So I wake up this lovely Saturday morning and what do I find on Google News? After weeks and weeks of steadily decreasing, aparently failing attempts by the centrist media to “Drip, drip, drip” Trump into either surrender, total incapability to get anything done or probable impeachment?
A flurry…a flood, a veritable Golden Shower…of media coverage regarding the so-called “Steele dossier!!!” Yeah. You know… that one. Assembled by a commercial Brit spook, supposedly originally commissioned by Trump’s RatPublican opponents as he started his serious run and then…when he fooled everybody and actually won the election…funding taken over by the DemRats. (Equal opportunity hustle…a benchmark of the neocentrist alliance. “You piss on his back, and then I’ll piss on his back.” Believe it.)
You all know the story by now…pro-Trumpers saying it’s all horseshit, anti-Trumpers (including the newly neocentrist National Review. Whod’a thunk it!!! Bill Buckley must be whirling in his grave.) taking more or less dignified anti-horseshit stances and so on. Meanwhile, after all of the firings, after all of the tweetings and counter-tweetings, after all of the denials from so-called investigators that “No, we have not paid overmuch attention to Mr. Steele and his salacious dossier,” suddenly!!! From out of nowhere!!! (On a Saturday!!! When all good Omerticans are supposed to be trying to rest up so that they can deal with the next week’s barrage of crises.)
Well, ahhh…humph, harrumph…
It looks like there might be something to this dossier.
Could this be the end of Rico Trump? (The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly referred to as the RICO Act.)
Is he going to pull a Cody Jarrett?
Made it Ma!!! Top of the world!!!
Do the Nixon dance?
Is Air Force One finally going to pull that devoutly longed-for 180 degree turn and take that Great Circle route straight to Moscow?
Let us pray.
Watch.
Always remember…it was the FBI’s Mark Felt who put the finishing touches on the last preznit that the center wished to eliminate.
Mueller was nominated for the position of FBI director by George W. Bush on July 5, 2001. [20]
At the time he and two other candidates, Washington lawyer George J. Terwilliger III and veteran Chicago prosecutor and white-collar crime defense lawyer Dan Webb, were up for the job, but Mueller was always considered as the front runner.[21]
Terwilliger and Webb both pulled out from consideration around mid-June, while confirmation hearings for Mueller before the Senate Judiciary Committee were quickly set for July 30, only three days before his prostate cancer surgery. [22][23] The vote on the Senate floor on August 2, 2001, passed unanimously, 98-0.[24] He served as acting deputy attorney- general of the United States Department of Justice for several months before officially becoming the FBI director on September 4, 2001, just one week before the September 11 attacks against the United States.[7]
—snip—
In May 2011, President Barack Obama asked Mueller to continue at the helm of the FBI for two additional years beyond his normal 10-year term, which would have expired on September 4, 2011.[26] The Senate approved this request on July 27, 2011.[27] On September 4, 2013, Mueller was replaced by James Comey.[28]
The FBI plays rough in the D.C. trenches. Always has, ever since its inception under good ol’ J. Edgar and his own salacious dossiers.
Gonna be an interesting October, I think.
Watch.
AG
P.S. As usual, I believe nothing that I am told by either side of this hustle. It is a massive lying competition. All I believe is what I can see, and all that I am allowed to see is the spoor of these battling giants as reported by their various captive media.
But like a good frontiersman…and I’ve been living on the very edge of this culture since the assassination years…I can track down what’s really happening just by paying attention to the shit trail of the combatants. For example, I knew that the Watergate thing was a setup from the get-go. “Deep Throat!!!” Get real!!! That shit was easy to smell! Go here to see what I mean. Bob Woodward…ALL smoke and mirrors? I had most of that sussed out before Nixon said “I am not a crook!!!” and then ran like a bandit.
Bet on it.
Based on public disclosures to date, this is incorrect:
Fusion GPS was hired in 2015 by a Republican individual or entity (identity has not been publicly disclosed) to dig up dirt on Trump. When Trump secured the nomination (early May), that person/entity turned off the money spigot. Fusion GPS then peddled the effort to Democratic persons/entities. After making that sale, Fusion GPS hired Steele.
