Tag: Russia

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government transparency insider corruption national politics & policies

The Stick-​to-​it-​iveness of the Deep State

James Clapper, Amy Semple McPherson, Russia, Donald Trump

“It is essential that we (CIA/​NSA/​FBI/​ODNI) be on the same page and are all supportive of the report,” wrote former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, “in the highest tradition of ‘that’s OUR story, and we’re sticking to it.’ ”

Clapper wrote that in a recently declassified email from late 2016. It’s about RussiaGate, which his inter-​departmental team had concocted out of Clinton oppo campaign research leading up to Donald Trump’s unexpected win that year.

“This is one project that has to be a team sport,” urged Clapper, expecting unity on his scheme to undermine Trump’s presidency.

While you and I may hope that saving the country isn’t mere sport to our leaders, we should learn from divulgations of this kind. They know what they’re doing, and are serious about it, even when “sticking to” an obviously nutty story.

Do you remember where that phrase came from?

On May 18, 1926, Aimee Semple McPherson vanished while swimming at Venice Beach, California. A massive search — involving divers, the Coast Guard, and a $25,000 reward — came up bupkis. But this media innovator and founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel reemerged five weeks later near the Mexican border, saying she had been abducted by three strangers, held captive in a desert shack, tortured, and forced to write ransom notes before her escape, walking 40 miles through wilderness. Her wild story quickly fell apart as evidence of a torrid affair was made public. But in response to relentless questioning from prosecutors, journalists, and skeptics during the following grand jury hearings and trials, the Pentecostal evangelist repeatedly affirmed her account, often uttering variations on what became an infamous theme: “This is my story, and I am sticking to it.”

James Clapper channeled that while orchestrating his much more serious public fraud. And he expects to get away with it, too, like “Sister Aimee” did, through bluster. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment insider corruption national politics & policies

A Plausible Theory

Donald Trump, deep state, Hillary Clinton, top secret files, fishing expedition

A solid majority of Americans — a supermajority, even — are likely unaware that Donald J. Trump is suing Hillary Clinton and a gaggle of her cohorts for their part in the Russiagate hoax.

Though it has been reported on, here and there and now and then, I wasn’t aware until a few weeks ago.

Most major network news outfits do not make much of it.

Indeed, CNN’s initial coverage was quite instructive in how to downgrade a story in potential readers’ minds: “deep state” is in scare quotes and Hillary crony John Podesta is himself quoted as saying the suit was sure to be a “hoot.”

That’s the dismissive tactic of the current Vice President’s cackle. 

But this lawsuit may be the key to understanding what the FBI was really looking for during its documents raid at Trump’s Mar-​a-​Lago residence: the material he had collected to bring this lawsuit against his enemies who had tried to unseat him using farrago, fantasy, and fraud.

In The Epoch Times, Jeff Carlson expounds on this theory that Trump had the goods on Clinton and certain other players on her staff and within the FBI and elsewhere, and that the FBI was trying to confiscate and muddy up the waters about what documents may be used in Trump’s lawsuit.

Calling the raid “a targeted fishing expedition — designed to capture any and all information relating to the Russiagate hoax,” Carlson notes it comes “at the exact time that the DOJ is defending its actions taken in the Russiagate hoax in court against Trump’s RICO case.”

Evidence, over time, has indeed linked Russiagate directly back to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Indeed, the Muller Report was  a jumble of nonsense and notoriously fizzled. The whole mess is indecent.

But the only thing we — outside the halls of power — can count on for sure is that the insiders cannot be trusted to do anything but protect their power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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defense & war international affairs

Priced to Purloin

Russian tank, Ukraine, war

We interrupt this regularly scheduled commentary to give you a tip about an opportunity you may want to exploit ASAP, especially if you live in the Ukraine area.

This offer may not last. 

But at least for the moment, the Ukraine government says it will pay cold hard cash for any functioning tanks, combat aircraft, reactive volley fire systems, ships, armored personnel carriers, etc. that you happen to have on hand.

