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“[He who must not be named] is world’s worst cheat at golf, players and celebrities say”– NY Post
Read the details here.
Why dignify that statement by repeating it? Because lies have to be confronted, but when dealing with a man who lies fluently a documented ten times a day, they come so thick and fast that they can’t be dealt with singly. It’s like debating someone who uses the “Gish gallop”, a barrage of nonsensical or illogical assertions that are too numerous to allow a response that deals with each of them specifically.
The fact is that *he who must not be named treats different people in different ways. To those who share his ideological worldview, he is the most accessible and friendly of men. His superficial demeanor of open companionship is reinforced by frequent phone calls and flattery. To Republican senators, who can approve or disapprove of his plans and who are in the same Republican mini-universe, he is the most accessible of politicians. To enemies like certain Democratic representatives from his own home-town, New York City, he is an insulting, demeaning, distant adversary who is impossible to understand, much less negotiate with.
The fact that *he suffers from narcissistic personality disorder and sociopathy has been well established by Mr. George “Kellyanne” Conway, husband of one of his closest advisors. Mr. Conway’s famous tweets showing the psychiatric manual for diagnostic purposes reached quite a few people, but changed few minds. Like all sociopaths, though, he can be superficially very friendly if not crossed, and he can readily draw people in to his influence by his charm.
Republican congressmen have publicly said that *he is the most accessible person they have ever dealt with, and this is true because he calls them repeatedly and indulges them with his attention and flattery. *His personal style is the most dangerous of weapons when aimed at ensuring complete unity of the Republican party on most of *his issues.
Meanwhile, the very legitimacy of *his election is suspect. Targeted propaganda efforts by Russian agents in support of *his candidacy as president definitely occurred and were not necessarily limited to the ones discovered in the Mueller investigation. A number of Russian operatives were indicted by special prosecutor Mueller for disinformation campaigns waged over the social media many Americans have come to use instead of traditional news programs.
There are signs that *his slim election victory was facilitated by careful application of propaganda and disinformation to susceptible swing voters in carefully selected districts informed by detailed polling. Large segments of the public whose political knowledge was limited were also subject to nonstop news coverage on television of *his speeches. I noticed a huge concentration on *his speeches and outrageous public statements on television, an equivalent to what *he said was $2 billion in free publicity.
In addition, the polls that established which districts would be most vulnerable to be turned by propaganda were apparently handed to a Russian agent, Konstantin Kilimnik, by Paul Manafort. These private political polls showed which segments of the American public were likely to support the alternative candidates and which were susceptible to being convinced otherwise (“swing” voters). Propaganda efforts could be more effectively targeted at swing voters, although it is uncertain whether that actually happened.
The point is that there was a significant Russian effort, with a budget estimated at a million dollars a month, to infect the American political discourse with propaganda in favor of the Republican candidate for president in the 2016 election, and that makes *his narrow victory suspect in the minds of the conspiracy-minded among us.
That is what, overall, makes the current occupant of the office of president something of a wrecking ball directed at American government. Russians are happy to see our government be crippled by recriminations and investigations instead of forging ahead with forward-looking infrastructure projects. That is how the Russians won the 2016 election– they got a guy who destroys the American administration from within.
Michael Morell (former dep. dir. CIA): “We still do not understand why [he who must not be named] has this affinity for Putin… Mueller took one possibility [criminal conspiracy] off the table… we still don’t know what is going on between these two…”
full quote: “We still do not understand why [] has this affinity for Putin. What happened yesterday [Friday, March 22, 2019] is Mueller took one possibility off the table– that there was a criminal conspiracy. But we still don’t know what is going on between these two leaders, and what is driving their relationship.”
[former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, host of the Intelligence Matters podcast, as told to the author, Natasha Bertrand, in her article in the Atlantic on March 26, 2019.]
(image courtesy pixabay.com and geralt)
(From the Atlantic on March 26, in an article by Natasha Bertrand, about a “critical” aspect to the Mueller investigation that Barr didn’t mention in his four-page summary: the counterintelligence investigation.) As we all remember from the days after James Comey was fired by *he who must not be named, a counterintelligence investigation was immediately formally begun by the FBI under McCabe’s direction, looking at whether the *president himself was compromised or actually an agent of the Russian intelligence apparatus.
If, in fact, *he was/is a Russian stooge, there are probably no laws (other than impeachment) available to deal with that simple fact. There are laws that prohibit various activities that *he might engage in. There are laws against suborning perjury, for example. But what if *he comes right out in the open and says that he is “resetting” the relationship with Putin, as when *he tried to cancel the sanctions on Russia immediately after he was inaugurated?
One could claim that this was *his prerogative as *president, to change policy course. If the Russians didn’t have any kompromat on *him and *he was doing it “of *his own free will”, then he may not have been breaking any laws– merely exercising his powers as a duly elected *president.
But the Russians do have kompromat on *him. The FBI investigation may or may not have fully uncovered this information. They may not have been able to confirm with high confidence that such information did, in fact, exist. In that case, they may have made the conclusion that the available evidence “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Note the bolded phrases. These words have specific meanings. “Did not establish” means that the investigation did not find sufficient evidence. It does not mean that they did not find any evidence. Attempts at coordination, such as taking a meeting with Russians who offered “government documents and evidence” that was embarrassing to Hillary, did in fact occur and were not revealed until July 2017. Apparently, Mueller found the thesis that Jr. was too naive to realize he should have called the FBI when he received that email to be convincing enough that he overlooked this meeting. Of course, we have only the word of Jr., Manafort, et al. that “nothing came of the meeting.” In fact, the Republican campaigners in the meeting didn’t actually need to do anything other than to receive the information that the Russians were trying to help them and to expect the release of vast troves of private emails from the Democratic campaign and Hillary herself.