The stories today that are already leaving skid marks are right out of your own turf. Harvey Weinstein and Cyrus Vance. If, as it appears so far, Weinstein’s flagrant and serial sexual harassment behaviors was an open secret in the biz, a whole lot of people have some ‘splainin to do.
Weinstein’s excuse is that “he grew up in the sixties and seventies.” Total BS. Perhaps the term sexual harassment wasn’t generally used until the mid-seventies, but his behavior was in no way condoned or prevalent in that time period.
On Vance, he declined prosecutors recommendations to file criminal complaints against Weinstein and in a separate matter Ivanka and DT, Jr. Of course these characters, along with the Clintons, DT, Sr. and many others, are affiliated with each other.
Not my turf. Those creatures live in entirely different neighborhoods and worlds.
Different universes, to be precise. If they were to try enter my universe, they would disintegrate from suddenly perceived guilt.
Here is a piece my turf:
AG
P.S. I stand corrected about when Steele entered the picture. The RatPubs must have been using some other dirtbags for their info.
The subject characters aren’t NYC denizens? You don’t live in NYC and the NYTimes isn’t your daily rag?
Situational awareness by locals about local denizens is naturally higher than it is for outsiders. Even outsiders that go inside to collect info and stories. “Turf” always has a geographical component but association/affiliation is another component. For example, jazz is your “turf,” and while you have more knowledge/insight about that turf than non-musicians and non-jazz aficionados, you’re strongest in Latin jazz and stronger still in NYC Latin jazz which makes that your turf. (And I defer completely to you that subject.)
My sense is that when Steele was hired by Fusion GPS is a factoid of import. His report doesn’t have the tone and feel of having built upon whatever and whoever GPS previously engaged for the project. However, as Steele’s reporting followed so quickly from the time he was hired, it’s easy enough to assume that he was working on it before his hire date. Was he? If so, who was paying for it? Did the deal to hire Fusion GPS include the condition that Fusion GPS would hire Steele? If there’s so much there there, isn’t it odd that Fusion GPS didn’t get there in all the months they worked for their GOP client?
(While probably highly fictionalized, can’t ignore The Scorpion and the Frog: High Crimes and High Times. It was published (and ignored) long before Sater was outed as an FBI informant. He’s just the sort of asset that US intel operations like to hire. Smart, amoral, ruthless, and able to present himself as a legitimate bird-of-a-feather to small subsets of a few communities. He and/or Lauria (with an assist by Klotsman?) would be just the sort to concoct and sell what made it to Steele’s dossier.)
Interesting speculation from Paul Roderick Gregory in Is Russiagate Really Hillarygate?
As a child of the anti-USSR, Dallas-Ft Worth Russian expat community and who went on to become a Soviet/Russian academic expert, Gregory has his biases and those shouldn’t be discounted. However, he’s informed and rational and importantly IMO, he doesn’t lie.
About the only thing the unending, evidence-free Russiagate story had going for it was the underlying, rationally-based speculation that the Kremlin would prefer Trump over Hillary, as, strikingly and uniquely, the former openly advocated for better Russia-US relations while the latter called for more toughness, and as DT, unlike HRC, never equated Putin with Hitler.
So it’s hard to assign much rationality and credibility to a Gregory theory that upends the above while offering little reasoning or rational motive for the Kremlin to undertake a sabotaging of DT’s campaign. Create chaos in the electoral system? Sounds like a weak fig-leaf to cover for a lack of a strong motive. Positive payback for the alleged Clinton-Russia uranium deal? Not nearly enough there, if true, to overcome either a likely firm Kremlin policy of non-interference (the risks of doing so being too high) or, less likely, a policy of favoring the candidate who in the campaign seemed to look forward to doing business and having better relations with Russia.