It turns out that getting hold of these things is possible even if you are not a military procurement officer. Who knew?

For example, the Russian government lets their soldiers operate tanks and other equipment when they’re out and about invading neighboring countries. The soldiers are told not to lose the equipment. Even so, we’ve heard tell during the recent unpleasantness of Ukrainian farmers using tractors to haul away misplaced Soviet tanks to add to their personal collection and other such incidents.

The Ukrainian government figures that since tanks, ships, and helicopters are just lying around in backyards and muddy fields anyway, why not give people an extra incentive to deliver these things to the Ukraine military so that they can then be refurbished to smash Soviet invaders?

It’s $100,000 for a tank, $500,000 for a combat helicopter, $1 million for a first-​rank ship, $1 million for combat aircraft. Not exactly the retail prices. But if you’ve got something like this that you lugged from battle, well, why not?

Hurry. You must act now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs media and media people

Gain of Dysfunction

Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland

Early in Putin’s war, rumors and assertions and “memes” about Russian forces attacking U.S. bioweapons labs in Ukraine quickly spread online.

The corporate press’s “official” “fact” “checkers” mocked the idea, of course. 

But then something … inconvenient … happened. Senator Marco Rubio asked Under-​Secretary of State Victoria Nuland point blank: “Does Ukraine have chemical and biological weapons?”

Her response was not, as Glenn Greenwald notes, what he was expecting. “Ukraine has biological research facilities,” she answered,* “which, we are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”

It turns out that the United States has long been working with Ukraine “to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern and to continue to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats.” And the relationship between defensive biological research and offensive is quite close, Greenwald suggests: “research that is classified as ‘defensive’ can easily be converted, deliberately or otherwise, into extremely destructive biological weapons.”

If this is at all puzzling, note those fact-​checkers, again. These “defensive” warriors in the memetic arena are supposed to serve as antibodies to “misinformation” in the realm of spreadable ideas. By reflexively debunking any new attack on accepted government-​approved opinion, they serve as spreaders of their own misinformation.

As in the war of ideas, so in the war of biological contagions.

The next question is: Does it make sense to place our labs on the border of our enemy?

But then, I thought it was a bad idea to subsidize biological research laboratories in Wuhan, China.

Our leaders think they know better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Greenwald leaves in Nuland’s uh-stutters and the like. I’ve cut them.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Production, It’s a Gas

Elon Musk

Is this a news story?

“Electric-​car baron Elon Musk calls for increasing U.S. oil and gas [production] to combat Russia.”

It’s news because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (and because gas has gotten awfully expensive) and because Musk is a major industrial figure. But a businessman calling for deregulation of an industry — is that also headline-​worthy stuff?

Unfortunately, yes, given how businessmen so often want liberty for themselves along with ever-​expanding restrictions for competitors (or the same restrictions for everyone as long as competitors end up getting hurt more).

I want a world in which we can make no sense of the word “but” in this opening paragraph:

“Tesla may be the world’s leading seller of plug-​in electric vehicles, but CEO Elon Musk wants the U.S. oil-​and-​gas industry to ramp up production.” 

“But”?

Musk’s statement-​by-​tweet doesn’t help: “Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil & gas output immediately. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures.”

These words are not super-​clear about what Elon Musk believes the government’s attitude should be toward markets during non-extraordinary times. War or no war, government policies safeguarding markets should not be resorted to only as emergency measures. No matter how much some may welcome sustained efforts to hobble an industry.

It’s rare that our businessmen clearly enunciate the principles of free enterprise that they are thought themselves to practice. We’re lucky if we get a tendency in that direction. 

I guess that’s better, at least, than a fervent statism that seeks to wipe out all economic freedom all the time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption media and media people

Mount Maddow Blows

Rachel Maddow, Russia

Blemishes on journalists for leaping to conclusions, rather than doing actual reporting and investigation, are now erupting like terrestrial super-​zits of stratovolcano proportions.

