The forced resignation of President Donald Trump's National Security Adviser General Michael Flynn has grabbed headlines, continuing the mainstream media barrage of hyped claims that the November elections were hijacked by sophisticated Russian intelligence agents, working under the personal direction of President Vladimir Putin. Today, the very people who leaked classified National Security Agency intercepts to MSM figures like David Ignatius are admitting that the actual transcripts of the talks between Flynn and the Russian Ambassador in Washington contained nothing indicating criminal misconduct.
John Schindler, a former NSA analyst, posted a widely publicized message this week, boasting that "he'll die in jail"–referring to President Trump–because elements in the US intelligence community have declared war on the White House.
Are we witnessing a criminal assault against our Constitutional system by a bunch of Obama/Clinton linked "sore losers" who find themselves on the sidelines as the result of the November elections? Has the MSM gone totally over to the dark side? Is the plot against our Constitutional system coming from Moscow schemers or perhaps a network much closer to home, involving former President Barack Obama, George Soros and others who simply cannot believe that they have been cast out by American voters?
The rantings of the left that "Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and should have been president" betrays a total lack of understanding of our Constitutional Republic and the history of how we devised the Electoral College. What is more, if you look at a county-by-county map of the country, you see that, outside of California, which Clinton won by 4 million votes, the majority of voters went with Trump. This was a repudiation of both the Bush and Obama presidencies, and the very people who dragged the country into permanent wars and Wall Street bailouts are now looking to bring down a duly elected President. Does this smack of treason?
I do not know whether President Trump will actually change the course of the US economy or end our string of permanent wars. I do know that what is being done by this media-led, Obama-inspired, Soros-funded mob is nothing short of an attempted coup d'etat. For once, this morning, I have taken some of President Trump's overnight tweets seriously.
Well, I guess now we shall see what “the brave” in the land of “the free” are made of, won’t we? This is where the rubber hits the road, or where the blubber hits the Borg. Nuff Sed.
How has Obama “inspired” this coup?
Baloney
Harper,
Excellent piece.
the actual transcripts of the talks between Flynn and the Russian Ambassador in Washington contained nothing indicating criminal misconduct.
this sounds right when you can see what LTG Flynn thinks of Russia:
Flynn does part company with Trump (and, perhaps, with Secretary of State designate Rex Tillerson) in a major way regarding Russia. “There is no reason to believe Putin would welcome cooperation with us,” he writes. The Kremlin’s 2016 announcement of its intention to open new military bases on its western border and its plan to increase the readiness of its nuclear forces “are, rather, indications that Putin fully intends to do the same thing as, and in tandem with, the Iranians: pursue the war against us.”
from this article of book reviews dated January but published last week in:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/02/09/what-trump-is-throwing-out-the-window/
Interesting read considering that Eliot Cohen (whom Trump said Nyet to as far as the #2 position at Foggy Bottom is concerned) is also mentioned and dissected
sorry should read Eliot Abrams and not Cohen(who couldn’t place his warhawks yesmen in the Trump Administration): both opportunists, in my opinion, to promote Israel instead of being a good American patriot
While not possessing the impressive resumes that are common here, I do have an opinion on the current goings on in DC. It is obvious to me that the president needs to somehow regain the upper hand against the rogue elements in the intelligence community and instill maximum fear in their hearts. Some of them need to experience some real personal fear, kind of like the kind one would have meeting up with an enraged Mike Tyson in a dark alley. There is no doubt that we are in a, for now, slow moving soft coup; how long before events begin to speed up?
As I wrote here the other day, perhaps it is time that we had an American Night of the Long Knives, with our military coming to the defense of the Republic before it is all over, done in by the Deep State.
Considering Trump’s sales and communication skills, surely the Red part of this country could be counted on to assist in the swamp draining.
Alarmist? Possibly. But how long can our duly elected president standby and allow the whole system that has creaked along for two centuries be scrapped by un-elected elements?
Action is required. The other side is acting in their own interests, our president needs to do the same. I, for one, did not vote for a Deep State puppet as my president.
Lincoln, Wilson, FDR took actions that many at the time thought were unconstitutional. Somehow we survived as a nation. I am not sanguine on the chances of our nation’s survival continuing forward if the Deep State isn’t stopped now.
As a candidate for president, Donald J. Trump embraced the hackers who had leaked Hillary Clinton’s emails to the press, declaring at a rally in Pennsylvania, “I love WikiLeaks!”
To the cheering throngs that night, Mr. Trump marveled that “nothing is secret today when you talk about the internet.” The leakers, he said, had performed a public service by revealing what he called a scandal with no rival in United States history.
Now, after less than four weeks in the Oval Office, President Trump has changed his mind. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/politics/leaks-donald-trump.html
bks
The material that was give to WikiLeaks during the campaign was private, unclassified, non-governmental material. What is being leaked now by the plotters is the most sensitive government classified information that reveals sources nd methods. do you understand the difference? pl
raven
Tell us WHY it is baloney. pl
Harper, thank you for this. Colonel, regarding your remark in the previous thread about the need to come up with a new definition of the ‘deep state’ within an American context — Yes, it is past time. Toward that end here is my two cents:
1. In June 2013 David North and Eric London, two influential hardcore communists (Trotskyists) who write at World Socialist Web Site, itself influential on a global scale in the Leftist movement, wrote a defense of Edward Snowden in which they attacked two famous Liberal American attorneys, Jeffrey Toobin and in particular Professor Geoffrey R. Stone, who had as much accused Snowden of treason. (“Liberal advocates of a police state turn savagely against Edward Snowden”)
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/06/14/comm-j14.html
The entire article needs to be read to fully understand North and London’s argument (and Stone’s) but I mention it here because they gave the reader a crash course on the key aspect of Nazi government. They explained that the Nazis conflated the German state and its administrative apparatus under the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis).
Therefore, any criticism by a German civil servant of the way the apparatus functioned under the Nazi political party was interpreted as treason.
Fast forward to November 2016, and the cry from many Americans on learning that Donald Trump had been elected U.S. President: “Not my president! Not my government!”
From those remarks and others that followed, many Americans are unable to distinguish between America’s government — a representative republic — and a political party elected to administer it in caretaker fashion. They equate the Democratic Party with the state.
(This may be a consequence of omitting civics courses from many American public schools.)
2. Fast forward to yesterday, Rush Limbaugh’s opening monologue for his show; from the transcript:
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/02/15/the-barack-obama-shadow-government-coup-against-trump/
BEGIN QUOTES
[…]
The Democrat Party really, really is dwindling away before our eyes. But don’t misunderstand me. It’s precisely because of this that the unelected Democrat Party, which is embedded in our nation’s bureaucracy, has taken over the role of the opposition party. And by that I mean all of the Obama appointees in the intelligence community. All of the Obama and Clinton appointees at the departments of justice, departments of state and the defense department, they are all there, and they are working to sabotage the administration of Donald Trump from within. They are doing this with the aid and cooperation of the media.
Now, the media isn’t who they used to be, either, just as the Democrat Party is really not a functioning political party. Now, don’t misunderstand me on this. I’m not saying that they’ve been defeated forever and gone away, but as currently constituted, they are not an opposition force that can stop anything. They simply don’t have the numbers in the House, in the Senate. In the true representative republic sense of our country, they don’t have any power.
And so they have to turn the country into something other than a representative republic, something other than a democracy, which is what they are doing […]
And this effort to deconstruct and transform this country began in earnest with Barack Hussein Obama and it continues from the shadows of the embedded bureaucrats all throughout not just the federal government, but in the judiciary and in certain levels of state government.
[…]
END QUOTES
Somewhere in all that verbiage is I think an attempt to define the deep state, which Limbaugh is calling the “Obama shadow government.” But when I look at the history lesson provided by North and London, I think Limbaugh is close but no cigar.
It’s not Obama or Democrats per se, it’s the conflation of politics with the state itself. But one sign of this, as Limbaugh points out, would be government workers who see serving their political party in the course of their duties as indistinguishable from serving the American state.
You do know the CIA has annexes scattered throughout the U.S., in suburban and urban locations, much like the FBI has field offices? Except the CIA sites are deep cover and classified and sometimes operate under the facade of another federal agency (non-law enforcement or security) or a government contractor business. Often they work closely with FBI counterintelligence. And you do know these CIA people working there tend to be citizens-of-the-world types who fancy themselves as elites (i.e., not American patriots)? But fortunately for us their spying is limited to spying on foreign spies and enemies inside the U.S. (wink, wink).