This is apart from the issue of whether and to what extent generally the HRC campaign is ultimately responsible for drumming up the Russiagate pseudo scandal to cover for her poor campaign performance. According to that campaign book that came out a few months back, there is some substance to that charge.
Agree. But note that Gregory’s speculation doesn’t include Kremlin higher-ups and doesn’t accord much rationality or strategic objective to such an operation. It’s not as if right-hand and left hand factions in the US military and intel operations don’t exist and don’t engage in activities to undermine each other.
Gregory is too knowledgeable to buy into the Putin-Russia crap, but the Steele dossier presents a conundrum for him. His knowledge includes and awareness of Russian government structures and how some sections operate. That still leaves him scratching his head as to the objective of an effort that on its face would have defeated Trump. (Gregory is a conservative Republican, and while Trump may not be his cup of tea, he probably got Gregory’s vote.) Perhaps what may only be his skinny knowledge of lower level Kremlin operations and over-reading that a few of them fed stories (for payment) to anti-Trump funded operation seeking dirt on Trump. The less convoluted and not rare scenario is: you want dirt on X? you pay and I get you the dirt. guaranteed salacious. no guarantee that it’s true.
It’s interesting as proof of concept that if one plays six degrees of Putin and corruption, one can end with Clinton as well as Trump. And absent any actual proof of Russian involvement in the DNC leak (and with Guccifer 2.0 discredited and Crowdstrike denying access to the server while claiming non-existing hacks of Ukrainian howitzers and NSA keeping mum, the amount of actual proof is pretty close to zero), six degrees of Putin and corruption is what is left.
Of course, it doesn’t mean that the theory about Hillarygate has any substance to it.
You ask:
Let me ask you a question, Marie. I don’t know where you live but I am willing to bet that wherever it may be in the U.S., it serves as the “turf” for very powerful, very crooked, very wealthy hustlers, their paid-for politicians and their wholly owned media.
Do you pay overmuch attentions to their writhings? I don’t. I am much more concerned with national affairs and the affairs on the streets of NYC than I am with these empty, powerful poseurs. Their game bores me.
I pay them little mind.
AG
P.S. I am more of a Pan-American musician who lives and works in NYC than I am anything else. That is my “turf.” I worked with Thad Jones, Charles Mingus, Gil Evans, The Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra (which though it was based in D.C., was primarily a NYC band for the best part of its time of being), Lee Konitz, the great Cuban-Anerican composer Chico O’Farrill and any number of other great jazz players simultaneously with my Nuyrorican work. I also worked with Caribbean stylists from the Islands and Trinidad, Brazilians and Argentinians just to name a few.
Pan-American to the bone.
For the record, CA. I wouldn’t be in the least insulted if someone outside of CA asked for my local perspective regarding anything involving local denizens and public officials and how it will play with the residents.
Odd that you know nothing of NYC but on one gig in PA could read that Trump would win.
Yiou write:
It was a week, not one gig. A week spent mostly driving on personal business through NJ into central PA (Scranton), up through the western part of NY and then back to NYC via Ithaca and central NY. With the exception of Ithaca, the entire area was basically working class white, rural/semi-rural, and rust belt cities. Trump country, in short.
Like I said, I pretty much ignore the hustlers and pay more attention to the common people. And I do not know “nothing” of NYC. For example, I simply ignored Trump and his big time, semi-legal thief act for over 30 years. Bloomberg, too. Why? Too busy hanging out with people like 138th St. Papo, someone who knew the street and what was really going on in people’s lives. These others? They’re just predators on a crowded plain. I stay as far away from them as I can possibly do so. Internally. They’re just bad weather. “Everybody talks about the weather, bt nobody does anything about it” said Mark Twain. Nothing can be “done about it,” Marie. They’re just part of the human genome and they thav been with us forever. Line ’em all up and shoot them and within a week a new cadre of assholes would be looking to fill their shoes.