I could be talking about the Kyle Rittenhouse case, or any number of other issues where corporate media has spectacularly failed us, but the Trump years left us with one humungoid blot on the landscape, Russia-​Russia-​Russia.

“Russiagate is already a sizable boil on the face of American journalism,” wrote Matt Taibbi last week, “but the indictment of Danchenko has the potential to grow the profession’s embarrassment to fantastic dimensions.”

That’s Igor Danchenko, key player in the Democratic conspiracy to take Trump down. But the “professional” about to be disgraced to “fantastic dimensions” is none other than MSNBC’s star pusher of the Steele Dossier, Rachel Maddow. 

Taibbi calls her response to Danchenko’s prosecution “a thing beyond.”

The case for the Steele Dossier, upon which Trump and his cronies were accused of massive corruption and even treason, is now in complete tatters. Danchenko has been caught in lies, and Hillary Clinton campaign insiders have been caught pushing, paying for, and plotting to promote those lies.

But Rachel Maddow? She’s in sneaky defense mode.

Dr. Steve Turley, in video con brio, quotes Erik Wemple’s Washington Post characterization of Maddow’s one-​sided coverage: “there for the bunkings, absent for the debunkings — a pattern of misleading and dishonest asymmetry.”

Now Maddow’s engaged in pointing out that Danchenko’s prosecutors, instead of making the case for Danchenko’s fabrications, concentrate on linking a trail of political connections with the Clinton campaign. Not true: the prosecution makes much of Danchenko’s lies. 

Yet, making “collusion” connections is precisely what Maddow did (relentlessly) against the Trump campaign and various Russian figures.

That’s a symmetry!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people national politics & policies

In, Over and About

Putin, election, interference,

Sometimes losing track of a story pays off.

Last week, Facebook and Twitter and that minor player, the “major” news media, erupted with Democrats glorying in and gloating over and harrumphing about a story from Reliable Liar & Leaker Adam Schiff — I think that may be his semi-​official position in the House of Representatives. 

Schiff’s office confirmed that the House Intelligence Committee — which, in fact, Schiff chairs — had been briefed on February 13th to the effect that Russia favors the Trump Administration and will again, this year, ‘interfere’ in U.S. presidential elections. 

Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders, who is running for the presidency as a Democrat but who calls himself a ‘democratic socialist’ (but of whom Nobel Laureate in Amnesia Paul Krugman dubs a mere ‘social democrat’) … well, he got in the news with the story that he had been briefed with “intelligence” that Russia was trying to throw the race towards him. Sanders sputtered his protests.

In 2016, it has been determined, Russian operatives had placed lame social media ‘memes’ into the political mill, impressing no one at the time, but scandalizing Democrats after the ‘inexplicable’ loss of their much-​hated candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps they are priming their Excuse Reservoir for another ignominious defeat?

Anyway, last week I was so distracted that I did not comment on the whole story. Which, conveniently, has now received enough “pushback,” denials and contradictions to close the chapter on it.

In record time, it was over.

That’s about it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies political challengers

Defamed by the Devil

Tulsi Gabbard,

Challenged to a push-​up contest at a town hall campaign meeting in New Hampshire, Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D‑Hawaii) hit the floor and won.

The presidential candidate (polling at 5.4 percent in the Granite State) probably will not win the nomination, alas.

Or her lawsuit against Hillary Clinton.

Lawsuit?

Yes, a slander suit against the author of What Happened.

It is one thing to publicly call out Mrs. Clinton for her prevaricative snipes — but sue her? 

Boldness, at the very least. 

Would you dare to stand directly in Hillary’s way? 

Not to give credence to old #ClintonBodyCount conjectures, which connected a number of strange deaths in close proximity to her and her husband’s transit through the firmament of power, including old and more recent “suicides” … but the hashtag #TulsiDidntKillHerself is now trending on Twitter.

The lawsuit — dubbed a publicity stunt by David Frum in The Atlantic — involves Hillary’s public speculations (or conspiracy theory, if you will) that Tulsi is a “Russian agent.”