If I, during my brief military career, had allowed cameras around sensitive national defense documents, alà the Winter White House Situation Terrace, I would have ended up at Leavenworth. As a minimum, Trump does not understand the gravity of his position and does not seem to me to be sufficiently alert to national security threats to protect American interests.
One wonders how often in the past incoming administrations have communicated with foreign government officials. I would wager that such informal contacts would be the rule, not the exception.
WPFIII
Raven,
Makes a nice sandwich, definitely better than eating crow.
Bill Kristol ✔ @BillKristol
Obviously strongly prefer normal democratic and constitutional politics. But if it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state.
1:36 PM – 14 Feb 2017
269 269 Retweets 504 504 likes
Copied from:-
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/15/evan-mcmullin-cia-must-defy-president-defend-constitution/
Either Trump will break the CIA or the CIA will break Trump. They have drawn the line in the sane.
To my mind, this is Trump’s “Alice courthouse” moment. In Robert Caro’s terrific second book on LBJ (Means of Ascent), Caro describes how LBJ faced down all his advisers when Coke Stevenson began court challenges over LBJ alleged ballot-box stuffing during his 1948 Senate race. Johnson knew he was fighting for his life. He would not back down.
In that moment, Caro writes, LBJ showed why he was a leader of men.
If Trump won’t take the fight to these insiders now, he doesn’t deserve to be president.
“As I wrote here the other day, perhaps it is time that we had an American Night of the Long Knives, with our military coming to the defense of the Republic before it is all over…”
I looked for your prior post but ran out of time. Be more specific about the military intervention you propose. Don’t mince your words. What exactly would you have all four branches of the military do?
Yes, it looks to me too that the Democrats having lost the election are teaming up with the establishment (intelligence, career bureaucrat corps and corporate-controlled media) to run a Coup D’Etat.
“…outside of California, which Clinton won by 4 million votes, the majority of voters went with Trump.”
And rebels claim your citation of that is bunk because “California votes count as much as the other 49 states,” except that neither candidate campaigned in California. That is a very important point. Would Clinton have had a 4 million vote margin in California if both candidates had campaigned there? We don’t know. The one thing we can say for certain is that it cannot be proved that she would have, so that margin means nothing, unless an election is held in which the national popular vote is at stake.
In the states where both candidates did campaign she lost the popular vote, which is also meaningless. She lost the electoral college.
A nation in which the losing side can delegititimize the winner and drive them from office cannot call itself a democracy.
Trump was wrong to “forgive and forget” HRC’s past and just let bygones be bygones. He should have made it clear he would go after her and her foundation with a vengeance.
Given the insightfulness of previous posts by Harper, I have to admit I was very disappointed in the post. It rather sounds like blaming Obama and Soros for what’s going on in the intelligence community with regards to Trump. I can go to any right wing publication and hear Soros and Obama, but especially Soros, being blamed for all kinds of things. How convenient and shallow minded.
There have been a number of good articles the past couple of days on how some facets of the intelligence community are going after Trump. Myself and other posted many of them on the Feb 14 open thread. Those were all much valuable for understanding what’s going on now.
In particular, the link that LondonBob posted this morning…
EXCLUSIVE: How The Nation’s Spooks Played The Game ‘Kill Mike Flynn’ http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/15/exclusive-how-the-nations-spooks-played-the-game-kill-mike-flynn/
Former intelligence officials who understand spy craft say Flynn’s resignation had everything to do with a “disinformation campaign” and little to do with the December phone conversation he had with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
They charge officials from America’s top spy counsels leaked classified government intercepts of Flynn and President Trump’s conversations with world leaders and had “cutouts” — friendly civilians not associated with the agency — to distribute them to reporters in a coordinated fashion.
… “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Retired Col. James Waurishuk, who spent three decades in top military intelligence posts and served at the National Security Council, said in an interview with TheDCNF. “We’ve never seen to the extent that those in the intelligence community are using intelligence apparatus and tools to be used politically against an administration official,” he said. “The knives are out,” said Frederick Rustman, who retired after 24 years from the CIA’s Clandestine Service and was a member of its elite Senior Intelligence Service.
… Williamson agreed, telling the DCNF, “There are individuals who are well versed in information operations — we used to call that propaganda. They know how to do it. It’s deliberately orchestrated.” Retired Marine Col. Bill Cowan, who often interacted with the intelligence operatives in combat zones, believes Mike Pompeo, Trump’s new CIA Director, must clean house. Otherwise, the administration will encounter four years of attacks.
—————–
Throughout his campaign Trump repeatedly said that the US should not be toppling the governments of other countries, and not be involved in unproductive wars, and that he was going to stop that.
Since that is the CIA’s primary job, no surprise they would be upset and fighting back. And there are other components of the military-industrial complex who make money on the wars that don’t benefit the rest of America and they are going to go against Trump as well.
Both Bush and Obama said they wanted to rein in the wars when they ran for President too, and yet both got sucked in to ever more war by the various agencies/MI-complex/think tanks. This is a long term trend of Pax Americana. WTF does George Soros have to do with that?
Not a fan of Obama, but I really don’t think he cares that much about fighting Trump. Obama is not a fighter, he’s an appeaser by nature. I’m guessing he’s enjoying his retirement and happy that he’s done having to deal with all the pressure to get him to get the US involved in ever more military adventures. I’m not saying he Obama wouldn’t be pleased with anti-Trump actions, I just think he’s not that motivated to do anything about it himself.
Harper
The fact that the leaks of Flynn’s call was an inside job and then there was a manufactured hysteria with the MSM leading the charge shows some elements in our intelligence agencies are seriously unhappy. Add to that reports that the intelligence agencies are now withholding information from the president and we have a scenario of agencies elements going rogue.
Not knowing how are intelligence agencies are organized I have a few questions for the Committee.
1. At what level would these decisions be taken – leaking Flynn’s call and not sharing intelligence with the president?
2. Would it be easy to ascertain by the president who these people are?
3. Can the president summarily fire these people or are they protected by union rules, etc?
4. Why was Flynn let go when it seems that Trump is defending him publicly?
As an outsider I am becoming more, rather than less, confused by these discussions. I do not really follow how the battle between the intelligence community has anything much to do with party politics or Obama. So far it seems a straight fight between the Borg (US foreign policy establishment) and a President who does not seem to be certain to continue the policies followed by Presidents of both parties over the last 20 years. Had it been Sanders would the same not be occurring? The establishment merry-go-round is being threatened and those who have held sway for decades are not happy that they are not going to be calling the shots by having their plans rubber stamped. Am I misreading all this?
I had assumed that as-well. If nothing is promised and nothing divulged is it still illegal to talk to someone from over seas to find out what they are thinking? He was an idiot to not have lied about it and for that he should go.
All
Trump should order the release of the transcript of Flynn’s call. This would provide irrefutable evidence of if he violated any law.
Next, Trump should order an investigation by whoever would be most competent to do that to ferret out the fifth column in the IC and then prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.
If he doesn’t fight back hard they will only escalate. Now it is a matter of survival for him.
Is amazing to me the Borg/deep state and her operators inside the goverment are not afraid of this soft (coup) to become public and openly discussed, they are not even afraid of consequences to them and to the state, they are not afraid of declaring war on the constitutional system.
Fred,
Nice, but I was never thrilled by baloney. I did like sliced Spam cooked over an open fire until it developed a nice crisp char. We’d put it between two pieces of dense pumpernickel, lay back and gaze at the stars. Life was so good back then.
English Outsider,
Bill Kristol will be one of many bound by chains and dragged to his death behind a deplorable pickup truck to the amusement and satisfaction of cheering heavily armed deplorable crowds, should the coup be fully realized.
If these people think they are going to overthrow the Trump Presidency without serious violent civil unrest – perhaps a civil war – resulting, they are more delusional than I thought them to be. When they seek to destroy Trump, they seek to destroy all of the hopes and dreams of the deplorables – you know, the people with all the guns. And the deplorables know exactly what is happening and have a pretty good idea who is behind it all.
The only line that surprises me in the article is the line “Has the MSM gone totally over to the dark side?”