Of course, they’re just bad weather until they reach dangerous proportions. Hurricane Donald, for instance. As his power grew, I tried to act as a weatherman here and elsewhere in my life. I failed. Why? Because most of the other supposed weathermen were too busy mocking the little-handed tempest in a teapot that they thought Trump was. Why did they think that? Because they lived in the same bubble of middle class, upper middle class, white, self-satisfied fools as did most of the workers for the controller class. Those deplorables? What did they know? What did they matter!!!
And here we jolly well are, aren’t we. Ruled by the rapper D. Trump.
So it goes.
Later…
AG
P.S. I wasn’t “insulted” that you asked about that, Marie. I just answered with my own truth. I pay as little attention to assholes as possible. So that goes as well. Just like with the weather, I simply put on my coat, grab an umbrella and walk through the shitstorm until I can go to work.
Like dat.
Almost better on second reading: Matt Taibbi The Madness of Donald Trump
Far too much in it that totally zings to post spoilers, but can any other writer today top what is one of the lesser notes in this article:
Since O/T isn’t welcome on the F/P here, and this is one that regrettably I missed (apparently along with many as it’s #3 on Project Censored’s top 25 censored stories of 2016-2017, hope it’s okay to reference it here:
Fake News and False Flags – How the Pentagon paid a British PR firm $500 million for top secret Iraq propaganda.
Wonder how much the USG paid for anti-Assad propaganda, who was hired to produce the crap, how many fake “peaceful anti-Assad” operations (ie White Helmets) were funded, and when we’ll learn of these contracts. (Takes the Pentagon a long time to book the expense debit entries in its accounting records. Until it does, they languish as a couple trillion dollars that can’t be accounted for.)
O/T: The US Deep State propaganda machine seems to be working. A new study by the Chicago Council shows a majority of Americans, for the first time, favoring sending US troops into Korea and Latvia/Lithuania/Estonia (i.e., vs Russia presumably) in case our allies there are threatened. Dems disproportionately in favor. New numbers on this reflect a 20% increase in support since the last survey.
Americans apparently just haven’t had enough of them foreign wars. And massive defense spending.
One commentator, Max Blumenthal, attributes the increased public and Dem support for troops on the ground in those areas to the massive effort by the Deep State Boys to propagandize for such undertakings in the face of alleged aggressive moves by our adversaries. He particularly calls out CNN and MSNBC for their wall to wall Russiagate nonsense coverage and their hiring/presenting numerous on-air faces from the Pentagon and Intel agencies to present a one-sided view.
Here is Blumenthal’s recent commentary on the study.
That bloody woman destroyed one of the few remaining decent viewpoints of Democrats. (Not that eight years of Obama didn’t put the peace movement on life support, but she pulled the plug.) Didn’t get her to the WH (against an ignorant buffoon no less), but now she, Bill, and Obama own the warmongering, anti-New Deal Democratic Party. (Are they now dickering over who the new and improved naming rights to what was once the Democratic Party?
As has been said many times before, given a choice between a Republican and a fake Republican, voters choose the real thing.
Fear that once people have gone down a dark rabbit hole — mistaking it for a beam of bright and wondrous light — that there’s not return to rationality and sanity.
You write:
“…wall to wall Russiagate nonsense coverage and their hiring/presenting numerous on-air faces from the Pentagon and Intel agencies to present a one-sided view.”
I no longer pay much attention to TV network news except insofar as it clues us in to what the Deep State boys really want the population to think.
My own end as far as that that shit is concerned came during the multiple-week buildup to Butch II’s Iraq invasion. Over and over and over again, each and every Government-controlled mass media TV network trotted out a succession of current and “ex-” military, intelligence and federal officials one after another and then…In the name of unbiased reporting…would drag out some poor rural nun or already-discounted left-winger to argue against the invasion. It was a joke…except of course for how successfully it worked.
They have tried the same thing again with Trump, but…for the very first time (so far)… it has not worked. Not on the level that they need it to work if it is going to be successful. Since they have no other tricks to play that aren’t blatant shoot-em-ups, they are simply (one more time once) raising the stakes with his effort.
Will it work?
Damned if I know.
