal contribution to his campaign committee permitted by law: $1,000. But he wanted to do more. So when one of Bush's fundraisers solicited him to contribute to the Republican National Committee's nonfederal, or "soft money," account, Schreyer made a $100,000 donation.

The bankers' alliances remained divided among the candidates at first, as they considered which man would be best for their own power trajectories, but their donations were plentiful: mortgage and broker company contributions were $1.2 million; 46% to the GOP and 54% to the Democrats. Commercial banks poured in $14.8 million to the 1992 campaigns at a near 50-50 split.

Clinton, like every good Democrat, campaigned publicly against the bankers: "It's time to end the greed that consumed Wall Street and ruined our S&Ls [Savings and Loans] in the last decade," he said. But equally, he had no qualms about taking money from the financial sector. In the early months of his campaign, BusinessWeek estimated that he received $2 million of his initial $8.5 million in contributions from New York, under the care of Ken Brody.

"If I had a Ken Brody working for me in every state, I'd be like the Maytag man with nothing to do," said Rahm Emanuel, who ran Clinton's nationwide fundraising committee and later became Barack Obama's chief of staff. Wealthy donors and prospective fundraisers were invited to a select series of intimate meetings with Clinton at the plush Manhattan office of the prestigious private equity firm Blackstone.

Robert Rubin Comes to Washington

Clinton knew that embracing the bankers would help him get things done in Washington, and what he wanted to get done dovetailed nicely with their desires anyway. To facilitate his policies and maintain ties to Wall Street, he selected a man who had been instrumental to his campaign, Robert Rubin, as his economic adviser.

In 1980, Rubin had landed on Goldman Sachs' management committee alongside fellow Democrat Jon Corzine. A decade later, Rubin and Stephen Friedman were appointed cochairmen of Goldman Sachs. Rubin's political aspirations met an appropriate opportunity when Clinton captured the White House.

On January 25, 1993, Clinton appointed him as assistant to the president for economic policy. Shortly thereafter, the president created a unique role for his comrade, head of the newly created National Economic Council. "I asked Bob Rubin to take on a new job," Clinton later wrote, "coordinating economic policy in the White House as Chairman of the National Economic Council, which would operate in much the same way the National Security Council did, bringing all the relevant agencies together to formulate and implement policy... [I]f he could balance all of [Goldman Sachs'] egos and interests, he had a good chance to succeed with the job." (Ten years later, President George W. Bush gave the same position to Rubin's old partner, Friedman.)

Back at Goldman, Jon Corzine, co-head of fixed income, and Henry Paulson, co-head of investment banking, were ascending through the ranks. They became co-CEOs when Friedman retired at the end of 1994.

Those two men were the perfect bipartisan duo. Corzine was a staunch Democrat serving on the International Capital Markets Advisory Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (from 1989 to 1999). He would co-chair a presidential commission for Clinton on capital budgeting between 1997 and 1999, while serving in a key role on the Borrowing Advisory Committee of the Treasury Department. Paulson was a well connected Republican and Harvard graduate who had served on the White House Domestic Council as staff assistant to the president in the Nixon administration.

Bankers Forge Ahead

By May 1995, Rubin was impatiently warning Congress that the Glass-Steagall Act could "conceivably impede safety and soundness by limiting revenue diversification." Banking deregulation was then inching through Congress. As they had during the previous Bush administration, both the House and Senate Banking Committees had approved separate versions of legislation to repeal Glass-Steagall, the 1933 Act passed by the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that had separated deposit-taking and lending or "commercial" bank activities from speculative or "investment bank" activities, such as securities creation and trading. Conference negotiations had fallen apart, though, and the effort was stalled.

By 1996, however, other industries, representing core clients of the banking sector, were already being deregulated. On February 8, 1996, Clinton signed the Telecom Act, which killed many independent and smaller broadcasting companies by opening a national market for "cross-ownership." The result was mass mergers in that sector advised by banks.

Deregulation of companies that could transport energy across state lines came next. Before such deregulation, state commissions had regulated companies that owned power plants and transmission lines, which worked together to distribute power. Afterward, these could be divided and effectively traded without uniform regulation or responsibility to regional customers. This would lead to blackouts in California and a slew of energy derivatives, as well as trades at firms such as Enron that used the energy business as a front for fraudulent deals.

The number of mergers and stock and debt issuances ballooned on the back of all the deregulation that eliminated barriers that had kept companies separated. As industries consolidated, they also ramped up their complex transactions and special purpose vehicles (off-balance-sheet, offshore constructions tailored by the banking community to hide the true nature of their debts and shield their profits from taxes). Bankers kicked into overdrive to generate fees and create related deals. Many of these blew up in the early 2000s in a spate of scandals and bankruptcies, causing an earlier millennium recession.

Meanwhile, though, bankers plowed ahead with their advisory services, speculative enterprises, and deregulation pursuits. President Clinton and his team would soon provide them an epic gift, all in the name of U.S. global power and competitiveness. Robert Rubin would steer the White House ship to that goal.