“Tulsi Gabbard is running for President of the United States, a position Clinton has long coveted, but has not been able to attain,” explains the lawsuit, filed in the State of New York. “In October 2019 — whether out of personal animus, political enmity, or fear of real change within a political party Clinton and her allies have long dominated — Clinton lied about her perceived rival Tulsi Gabbard. She did so publicly, unambiguously, and with obvious malicious intent.”

I am not a lawyer, but … while Mrs. Clinton’s insinuations-​and-​worse were malicious and almost certainly untrue, perhaps even diabolical, in our politics lying is the norm and hardly legally actionable.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tulsi Gabbard,

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insider corruption international affairs national politics & policies too much government

Mrs. Clinton’s Fevered Nightmare

Hillary Clinton, Tulsi Gabbard, Russia, conspiracy,

Hillary Clinton’s recent statements linking Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D‑Hawaii) to the Russians — Mrs. Clinton’s current favorite enemy — provided Rep. Gabbard with an opportunity for a return volley, dubbing Mrs. Clinton “the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.”

But what was shocking was Clinton’s confidence in making such a charge sans evidence. 

Or not, considering her long history of “vast rightwing conspiracy”-mongering.

Should we wonder about projection, here? Could Clinton see conspiracies everywhere because she is herself at base a conspirator?

Ask Julian Assange.

His Wikileaks site provided evidence of Clinton campaign malfeasance and sheer creepy weirdness before the 2016 election, and also, more famously, evidence of U.S. military war crimes. No wonder he earned the ire of Clinton and the superstate within which she has worked.

Assange is now in a British court, trying to resist extradition, a wounded man. “I can’t think,” he lamented. “I can’t research anything, I can’t access any of my writing. It’s very difficult where I am.”

What his barrister said is even more chill-​inducing: “This is part of an avowed war on whistleblowers to include investigative journalists and publishers. The American state has been actively engaged in intruding on privileged discussions between Mr. Assange and his lawyer.”

Though we know little for certain, between a “sunlight” publisher and the dark, secretive Deep State, I trust the journalist at least a bit more. After all, the Deep State has Hillary Clinton on its side, along with known liars like James Clapper — who just had the temerity to call Trump’s lies “Orwellian”!

And no wonder Mrs. Clinton hates Rep. Gabbard, for the Hawaii congresswoman would halt the prosecution of Assange.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Hillary Clinton, Tulsi Gabbard, Russia, conspiracy,

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The Real Scandal Continues

Jimmy Dore, Tucker Carlson, Russia, julian assange,

The Mueller Report goes public today, and though some hope to find within it a splinter of kindling upon which to light the bier for President Trump, odds are high for a fizzle, a wet firecracker on a Fifth of July morning. 

Still, the whole Russiagate issue has not lacked for entertainment value. 

As comedy.

Little wonder that some of the best commentary on the left has included the incredulous coverage of the brouhaha by a professional comic.

Jimmy Dore, late of The Young Turks, has from the beginning been a skeptic of the modern conspiracy theory about Trump’s alleged Russian Collusion. Now he gloats. Earlier this week, on his podcast The Jimmy Dore Show, he came out swinging, insisting that the Hillary Clinton campaign actually did what the Donald Trump campaign was accused of doing. But, he laments, “accountability is not coming” — no journalist will be fired, nor the worst fake news stories even be retracted.

Mr. Dore also points to Tucker Carlson as a surprising purveyor of the truth about Julian Assange — that the Wikileaks guy, recently nabbed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, is not guilty of the crimes he is accused of. But Assange has humiliated nearly everyone in the political class. Dore wonders why Carlson can get this story right, but the major talking heads at CNN and MSNBC — all to the left — cannot.

Yes, why? 

Why is journalism now so lockstep in line with the corporatist Deep State and its major political operators?

I probably disagree with Dore on the answer. He thinks the Deep State’s main goal is to keep progressives out of power.

But the question is at least worth asking.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Jimmy Dore, Tucker Carlson, Russia, julian assange,

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