Staunton, February 6 - Viktor Kamenev, a commentator for the influential Russian military journal, Voyennoye obozreniye, says that the visit to Washington by the three heads of Russia's security services as well as a series of other events in Washington, Davos and Dubai prove that "Trump is again ours."
The simultaneous visit of the heads of the three Russian special services, the SVR, the FSB and the GRU, to Washington was "an unprecedented event," Kamenev says. Officially, they declared they were there to discuss cooperation in countering terrorism "but what else could they say" (topwar.ru/135288-tramp-opyat-nash.html).
The Russians and the Americans could easily have discussed "'the struggle with terrorism' in another place, without fanfare," he continues. But they chose to have a meeting in the US capital, apparently at the request of the American side but with the Russians interested in getting the American president to end the sanctions regime.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the American right set about undermining trust in the mainstream media, which it saw as dangerously infected with liberal assumptions. Later, in debates over evolution and the environment, some on the right attacked the validity of modern science. By the turn of the millennium, it was an article of faith among conservative ideologues that whole realms of human expertise were in fact intricate structures of propaganda that trapped the unwary in a matrix of deceit.
In an invaluable 2017 Vox essay titled "Donald Trump and the Rise of Tribal Epistemology," David Roberts quoted a 2009 Rush Limbaugh rant: "Science has been corrupted. We know the media has been corrupted for a long time. Academia has been corrupted. None of what they do is real. It's all lies!" With Trump, this ethos reached the White House. And now, to protect Trump, the right has expanded its war on empiricism to that most conservative of institutions, the F.B.I.
That's the best way to understand the farce surrounding the infamous classified memo written by aides to Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which Trump reportedly believes will help discredit the Russia investigation. The events involved in the creation of this memo, and the multifront political battle over efforts to make it public, are so absurd and convoluted that they're difficult to summarize, and in some ways that's the point. . . .
Thanks to reporting on the memo, we know that Rosenstein, a Trump appointee, saw fit to apply for this warrant's renewal. This suggests that one of the most senior figures in Trump's own Justice Department thought it was credible that Trump had someone compromised by Russia on his campaign. Only in a crazy alternate universe does that exculpate the president....
He paints a picture of the media being corrupted, but this happened when corporations were allowed to buy up the Mainstream Media in America. I remember Jack Welsh implying that NBC, purchased in 1986, would serve the needs of GE.
Next is the corruption of academia! This has happened in selected areas, particularly economics. Corporations force tax cuts that starved educational institutions. Then, corporations came in with big endowments provided departments such as economics only taught the corporate brand of thinking known as Neoliberal Economics.
Now mind you, the author is pretending that none of the above happened. He is pretending the Alt-right just thinks these institutions were corrupted. This leads the author to decide that not only are all of the above trustworthy, but the FBI is also trustworthy. Thus the idea that the FBI and other parts of the government might have messed with the election in favor of one candidate must not be true.
Well, it is true that corporations have corrupted any institution that can serve their ends, and certainly, the FBI and the CIA have the means and resources to help the corporations with their goals.
The real question here is not to be trivially dismissed as the author does. The question is, have some of the top members of the FBI and other government institutions been so politicized and so corrupted that they would use their government role to support the candidate that the corporations wanted to win the election?
Given our history, that is not a far-fetched notion!
Why is the Post not clamoring for the story? Why no calls to print the memo and damn the torpedos? Oh, I forgot, it's Trump-R not Trump-D, and this wouldn't hurt Trump-R the way it would (MmMmMm) Barack Obama-D.
If there is nothing but embarrassment for the right, then let the memo and the underlying docs loose.
In other ...See MoreMan, this is a real pickle. You'd think in 250 years, our country would come up with a remedy for abuse of the warrant process described in our Constitution.
Oh that's right, they HAVE a remedy for it.
And guess what the remedy is NOT? Excusing the wrongdoings of an actor who the warrant was not served against.
In other words, a bad warrant will cause evidence recovered by it, to be suppressible - as far as the SUBJECT of the warrant is concerned. So for example, if Carter Page could meet a test, then he could seek to have evidence collected through that warrant to be suppressed.
But Trump isn't seeking to suppress evidence incriminating Carter Page. Trump is hoping that he can destroy the credibility of our federal law enforcement sector, so that when the admissible evidence of his own wrongdoing comes out, Republicans have cover for ignoring the high crimes of a president pushing their agenda.
Scorched earth - Trump is willing to take down anything that stands in his way - including the national security and rule of law of his own country.
By the way, the test fora bad warrant isn't whether the underlying basis of the affidavit supporting it are true - it's whether the judge had a good-faith basis for approving the warrant. And there's simply no scenario where the facts the FBI/DOJ have uncovered about the Trump/Russian scandal are discredited or invalidated by anything relating to a FISA warrant for Carter Page.