The owners of the mainstream media play critical roles at the interface of news, finance and government, they have learned how to frame issues, they are willing to cover or not cover events to achieve their agendas, and they regularly hire such fronts as David Ignatius to speak for them.
They are not benign. They expect to get their way. They are a central node. They are working hard to take Trump out.
The noise and fury will continue throughout the Trump Presidency. That noise and fury does not matter while the Republicans control congress. The Republicans will not touch the idea of the impeachment of Pres. Trump. His base is not eroding regardless of what NYT and the Washington Post has to say. The part of the electorate that opposes him will not change. The rants do not mean anything unless it can be turned into coherent political action.
The Republicans are striking while the iron is hot at both the state and national level. In this light Pres. Trump’s distractions could be seen as useful since very little attention is being paid to the real changes that are being enacted by the Republicans. As long as the Republican agenda is not impeded by Pres. Trump’s floundering (regardless if that floundering is real, perceived, or manufactured) there is no incentive to do anything. A weakened Pres. Trump may benefit the Congressional Republicans since there are differences between what Pres. Trump has promised and what the Republicans want to pass.
Pres. Trump will be naming more judges than any other President in the past 40 years. I don’t see anything structurally changing in 2018 or 2020 that will change the Democrats minority status. 2020 is especially important because it is another census year and the Republicans will continue to control a majority of the states.
Now if you look at the rhetoric used by ‘Morongobill’:
Why would anyone on the receiving end of that commentary take it as anything but an existential threat? How do people react against existential threats?
When Pres. Trump is not inclined to draw clear moral differences between our system of government and Putin’s authoritarian Russia it immediately biases me against anything Pres. Trump does. It makes me question anything else that Pres. Trump does. It plays into the story and the context that media has constructed onto about Pres. Trump being compromised.
Finally you have Koch brothers warning about authoritarian trends in American politics. (“We have a tremendous danger, because we can go the authoritarian route, or we can move toward a free and open society.” — Charles Koch). Anything that pushes back against that authoritarian route I will support.
I find this to particularly odd question. The Republicans are ascendant. They have more power since anytime since the Great Depression. Bannon’s prediction of 50 years of Republican rule stands just as close to reality now as it did before the leaks about Flynn. A few leaks; regardless of how criminal; does not rise to an assault on our Constitutional system. With regards to the news bias: We all have to be news analysts. I don’t see how we can change that without putting our system of checks and balances into even greater peril than it is now.
William Fitzgerald,
Probably the most significant instance in modern times was Reagan’s message to the Iranian government to not release the hostages until he was sworn in as President. There was some uproar at the time, but I don’t think there were as many running around with their hair on fire then as there are now.
Harper, I think you are long behind events. Unfortunately PCR has it more acutely analysed:
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/02/16/trump-presidency-rip/
I don’t see any of this leading to a coup d’etat. Both the country and the Trump administration will weather this just as the country and the Reagan administration weathered the Iran-Contra affair. The only thing Flynn has to worry about is if he lied to the FBI about anything contained in the transcripts of his call(s) to the Russian Ambassador. Then he could end up like Cartwright. In my opinion, Flynn and Trump should have owned this up front. All the calls did was diffuse a growing tension between to nuclear armed adversaries. Was that so bad?
Trump ought to own whatever contacts and relationships he has with Russians to stop this whole affair in its tracks. So he talked with Russians who may turn out to be SVR, FSB, GRU or United Russia operatives. So a lot of Trump’s fortune may be owned by Russian banks and oligarchs. If anything like this was openly admitted, Russian intelligence would lose any leverage it might have had and our IC could no longer speculate about this leverage. There would be loud harumphing from all corners and then we’d all get over it. Unfortunately, I don’t think Trump has the strength of character to absorb the blow to his ego this admission would inflict upon him. I do believe he will place his bloated ego above the good of his administration and the country. He will fight this to the bitter end and the country will be worse for it.
All
Harper is presently busy reorganizing the universe but will respond to a number of you this evening. pl
I think you are spot on.
It does seem the IC is going very hard to get rid of Trump, or beat him into submission, aided by the MSM.
The MSM’s performance has been risible… reminds me of ancient days on high school n college newspapers. The NYT and WaPo have set their hounds loose, all pre-tuned to their 1950s Red Scare pitch-pipe, familiar but still potent because their readership is naive, to put it kindly.
But it’s the broadcast media that both alarms and amuses me. They’re like children just presented with a huge box giftwrapped in multiple layers, festooned extravagantly with ribbons n bows. Their excitement is palpable and they tear into the unwrapping with such glee you know they’re experiencing the cub reporter’s wetdream of covering A Great Moment In History. Every time Maddow gets A Name Interview her joyful smarminess makes me wonder if she’s wet herself.
Everywhere one tunes in, whether their angle is left, right, or Respectable Center, the exuberance of these happy yappers amazes.
But the weather’s turning, we didn’t get much snow this winter, and soon I’ll be opening the cabin for the season and be able to spend my days watching ‘our’ bear emerge with her new cubs, the loons rebuilding their nest in the bay, and spend nights with good whiskey watching the fireplace and listening to the chorus of the frogs down in the swamp.
Where do I get my (((Soros))) check? Same place where we pick up our Death Panel checks?
For which purpose/effect?
I thought this piece in Asia Times by someone who isn’t American might be of interest on the topic at hand: http://www.atimes.com/world-community-sizes-diminished-trump/
It looks like this – from out here:
The “establishment” (deep state) could not grasp that Trump was elected.
“How could those flyover yahoos do this?”
Then, they got nervous:
“Oops, our guaranteed jobs, pensions, the good life might be in question.”
Who’s in charge here?
“We’ll show those flyover yahoos and their “president” who REALLY runs this country, and it ain’t them.”
And this is not partisan.
This is about the REAL “ruling class” feeling threatened.
And please spare me the “dedicated, brave men and women, blah blah blah.”
Maybe at one time, but now the bureaucracy is all about self-enrichment and power.
The main stream media makes its money selling drugs during the evening news. And sugar the rest of the day. Then they report poll numbers so you know how your neighbors are “feeling”. And, yea, they have nice 7th homes. We should not count on any information that gets in the way of ad revenue coming from the MSM.
All —
I urge you all to listen (not read a transcript) but listen to the entire Trump press conference that is just wrapping up.
Then, let’s have a discussion.
All good reasons to avoid flight paths over NATO territory.
I have generally avoided copy-pasting chunks of writing from other places into my comments here. But Naked Capitalism’s co-blogger Lambert Strether wrote a few days ago a comment in semi-parallel with this post, and of enough value in my mind; that I will copy-paste it here in case it may be considered valuable enough to deserve to be published.
* * * * * * * *
Lambert Strether
February 14, 2017 at 2:50 am
Sketching some first thoughts, because the situation is overly dynamic and has a lot of moving parts–
Yep, the sharks smell blood in the water. (The tank is the Beltway, however.) Some links on Flynn:
WHY ARE NINE SOURCES COMING FORWARD NOW ON FLYNN’S CONVERSATIONS WITH RUSSIA? EmptyWheel
Michael Flynn Resigns as National Security Adviser NYT
This to me is the important story, from (Kushner’s) Observer:
In light of this, and out of worries about the White House’s ability to keep secrets, some of our spy agencies have begun withholding intelligence from the Oval Office. Why risk your most sensitive information if the president may ignore it anyway? A senior National Security Agency official explained that NSA was systematically holding back some of the “good stuff” from the White House, in an unprecedented move. For decades, NSA has prepared special reports for the president’s eyes only, containing enormously sensitive intelligence. In the last three weeks, however, NSA has ceased doing this, fearing Trump and his staff cannot keep their best SIGINT secrets.
Since NSA provides something like 80 percent of the actionable intelligence in our government, what’s being kept from the White House may be very significant indeed. However, such concerns are widely shared across the IC, and NSA doesn’t appear to be the only agency withholding intelligence from the administration out of security fears.
What’s going on was explained lucidly by a senior Pentagon intelligence official, who stated that “since January 20, we’ve assumed that the Kremlin has ears inside the SITROOM,” meaning the White House Situation Room, the 5,500 square-foot conference room in the West Wing where the president and his top staffers get intelligence briefings. “There’s not much the Russians don’t know at this point,” the official added in wry frustration.