On February 12, 1999, Rubin found a fresh angle to argue on behalf of banking deregulation. He addressed the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services, claiming that, "the problem U.S. financial services firms face abroad is more one of access than lack of competitiveness."

He was referring to the European banks' increasing control of distribution channels into the European institutional and retail client base. Unlike U.S. commercial banks, European banks had no restrictions keeping them from buying and teaming up with U.S. or other securities firms and investment banks to create or distribute their products. He did not appear concerned about the destruction caused by sizeable financial bets throughout Europe. The international competitiveness argument allowed him to focus the committee on what needed to be done domestically in the banking sector to remain competitive.

Rubin stressed the necessity of HR 665, the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, or the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, that was officially introduced on February 10, 1999. He said it took "fundamental actions to modernize our financial system by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act prohibitions on banks affiliating with securities firms and repealing the Bank Holding Company Act prohibitions on insurance underwriting."

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act Marches Forward

On February 24, 1999, in more testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, Rubin pushed for fewer prohibitions on bank affiliates that wanted to perform the same functions as their larger bank holding company, once the different types of financial firms could legally merge. That minor distinction would enable subsidiaries to place all sorts of bets and house all sorts of junk under the false premise that they had the same capital beneath them as their parent. The idea that a subsidiary's problems can't taint or destroy the host, or bank holding company, or create "catastrophic" risk, is a myth perpetuated by bankers and political enablers that continues to this day.

Rubin had no qualms with mega-consolidations across multiple service lines. His real problems were those of his banker friends, which lay with the financial modernization bill's "prohibition on the use of subsidiaries by larger banks." The bankers wanted the right to establish off-book subsidiaries where they could hide risks, and profits, as needed.

Again, Rubin decided to use the notion of remaining competitive with foreign banks to make his point. This technicality was "unacceptable to the administration," he said, not least because "foreign banks underwrite and deal in securities through subsidiaries in the United States, and U.S. banks [already] conduct securities and merchant banking activities abroad through so-called Edge subsidiaries." Rubin got his way. These off-book, risky, and barely regulated subsidiaries would be at the forefront of the 2008 financial crisis.

On March 1, 1999, Senator Phil Gramm released a final draft of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 and scheduled committee consideration for March 4th. A bevy of excited financial titans who were close to Clinton, including Travelers CEO Sandy Weill, Bank of America CEO, Hugh McColl, and American Express CEO Harvey Golub, called for "swift congressional action."

The Quintessential Revolving-Door Man

The stock market continued its meteoric rise in anticipation of a banker-friendly conclusion to the legislation that would deregulate their industry. Rising consumer confidence reflected the nation's fondness for the markets and lack of empathy with the rest of the world's economic plight. On March 29, 1999, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 10,000 for the first time. Six weeks later, on May 6th, the Financial Services Modernization Act passed the Senate. It legalized, after the fact, the merger that created the nation's biggest bank. Citigroup, the marriage of Citibank and Travelers, had been finalized the previous October.

It was not until that point that one of Glass-Steagall's main assassins decided to leave Washington. Six days after the bill passed the Senate, on May 12, 1999, Robert Rubin abruptly announced his resignation. As Clinton wrote, "I believed he had been the best and most important treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton... He had played a decisive role in our efforts to restore economic growth and spread its benefits to more Americans."

Clinton named Larry Summers to succeed Rubin. Two weeks later, BusinessWeek reported signs of trouble in merger paradise -- in the form of a growing rift between John Reed, the former Chairman of Citibank, and Sandy Weill at the new Citigroup. As Reed said, "Co-CEOs are hard." Perhaps to patch their rift, or simply to take advantage of a political opportunity, the two men enlisted a third person to join their relationship -- none other than Robert Rubin.

Rubin's resignation from Treasury became effective on July 2nd. At that time, he announced, "This almost six and a half years has been all-consuming, and I think it is time for me to go home to New York and to do whatever I'm going to do next." Rubin became chairman of Citigroup's executive committee and a member of the newly created "office of the chairman." His initial annual compensation package was worth around $40 million. It was more than worth the "hit" he took when he left Goldman for the Treasury post.

Three days after the conference committee endorsed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill, Rubin assumed his Citigroup position, joining the institution destined to dominate the financial industry. That very same day, Reed and Weill issued a joint statement praising Washington for "liberating our financial companies from an antiquated regulatory structure," stating that "this legislation will unleash the creativity of our industry and ensure our global competitiveness."

On November 4th, the Senate approved the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act by a vote of 90 to 8. (The House voted 362–57 in favor.) Critics famously referred to it as the Citigroup Authorization Act.

Mirth abounded in Clinton's White House. "Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the twenty-first century," Summers said. "This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy."