I can’t even really define the idea of what “working” would really mean.
is dangerous game has gotten way too close to lethal explosion of the whole system for me to get my mind around that idea. I mean…what if it “worked” and the entire ball of wax began to melt down? Is that a win or a net loss? Maybe that’s what Trump has been aiming at all along.
We shall see…
AG.
On FP matters, it isn’t just the media but Trump’s own advisors — 4 of them generals — who are the most influential. He doesn’t need to turn on the tv to get a stream of one-note hawkish advice. They are right there in the Oval. And none of them, to my knowledge, are considered America First isolationists or proponents of a new détente with Russia.
Perhaps, in the national security chain, only Rex “Tea for the” Tillerson might be inclined to want better relations with Putin. However, according to the latest scuttlebutt, Tillerson might be on his last legs as SoS.
There’s no question Trump has been persuaded away from his initial pro-Russia and NATO-skeptical instincts. The continuing Russiagate media campaign, fed by the intel community, has also played an important role. Trump likely generalled up in part in response to the media/intel onslaught against his perceived détente tendencies.
He may not personally be fully on board with the Deep Staters, but he seems to be keeping them close and giving them a very long leash, and the trendline of influence is clearly in their favor.
Thanks! I hadn’t thought of this album in some time. Maybe this song should be played at Tillerson’s political funeral? LOL He can’t hold on much longer.
Good to see someone here caught that reference. One of my favorite musical artists of the 70s … until that unfortunate decision at the end of the decade.
But…was it “unfortunate” for him? He seems to have stuck by it.
AG
He made a couple of unfortunate decisions in that period, unfortunate for those of us who enjoyed his music. The name change decision — Cat Stevens was a great name, unique. The decision to abandon his musical career, depriving the world of undoubtedly much more great music.
Of course the worst was his unfortunate decision to endorse the death sentence against author Salman Rushdie, though he later denied it, sorta.
He’s gone back to music in recent years, and needing to rehab his tarnished public image, seems to have distanced himself from his earlier years promoting at times some very harsh Islamic laws.
I prefer to think he’s gone back to being Cat Stevens, Mr Peace Train, even if under a different name.
Still a Muslim, I believe…Yusef Islam by name.
That is his decision to make. It is not “unfortunate” for most of the 2 billion of so Muslims in the world. Who are we to judge this man, to say that he made an “unfortunate” decision? Was Muhammad Ali’s decision “unfortunate?” I do not believe so, myself.
Is it “unfortunate” that a small percentage of Muslims have promulgated a worldwide terrorist war? Yes, I think that it is. Did they have good reasons for their anger? Also yes. Did they have any other practical choices given the ongoing economic imperialist attacks from other, more powerful nations? Not having been in their shoes, I am not qualified to answer that. Are orthodox Muslims “unfortunate” to be so? I don’t know. How about orthodox Jews? True believer Christians? Serious Catholics?
I guess it all boils down to individual belief.
Doesn’t it.
I think that he did a very brave thing.
AG
Of course it was his right to choose.. I was more disappointed that he chose to make such a big deal of it and to announce he was hanging up the guitar, as, apparently, he felt or was told that music making was incompatible with Islam.
And generally I prefer my great artists to stay completely independent, especially from large organized traditional institutions of belief, unless these are squeaky clean morally and ethically and in rhythm with modern times and civilization, which Islam as promoted in our times is not. I do allow however for the artist’s occasional political endorsement, if of someone from the left of course.
As for Ali, I didn’t care for that group he joined, the NOI. Some dark undercurrents, and allegedly implicated in the assassination of Malcolm X. Ali was brave in other important ways. Not so much in my book for his religious choice, which I think was unwise. And did he choose them or did they choose him? Another great artist, of the ring, choosing to give up his independence. So much better if he’d announced he was studying Buddhism.
P.S. I did not follow his positions on Rushdie, so I am again unqualified to comment. I further believe that the western mass media are not to be believed about anything even remotely connected to Islam.
Not for a long, long while.
So that goes as well.