A...See MoreInteresting listening to all of the democrat responses to the state of the union without the press coverage of the fractures.
Drooling Joe Kennedy gave the official response.
Elizabeth Guzman gave the response in espanol.
Bernie Sanders? The working families response (why not the democratic socialist response?)
And then Maxine Waters gave the BLM(?) response?
Oh, and there was the Hollywood response by Ruffalo, Moore...
Is there an official democrat response? Is the left this divided?
I remember the outrage when the TEA party offered a response along with the GOP. Haven't heard quite the outrage now that the left is offering multiple responses, showing the fracture in their party.
Hopefully the T...See MoreThose damn tariffs... it's a shame that solar companies don't create jobs in the US instead of complaining about tariffs on their products produced with slave labor overseas.
Even washers and dryers are not immune. LG would rather produce their product overseas instead of saving or creating jobs here in the states.
Hopefully the Trump tax breaks will bring these manufacturing jobs back to the states.
Why has Elon Musk not bought the small parcel in Utah (I think that's where it was) that could power the US on solar? Where is the altruism? Oh, wait ... the company Musk didn't build wants to profit.
Trump put tariffs on imports ... hopefully those companies (that they didn't build) will bring production, and that three letter word ... J-O-B-S ... to the states.
If you want solar, there are models out there on how to get it done. Germany went to the banks and said, "You will make low-interest loans to anyone who wants to put up solar.
Then they turned to the power companies and said, "You will pay these people a fair price for the power you get from their solar panels. That is, you will not screw them."
Germany now gets 85% of its electricity from renewables, and is getting rid of that horrifyingly expensive and dangerous nuclear power. It is just that Americans are not smart enough to do something that inventive.
Net neutrality is a consumer issue. Regardless of policy, any congress person who votes against net neutrality would not get my vote. I'm not really interested in seeing politicians create ISP's.
Democrats have been presented with a path to citizenship. Schumer and Gutierrez have offered funding for a walk. Will the democrats take yes for an answer? Or will they filibuster? It's impossible to negotiate with a liar like Schumer... but the president seems to be willing to give on some items in exchange for others. Will the democrats negotiate? Or continue to refuse to accept yes for an answer?
Bob R/CAIt's fantastic! As in, pure fantasy. Not only does it have zero chance of passing in the GOP House, it completely contradicts what Trump pledged last week. He can't even get himself to agree with his ideas.
Tim FinneganSo, Bob ... question for you. Let's give all 800K "dreamers" citizenship ... as a concession to the Republicans, let's say they have no voting rights. What would you do the next day for the children that illegally immigrated to the US tomorrow?
Schumer and Gutierrez have both said they were willing to fund a wall. Do they mean it?
But, at least Chuckles got his way. We know now that both he and Guttierez are both willing to fund the wall (I'm still curious just what number Schumer accepted).
Again, if the Dreamers were so important, why did President Obama and the Democrats use the two years where they had complete control of the legislative and executive branches to pass all of their closely held beliefs? Why no immigration reform when they had control of both houses of congress? The answer ... they don't want to.
Democrats chose to shut down the government over the Dreamers. Then when they found out that funding the government was more popular than the Dreamers, they backtracked and accepted the same deal (that had NOTHING they disagreed with) that they had shut the government down because the deal was unacceptable.
What legislative solution was passed and sent to Trump for him to veto? He still hasn't been sent a bill that addressed immigration reform. Now, I know Schumer is willing to pay for the wall ... oh wait, that was before. At least Gutierrez is willing to pay for a wall still, so maybe he will be a vote for an immigration deal that is needed.
IMHO, Bob also misses the point on DACA. You have to ask yourself, with all of the problems in this country, why DACA instead of hunger, homelessness, veterans and more. Well, the answer may be that the Democrats are trying to lose the next election. I mean, nothing fires up the Republican base like putting illegals ahead of other problems in this country - problems the Republican base would like to see solved.
Simply put, the Democrats are looking like they care more about illegals than American citizens.
In the end, the biggest problem in this thread is the assumption that the two parties are actually fighting for something based on some higher principle. They are not! They are both owned and operated by the oligarchs that run this country. All of the rest is window dressing for your benefit!
PS: Paying for a wall is a truly stupid idea when all you have to do is go after the employers of illegals. When convicted, have the employer spend a month in jail and your problem of illegal workers will go away. Paying for that month in jail is a lot cheaper than a wall! Then again, the oligarchs do not want congress messing with their cheap labor, so it will be a wall - because it will not work!
He paints a picture of the media being corrupted, but this happened when corporations were allowed to buy...See More