But the happiness was misguided. Deregulating the banking industry might have helped the titans of Wall Street but not people on Main Street. The Clinton era epitomized the vast difference between appearance and reality, spin and actuality. As the decade drew to a close, Clinton basked in the glow of a lofty stock market, a budget surplus, and the passage of this key banking "modernization." It would be revealed in the 2000s that many corporate profits of the 1990s were based on inflated evaluations, manipulation, and fraud. When Clinton left office, the gap between rich and poor was greater than it had been in 1992, and yet the Democrats heralded him as some sort of prosperity hero.

When he resigned in 1997, Robert Reich, Clinton's labor secretary, said, "America is prospering, but the prosperity is not being widely shared, certainly not as widely shared as it once was... We have made progress in growing the economy. But growing together again must be our central goal in the future." Instead, the growth of wealth inequality in the United States accelerated, as the men yielding the most financial power wielded it with increasingly less culpability or restriction. By 2015, that wealth or prosperity gap would stand near historic highs.

The power of the bankers increased dramatically in the wake of the repeal of Glass-Steagall. The Clinton administration had rendered twenty-first-century banking practices similar to those of the pre-1929 crash. But worse. "Modernizing" meant utilizing government-backed depositors' funds as collateral for the creation and distribution of all types of complex securities and derivatives whose proliferation would be increasingly quick and dangerous.

Eviscerating Glass-Steagall allowed big banks to compete against Europe and also enabled them to go on a rampage: more acquisitions, greater speculation, and more risky products. The big banks used their bloated balance sheets to engage in more complex activity, while counting on customer deposits and loans as capital chips on the global betting table. Bankers used hefty trading profits and wealth to increase lobbying funds and campaign donations, creating an endless circle of influence and mutual reinforcement of boundary-less speculation, endorsed by the White House.

Deposits could be used to garner larger windfalls, just as cheap labor and commodities in developing countries were used to formulate more expensive goods for profit in the upper echelons of the global financial hierarchy. Energy and telecoms proved especially fertile ground for the investment banking fee business (and later for fraud, extensive lawsuits, and bankruptcies). Deregulation greased the wheels of complex financial instruments such as collateralized debt obligations, junk bonds, toxic assets, and unregulated derivatives.

The Glass-Steagall repeal led to unfettered derivatives growth and unstable balance sheets at commercial banks that merged with investment banks and at investment banks that preferred to remain solo but engaged in dodgier practices to remain "competitive." In conjunction with the tight political-financial alignment and associated collaboration that began with Bush and increased under Clinton, bankers channeled the 1920s, only with more power over an immense and growing pile of global financial assets and increasingly "open" markets. In the process, accountability would evaporate.

Every bank accelerated its hunt for acquisitions and deposits to amass global influence while creating, trading, and distributing increasingly convoluted securities and derivatives. These practices would foster the kind of shaky, interconnected, and opaque financial environment that provided the backdrop and conditions leading up to the financial meltdown of 2008.

The Realities of 2016

Hillary Clinton is, of course, not her husband. But her access to his past banker alliances, amplified by the ones that she has formed herself, makes her more of a friend than an adversary to the banking industry. In her brief 2008 candidacy, all four of the New York-based Big Six banks ranked among her top 10 corporate donors. They have also contributed to the Clinton Foundation. She needs them to win, just as both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton did.

No matter what spin is used for campaigning purposes, the idea that a critical distance can be maintained between the White House and Wall Street is naïve given the multiple channels of money and favors that flow between the two. It is even more improbable, given the history of connections that Hillary Clinton has established through her associations with key bank leaders in the early 1990s, during her time as a senator from New York, and given their contributions to the Clinton foundation while she was secretary of state. At some level, the situation couldn't be less complicated: her path aligns with that of the country's most powerful bankers. If she becomes president, that will remain the case.

[May 06, 2015] Clinton Cash: errors dog Bill and Hillary exposé – but is there any 'there' there? by Ed Pilkington

May 05, 2015 | The Guardian

In an interview with the sympathetic Fox News (owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Harper, the publisher of Clinton Cash) it was put to Schweizer that he hadn't "nailed" his thesis. "It's hard for any author to nail it – one of the strategies of the Clinton camp is to set a bar for me as an author that is impossible to meet," he replied.

... ... ...

Certainly, pundits were warning about the problem of the large sums of money flowing into the Clinton Foundation's coffers even before Hillary Clinton took up her position as Obama's global emissary-in-chief. A month before she became secretary of state, the Washington Post warned in an editorial that her husband's fundraising activities were problematic. "Even if Ms Clinton is not influenced by gifts to her husband's charity, the appearance of conflict is unavoidable."

Since the foundation was formed in 2001, some $2bn has been donated, mainly in big lump sums. Fully a third of the donors giving more than $1m, and more than a half of those handing over more than $5m, have been foreign governments, corporations or tycoons. (The foundation stresses that such largesse has been put to very good use – fighting obesity around the globe, combating climate change, helping millions of people with HIV/Aids obtain antiretroviral drugs at affordable prices.)