AG
Per basic info online, Rushdie, who doesn’t strike me as someone who would rush to judgment about others or not seriously undertake to determine the truth of the allegations, seems to believe CS/YI did make the comments attributed to him about endorsing a death sentence for the author. The singer’s attempts at dismissing his remarks as not entirely serious were dismissed by Rushdie as not entirely credible.
Btw, agree with you about MSM on Islam, but probably not for the same reasons. If anything, they tend to tap dance around having to report the religious angle, so as not to be called Islamophobic. In some countries in western Europe, lots of valid and vital reporting goes unreported for this reason. Wouldn’t know anything about that unless I’d gone outside the MSM for other, independent, non-institutional perspectives.
New Pew Research poll shows the greatest political gap between the two major parties since they started polling on this in 1994. This would confirm the suspicions of many in recent years that this was happening, including a few of us who think we might be headed for an actual civil war in the next 3-4 yrs.
Also Pew confirms that Chicago Group study about more Dems/liberals in recent years moving towards preferring an assertive US stance overseas as opposed to taking care of things at home. On this, Pew shows a significant shift by liberals since just 2014.
Some polling details on the Dem/lib shift on overseas involvement. Iirc, 2014 was about the time of the US-instigated coup in Ukraine and also about the time the anti-Putin/Russia media hysteria began to be more pronounced.
It’s…interesting how you deceptively conflate a wish by more liberals for the U.S. “…to be active in world affairs…” with warmongering.
I’ll speak for myself: I’m a Democrat who is sick to death of our military misadventures. But I am more interested in the U.S. becoming more active in world affairs, as long as those actions hold up the best American values and reduce political tensions which lead to war.
Because I am sick to death of our military misadventures and more interested in the U.S. becoming more active in world affairs, I was a strong supporter of Clinton over Trump in the general election. Only people willfully fooling themselves could make themselves believe Trump would be anything other than the extraordinarily belligerent warmonger he has turned out to be.
Wouldn’t it be nice if our overseas involvement consisted solely or mainly of humanitarian aid, friendly cultural exchanges, diplomatic support in brokering important multilateral agreements to reduce tensions in an area, etc. But back here in the real world, we know there is more involved in US “global involvement”, often along lines Gen Smedley Butler once talked about.
The single-minded Pentagon and other Deep State entities don’t think along benign, kumbaya lines of mere friendly, non-intrusive, peaceful cooperation. Operating often on the wishes of powerful corporate interests, they see only ways to assert our military, political and corporate power abroad, ways to in many instances treat the foreign country as one of our colonies.
As for HRC and Donald and belligerent warmongering, in the campaign she pushed positions more to the hawkish side of the spectrum than did DT. How about her call for a no-fly zone in Syria — how would that have worked out with Russians forces on the ground and in the air? Probably a major crisis w/Russia in her first 100 days, a real risk of a hot war directly with another major power with wmd’s.
Although I didn’t vote for him, it’s clear that DT did want better US-Russia relations and would have pursued that but for the Russiagate faux scandal, which pressure forced him to do a 180 to almost prove to the neocon Establishment that he was not in league with Putin.
A real shame that hawkish Hillary took the neocon line on Russia — but consistent with her hawkish positions on Iraq (2003) and Libya. Scoop Jackson would have been proud. But Dems who supported her need to reassess the desirability of voting for someone with such reflexively RW attitudes about FP, attitudes which are hardly distinguishable from the disastrous FP line Bush Junior and Cheeney pursued.
“As for HRC and Donald and belligerent warmongering, in the campaign she pushed positions more to the hawkish side of the spectrum than did DT.”
Donald Trump is a motherfucking liar. It is plainly astonishing that this escaped too many liberals who hung their hat on this idea. There was plenty in Trump’s pre-2016 record which showed that his temperament and ideology would lead him to be positively eliminationist in his law enforcement and military policies against non-whites in America and around the world.
