Tag: Russia

Categories
media and media people

Morning Mind-​Probe

Joe Scarborough, Morning Joe, Donald Trump, Russia,

There’s news reporting, done well or not, and opinion, with which one can agree or disagree. But on MSNBC’s Morning Joe you get something even more illuminating: mind-​reading.

Yesterday, the show addressed U.S. Attorney General William Barr’s testimony the previous day before a Senate subcommittee. Viewers were shown The Washington Post’s succinct front-​page headline: “Barr thinks U.S. spied on Trump.”

 And heard the Attorney General tell Senators that he wanted to “explore” and “make sure there was no unauthorized surveillance” of the Donald Trump for President campaign. “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” he added.

“You’re not suggesting that spying occurred?” asked Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D‑N.H.)

“I think spying did occur,” Barr replied, “yes.” Barr defined “spying” as “unauthorized surveillance.”

“Someone’s been Trumped!” co-​host Mika Brzezinski exasperatedly declared as the footage ended. Co-​host and husband Joe Scarborough then took over, likewise uninterested in any such inquiry.

“[Barr] knows that what he’s saying is unbelievably reckless,” the clairvoyant former congressman informed. “And you can almost see in his mind, Barr going, ‘How do I answer this question so that Trump doesn’t tweet at me, so that I keep my job, but still not make a jackass of myself for lying?’”

As on-​set bobbleheads nodded, Mike Barnacle vouched for Joe’s telepathic veracity, sharing a tale that “two people who have known Bill Barr for 30 years” were “stunned.” These unnamed sources are known only to Mr. Barnacle, the disgraced former Boston Globe columnist, a plagiarist and fabricator of stories, once described accurately as “cynically churning out fiction clothed as journalism.”

“I want to satisfy myself that there were no abuse of law enforcement and intelligence powers,” Barr told the committee. “I think that is one of the principal roles of the attorney general.”

I agree … but you read my mind.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Joe Scarborough, Morning Joe, Donald Trump, Russia,

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
ideological culture media and media people meme national politics & policies Popular

The Anti-​Orange Man Cult

Rachel Maddow, Russia, investigation, Mueller Report,

How do you know you are in an end-​time cult?

When you won’t accept the complete and utter failure of your prophecies when they come a cropper.

So, am I talking about the classic Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter study in social psychology, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World? In that work, social scientists infiltrated an eschatological cult to see how they would react when their prophecy of end times failed.

What did the cultists do?

Many doubled down, tweaked their original prophecy, and continued in their previous beliefs but with greater fervor.

But no. I am not talking about that, not directly. 

I refer to the Mueller Report.

“For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-​in,” writes Matt Taibbi in “It’s official: Russiagate is this generation’s WMD?” Noting that while the story as it was hyped from the beginning was about espionage, a “secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who’d helped him win the election,” the biggest thing to come of it has been “Donald Trump paying off a porn star.”

Now that the Mueller Report has come to a fizzle, proving nothing very interesting or relevant, our reaction to the news that the President is not Putin’s puppet should be jubilation.

To shed a tear and get all choked up, like Rachel Maddow? That should signal the end time for the cult.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Rachel Maddow, Russia, investigation, Mueller Report,

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts


Categories
national politics & policies

The Cohen Conspiracy?

Donald Trump, 4d Chess, strategy, Michael Cohen, investigation, Russia

The whole “Russia conspiracy” charge, relentlessly picked at and hyped since Donald Trump’s election in 2016 — and, more relevantly, since Hillary Clinton’s loss — suggests that Trump’s an evil mastermind. The infamous “dossier” that included tales of Russian harlots in a suite Barack Obama stayed in, suggests that Trump’s something of a madman as well as a narcissist.

Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, Esq., in his testimony before Congress, has called Trump a racist, con-​man and cheat. Cohen has publicly confessed his many grievous sins and technical crimes, re: bribery of hookers, etc., and generally repented of having served as the Evil Trump’s minion. Cohen has pleased Democrats by relentlessly castigating the president’s character, Igor finking on Frankenstein.

One important take-​away, however, is that the biggest charge against Mr. Trump appears untrue. Cohen did not go to Prague to meet with Russians to advance some nefarious business-​cum-​political deal.

So this is the end?