Schweizer may have made mistakes about aspects of Bill Clinton's fees on the speaker circuit, but one of his main contentions – that the former president's rates skyrocketed after his wife became secretary of state – is correct. Politifact confirmed that since leaving the White House in 2001 and 2013, Bill Clinton made 13 speeches for which he commanded more than $500,000; all but two of those mega-money earners occurred in the period when Hillary was at the State Department.

Though Schweizer has failed to prove actual corruption in the arrangement – at no point in the book does he produce evidence showing that Bill's exorbitant speaker fees were directly tied to policy concessions from Hillary – he does point to several glaring conflicts of interest. Bill Clinton did accept large speaker fees accumulating to more than $1m from TD Bank, a major shareholder in the Keystone XL pipeline, at precisely the time that the Obama administration, and Hillary Clinton within it, was wrestling with the vexed issue of whether to approve it.

It is also true that large donations to the foundation from the chairman of Uranium One, Ian Telfer, at around the time of the Russian purchase of the company and while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, were never disclosed to the public. The multimillion sums were channeled through a subsidiary of the Clinton Foundation, CGSCI, which did not reveal its individual donors.

Such awkward collisions between Bill's fundraising activities and Hillary's public service have raised concerns not just among those who might be dismissed as part of a vast rightwing conspiracy. Take Zephyr Teachout, a law professor at Fordham university who has written extensively on political corruption in the US.

Teachout, who last year stood against Andrew Cuomo for the Democratic party nomination for New York governor, points out that you don't have to be able to prove quid pro quo for alarm bells to ring. "Our whole system of rules is built upon the concept that you must prevent conflicts of interests if you are to resist corruption in its many forms. Conflicts like that can infect us in ways we don't even see."

Teachout said that the Clintons presented the US political world with a totally new challenge. "We have never had somebody running for president whose spouse – himself a former president – is running around the world raising money in these vast sums."

... ... ...

Though Bill Clinton insisted this week that his charity has done nothing "knowingly inappropriate", that is unlikely to satisfy the skeptics from left or right. They say that a family in which one member is vying for the most powerful office on Earth must avoid straying into even the unintentionally inappropriate.

In the wake of Clinton Cash, the foundation has admitted that it made mistakes in disclosing some of its contributions. It has also implemented new rules that will see its financial reporting increase from once annually to four times a year, while large donations from foreign governments will be limited in future to six countries including the UK and Germany.

But with Bill refusing doggedly to give up his speaker engagements – "I gotta pay our bills" – and foreign corporations and super-rich individuals still able to donate to the family charity, it looks like this controversy may run and run. Politically, too, Hillary Clinton is confronted with a potential credibility gap between her appeal to ordinary Americans on the presidential campaign trail and the millions that continue to flow to the foundation.

"Is she going to be in touch with the needs and dreams of poor America when her spouse and daughter are working with the world's global elite?" said Dave Levinthal of the anti-corruption investigative organization, the Center for Public Integrity. "That's a question she will have to answer, every step of the way."

mkenney63 5 May 2015 20:39
It would be nice to know how much Saudi and Chinese money her "Foundation" has taken-in. I can tell you how much Bernie has taken - $0. Bernie, the only truly progressive in the race, raised $1.5 million in one day from ordinary working people like you and me who have the smarts to know who's really in their corner. When I look at Hillary I ask myself, do we really want parasitic people like this running our country? Is there anything she has ever touched that isn't tainted by a lust for money?
foggy2 gixxerman006 5 May 2015 20:38
I am in the process of reading the actual book. He does have actual sources for many things but what is missing is the information controlled by that now cleaned off server and the details of just who contributed to them, their foundation, and who hired them for those gold plated speeches. Those names never were made public and now the related tax forms are being "redone." Wonder how long that will take.

The author was able to get pertinent data from the Canadian tax base information and that is important because some of the heavier hitters are Canadians who needed help in the US and other places to make piles of money on their investments. And many statements made by people are documented as are some cables sent TO the state department.

AlfredHerring raffine 5 May 2015 20:33

It's funny that free-market Tea Party Republicans criticize the Clintons

There's a broad populist streak in the Tea Party. They may be social conservatives and opposed to government telling them they MUST buy health insurance from a private company (that's where it started) but on many issues they're part of the Teddy Roosevelt trust busting and Franklin Roosevelt New Deal traditions.

[Jan 12, 2014] Chris Hedges: The False Left-Right Paradigm and the Fatal Intransigence of Oligarchies

Clinton was betrayer of his class on a very large, but poorly understood level. He really was a neoliberal president.
January 11, 2014
"In the same way, those who possess wealth and power in poor nations must accept their own responsibilities. They must lead the fight for those basic reforms which alone can preserve the fabric of their societies. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

John F. Kennedy, First Anniversary of the Alliance For Progress



[Jul 02, 2011] Clinton Pimps Some More for His Bank and Corporate Benefactors

naked capitalism

Of the many low points of the Clinton presidency, one was its questionable money dealings. Remember how Hillary managed to turn $1000 into $100,000 via successful commodities trading? 70% of retail commodities traders lose money. Boy, for a newbie trader, the First Lady was clearly a natural!

