…consider how hard it is to understand right away that you’ve been exhausted into submission, especially when submission and endurance feel inextricable. It’s reminded me of how high I’ve let my own hideosity bar get lately, and also of the fact that no one can lower it again but me.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, who was born in Ukraine and brought out of the Soviet Union by his family at age 3, is being slandered as too concerned with the welfare of Ukraine, among other things. He has been described as a “Never-[redacted]” by [redacted] himself. What could be worse, as he is “human scum” by that association?
John Yoo, already notorious for drafting a memo justifying torture, described Vindman as “treasonous” for supposedly being more concerned about the welfare of Ukraine than that of the US. Although how the behavior of the president* intersects with the welfare of Ukraine is not clear, other than that $400 million in military aid was being with-held. Surely the welfare of Ukraine and of the US are linked when the US gives Ukraine $400M in weapons to defend against the Russians and save a Western-style democracy Are they implying that Vindman was so unhinged by the prospect of losing the aid for his country of birth that he decided to slander the president* as revenge? Apparently.
Vindman may not be a wonderful guy or even a great conversationalist, but he is a veteran with multiple foreign deployments and a Purple Heart for wounds received in an IED explosion in Iraq. He is still on active duty and was deployed to the National Security Council in the White House. His family is Jewish, which is apparently why they emigrated from the Soviet Union– a number of Jews were allowed to emigrate from the USSR to get rid of them, due to pervasive occult anti-Semitism and the perception of all Jews as dissidents.
He is said to be resolutely apolitical and has stressed his “sacred” duty to the United States on multiple occasions. He was “concerned” by the meeting he had with Gordon Sondland and others in which he heard that there was a quid pro quo, and reported his concerns to a ranking lawyer in his chain of command. He reported a second time after he listened in at the Situation Room on the notorious July 25 phone call. His complaints seem to have gone nowhere, although those of the still-anonymous whistle blower(s) have finally reached Congress.
This is what the Republicans are claiming is the “fruit of the poison tree” in the House impeachment inquiry. By claiming that the inquiry is fatally flawed from the beginning (as if he hadn’t been read his rights or had evidence seized without a warrant) they can avoid discussing the actual evidence, which has been voluntarily made public by the president* himself. They can pretend that the pending all-House vote on the impeachment inquiry doesn’t make it legitimate by claiming that somehow the “rights” of the victim-in-chief have been violated so he should be allowed to walk free for homicides committed in plain sight of multiple witnesses.
(cartoon courtesy pixabay.com)
Starting with “no quid pro quo” and continuing to “yes, it’s a quid pro quo, but that’s OK” and going on to who knows what? Republicans are fearful of the other shoe falling. What else has he done that we don’t know about yet?
(“cement around the ankles” is courtesy of the Washington Post yesterday…)
(photo courtesy pixabay.com)
This comes from the Washington Post, in an article on Syria and the reinforcement of Syrian oilfields in the northeast of the country. These fields happen to be small and of poor quality, but their very presence attracted him when he was offered the option of securing them with a few troops not withdrawn from the country. Trouble is, the only way to secure the oilfields is with armored units, meaning more than a couple of hundred troops will be needed for this mission. This is the military’s only option, under [redacted]’s short vision, to keep a few troops in Syria. Bradleys would probably be under-armored to face a Russian forced armed with Javelin-like weapons, so it looks like main battle tanks are the only viable option. Just kidding. Bradleys will be used as a sacrificial pawn.
(photo montage courtesy of pixabay.com)
This disturbing prediction comes from a senior cybersecurity director for the White House, in the office called OCISO (created in 2014 in response to the discovery that the Russians had penetrated or breached White House computers). This article is in an online journal called Futurism that refers to an article in Axios. That journal refers to an exclusive look at an internal memo on cybersecurity from which that quote is referenced in the first paragraph. So if you read the Axios article, you’ll find that at least a dozen high-level officials in cybersecurity have resigned or been forced out of their positions and the entire OCISO has been subsumed into the “Office of the Chief Information Officer” which is just legalese for the publicity department. The axe has fallen heavily, under the excuse of saving money by streamlining operations. As a result, morale in cybersecurity is extremely low, it has been rendered much less effective at defending against Russian incursions, and the whole staff is subordinated to a politically appointed director whose priority is publicity, not national defense.
Need we say more about how the White House has been destroying government from inside ever since the Inauguration?