No active behaviors by the Republican campaigners were necessary. They didn’t need to approve the releases, the Russians didn’t need any money (in fact, they apparently gave the Republican campaign approximately $20 million laundered through the NRA), and the Republicans didn’t need to give their consent or approval. When the emails were published, they should have condemned their release, but they instead focused on their contents– which failed to reveal anything in the way of illegal behavior by Democrats– as being embarrassing to the Democratic side.
Russian activity on the internet– especially the publication of images which represented Hillary as the Devil and *him as Jesus, plus the explicitly racist messages sent only to susceptible recipients, to name only two of the objectionable types of messages– hadn’t been revealed before the election. When the messages were identified, publicized, and “outed” as Russian plants, the Republicans didn’t have to do anything. In fact, they have done nothing to try to stop this behavior or even to condemn it forthrightly.
The bottom line is that *he who must not be named was the beneficiary of Russian hacking and a secret internet disinformation campaign (on which the Russians spent roughly a million dollars a month during the campaign) that turned the corner on an extremely close election and washed *him into the White House. The Russians did this because Vladimir Putin despised and feared Hillary Clinton.
The internal polling data which Manafort gave to Konstantin Kilimnik enabled the Russians to target their disinformation campaign at critical swing states and districts. Winning in three of these states, in each case by considerably less than 100,000 votes and in one case, less than 20,000 votes, threw the election to *him and effectively negated the 2.9 million vote popular margin by which Hillary over-topped *him. So it has been definitely established that the Republican campaign delivered information to the Russians which would have allowed just this targeting (such targeting has been posited but not definitely established.)
Thus, there is information that the Republican campaign did try to coordinate with the Russians in one critical area; there is unfortunately no definite proof that they actually succeeded at coordination. The ever-cautious Mueller investigation did not charge this incident as a crime, for reasons that we have yet to explain.
He who must not be named and his campaign staff didn’t need to do anything to get Putin’s help throwing the presidential election. All he needed was the details from a Republican-funded private poll, which we know Manafort delivered to Konstantin Kilimnik. Putin already “despised and feared” Hillary Clinton, so there was no need to convince him to throw his weight behind an active measures espionage program against her and against the election. More broadly, Putin worked to try to destabilize the United States along class and racial lines– as if we needed any help along those lines.
*His weird behavior around the question of Russian interference can be traced to his narcissism and his belief that he won the election on his own merits. Any deviation from that win had to be due to millions of illegal aliens voting.
The Saudis have a large stable of cows that provides fresh milk to the local people– for a price. Some of the alfalfa that feeds the cows is imported from California, where they own 15,000 acres devoted to continuous alfalfa growth. The land is located near Blythe, California, next to the Colorado River in the middle of the desert. All the land in Blythe has a claim on the water coming down the river that dates back to 1877, so it is always irrigated and grows rapidly in the hot sun. When the alfalfa is ripe, it is sent by container ship to the air-conditioned barns in Saudi Arabia where the cows (93,000 of them?) live.
Saudi Arabia also owns 30,000 acres in Argentina.
(photo courtesy of jmklatte on pixabay.com)
Image by <a href=”https://pixabay.com/users/jmklatte-5071632/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=2221993″>jmklatte</a> from <a href=”https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=2221993″>Pixabay</a>
Trust me on this. We need to do this. I’m talking about overturning the “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision that allowed unlimited money to be poured into electioneering. This decision has resulted in the tyranny of the rich in American politics. Government power and ownership interests combine to turn capitalism into a machine for creating inequality.
PS the yield curve is still inverted.
Unfortunately for those who were hoping for an indictment of a sitting president, the Mueller report turned out rather lukewarm– not cold, exactly, but not hot either. Naturally, there was dancing in the White House and a claim of “total exoneration”– which was easy for anyone with an internet connection to fact-check and discover the actual words used by Barr (who was appointed by *him on the basis of his avowed opinion that presidents cannot commit obstruction) to be “not exonerated”… an extremely cautious choice of words that invites further scrutiny of the actual Mueller text.
Frankly, I should have expected a whitewash by Barr of an overly cautious investigation by Mueller whose conclusions require explaining away a certain notorious meeting between Russians, Donald Jr., and campaign staffers, a private computer connection between Trump Tower and Alfa Bank in Moscow, and a few other things. It is almost as if Mueller is afraid to draw conclusions… could his fear be related to his apprehension about what a damning report would reveal regarding confidential sources and methods.
Or could it be that he fears a reaction by the 40% of the American public that stands behind *him and might become violent if crossed, particularly against unarmed, undefended brown people at random on the streets. You know, these hate crimes are coming from somewhere, and I have reached the depth in this article that I can just come out and say it without fear of anybody reading it: *he who must not be named is inciting hate crimes against Muslims, Latins, immigrants, and virtually anyone perceived as different.
*He incites racial and ethnic hatred in his speeches, not directly, but with “dog-whistles”. *He refuses to speak out to condemn violent acts by white supremacists. When he does speak out, it sounds mealy-mouthed, like his response to the Christchurch massacre that begins: “Warmest wishes”…
I believe at the moment that a large segment of the American population is in the depths of a severe depression and is paralyzed by the failure of our institutions to overcome and expel the offensive presence that is he who must not be named.
The only hope (and it’s a dark hope) is for a recession between now and the next election, and today the yield curve inverted even further– so things are looking so down that they’re up!
(image courtesy of pixabay.com)
Conrad Theodore Seitz 