A former contact of mine, low profile but with a serious reputation among professional traders, was asked to review Hillary's trading records by some Congressmen (they apparently asked two other market professionals). Of course, it was clearly bogus, impossible even for an expert. Among other telltale signs: her trades were almost always executed at the best price of the day.

And there was the cheapening of the Presidency. Remember the monetization of the Lincoln bedroom? The rush to give big ticket speeches and ink book deals? (note Hillary's was signed while Clinton was still President). While some recent Presidents have also used their former role as "leader of the free world" to ring the cash register (Saint Ronnie reportedly gave a speech in Japan for a cool $2.5 million), they tried to keep it below the radar. The Clintons, by contrast, have been remarkably brazen about their efforts to cash in.

So it should be no surprise given that the Clinton Global Institute has a roster of big name corporate patrons that Slick Willy is perfectly happy to carry their water. Of course, he offers some gestures to the left, as if that will camouflage what he is up to. Today's sightings include:

Delaying the implementation of Dodd Frank. From The Hill:

Former President Clinton suggested Thursday that the implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform be slowed.

As the one-year anniversary of the financial overhaul draws near, Clinton was generally positive on the law as a whole, but suggested regulators should parcel out the new rules bit by bit for the benefit of businesses.

"One way to clear that up may be to stagger [the regulations] in over a more pronounced time table," he said on CNBC. "I think there's only so much change that institutions can handle at one time."

If you haven't been following what happened during the fights over financial reform, one of the ways Dodd Frank was already hampered is a great number of its supposed changes were not hammered out, but instead were delayed by requiring studies or being fobbed off on more detailed rulemaking (beyond the degree that is typical). That gave the industry the opportunity to water it down further. And at this juncture, delay could be a monstrous boon for the banks, since if Obama loses in 2012, even more bank friendly regulators will be put in place.

It's not as if Dodd Frank related rules are being put in place at such a quick pace that the banks can legitimately claim it is causing them headaches (as in it's that they don't want to be asked to do anything different at all, there is no evidence that the pace of change is compounding their work. Bitching and moaning is not tantamount to evidence). But this feeds the spurious notion that the convenience of management should take precedent over the public good.

Supporting a tax repatriation holiday. Trust me, no one who is knowledgeable and not in the pocket of banks favors this idea; see Jared Bernstein (hat tip Marcy Wheeler) for details as to why (for starters, it will cost $80 billion in tax revenues and since big multinationals don't invest in America, will be used for really productive activities like stock buyback or dividends). But you'd never know that if you listened to Clinton via Bloomberg:

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton endorsed a tax holiday on repatriating offshore profits with conditions, taking a position contrary to the Obama administration.

"I favor it under certain circumstances," Clinton said in an interview with Bloomberg Television's Al Hunt yesterday in Chicago. He suggested an approach that would give companies a 20 percent tax rate on repatriated profits, which could be reduced to 10 percent if they "reinvest it in increasing employment in America."

Oh, please. How exactly will we determine that they "increased employment" over what they would have done regardless? And how pray tell would a program like this be monitored? Plus, as Bernstein notes, all you do is incentivize companies to play this game all over again, since they can expect another holiday in the future. And giving them a break for hard-to-be-sure-anything-happened initiatives is a less good idea that higher tax receipts and programs that provide employment more directly (like investments in areas that are national priorities).

But this is just another example of the fish rotting from the head, or in this case a former head. And the really sad thing is that this sort of thing has become so routine that hardly anyone sits up and takes notice.

[Apr 18, 2010] Slick Willy Rewrites the History of the Financial Crisis and Regulation, Blames His Advisors

The hypocrisy of the oligarchs knows no bounds.

Bill Clinton conveniently forgets the hundreds of millions of campaign contributions that he and Hillary so famously raised from Wall Street for the Democrats. They taught their party, always a bit chaotic but left dispirited after the Kennedy assassinations, that 'greed is good.,' and it certainly pays well. You can put up $1000 and obtain a return of $100,000 in a futures market of which you know nothing, and do nothing, if you know the right people.

The price of their perfidy was the overturning of Glass-Steagall and the planting of the seeds of the bubbles and financial crises that the US is still experiencing today.

There is no doubt that George W. Bush hatched the egg, and nurtured it into a ferocious buzzard of fraud and greed. But Bill Clinton laid the egg. And Obama continues to feed the beast, and maintains the very same advisors that Clinton blames in the Rubin proteges Larry Summers and Tim Geithner.

Americans embrace the "CEO defense." Hey, everyone makes mistakes. All you have to do is say, "Oops, I made a mistake" and all is forgiven, from Greenspan to Clinton.