Sure, Hillary’s no-fly zone proposal for portions of Syria was the very worst policy position she took during the campaign. It was outranked by approximately 572 policy positions by Trump which were worse. Such as…
“Operating often on the wishes of powerful corporate interests, they see only ways to assert our military, political and corporate power abroad, ways to in many instances treat the foreign country as one of our colonies.”
Trump said tons of things during the campaign which showed he would do exactly as you describe here, and that he would do so in ways which were much more radical than Clinton. This is plainly true.
No doubt, which is why I not only didn’t vote for him, but never considered voting for him. I’ve never voted R for any office, ever. Racism, corporatism, greed to much greater degrees than what we see with even the worst Ds.
But, despite being wrong on 500 other issues, mostly domestic, somehow Donald managed to get exactly 2 important policy things right in the campaign — positive attitude about Russian relations and skepticism about Nato, an organization which should have been dissolved when the Soviet Union broke up.
I have long suspected his curiously friendly attitude about Russia was the right answer but for the wrong reasons, and had more to do with prior extensive financial dealings with individual wealthy Russkies, some likely involving money laundering in real estate, and nothing to do with any alleged collusion with the Kremlin.
Meanwhile, with DT’s 180 on better relations, we are stuck with an erratic borderline personality who is doing just about nothing right in FP, to go with his appallingly bad domestic governing. There would normally be an obvious opening here for Ds to call out his dangerous foreign activities — Syria, Iran, Russia, NK — and chart a new, safer path for voters to consider, but sadly most Ds, in the Russia areas particularly, are afraid to go against the foreign policy establishment in DC and risk looking weak on the demonized Putin. 3-4 reasonably sane Ds in the FP area, including Bernie, is not nearly enough.
No one voted for Donald Trump because of his skepticism on NATO. Few agree with your extreme view in this area.
Congratulations on figuring out that corrupt financial ties were partially responsible for Trump’s favoring of Russia. We can also observe that Trump’s racism, sexism and demagoguery on “moral” issues align superbly with the Russian Federation under Putin’s rule.
Given Russia’s recent malevolent behaviors domestically and internationally, taking a positive attitude toward their relations at this moment is an odd tack to take. Russia’s values, as expressed by their government at this time, do not align with America’s best progressive values at all. Hell, they don’t align with the personal values you have expressed here.
The Russian Federation is trying to destroy the political movement and political Party you claim to favor in order to remake the United States in their image: an illiberal, anti-democratic, racist, violent, opposition-murdering paradise for oligarchs and thugs. What are you trying to accomplish here with these defenses?
Nato — I’ve been over this area here before. Because of US failing to keep its commitment (verbal) to Russia since 1990 not to encroach farther eastward w/Nato and b/c of the extreme aggressiveness of the US in that expansionist effort, Nato has been an overwhelmingly destabilizing force in that part of the world, all the more so as the US/Nato undertake increasingly massive war exercise games along Russia’s western border. Clearly provocative and unnecessary, but par for the course for the Deep State-friendly US and par for the course for Deep State-friendly Dems such as yourself.
As for the few numbers, less a reflection that my side is wrong (today’s minority dissent is tomorrow’s accepted view) than the lack of bold, courageous thinking in FP by today’s cowardly Dems. Congratulations on running with the bellowing herd.
Re Trump’s financial corruption: I’ve mentioned it here numerous times previously. Congratulations on finally noticing.
Impossible to try to reason with someone who’s drunk the kool aid on Russiagate, especially those who’ve drunk it by the gallon. Your idiotic black-and-white cartoon images of Putin and Russia read like the simplistic comic book version of reality that the boys in the basement at Langley try to achieve. Congratulations on being such an uncritical, loyal consumer of their propaganda.
Look, it’s not just the intelligence community bringing us news of Russia’s anti-democratic illiberal governance. Many independent journalists are reporting this stuff as well. Many of those independent journalists doing their work in Russia have been murdered, incarcerated and harassed. I’d think these things would alarm you, given your stated values here.
Hillary Clinton…a kinder, gentler, more subtle warmomnger.
Warmonger Lite.
AG