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
Ambassador Taylor just happens to be testifying before the House, behind closed doors, today. We hope that he will say something revealing, although he has already said what needs to be said: [redacted] is “crazy” and is living in a dream world. He believes that the CIA tried to keep him from being elected with an elaborate plot that involved entrapping George Papadopolous with a double agent and somehow faking the contents of the DNC’s computer servers, then shipping the lot to Ukraine.
He believes that the Russian interference to help him get elected was a fake engineered by the Ukrainians because he doesn’t want to accept that he had help getting elected– he wants to think he did it all on his own. Apparently. But isn’t that crazy? Maybe there’s a more sane reason. He has to know that he (or someone high in his team) tasked Manafort to get the Russians data they needed to focus their online influence efforts.
Manafort delivered secret detailed polling data on key battleground states to the Russians, as requested. The Russians then targeted key swing districts, saving them money and increasing their influence. [redacted] has to know that this constitutes a criminal conspiracy, a real one, not just a theory. So he’s spinning crazy conspiracy theories to hide his guilt.
Now the Attorney General and his minions, along with Rudy Giuliani and his squad, are combing the world for clues that will somehow back up this insane conspiracy theory. All of the CIA’s agents who could have anything to do with this charade are being interviewed, although there is some question as to who is not being interrogated.
The Hillary Clinton email investigation has finally run its course, with every secret email run to ground and accounted for (and no hacking of her private server was detected). Paranoia is notoriously narrow-minded, and now intense attention has shifted to trying to get something on John Brennan (who was CIA director under Obama) and other Obama troops.
Brennan, who has not stinted in his criticism of [redacted], is an especial target for personal reasons. Unaccountably, his criticisms have stung more than those of other people, although he has been saying the same things: [redacted] is not fit for office because he has a character disorder called malignant narcissism, with sociopathy; and besides, his judgement is clearly impaired. Maybe Brennan has the authority to make people believe he’s telling the truth and that makes him dangerous.
I don’t know why [redacted] hasn’t come after me, because I’ve been baiting him for years. I have the authority and experience to make judgements about whether someone is a malignant narcissist and a sociopath because I’m a doctor and I’ve seen many patients like him. I never lie, and I’ve never had a good word to say about him. Actually, I do know why he ignores me. I’m not important because I’m poor. If I were rich or had a high position, like head of the CIA, then maybe he’d care what I had to say.
“[redacted] derangement syndrome” leads to “[redacted] fatigue.”
Jia Tollentino, the New Yorker:
Specifically, I feared that the [redacted] era would bring a surfeit of bad news, and that I would compartmentalize this bad news in order to remain functional, and that this attempt to remain functional would itself be so demoralizing that it would contribute to the despair and distraction that allowed all this bad news to occur.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
This quote and the backup information come courtesy of Reuters, in a post dated October 21, 2019 at 6:54 AM EDT.
One factor which has not been emphasized enough yet is that this move into Syria by Turkey represents a big win for the Russians. The Kurds, fearful of massacre after the withdrawal of American troops, quickly negotiated a deal with Bashar al-Assad and the Russians to bring heavy troops into the front-line areas facing Turkey. The Russians immediately occupied some positions that the Americans had just left.
This is the proof positive: the US is yielding field positions to the Russians, contrary to our stated mission of advancing or at least maintaining American influence against Russia. [redacted]’s policy of retreat has given the Russians tremendous tactical victories, far greater than those the Obama administration allowed.
These moves show clearly that [redacted] is working hand in glove with Vladimir Putin of Russia. Hillary once again claimed that Putin has kompromat on the American *president, but it’s possible that his mind is so twisted that he really believes that what he’s doing is right, even without Putin having a hand over him.
Even the present Ukraine scandal is tainted with Russian influence: rumor has it that Russian cut-outs and oligarchs plus Russian-allied Ukrainian oligarchs were willing and possibly able to supply disinformation to Rudy Giuliani and his friends. None of the information that has come out of Ukraine is demonstrably false right now, but who knows what conspiracy theories lurk behind the scenes only to arise later in the campaign season, when they could have more impact. The entire theory that “the DNC server” (there were actually some 400 servers that shared DNC data) is physically located in Ukraine may have come courtesy of the Russians.