When you make a big enough mistake, or a series of mistakes, and profit by it, and your actions have the stench of corruption, you should be sacked, disgraced, and shunned for a decent period of time.

The elite media is in a panic. I had the opportunity to watch "The Chris Matthews Show" and the comparisons of Tim McVeigh, Ruby Ridge, and Waco to the Tea Party Movement went way over the top, suggesting the possibility of imminent crisis. I can almost see the over-reaction and paranoia coming over the horizon.

There is a tremendous temptation for the old media, and even the bloggers, to go along to get along, to deal only with the 'safe subjects' and reforms, and to play the party line for the status quo. It provides the admittance to the powers, and the venues where they pose for the press. It brings connections and praise from those in power. All you have to do is say thing, or deal with this legitimate problem but in the way we suggest. And ignore these other things.

It does happen. It is not always obvious, but it is there. And if you say 'no' you are attacked or shunned. And being your own person, not taking 'sides' in distorting the facts in one direction or the other, puts one is in the 'grays' always caught between black and white. It sounds noble, but it is a lonely watch.

I am absolutely no follower or even admirer of Sarah Palin. I think she is a shameless opportunist playing to the crowd, saying whatever will deliver money and power. She is the Bill Clinton of the right, or even worse, a Huey Long. And the Tea Party crowd is badly in need of adult supervision. And Fox News is too often blatant propaganda, and pandering to and inflaming extremism for commercial gain. I often suspect that they are part of the Hegelian dialectic, the means of defusing legitimate reform into ineffective noise.

Bear in mind I was a conservative before 'conservatism' was cool, going back to the Goldwater movement and the traditional and principal conservatism embodied by Edmund Burke and James Burnham. These Fox conservatives for the most part are the worst of breed. But such is the quality of discourse and action in the States as it declines.

But having said all that, the grievances are legitimate, the Congress is corrupted by the current campaign contribution laws, the US financial system is rife with fraud, the economy is dysfunctional as a price discovery and capital allocation system, and the inequality of power and wealth is a significant obstacle to progress and domestic tranquility.

Obama is leaving a leadership vacuum by his indolent style of leading by indirection, trying to build a consensus to do the right thing, teaching the Congress to fish. I have great sympathy for the challenge he faces. The problem is that the Congress cannot even find the stream for hitting one another with their poles. There are serious and fundamental flaws in the political and economic structure in the US that become more acute and systemically threatening with each false recovery.

How all this resolves is difficult to see. A new financial crisis will almost certainly bring things to a head, but it remains to be seen how America will react to the realization that they have been badly used, and are expected to suffer, in some cases greatly, for it. But before America the jackals appear to be descending on Europe. And Europe, and especially the UK, may provide us with some insight into the future of the world's greatest but declining superpower.

Bloomberg
Clinton Says He Had Bad Advice on Derivatives
By Joshua Zumbrun

April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Former President Bill Clinton said he should have pushed for regulation of financial derivatives when he was president, rejecting the advice of top economic advisers Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.

The argument was that derivatives didn't need transparency because they were "expensive and sophisticated and only a handful of people would buy them," Clinton said on ABC's "This Week" program. "The flaw in this argument was that first of all, sometimes people with a lot of money make stupid decisions and make it without transparency."

"Even if less than 1 percent of the total investment community is involved in derivative exchanges, so much money was involved that if they went bad, they could affect 100 percent of the investments," Clinton said. The show was taped yesterday for broadcast today.

Tighter regulation of derivatives trading is part of a package of financial reforms being pushed by the Obama administration against Republican opposition. The Senate is debating a bill introduced by Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd that would also give the federal government the authority to unravel institutions whose failure threatens the financial system.

Bush Blamed

Clinton also said the Bush administration contributed to the financial crisis with lax regulation.

"I think what happened was the SEC and the whole regulatory apparatus after I left office was just let go," Clinton said. If Clinton's head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Arthur Levitt, had remained in that job, "an enormous percentage of what we've been through in the last eight years would not have happened," Clinton said.

Levitt is a director of Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News.

Clinton also said that Republicans who controlled Congress would have stopped him from trying to regulate derivatives. "I wish I had been caught trying," Clinton said. "I mean, that was a mistake I made."

"Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth?

No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform. He promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind.

He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them. He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods.

Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

John Henry Newman, The Antichrist

[Jun 26, 2009] Did Clinton cause the banking crisis - MSN Money

A trio of regulatory changes and missteps on the former president's watch let the banks run wild and encouraged the housing bubble. But he had help, of course. By David Weidner, MarketWatch

On Wall Street and Main Street they call William Jefferson Clinton the "Comeback Kid," but it's not because of some Election Day surprise.

It's because almost everything he did regarding financial-services regulation has come back to haunt us.

If it wasn't apparent before, the former president's handiwork became clear when President Barack Obama announced his plans for sweeping financial-services reforms. Obama's efforts to bring fair dealing to the mortgage markets, rules to the derivatives marketplace and restraint to big financial companies underscore the missteps of Clinton's second term.