None of this has happened in Washington before. A White House with unsettling links to Moscow wasn’t something anybody in the Pentagon or the Intelligence Community even considered a possibility until a few months ago. Until Team Trump clarifies its strange relationship with the Kremlin, and starts working on its professional honesty, the IC will approach the administration with caution and concern.
I previously warned the Trump administration not to go to war with the nation’s spies, and here’s why. This is a risky situation, particularly since President Trump is prone to creating crises foreign and domestic with his incautious tweets. In the event of a serious international crisis of the sort which eventually befalls almost every administration, the White House will need the best intelligence possible to prevent war, possibly even nuclear war. It may not get the information it needs in that hour of crisis, and for that it has nobody to blame but itself.
So factions within the intelligence community have gone on strike (so much for “democratic norms”) A few things.
1) Chuck Schumer issued the same threat (“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you. So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this”). So we’re looking at, as it were, full spectrum dominance within the political class by the “intelligence community.”
2) So far as I can tell from the Schindler article linked above, Flynn fucked up, maybe on about the level of Petraeus or Democrat Sandy Berger, who hid classified documents in his pants and smuggled them out of the National Archive. (Of course, a lot of people in the Beltway were very happy to see Flynn fuck up, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t. And while we’re at it, can somebody please point me to a fully paid-up member of The Blob who isn’t crazy pants? Or corrupt? And isn’t the Logan Act a dead letter?)
3) To me, looks like a well-executed play in a game-plan that intelligence community slash Democrat factions have been running since at least mid-summer. (At this point we remember that “American statesman” Leon Panetta was Obama’s chief of state, head of DoD, and head of the CIA. So I would be very interested to know who appointed WaPo’s nine anonymous sources.) Clinton calling Trump a Russian stooge in the debates was one play, the 25-page “dodgy” dossier was another play (now, apparently, SIGNINT is “confirming” parts of it, so that’s still on the boil), the call for “faithless electors” to be briefed in the (farcically bad) JARA memo was another play, this is another play. No doubt impeaching Trump or getting him to resign by peeling off “moderate Republicans” would be a touchdown).
4) Note that Clinton made her charges of Trump treason in the debate in as direct a fashion as possible, so voters have aleady had the chance to take all this into consideration, at least at a high level (and since we can never see any of the intel, the high level is all we ever will see.) So, if the winning play in the gameplan is removing Trump from office, we’re seeing the intelligence community reversing an election result.
5) If the intelligence community can (a) vet a Presidential candidate after he is elected but before he takes office, and (b) can reverse an election result based on evidence the public cannot see, then the intelligence community is, in essence, a new fourth branch of government not accountable to the people in any way. Anybody who thinks the military will go back to the barracks after staging a coup is delusional. In the same way, anybody who thinks the intelligence community will go back to its SIGINT and HUMINT is delusional. Once they have achieved this change in the Constitutional order, it will never be undone.
6) It’s been amazing to see what liberals have been willing to throw away for Clinton’s sake. Apparently, having a vehemently pro-life Pence as President isn’t a problem for them. Nor is turning the intelligence community in a Praetorian Guard and giving them veto power over voters’ choice of a President a stumbling block. And it can’t be that they really believe Trump is a fascist, else for example Trump’s nominee to the VA wouldn’t be approved 100-0. So it’s all about their power and their rice bowls, plain and simple (and, I would argue, the war with Russia that The Blob wants, which amounts to the same thing). It would be wonderful to spot a good faith actor in this mess, but frankly, I’m stumped.
7) So this is what a legitimacy crisis looks like when liberal Democrats foment it. It would be entertaining if it weren’t so horrific and sad.
8) Of course, all the Democrat establishment really had to do was:
a) Get 10 Democrats on the road doing Town Halls, just like Sanders is doing, talking about universal programs that deliver concrete material benefits, especially to the working class
b) Make voter registration a core party function.
That would do it. Boom, Senate 2018, Presidency 2020. Rather than do something simple that connects with voters, they’re fomenting a slow-moving soft coup and a change to the Constitutional order from inside the Beltway. Swell. Just swell.
Reply ↓
* * * * * * *
I too view this as an unfolding IC/Borg-driven “bloodless assassination” of President Trump under way in open view. I am a little confused as to why Obama would care to be involved. Isn’t he content to spend his remaining decades golfing on the beach and counting his money as it keeps rolling in?
About Soros . . . this looks bigger than Soros to me, and much deeper and wider-spread. If there were no Soros, I think the only difference would be fewer or maybe no pink kitty caps.
About Pence . . . he apparently was willing to say that Flynn “lied” to him. If that is not really true, that makes me wonder if Pence is a “silent partner” in this bloodless assassination plan against President Trump . . . instructed to look Eagle Scoutly, Straight Arrowly, and await further instructions while being ready to assume the Presidency.
Obviously, the Clintonites would prefer a President Pence, or even a President Ryan, over the President Trump they now face.
I just watched Trump’s press conference and it made me feel I was wrong in following PCR’s statements: the guy is not giving up. I wish my former president Cristina Kirchner had those balls and lucidity to interact live with the cynical brainwasher presstitutes, but even bright, she was only a parliamentary, not a businesswoman used to deal with cretins. I’m so happy for Americans and remain hopeful about a fairer America to a fairer world. Fingers crossed still.
“Journos & other idiots are confused as hell by the Donald Trump; don’t get that he may be the *only* recent leader who never had a boss.”
Nassim Taleb tweeting today.
Hi JLD. The best defense is a good offense, keep them on their toes and too busy to worry about much else like trying to upset the Presidential apple cart.
From what I have read the FBI have already cleared Flynn, they have found no criminal activity or connection, in regards to Flynn or anyone else. The media aren’t reporting this.
PCR may be a dissident but he’s still living in the bubble – that closed Washington environment where trivia take on immense meaning to insiders but leave outsiders cold.
Same with Westminster – the politicians and journalists can get enormously exited about nothing very much in their tiny sealed bubble and most people say “What’s this got to do with what matters to me?”
During his candidacy Trump managed to connect with normal people because he came from outside the bubble. The only danger is that because he is now perforce living inside that bubble himself, he also starts to see things on the skew. Then, I suppose, he and his team will lose the connection they had with what the great mass of outsiders want. If that happens, he and his team will then also start to magnify trivia.
In that case, what should be merely a few bumps in the road on the start of the journey will come to seem like some great emergency. The danger is not that his opponents will oust Trump, but that he will take those opponents more seriously than he should and therefore allow his presidency to be knocked off course.
In these circumstances, where there’s a lot of hysteria around but nothing much in the way of solid threat, one hopes that Trump will adapt the famous motto of one of his predecessors and recognise that the only thing to be paranoid about is paranoia itself.
This is not “Obama-inspired.” Obama does not care enough about anything but himself to get involved. It is Hillary Clinton-inspired. She is the one who feels the presidency should be hers by right.
Speaking as a deplorable, Mr Newhill, I don’t think I’d lend you my pickup. You’d put too much mileage on it.
But I get your drift.
Harpers article describes accurately the approach being used by Trump’s opponents and suggests the goal of a coup d’état. A lesser included goal, hamstringing, might be added as a second best outcome from the oppositions point of view. Pundita’s well-written (as usual) comment on the article appears to conflate the current opposition with the deep state, and creates the impression that we as a country are suddenly, unexpectedly driving off a cliff. It may be better to say that after a long time heading in this direction, we have reached a tipping point or that we are nearing the bottom end of a long slide.
We have been abandoning elements of our form of republican government for quite a while. Evidence abounds; a few of the many items include: The dwindling of the Democratic Party, the ideological takeover of the Republican Party, the failure to teach civics (which results in a failure of discourse and an unmooring of adherence to principles of comity), the failure to declare wars starting with Korea and sliding now into endless, pointless war since #43 with no draft in place to attract the citizenry’s attention, failure to indict after the 2008 crash, the neocon/ Clinton usurpation of the Democratic Party apparatus, impeachment of Clinton, Reagan’s message to the Iranians (thanks, TTG), the complete politicalization of the Supreme Court, etc.