Sure looks like it, but I am waiting for someone to notice that Cohen’s testimony could be a ruse. 

Were Trump truly an evil mastermind, he would have figured that the only way to convince his enemies was to have the testimony of his innocence come from someone who hates him, who says all the right things against him.

In this scenario, Cohen still plays thrall to Trump. He has delivered the poison pill in the sweetest chewable form: his own public defection from Trump.

Is this psyop what’s going on?

Probably not.

But if one sees Trump as both an evil mastermind and a crummy, petty narcissist bordering on buffoon, then what would you believe? Were you right all along … but completely played?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Donald Trump, 4d Chess, strategy, Michael Cohen, investigation, Russia

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment government transparency incumbents term limits

The Smoking Russian Donut

Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.), corruption, Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper, Dunkin Donuts, FBI, Russia, Russian

“Politicians in prison garb,” headlined a recent Sun Sentinel editorial, “shake trust in government.”

It was not a fashion statement.

“What is it about a long career that makes some politicians — not all, let’s be clear about that — feel the rules don’t apply to them?” asked the paper, which serves Florida’s Broward and Palm Beach counties.

This week, after spending the last 24 years in Congress, former Rep. Corrine Brown (D‑Fla.) began serving a five-​year term in federal prison. Brown was convicted of 18 separate fraud and corruption counts stemming from her use of a public charity to benefit herself. 

Not to be outdone, last week the FBI arrested Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper on various corruption charges following a six-​year undercover sting operation. “From what is now known,” the editorial board judged “the case against Cooper” to be “devastating.”

There are taped conversations, reportedly, between FBI agents posing as “wealthy land owners [seeking] political favors” and the mayor, discussing pay (her) to play (with the city). At one point, undercover agents say a bribe was delivered to the mayor in “a Dunkin’ Donuts bag stuffed with $8,000 in cash and checks from people with a ‘bunch of Russian names.’”

Russians?

“If not so tragic,” the paper wrote of the corruption, “it would be laughable to imagine Russians colluding to control the Hallandale Beach city election.”

Humor is needed, truly. Yet, the Sun Sentinel concluded instead that “term limits are needed in Hallandale Beach.”

Of course.

And needed for Congress. 

Now more than ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment government transparency insider corruption media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Stranger Counsels

special prosecutor, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Russia, corruption, Trump, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates

The office of special counsel, like that of the special prosecutor in days (and administrations) of yore, is a strange one. Not mentioned in the Constitution, it is institutionally slippery. An executive branch position designed to investigate the executive branch — there is no way it cannot be … “problematic.”

Just in time for Halloween, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, tasked with looking into the Russian connections of the Trump administration — particularly electoral mischief* — landed his first fish this week, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. The two have been charged with, and pled innocent to, twelve criminal counts related to their activities in Ukraine before their association with Trump. There are tax dodging charges, too, including something called “conspiracy to commit money laundering.”

And while the whole bizarre Russia story has now launched into a feeding frenzy, it appears that it just became … mundane. “Legal experts said the court filings indicate Mueller is running a serious, deliberative, and far-​sighted inquiry,” says The Atlantic.

Meanwhile, the weird relations between the Clintons and Russia loom on the horizon, rather like that smoky monster from the Upside Down on Stranger Things 2.

But hey, none of this is shocking. Troll through the modern state and you will find corruption. You can land all sorts of fish.

Including suckers.

Could we be those suckers? 

Since this sort of thing can always be found — and the Manafort skullduggery seems somewhat tangential to Russian electoral influence, despite the man having served a stint as Trump’s campaign manager — is this just a way to get us to look the other direction from anything really meaningful?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*And let’s not pretend this is new. Foreign influence was an issue in the campaign of 1800.

PDF for printing

Categories
Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies too much government

We Are At War — So What Else Is New?

Russia, war, hack, propaganda, Morgan Freeman, video

As if on some hellish, punitive treadmill, we keep “experiencing” the last federal election, over and over. 

Hillary Clinton, who didn’t get a majority of all votes and who lost in the Electoral College, keeps on grinding through her long list of people who failed her. 

Her nuttiest charge, that “Russia ‘Hacked’ the election,” reached its apogee, last week, in the bizarre video featuring Morgan Freeman. The actor, who’s played both the President and God, intones that “We have been attacked; we are at war.” 