We had weakly regulated markets when Clinton took office, but by the time he left, they were an invitation to lawless dealing. For the ease of it, Willie Sutton would have traded his gun and mask for a briefcase and necktie.

Clinton created a fertile environment for home-lending charlatans and hiding places for Wall Street swindlers, and upset a regulatory structure that had served the financial marketplace so well for more than six decades.

Clinton bashing -- like Bush bashing -- is often a cop-out, but Clinton made critical mistakes when it came to dealing with the financial industry. Three poor decisions stand out.

The first, in 1997, was a change to the amount of taxes a homeowner had to pay on the sale of his or her home, up to $500,000. That change effectively made buying and selling a home for profit the most compelling investment in America by tax standards. It shifted our housing market from one of supply and demand to one of rampant speculation.

The second mistake was one of inaction. In 1998, Long-Term Capital Management's use of derivatives and leverage required a massive $3.6 billion hedge fund bailout organized by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. After the fiasco rocked the markets, the administration was on the spot. Would it push for tighter regulation of this new form of investment vehicle? Would it rein in the derivatives markets?

Alan Greenspan and Arthur Levitt, then the chairmen of the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission, respectively, and Clinton's Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, all counseled against it to varying degrees. No action was taken.

Repeal of Glass-Steagall

But perhaps the biggest mistake of the Clinton years regarding Wall Street and the one that rings loudest today was the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which effectively had split investment banking and brokerages from commercial banks.

In the years leading up to the repeal, Wall Street had been grumbling that the law had become an anachronism. Financial technology was sophisticated. We were so much smarter than they were back in 1929 that there was no way a financial-services conglomerate could pose a threat to the system, Wall Street experts said. Besides, they argued, it was a good idea for banks to handle customers' investments and savings as a hedge in the bad times.

The Clinton administration effectively had its hand forced by the merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group in 1998. The creation of Citigroup (C, news, msgs) required a lot of chutzpah by its CEO, Sandy Weill, because it was effectively prohibited under Glass-Steagall.

Enter the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which not only allowed Citigroup to exist but also eliminated key barriers between bankers, who were supposed to limit risks, and investment bankers, who were supposed to take them.

The biggest argument critics have against bringing back Glass-Steagall is that it would be too chaotic. Whole companies would have to be cleaved. Relationships would have to be unwound.

Well, back in 1933, the law effectively split J.P. Morgan, the bank, from what would become Morgan Stanley, the brokerage. Both seem to have come through the disruption fairly well.

Aides who abetted

Clinton didn't do it all alone. He had a lot of help from Congress. He was under pressure from a legislature controlled by laissez-faire Republicans who were hellbent on pushing Ronald Reagan's ideology of deregulation and free markets. The repeal of Glass-Steagall passed 90-8 in the Senate and 362-57 in the House.

Greenspan, the virtually universally loved Fed chairman, gave everyone bad advice in regard to interest rates, home ownership and derivatives. Under Levitt at the SEC, Wall Street accounting reached its nadir, only to reveal itself with the WorldCom and Enron scandals after he left office.

Then, Clinton's Republican successor closed the deal. President George W. Bush took the ball into the end zone, making buying a home easier than spelling "FNMA" or "FICO" and removing the last vestiges of capital requirements at U.S. brokerage firms.

Ultimately, however, the big bang -- the wall torn down between brokers and banks -- happened on Clinton's watch. It's largely the problem that's being tackled in the current administration's 85-page white paper on reform. After all, Citigroup's banking side probably would not have loaded its balance sheet with toxic loans had it not been under pressure from the arm making all of the stuff.

Citi also wouldn't be the size it is today, a monster the government deems "too big to fail" that has required more than $300 billion in cash and guarantees to stabilize.

Citigroup's drag on the nation probably isn't what Clinton envisioned, but that's the problem with modernizing markets and making our financial system cutting-edge: Too often we get cut.

The Mellowing of William Jefferson Clinton by PETER BAKER

May 31, 2009

When the subject came up during our conversation in Chappaqua, Clinton calmly dissected the case against him and acknowledged that in at least some particulars his critics have a point. In almost clinical form, as if back at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, he broke down the case against him into three allegations: first, that he used the Community Reinvestment Act to force small banks into making loans to low-income depositors who were too risky. Second, that he signed the deregulatory Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, repealing part of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act that prohibited commercial banks from engaging in the investment business. And third, that he failed to regulate the complex financial instruments known as derivatives.

The first complaint Clinton rejects as "just a totally off-the-wall crazy argument" made by the "right wing," noting that community banks have not had major problems. The second he gives some credence to, although he blames Bush for, in his view, neutering the Securities and Exchange Commission. "Letting banks take investment positions I don't think had much to do with this meltdown," he said. "And the more diversified institutions in general were better able to handle what happened. And again, if I had known that the S.E.C. would have taken a rain check, would I have done it? Probably not. But I wouldn't have done anything. In other words, I would have tried to reverse everything if I had known we were going to have eight years where we would not have an S.E.C. for most of the time."