We’ve been heading this way for quite a while. The current group of opponents is not suddenly turning the country into something other than a democracy, it’s just continuing a trend. Some members of the opposition may be part of the deep state and some are likely sore losers. The deep state is the unelected people in a position to influence governmental policy over time, and who think and act on the idea that their view of what’s good for the country should not necessarily be subordinated to the policies of comparatively transient elected officials. Some members of the deep state may be cabinet members or agency folks with independent opinions; some members of the deep state may also be members of this committee.
Harper,
I like the post but want to add clarifications. This battle is strictly within the Republican Party. The Democrats are out of power. They are pawns that will only come into play if a GOP faction needs their votes. Also, remember that Congress Critters are bought and paid for. They vote for what their paymasters want. Democrat political appointees have been all been swept out of the State Department, Justice Department and so on. Good Bye Victoria Nuland. Since I never knowingly met a CIA agent; a google search indicates the only political appointees are Director, General Counsel and Inspector General in the CIA and six positions in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The factions within our government who are at war do need to be named. Both are Oligarch supported. One is nationalist with a leader of one, Donald Trump. The other is multi-national Corporatists with no clear leader except perhaps Paul Ryan. I would have listed Eric Cantor as his second but he has gone off to Wall Street. Globalists and embedded neo-conservatives want a regime change in Russia. There isn’t a Left left anymore, anywhere, except maybe for the Kurds in Syria. Mentioning Hillary Clinton in the same sentence with “the left” sullies the names of all those in the past who fought for the working class. If Donald Trump is tamed, he will last four years; otherwise, the globalists will elevate Mile Pence. None have the slightest concern about the little people; except Donald Trump, who was elected thanks to the Deplorables.
President Trump has stated unequivocally that the answer to: ‘So a lot of Trump’s fortune may be owned by Russian banks and oligarchs” is that he has zero financial connections to Russia.
This is good. I wonder when was the last time President Trump drove a car, went to the CVS, or did other stuff deplorables and hippies do.
I’m reminded that President Trump’s organizational expertise is itself associated with what Taleb is pointing at. It seems to me President Trump is very accustomed to working with a small inner circle, while being sometimes very suspicious of the larger cast of characters. Etc.
I’m with TTG in this, if he will have me. 🙂
The shortest hand I gather is this:
If you don’t support the fundamentally politically incorrect house cleaning on offer from President Trump, you are enabling Borgism, are a dead ender, are undermining the legitimacy of our Republican form of government, and don’t know enough to understand you are being manipulated by the post-statist globalist deep state.
Once the two groups are sharply defined, then one is cast into one group or the other. Now we have fantasies, and these are especially intense at certain locales on the internet, that the members of one box will find themselves to be the targets of justice served up “deplorable style.” After all, the so-called deplorables have all the guns.
My own opinion is this “all against all” scenario does not reflect the actual positions of every “last man.”
President Trump won in the electoral college and lost in California and some other states, and ended up losing the popular vote, BUT, this popular vote loss doesn’t matter a bit because of the way our system is set up and works. It is a mistake to assume that there aren’t millions of people like myself who are okay with the fact of our system and how it works.
(My side lost, sigh, Bernie is old, better get to work to help Senator Brown retain his seat, etc.)
Intelligence leaks may be the tip of the sword of HRC’s dead-ender efforts, or, alternately, the leaks may be instantiated by other powerful internal players who have nothing to do with HRC or Obama, let alone George Soros. Harper has not given evidence of the scope of the “conspiracy.”
Finally, to some it seems as if the Russians interfered with our election. Count me as someone who would like to learn more about the extent of this interference and would welcome a non-partisan investigation into this and into the actual source of the intelligence leaks.
One thing the military leadership could do is to assure the public that they will follow the orders of their C-I-C and that they will defend this constitution and republic. No sitting quietly while the intelligence community destroys this administration and also diminishes the military’s power in the process. In other words, the generals and admirals need to publicly take sides by their actions.
There really is no need at this point for violence, but with the shadow of a vigilant military looming, it is strongly implied. This is a message that I believe needs to be sent and understood clearly. Enough of this talk of the president will end his days in jail or be assassinated. These people need to be silenced; imo, the quicker, the better.
A couple of perp walks on the evening news followed swiftly by quick trials in front of a tough judge would do much to quiet those big mouths as well.
Look, this is just a deplorable opinion from flyover country. Nobody is listening to some old former liberal who voted for Trump. So the beltway can relax a little.
But be assured, that if it looks like this Deep State may succeed in taking down this president, others may in fact act and do their best to help him and this republic out of the clutches of the IC.
I do not put a lot of stock in what the person John Schindler has to say, including his claim in a Twitter note that Trump will be going to jail for a long time–
https://mobile.twitter.com/20committee/status/831872441597194241?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
He apparently was an analyst at the NSA for some period of time, and later got a teaching position at the U.S. Navy War College. However, he left that position after he was alleged to have been involved in a “sexting” incident–
https://shadowproof.com/2014/08/14/john-schindler-out-at-naval-war-college-after-sexting-scandal/
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/snowden-critic-resigns-naval-war-college-over-online-penis-photo-flap/
He has referred to William Binney as a “well-respected analyst”, which can leave the impression that Binney is on a par with Schindler, who was an analyst. Of course, Mr. Binney is blessed with an extraordinary intellect, with which he broke Russian codes and ciphers of the former Soviet Union, supervised or mentored thousands of NSA employees, became Technical Director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group at the NSA, was able with creative thinking in a group to solve the problem of collecting and automatically scanning the vast amount of data produced worldwide in the digital age, received the NSA’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award, and so forth. Yet, in a Twitter note, Schindler accuses Binney of having an agenda and that he has “gotten cuddly with Putin”–
https://mobile.twitter.com/20committee/status/760094031615561729
This bizarre accusation is made when in fact Binney spent a lot of time at the NSA successfully working against Russia and the former Soviet Union, mapping their command and control structure, and so on.
However, it does appear as if Schindler is able to operate the Twitter computer program through a web browser.
Dear Twisted,
I think that both the country and Trump administration will weather this…IF, as the Reagan administration did, Trump and his administration move on with governing the country. I think that many have not yet realized that Trump is his own worst enemy. NONE of this is part of any “long game” or well-crafted plan and any plan that folks like Bannon might have crafted is totally hostage to whatever Trump decides to do when he wakes up…in the middle of the night.
He cannot and will not change. If you like the last 4 weeks, you will love the rest of it as well because Trump himself is the problem and NOT part of the solution.
TTG –
And for that we got stuck with ‘Trickle-Up’ economics for the past 36 years. Plus the Bush Dynasty.
Nixon communicated through intermediaries with the South Vietnamese prior to the 68 election. The purpose was to encourage SV to leave the peace talks. Approximately 20,000 names inscribed on the wall after 1968.
If one believes in coincidences Nixon, Reagan and Trump are or were members of the same party.
Jack, your suggestion is genius. It would put the Flynn affair to bed one way or another almost immediately.
Laura, I listened twice. Once real time and later streamed with a transcript in a side window. Then I watched an hour of CNN and an hour of Fox. Persons who get their news from the MSM will hear about one presser and those who watch Fox another. Each network focused on the performance and how it made them feel. One saw the return of campaign Trump giving the MSM their due. The other saw an inarticulate man who seemed obsessed about having won the presidency without winning everyone’s respect. One network talked about how illogical and factually challenged Trump was, the other how calm he seemed.
I know what I took away from what I witnessed, but I also know that witnesses are extremely unreliable.
Trump was right when he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and no one would care. I fully believe that 44% would not.
mike
How are you doing in the markets? pl
Laura
What is it that you don’t like about the last four weeks? Him? pl
A couple questions or points.
This John Schindler that supposedly said something about Trump, death and jail is he the same guy who had camera and pee-pee problems plus drinks his beer in the pool with his shirt off? If he is a representative of the Deep State there is no problem here. Bunch a pussies. Let them vent but nail them when they step over the line. Leakers only leak when pressed by someone they think is important to attempt to show their importance. Corn or Ignatius Ugh.
The only fact based media presently is what Trump writes on Twitter. It’s becoming a regular morning read for me.
By letting Flynn go what did Trump get! Must of been huge.
No one should encourage another regarding violence as words are more fun.
Robert willman
So, you do not accept my principle that subject and source should be considered separately. pl
Laura, here is what I meant when I said “inarticulate “.