Financed by a cobbled-​together Committee to Investigate Russia, the notion seems to be: stretch Hillary Clinton’s conspiracy theory into the talking points for . . . a coup d’état.

Congress is, of course, investigating “what Russia did.” 

Unearthed, so far? Not much. 

As James Freeman wrote, in The Wall Street Journal, considering the paltry Russian presence on Facebook, “if Russian disinformation managed to change the outcome of the U.S. presidential contest, the Kremlin must have created the most influential advertising in the history of marketing.” 

And when you add in the FBI’s multiple FISA requests to bug Trump’s campaign manager, it’s hard not to come to this conclusion: it was not Trump, but the Deep State that colluded with the Russians.

The Committee/​Freeman video talks about “using social media to present propaganda and false information,” which puts the “hack” on the level of ideas — not real manipulation. Propaganda from the Kremlin is not appreciably different from propaganda from Clinton or Trump. 

Lies were everywhere, and if “false information” were worth declaring war over, the American people would have revolted against Washington, D.C., decades ago.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
folly general freedom local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Syria & Sanity

TulsiGabbard, Democrat, Syria, arms, rebels, war, Obama, Trump, Russia

President Trump has decided to end the CIA’s covert* program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-​Assad,” the Washington Post first reported last week, immediately adding that it was “a move long sought by Russia.”

This insinuation that the policy change was simply a concession to Russia belies the recent history of U.S. involvement — and failure — in Syria. 

President Barack Obama had intervened.

Very ineffectively.

“Calling” for regime change. 

In 2012, Reuters disclosed that the president had signed “a secret* order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-​Assad and his government.” In 2013, after accusing the Assad regime of using chemical weapons, Obama announced the U.S. would provide direct military aid to rebel groups. 

But Obama’s execution seemed more designed to make it look like the U.S. was trying really hard than actually toppling Mr. Assad.** 

This may have been a good thing, though, seeing that some of the best-​organized rebel groups in Syria are aligned with al-​Qaeda and ISIS. 

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D‑Hawaii) has introduced “The Stop Arming Terrorists Act”*** to prevent American weaponry and material from being handed to terrorists. She cheered Trump’s move, explaining to Tucker Carlson on Fox News that “providing direct and indirect” aid to the “very same terrorist group that attacked us on 9/​11” made no sense.

Also lacking in sense is the Obama Administrations claim that the congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which specifically authorizes action against al-​Qaeda, also covered the attack upon Assad’s regime. Surely arming rebel groups aligned with al-​Qaeda couldn’t be justified under such an AUMF.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It was not very covert. And not secret. 

** In 2015, the Administration abandoned a separate $500 million program to put together a moderate rebel force opposed to both ISIS and the Syrian Government of Basher al-​Assad after training only 4 or 5 soldiers. The BBC suggested much of the problem was indecisiveness, observing that, “US President Barack Obama never seemed to want a train-​and-​equip programme for Syrian rebels.”

*** The Senate bill is SB 532, introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R‑Ky).

Printable PDF

 

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment government transparency media and media people national politics & policies responsibility

A Handy Evasion

Susan Rice, National Security Advisor, Obama, Trump, Russia, spying, surveillance

Susan Rice, National Security Advisor in President Barack Obama’s administration (2013 – 2017), is being picked on, she speculates, for reasons pertaining to her race and gender.

Handy evasion.

At issue is not her infamous prevarication in the Benghazi affair. We are used to being lied to about foreign policy, so that was barely a shock.

What is news now? The Trump-​Russia story. 

Background: Ever since her defeat to Donald Trump, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has provided the very model of how to deflect attention from one’s own defects. She’s blamed FBI Director James Comey, the vast right wing conspiracy, and, of course, Russia.*

Amusingly, the Russia biz still boils down to how Russian hackers, apparently directed from high in the hierarchy of the Eastern warlord state, illegally liberated information from private servers. Those revealed emails showed Mrs. Clinton and her campaign in a negative light. Excuse-​makers call this “hacking the election.”**

It turns out, the biggest crimes committed during the campaign, and somewhat regarding Russia, were engaged in by the Obama Administration, perhaps especially by Rice herself. She is accused of illegally surveilling the Trump campaign and those around it by “unmasking” their identities in the course of surveillance reports, which are legally required to be anonymous … when catching in the net folks tangential to the target. 