With luck, the Ukraine scandal will lead to a quick impeachment. The House lawsuit to reveal eight years of his financial statements from his accountant has made an appeals court decision, meaning the Supreme Court will be next to consider it. How long that takes depends on how much the White House can delay it. Revelations from the financial statements will almost certainly fan the flames of impeachment and are almost worth waiting for, now that the Doral golf course clause of the House’s bill of impeachment has been forestalled.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and Defence-Imagery)
Indeed, the typography is too flat and favors conventional warfare… I know they mean topography, but it still sounds ironic. The Turks have conducted airstrikes and artillery bombardment on sites in Kurdish-held Syria near the Turkish border. The Kurds are firing back but there doesn’t appear to be any organized opposition. Likely they are simply providing cover fire for the withdrawal of the rest of the Kurdish troops. The American soldiers in the area are probably supporting the Kurds from the rear– all the Presidential order has done is to remove American troops from harm’s way.
The right thing to do would have been to use the threat of American sanctions to talk Erdogan out of invading Syria, but our *president has 119 active business interests in Turkey, including the [redacted] Tower in Istanbul, making it difficult for him to threaten economic sanctions when his own businesses would be affected.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
Sometimes just repeating the words he says make it clear that he is delusional and malignantly narcissistic as well as just completely insane.
What’s worse, he expects the Kurds to be reassured by this statement.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
Kerry Kircher was the House counsel for the Republican majority between 2011 and 2016. He was quoted in the Washington Post today describing what [redacted] has done to the American system of democratic-republican government: he is openly defying the legislative branch in its attempt to exercise its oversight responsibilities and its impeachment powers over the executive branch. He has declared a policy of no cooperation at all with the House committees’ requests and subpoenas for documents and testimony. The rare person who testifies (like Kurt Volker) has usually already retired or been pushed out of government.
If [redacted] is successful in his attempts to stonewall the House, impeachment and “exoneration” by the Senate are likely consequences. The only hope for the Constitutional is conviction in the Senate– and that will require far more than the three Republican Senators who have so far expressed doubt about the President’s actions. Ultimately, that will make him successful at destroying constitutional government. The next President will find it easier still to defy Congress and legislate by executive order, backed by a conservative Supreme Court that accepts the “unitary executive” theory and that may sit for many years.
The situation is deteriorating fast, though. [redacted] has just agreed in a phone conversation with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to allow Turkish forces to invade the border area, up to 20 miles inside Syria, and take control of the ISIS prisoners the Kurds are holding. This area is currently controlled by the Kurds, who have depended on American logistics and support to overwhelm and capture 12,000 ISIS fighters and a total of some 80,000 prisoners, controlling the ISIS threat for the moment.
There is no explanation for how these prisoners will be transferred to Turkish custody, and it is unlikely that the Turks will take on this responsibility earnestly. If any of them escape, they could form the nucleus of a renewed ISIS. The chaos promised by American and Kurdish withdrawal from the border area and Turkish attacks on Kurdish positions would be an ideal atmosphere for renewed hostilities from ISIS.
What was the President thinking when he made this decision (which is being carried out as we speak)? He says he doesn’t want to pay any more for Kurdish help now that ISIS has been “eliminated” since the Kurds have already gotten a lot of money and supplies. He says let the locals and the “tribes” fight it out among themselves.
Except that’s not how the US has been operating up until recently. The Americans made commitments to democratic institutions and to freedom for the Kurds. They’re not just some local “tribe”– for many years, the Kurds have seen themselves as an aspiring nation. An independent Kurdistan has been the dream of Kurdish leaders since WW I and even before that, when the Turks massacred the Armenians.
This area has a complex history, and there are small minorities of Christians and other faiths that are in danger of being wiped out by those following the ISIS ideology. America has already made a point of rescuing the Yazidis from ISIS. The Kurds have worked hard to live up to American ideals and are even more deserving of shelter.
In other words, by abandoning the Kurds to the Turks, we are betraying promises made to Kurdish leaders that they depended on when they willingly gave up 11,000 dead in combat against ISIS. James Mattis resigned over this, and numerous others within the administration did their best to convince [redacted] not to do this. Those people are all gone, and [redacted] has gone back to his first impulse, which is to reflexively withdraw troops and renounce commitments whenever it seems convenient.
He is actually reluctant to spend American money on military logistics and troops in other countries, while at the same time giving more money to the military in this country. I think he expects the extra money to be used on bribes and other graft rather than spending it in South Korea.
This brings me to North Korea. Something tells me that [redacted] would love to withdraw American troops from South Korea in exchange for promises from Kim Il-Sung to denuclearize. He is so eager that he is likely to offer Kim a deal that he can’t pass up, in time for a propaganda coup for American presidential elections.
Conrad Theodore Seitz 