“TRUMP: Well, the leaks are real. You’re the one that wrote about them and reported them; I mean, the leaks are real. You know what they said, you saw it, and the leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake.”
I’m not certain what he meant.
Perhaps “Well, the leaks happened. You’re the one that wrote about them and reported them; I mean the leaks are real but they are not true. You know what they said, you saw it, and the leaks absolutely happened but they are not true. That’s why the news is fake because so much of the news is not true.”
Perhaps instead “The leaks are true but that doesn’t matter because they were criminal acts.”
morongobill
So, you want the JCS to take a political position with regard to who and how the US should be governed. My creds are pretty good with the JCS. Do you think the junta that would follow execution of your suggestion would think well of you? pl
Bobo,
John Schindler may be a sacrificial decoy set up for us to make fun of and to mistake for the IC’s “A Team”. If so, and if we think the “bloodless-assassination” engineers are all as low-grade as John Schindler, and if we are thereby lulled into taking the threat less-than-very-most-seriously; then the “Trump-removal” engineers could succeed while we all stand around and laugh at their “failing efforts” until it suddenly happens.
I think we should maybe not let the “John Schindlers” in open view lower our concern about the “engineers” down in the engine rooms and the pumping stations.
The DNC materials were leaked by disgruntled staffer Seth Rich, who was (coincidentally?) murdered two weeks after the fact. Do note that Julian Assange calls his outfit WikiLeaks, not WikiHacks. The leaks were confirmed by former UK ambassador to Tajikistan, Craig Murray, who is a friend of Assange’s.
I did watch the entire Trump presser.
Makes me even more confident that his natural instincts are correct on many issues especially foreign policy. He is much more of a realist and Col. Lang’s characterization that he’s at heart a deal maker seemed more apparent.
If he can purge the bureaucracy and slim it down considerably he’ll do very well as president.
I am glad that he’s found a way to beat back the “fake news” mavens with direct communication to his followers. The media and NeverTrump crowd are losing more credibility. They just don’t get why they lost the election and why so many back Trump. This press conference reinforces that to his voters & supporters. They are pleased with how he’s handling the situation.
Richard Armstrong
“I mean the leaks are real but they are not true. ” What he actually said was that the leaks were real but the reporting was phony. pl
The MSM collusion in whipping up fear of Russia in order to take down Trump is despicable and may have severe consequences down the road, even with Trump himself if he survives. He might end up believing the hype and turn on Russia.
The endlessly hyped reports of the “spy ships” off Long Island Sound and the Chesapeake Peninsula and the “buzzing” of US Navy ships in the Black and Baltic Seas are galling.
In the 80s I was in the Navy. Soviet Auxiliary Gatherer of Intelligence (AGI) ships were regularly deployed off US coasts, particularly the SSBN bases. The destroyer I was on was overflown or low-passed by Soviet aircraft, including a Bear and a Badger. I also had the chance to ride on a P-3 which overflew a Soviet anchorage in the Med. Nobody thought this was other than routine at the time.
Probably not sir.
But I believe that the military may ultimately have the final say on whether the Deep State can take down a legally elected president.
Not an expert but I’ve looked into Soros’ organization and history, including sifting through some wikileaks material.
It seems to me Soros’ motivations are making himself more money. States that resist the kind of speculation he has gotten rich by tend to be outside the Anglo-American finance capitalist Borg. And they also tend to be repressive against social phenomena that are held out in the west as tokens of freedom. Gender fluidity, Alternate sexualities and fair treatment of ethnic minorities. Soros’ organization gives a lot of money to civil liberty groups and encourages activism antithetical to governments that have a…more narrow view of such things. Soros’ business interests have thus colluded to a great extent with the agenda of the neocons, which has been to break up anyone they see as a potential threat to America’s Universal Imperium. If they did not, I doubt he’d have the influence he does.
The Koch Brothers are all for authoritarianism, so long as it is one they control and can make a lot of money from.
Looks like it’s no longer a coup. It’s a full blown world war with western intel agencies aligning with USI to dig up all the dirt on Trump. I thought all this talk about a coup was just both sides hyperventilating, but all these other intel agencies girding themselves for battle against Trump could really give him much more than a headache. It’s way beyond leaks.
http://www.newsweek.com/allies-intercept-russia-trump-adviser-communications-557283?google_editors_picks=true
Colonel –
Not well. At my age, the few pennies in my nest egg are in the bond market which is taking a beating. Plus before I retired, Bush’s recession took most all stocks down and they took a long time to recover.
mike
bonds? You over think things. sorry to hear it. pl
TTG
Welcome aboard. What do you think, mass hysteria? pl
TTG,
Spam well cooked is the only good kind there is. Never tried it with pumpernickel though. Life’s good now when you take the time to lay back and gaze at the stars. Might have to skip the spam this time out, got a few pounds to lose.
TV,
“”Oops, our guaranteed jobs, pensions, the good life might be in question.””
They sure are in question now, along with a few years in prison. I wonder what the friends, cubical neighbors and golfing buddies of the leakers are going to say when they starting getting subpoenas to testify before a grand jury.
dc,
“Isn’t he content to spend his remaining decades golfing on the beach and counting his money as it keeps rolling in?”
No and the money won’t be rolling in either. As a great Canadian put it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPBt4IuQEbw
All the blather about Hillary winning the popular vote is just noise and sore losers.
By quite a few measures, the Dems and Hillary did not have enough policy ‘carrot’ to persuade people to vote for her, which means that she raised about a billion dollars to lose the election fairly spectacularly:
http://brilliantmaps.com/if-only-x-voted/
These maps show that Trump won majorities of women’s votes in states; the problem with these maps is that they are geographical, rather than accurately portraying population distributions. The other problem with this set of maps is that they leave out the vast numbers of people who ‘did not vote’ for President.
I don’t know why people seem surprised that California had 4,000,000 more Hillary voters; the latest population stats for that state is almost 40,000,000, or 12% of the US population. IOW, California skews a lot of stats, and has a huge economy. The problem of vastly unequal population distributions across the states, each of which has 2 senators (even given small populations in many cases) is contributing to a larger problem of legitimacy that manifests as gridlock in DC.
Significantly, the biggest winner across the 50 states was “Did Not Vote”, which won in 41 states: http://brilliantmaps.com/did-not-vote/
If you actually look at maps adjusted for demographics, you get a little more refined understanding: http://www.businessinsider.com/2016-election-results-maps-population-adjusted-cartogram-2016-11/#heres-the-basic-electoral-college-map-with-states-that-hillary-clinton-won-in-blue-and-states-that-donald-trump-won-in-red-assuming-that-trumps-narrow-lead-in-michigan-continues-to-hold-1
These maps — particularly ‘Did Not Vote’ — suggests a deeper legitimacy problem. Given this context, Trump administration spokesmen spouting absolute nonsense about ‘Alternative Facts’ and vast inaugural crowds play straight in to the hands of those who seek to sabotage him.
At this point, I can’t tell whether I’m seeing news clips, or clips of some bizarro spy movie. I find the whole business so weird that I have a hard time making much sense of it. However, the deeper problem is that so many people were too disgusted to vote. That creates the conditions for much mischief.
“The only danger is that because he is now perforce living inside that bubble himself, he also starts to see things on the skew. ”
There is a Tibetan saying, “When gloves touch poop, the poop does not take on the smell of the gloves.”
Me three, as i also suggested in a post in the open forum.
DT ond co need to keep their fingers on their voters’ and independents’ pulse and stop biting the bait of reactionism.
The public has watched the Russia bogeyman narrative getting piped into the ears of Americans since well before the election by the democrat bff media outlets non stop 24/7 as if on autopilot, often to the exclusion of all others newsworthy topics. While most Americans may be ignorant of Russian history or even past 20 years of NATO relational issues wrt Russia or Syria-related dynamics, and likely have no particular warm feelings toward Russia itself, many are deeply suspicious of this narrative because of its obvious politicization. CIA confounding with it (etiology role) makes that agency all the more suspicious and lose what shreds credibility it might have had in the eyes of the public impervious to dem party propaganda. (Deplorables, Berners, Greens, rt and left libertarians, etc aka election swingers)
Moreover, those like me regard DT’s business experience w Russia to be a tremendous potential asset, if it could only be applied with propiety and without reeking of corruption. Especially if we recognize the enormous domestic resources of Russia and their diplomatic prowess in Asia (from their eastern seaboard to northwest Asia), US policy should be cordial, pragmatic engagement, akin to China’s relationship w Russia. The fact that Russian oligarchs were cut off by Wall Street automatically puts them in common with the personal economic experience of millions of Americans!