The law requires FISA court go-​aheads for such identifications. And the Obama administration was roundly reprimanded by a FISA court for not following protocols.

In any case, the idea that only women and African-​Americans are hounded by opposition parties and the press does not hold up to scrutiny.

Nixon, anyone?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Her team has also blamed President Barack Obama

** A private server was hacked, not an election.

Printable PDF

 

Categories
Accountability general freedom national politics & policies responsibility

A Threat We Can’t Refuse

NATO, Angela Merkel, Germany, Europe, Trump, Donald Trump, Russia, defense, war

“Recent days have shown me that the times when we could rely completely on others are over to a certain extent,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told folks in a Munich beer hall last Sunday. “We also know that we Europeans must really take our destiny,” she said, on the heels of the NATO and G7 meetings, “into our own hands.”

Merkel may have designed her comments to elicit shock and dismay among the inhabitants of America. But my shock is that anyone would find anything shocking, at all.*

Merkel’s responding, of course, to President Donald Trump’s censure of European NATO members for not ponying up to their treaty obligations.** This is widely whispered as … rude. Mustn’t upset Germany and other allies, even if only five of NATO’s 28 nations have reached the agreed-​upon two-​percent of GDP goal.

The received wisdom seems to be: don’t embarrass the freeloaders.

I’m often not copacetic with Mr. Trump’s demeanor. But the “threat” that U.S. soldiers might somehow not be permitted to shed their blood to defend deadbeat countries against a feared Russian attack is … just not all that threatening. 

What’s so scary about self-reliance?

It was also announced that German security agencies won’t share intelligence with the U.S. regarding alleged Russian interference in their upcoming election. 

This, too, we can survive.

But, gee whiz, I hope we aren’t banned from the cool countries’ lunch table at the cafeteria in the brand new $1.23 billion NATO headquarters — for which the U.S. pays a disproportionately high 22 percent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

* In my judgment, Merkel should have jettisoned “to a certain extent” and put a period after “over.”
** It’s worth noting that Trump is not the first president to marshal this complaint.

Printable PDF

 

Categories
folly government transparency national politics & policies political challengers responsibility

No Innocence Abroad

black pot, black kettle, pot calling the kettle black, Trump, Putin, Russia, interview, Super Bowl, killing, guilt, blame

After establishing, during the big Super Bowl day interview, that President Donald Trump respects Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Bill O’Reilly asked why. 

After all, the Fox News star challenged, “Putin’s a killer.”*

“We’ve got a lot of killers,” Trump replied. “What, you think our country’s so innocent?”

This disturbed just about everyone. On the left, it was more evidence of Russian influence. The right recoiled at Trump doing the leftist thing, equating our moral failings with the much worse failings of others.

“I don’t think there’s any equivalency between the way that the Russians conduct themselves,” insisted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky), “and the way the United States does.” 

But is that really what Trump said? He merely pooh-​poohed America’s innocence.** 

And not without cause. His predecessor, after all, holds the world record (not Nobel-​worthy) in drone-​striking the innocent as well as the guilty in seven countries … none of which the U.S. has declared war upon. 

But wait: if “we’ve got killers” is the new acceptable-​in-​public truth, then why not “we’ve got currency manipulators”?

Yes, I’m shifting focus from east of Eastern Europe onto the Far East. According to a different Fox report, “Trump accused China and Japan of currency manipulation, saying they play ‘the devaluation market and we sit there like a bunch of dummies.’”

Despite incoherent objections from Japan***, let’s not forget the obvious: the U.S. manipulates currency, too. What do you think the Federal Reserve is for?

I mention this not to rub Trump’s nose in hypocrisy. It’s to establish an estoppel principle here.

How may we object when others do that which we do ourselves?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The Russian State is asking for an apology from O’Reilly. Not for a retraction on the grounds of truth, mind you, but an apology. O’Reilly wryly balks.

** Which certainly doesn’t absolve Vladimir Putin of guilt.

*** Yoshihide Suga, a spokesperson for the Japanese Government, insists that “the aim of monetary policies that have pulled the yen lower is to spur inflation, not devalue the currency.” Nice distinction. Thanks.

Printable PDF