Clinton argued that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act set up a framework for overseeing the industry. "So I don't think that's such a good criticism," he said. "I think, actually, if you want to make a criticism on that, it would be an indirect one - you could say that the signing of that legislation sped up what was happening anyway and maybe led some of these institutions to be bigger than they otherwise would have been and the very bigness of some of these groups caused some of this problem because the bigger something is and the newer it is, the harder it is to manage. And I do think there were some serious management problems which might not have occurred."

Then there are the derivatives. There, Clinton pleads guilty. Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, opposed regulation of derivatives as they came to the fore in the 1990s, and Clinton agreed. "They argued that nobody's going to buy these derivatives, we'll do it without transparency, they'll get the information they need," he recalled. "And it turned out to be just wrong; it just wasn't true." He said others share blame, including credit-rating agencies that underestimated the risk. But he accepts responsibility as well. "I very much wish now that I had demanded that we put derivatives under the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission and that transparency rules had been observed and that we had done that. That I think is a legitimate criticism of what we didn't do." He added: "If you ask me to write the indictment, I'd say: 'I wish Bill Clinton had said more about derivatives. The Republicans probably would have stopped him from doing it, but at least he should have sounded the alarm bell.' "

For all that, Clinton insisted he never would have let the housing bubble grow into the problem it became (never mind the high-technology bubble that burst on his watch) and would have stepped in if he were president to prevent the free fall. "When anybody asks me that," he told me, "I ask them, I look at them and ask them: 'Do you think this would have happened if we had been there? Look me in the face and say yes.' I haven't found any takers yet."

[May 28, 2009] Blaming Clinton

May 28th, 2009 | The Big Picture

Clinton got sucked into the black hole of the prevailing economic ideology of the time.
Summers, Rubin, Greenspan, Gramm all of them.

Prodded of course by the titans at the time namely Sandy Weill.

Permabear:

As a Democrat and a big Clinton fan over the years, I cannot deny that Clinton made huge blunders signing the repeal of Glass Steagall and legisltation the following year, both penned by Phil Gramm by the way, that deregulated the derivatives market. At the time very few people raised eyebrows about either of these pieces of legislation. In fact I believe the derivatives legislation, Commodities Futures Modernization Act, was the last piece of legislation Clinton signed as President and was hidden in some larger legislation, and signed at at time that no one was really paying any attention to it.

Clinton overall was a pragmatist and he presided over a very prosperous economic period. Nevertheless he bought into the conservative, free market, deregulation is good, mantra of the time, which was shared by almost all Republicans, Alan Greenspan and a large portion of Democrats, including Summers, Rubin and Geithner.

Rather than blame Clinton for going along with the program, I personally blame the philosophy itself. I consider it to be part of the Reaganomics mindset which basically ruled the country from 1980 until the Great Recession of 2008. It is Reaganomics much more than Clinton the man who should be what history puts most of the blame on for the massive mess we see today. For the mess didn't begin with the signing of these foolish pieces of legislation. The debt, derivatives, and deregulation (3Ds as I call it) all began with Ronald Reagan and ended with the hyperinflationary depression that we are only beginning to experience today. http://www.jonasclark.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/usdebt_serendipitythumb.jpg

Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:

Permabear:

  1. Well as some say, Clinton was the most successful Republican President since Eisenhower.
Steve Barry:
Permabear is 100% correct…debt started rising in 1980…clearly a new paradigm was in effect. It was already out of control by 1987, when Reagan made the colossal, unimaginably disastrous blunder of installing the maestro. Total credit proceeded to go on a drunken orgy, continuing to this day to heights we cannot recover from in our lifetimes. The pain of it unwinding has yet to be felt. What we have had so far is just credit growth slowing. The deflationary debt crash should start soon, with plant closings and massive defaults.

It was the maestro…so blind that he could not recognize the greatest credit bubble the world may ever know…that could have maybe stopped it from happening.

BelowTheCrowd:

    I hate to get into "Godwin's Law" territory, but I think when the history of this period is written by those who are looking back rather than by those of us who lived through it, it will be seen in much the same way as the rise of the Nazis in Germany, or the Salem Witch Trials, or the John Law's Mississippi Company scheme in France, or any number of other highly destabilizing events, in which ultimately no one person can be blamed.

    As was the case in every single one of those situations, blame will be apportioned to many parties acting on behalf of many different interests, but the overall conclusion will be that at a critical point in history, everybody went crazy all at once. Virtually all major interests simultaneously decided that it was OK to deny and throw away rules and traditions that had worked so well, despite the fact that any logical analysis showed this change to be irrational if not completely insane.

    In this case, we have met the enemy and he is us, along with all those who have claimed to represent us at any point in the past 20-25 years.



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