“None of this has happened in Washington before. A White House with unsettling links to Moscow wasn’t something anybody in the Pentagon or the Intelligence Community even considered a possibility until a few months ago.”
Exhibit A: Uranium One deal
Do we really need more?
The Baltic states, which all spend between 1 and 2 percent of GDP on defence which accurately indicates the likelihood of a mythical Russian invasion, security services are very invested in the new cold war as is MI6.
This all reads like innuendo, the reality of doing business in any country is that you will always have partners with links to government etc. I have lived in Moscow I can only imagine the far fetched links to the Russian government and organised crime you could concoct with me just based on who the fathers of some of my Russian friends were.
TG,
Burp. My father was a Freedom Rider and as a result he kept getting fired from his job when he went south so I got a chance to taste baloney during one of those times and became sick. I’ll never forget it.
I wouldn’t touch the Spam.
I also never ate another white Lima bean in my life.
Matthew,
He caved. Some people around him need to be fired over these leaks and if that doesn’t happen I agree with you.
I watched. Trump better stop taking the information he is being given as fact. He’s being poorly served by those around him.
Morning Joe did a game show type segment of every time Trump was wrong and put a large red x over his face and played a buzzing sound.
Different Clue,
I haven’t trusted Pence since he said Dick Cheney would be HIS ideal running mate. In my mind he put a target on Trump then.
He is not to be trusted and I sent Trump a tweet telling him to take the Pence dagger out of his back.
Cee
I was an army kid raised in an army family. My father and I often escaped to the troop mess to get away from my mother’s fitful attempts at something she called cooking. in an army troop mess you can bring your family in and pay a nominal fee (cost of rations) for them and you to eat. So, I still instinctively think you should be eating cold cuts and building hoagies for Sunday lunch. I like Spam. Spam is particularly popular in places like Hawaii and Korea where there were a lot of US troops. Spam is basically “potted” ham. A non army Southern mixed grill would be fried Spam, bacon and fried baloney, grits and collard greens. Yum. pl
ROTL,
“The problem of vastly unequal population distributions across the states, each of which has 2 senators….”
The Democratic Senators from Rode Island, Delaware, New Hampshire and Vermont should tell their constituents that this is a real issue and they are thus resigning so that the people of the state of California, which is more deserving based on population, can have another senator. I’m sure it will go over well. Don’t forget to give Texas and Florida a couple of extra senators too.
“About Pence . . . he apparently was willing to say that Flynn “lied” to him. If that is not really true, that makes me wonder if Pence is a “silent partner” in this bloodless assassination plan against President Trump . . . instructed to look Eagle Scoutly, Straight Arrowly, and await further instructions while being ready to assume the Presidency.”
He’d better watch his back; Frank Underwood will stop at nothing.
Colonel –
I learned to love grits an collards during my several tours in Coastal Carolina. But fried spam and fried baloney were popular in my youth in Maine. They were never just a Southern delicacy. We did not have collards up there but Grandma’s pot of chard & bacon were pretty good too.
I also watched and he was inarticulate and often not very clear, however I thought I saw a mind that was clear but just was not very polished at expressing his thoughts – I could be wrong.
Re. His FP position this was more worrying while he laudably took a wait and see position on Russia he seemed to have come in with preconceived positions on Cuba and Iran which do not bode well and until we have a clearer picture of what he thinks a one state solution to Israel might look like I would have to reserve judgment. It could be anything from defacto annexation of the occupied territories with non-Jews in Bantus, an acceptance of full democracy for all ending in a secular, or Islamic state, or something in-between. Both extremes, and most of the middle, would seem to be a recipe for open conflict.
Colonel –
In Hawaii, did you ever have Loco Moco with fried spam on top? Double yum!
Dr. Puck,
Why am I smelling concern trolling here?
Russia interfered with the election? Really? If you’re truly a Sanders supporter, I’d think you’d be wanting further investigation into the DNC for interfering with your candidate’s chances.
The fact that the intent and purpose of the 2 amendment is exactly what the deplorables say it is for kind of upsets some people, doesn’t it?
A shadow government deliberately sabotaging the legal political processes of this country is de facto tyranny. And it is a complete breakdown of the rule of law and social order. Have you read history? You actually think it is inconceivable that a civil war/revolution would result? You think that your calls for reasonableness will be heeded – especially when you are slyly championing the discrediting of the legally elected POTUS in favor of something else?
Mass hysteria indeed. This increasing hostility towards and fear of Russia will poison us all. I think it’s worse than at the height of the cold war. At least then there was a general acceptance that this was a deadly serious state of affairs and that we ought not go off and do anything stupid. Now we have people like Breedlove and others apparently chomping at the bit to confront Russia. They revel in the stupidity and rabidly denounce anyone seeking a more reasoned approach towards Russia as dangerous traitors.
There’s plenty I dislike about Trump and the policies he pursues, but this is certainly not one of them. His desire for a mutually respectful and cooperative relationship with Russia is admirable. I wish him success in this endeavor. I deplore the use of this anti-Russian hysteria as a method to thwart Trump’s wider agenda. It’s stupid and dangerous, even potentially deadly.
Mike, Col. Lang,
Yes, fried spam is a favorite for my wife and me here in South Jersey (near Philly, in marked distinction from North Jersey, thank you very much), often in conjunction with fried eggs, and grits.
I got a mixed culinary legacy growing up, with my father being from Arkansas, and my mother coming from Pennsylvania Deutsch heritage. They met in Philadelphia, where my mother was in training at the Univ. of PA as a registered nurse, and my dad was posted for flight training as a naval air cadet, during WWII at a dance.
So I got exposure to some foods such as grits, or a good boiled ham with black-eyed peas and cabbage wedges more commonly found in the South, and others from the Pennsylvania Germans such as Schnitz und Gnepp, and the occasional stuffed pig stomach. One of my favorites from my mom’s people was a big old pot of boiled potatoes, the traditional wide (2″ or so) egg noodles, and stewed chicken, the whole redolent of a few threads of saffron (which made the dish), with the pièce de résistance being the dumplings dropped on the top of the pot liquor to cook just before serving. Other PA Dutch goodies were chow chow, a mixture of pickled vegetables (cauliflower, green beans, kidney beans, carrots, onions, etc.) served as a relish, and also sometimes in spring, wilted dandelion (picked before they flowered so that they weren’t bitter) and hard-boiled egg salad topped by a vinegary cooked sauce which included bacon, Mike, rather like your Grandma’s chard & bacon. Then for dessert, maybe a dry bottom Shoo Fly Pie, or some Apple Pan Dowdy made with apples from the trees in our yard (our house was built on what had been part of an orchard, and for years we tended and harvested those apples).
Good memories all.
DC and DH,
I REALLY don’t trust Pence now.
He’s on a European Reassurance Tour!!
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN15W0BB
Pat Buchanan (who knows something about politics and administrations) writes:
The Deep State Targets Trump
Thursday – February 16, 2017 at 9:34 pm
http://buchanan.org/blog/deep-state-targets-trump-126550
[From Buchanan’s article:]
…
[T]he deep state is after larger game than General Flynn.
It is out to bring down President Trump
and abort any move to effect the sort of rapprochement with Russia
that Ronald Reagan achieved.
For the deep state is deeply committed to Cold War II.
…
Purpose: Stampede the White House into abandoning any idea of a detente with Russia.
And it appears to be working.
At a White House briefing Tuesday, Sean Spicer said,
“President Trump has made it very clear that
he expects the Russian government to … return Crimea.”
Is the White House serious?
Putin could no more survive returning Crimea to Ukraine
than Bibi Netanyahu could survive giving East Jerusalem back to Jordan.
…
As for interfering in elections, how clean are our hands?
Our own CIA has a storied history of interfering in elections. In the late ’40s, we shoveled cash into France and Italy after World War II to defeat the Communists who had been part of the wartime resistance to the Nazis and Fascists.
And we succeeded. But we continued these practices after the Cold War ended.
In this century, our National Endowment for Democracy, which dates to the Reagan era,
has backed “color revolutions” and “regime change” in nations across what Russia regards as her “near abroad.”
NED’s continued existence appears a contradiction of Trump’s inaugural declaration:
“We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone.”
…
Col. Lang,
I was surprised to see Spam in menus in Hawaii. Still, I can’t go there plus the pink color.
We would be fighting over meals of of grits and collards!! Nom Nom!!
Jersey Jeffersonian –
My SWMBO’s brother married a Pennsylvania Dutch girl from Pennyan town up on the border of Pennsylvania and upstate NY. She used to cook what she called “salt potatoes”. They were just the small spring potatoes but boiled in very heavily salted water with some mystery herbs.
Good eats!
The Twisted Genius,
I remember one time decades ago when mother had to be away for something and dad made us supper. It was Kraft macaroni and cheese which I liked . . . and super special fried Spam. He sliced up the Spam and fried the slices and put a canned pineapple ring on each one and a maraschino cherry in the middle of each ring.
I liked it at the time and I look back and remember it as being very fancy for a small child.
BillWade,
I would like to see it done for general purposes of social and political disinfection and decontamination. I would like to see who all else the Clintons could pull down with them if they knew they were going all the way down.
Bill Clinton is supposed to have taken several plane trips on Mr. Epstein’s Air Pedo Express down to Epstein’s Private Pedo Island in the Caribbean. Surely he didn’t travel alone on that big jet. Surely some of the worlds Greatest and Goodest also made those flights. It would be nice if the entire public knew who all those Greatest and Goodest were.
Israel takes care to conflate State of Israel with Likud with Jewishness with God. Any criticism of Likud is anti-Semitic is criticizing God is unfair. Humans are wired to hate unfairness. Easy for theocracies to turn arrogant in this direction; this is one plank supporting my opinion Israel is de facto a fascist nation. As we are rapidly copying Israel (Gitmo, assassinating civilians and recently a US citizen w/o trial, militarized police, mass surveillance, victim mentality), I have fears America may easily turn fascist as well.
dc – you’ve done a good service pulling all the above together, so good I borrowed most of it, added some links, and re-posted to my blog, which I use as a kind of scrapbook-with-an-index so I can find things I want to remember easily…. let me know if that’s not OK and I’ll take it down
https://hanshowe.org/2017/02/17/what-to-make-of-trump-vs-spooks/
I really don’t get why Flynn was sacrificed. As Trump noted in his press conference, he would have instructed Flynn to call the Russian ambassador, if he hadn’t. And that call was a legitimate call.
Why did Flynn mislead Pence about the call? If Flynn was fired because he lied to Pence, then Trump should come down like a ton of bricks on the “coup plotters” in the IC, who leaked and spun the story on the Russsian “connection”.
I want to respond to several of the many thoughtful comments above. First, I must say that former President Obama is not sitting idly by and honoring the age old tradition of former presidents giving the new occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW the opportunity to settle down and govern. You can find a number of recent media accounts of Obama’s campaign PAC, Organizing for Action, mobilizing to disrupt town hall meetings by pro-Trump Members of Congress and setting up offices all over the country in the wake of the Trump victory. Jim Messina, Obama’s one-time campaign manager, is heading up the operations, and there is no doubt that Soros money is part of this effort. One recent article recounted that the Democratic National Committee and several state Democratic Party Chairs have denounced the OFA efforts as an effort to sideline the regular party apparatus.
This is not to say that Obama is able to unseat the President, but it is further indication of just how off-the-charts the Hate Trump Movement with its backing from the MSM,is.
I concur with several comments that VP Pence played a pernicious role in the ouster of Flynn. Clearly some Republican factions that have remained anti-Trump (John McCain denounced Trump at the Munich Security Conference yesterday, and he is not alone by any means in his upfront hatred of Trump) would be much happier with a Pence presidency, well before 2021. So Pence must walk a fine line, as he is not really part of the Trump trusted inner circle.
Amidst all of the noise, it should be noted that, particularly since Mattis and Tillerson were confirmed, there has been a clarifying of US Administration positions, more in line with traditional US foreign and national security policies. The shift in China policy to accepting the long-held “flexible One China policy” was executed very professionally, leading to the Trump-Xi phone call the day before Abe’s arrival in Washington. Mattis’ trips to Asia and Europe have settled nerves among key Asian and NATO allies. The economic team, with the exception of Gary Cohn at the National Economic Council (no confirmation required)and Jared Kushner, is not yet through Senate confirmation, and most second-tier posts remain vacant (I am told that Bob Works will stay on indefinitely as Deputy Secretary of Defense, a smart continuity move).
Trump’s press conference may not have been Lincoln-esque in terms of elocution, but he did make clear that it is in US interest to improve relations with Russia. That alone has many Cold War factions that did extremely well under Obama, Susan Rice, Samantha Power and Michael McFaul out for blood. Having an obnoxious personality does not, IMHO, rise to the standard of either “high crimes and misdemeanors” or the 25th Amendment.
I believe that Flynn’s departure had more to do with concerns that he was not fully up to the job of managing the entire national security structure for the President. The Bannon crowd at the White House (Steve Miller, Sebastian Gorka among others) were given too much leeway to mouth off, and some were concerned about Flynn’s dealings with Michael Ledeen. Ledeen published a typically psychotic oped in the Wall Street Journal on February 14, 2017, suggesting that the only way Russia will back off its alliance with Iran is for the US to run a color revolution to overthrow the Islamic Republic. Then, Moscow and Washington can work out a new condominium for the Middle East. Ledeen has always been a dangerous lunatic, and this oped was no exception. It was never clear to me whether the Flynn-Ledeen co-authorship of the recent book on how to defeat radical Islamic terrorism was a marriage of convenience, organized by the publisher, or whether the sympathies ran deeper.
Big question for me is who will replace Flynn. Need someone with deep experience in running White House national security policy, and one such person, Robert Gates, would almost certainly turn down the job if it was offered to him (he does have a relationship with the President, and was instrumental in getting Tillerson appointed as Secretary of State). Appointing someone with real experience and credentials, if only for a year assignment, would be one effective way to shut up the Dump Trump bandwagon.
Harper
Getting someone with “real experience and credentials” means another Borgist as they are the only ones deemed by the DC movers & shakers with such credentials.
Wouldn’t that only further embolden the McCains & the Democrat warmongers & everyone else who will likely believe that Trump is on the ropes?
Sam Peralta,
If General Flynn is not too upset about all this just now, perhaps he and Tillerson could discuss together with Trump himself about which people they know who would be able to run the NSC in a professional and quiet manner while getting the “machine mouths” to “hold their fire”. Between the two of them, Tillerson and Flynn might know people who got some Borg training in how to run things while waging political agency and inter-agency warfare but yet can think outside the Borg enough to be useful for Trump’s desire for some new departures in foreign policy.
Harper,
I suggest Martin Dempsey at NSC. One final duty to perform for the Republic. Of course having prevented intervention in Syria he won’t be popular with the borg.
TTG,
Your dislike and distrust of Trump assumes that he is somehow a bigger self-serving sellout, fool, liar, ego maniac, etc than any other politician. That seems to me like an arbitrary judgment. Your guy, the old anti-America activist hippie Alinsky acolyte with the mad professor hair that rants socialist ideology while driving his Ferrari back and forth from his multiple homes looks like the mendacious nut case to me.
Who we side with is just a matter of personal history/psychology.
I like Trump because one way or the other he is exposing things for what they are – even if that means the reset button is going to get hit. Better sooner than later. I do not expect Trump to last the full term. But his truth will march on.
especially when you are slyly championing the discrediting …
Eric, he didn’t do this. In fact he seems to have suggested something else. Maybe I cannot see that since I am just another troll? In any case, he didn’t do it here.
I think you misread the paragraph starting with “Once the two groups are sharply defined,… scenario does not reflect the actual positions of every “last man.”
He seems to suggest none of the two juxtaposed groups–as some type of collective image of the enemy scenario–can be as clearly defined to fit the “last man” or woman for that matter?
hans,
To re-post it is completely okay and totally fine with me.
Fred,
The fact that Martin Dempsey never got “Flynned” by the Borg, so far as I know, may indicate that he has the counter-Borg office warfighting skills and knowledge to “beat the Borg” from that position.