Tag Archives: Putin

A few preliminary thoughts about the Mueller Report vis-a-vis the Trump Crime Family and the 2020 election

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1) Mueller found no collusion, but does his report explain why a half dozen key Trump Crime Family members blatantly and in apparent coordination with each other lied about their contacts (which did happen) with Russian officials and agents?

This could be explained as follows.

For their part, Russia interfered with the election. This is known.

For their part, the Trump Crime Family attempted to coordinate with the Russians, but the Russians are not stupid. They regarded the Trump people as the Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Strait, and while Trump Jr, Flynn, Pence, and the rest of them, kept trying to open back channels and bend over backwards for the Russians, the Kremlin kept them at arms length. Why allow the idiots to get themselves arrested or impeached, thus becoming useless, rather than useful, idiots?

2) The special prosecutor a) chose to not move forward on obstruction but b) it was Barr and the Justice Department that determined that this is not worth pursuing. It is pretty clear that Trump committed obstruction, he is just going to get away with it. We have to see the report itself to consider this further.

3) Since so much of the left, the Democratic, the blue-wavist, momentum was (unwisely) tied up in this report, that is done now. Trump was polled as behind various Democrats in head-to-head comparisons, and his popularity and approval ratings were all down. The next head to head comparisons will likely show Trump as a possible 2020 winner, and his approval ratings will now go abruptly up. Had this report come out in this exact manner last October 1st, there would not have been as strong of a blue wave.

4) That slightly squishy zone, those who are Trump supporters but who we thought could be convinced to turn on him, will now harden and move fully into the Trump camp. This includes voters, the handful of Republican Senators that occassionally pretended to contemplate doing the right thing, and everyone in between. That particular political strategy for Democrats, not very important to begin with, is surely now zero gone.

5) We are probably left with only one option: To vote Trump out of office, and along with him, a bunch of Senators.

6) Now more than ever, infighting among Democrats is dooming our children, our planet, and ourselves.

This is an important perspective:

Under Trump, Putin Gets To Slowly Invade Georgia

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Every now and then, Russian operatives go out in some field in Georgia, sometimes at night, tear down a fence and put up a new one, making Russia bigger and Georgia smaller. You may remember a related incident that happened during the McCain-Obama election, of which much was made.

From WaPo:

This constantly changing boundary has already divided communities and swallowed up homes in Georgia, a country of 3.7 million that hopes to one day join NATO.

Many consider it nothing short of a silent, creeping occupation on the fringes of Europe supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“What should I do? If the Russians come closer I will not be able to do anything,” Vasya, 51, said with a shrug and a waft of a freshly lit cigarette. He wants only his first name used for fear of reprisals by nearby border guards.

The Russians have been trying to Russianize Ossetians living in the nearly island like enclave in Georgia for decades, and eventually issued many Russian passports.

It is the standard Russian move. Make up a situation in which there are people in some territory that say “Hey, we’re Russians. Where’s Russia! Come help us, Russia!” Then, the tanks roll in. In this case, until Putin put Trump in the US White House, the US helped Georgia resist this move in South Ossetia. No more. Trump is screwing over an important ally in the region.

In Georgia, there is a saying. You use it when you are disagreeing with someone. “We can discuss this in the morning. But during the night, I will sneak into your house and cut your throat,” or words to that effect. Well, now it’s Trump cutting the throat of Georgia.

“We can do nothing to protect ourselves … we cannot start war on them,” said Temuri Khuroshvili, 59, a retired police officer whose cinder-block house is in one of the 52 villages on the boundary. His home is surrounded by annexed territory on three sides.

“What can you do against Russia? They do whatever they can,” he said as he sat in the roadside shade while rusty tractors groaning under bales of hay rattled through the dusty lane. “The Russians don’t care at all.”

This is not the kind of mess that an actual US President, when we get one, is going to be able to clean up easily.

A key moment in the Russia-Trump scandal happens Wednesday…

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… when the trial of his campaign manager, Paul Manefort, starts.

Jury selection starts Tuesday

There are zero signs of a plea deal emerging.

But, sometimes that happens right near the end of jury selection when the defense sees what they are up against.

(There will be a delay motion heard on Monday, but there is no good reason to believe it will be ruled in favor of.)

Best Book on Trump-Russian Scandal

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Michael Isikoff and David Corn are among the very top reporters who have been covering the Trump Russian scandal. Corn is the reporter who initially broke the Dossier story (no, it was not Buzzfeed), and Isikoff broke the story about US intelligence looking into a Trump-Kremlin connection via Carter Page. Since this initial work, these two reporters have been, along with dozens of others, putting into the public view the famous ice-berg tip that we all know Robert Mueller has the rest of hidden away somewhere. Continue reading Best Book on Trump-Russian Scandal →

The Nunes Memo is out, here it is

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This is a memo from the White House to Devin Nunes telling Nunes it is OK to release the memo, followed by the memo itself.

(At this point you may want to know about this guy, the person running against Nunes for his seat in the House.)

The memo is from the staff of the House Intelligence Committee to the majority (Republican) members of that committee, with the subject line “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Abuses at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Continue reading The Nunes Memo is out, here it is →

People who voted for Jill Stein were tricked, and we are all paying for it

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Or so it seems.

Donald Trump won the 2016 election with 306 votes to Hillary Clinton’s 232 votes. That is a spread of 74 votes.

Clinton was likely to win in several states in which she lost, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, maybe Ohio, etc. In three states that could have gone either way, Jill Stein’s vote count was larger than the difference between Clinton and Trump. In Michigan, Trump won by 10,704 votes, Stein got 51,463 votes. In Pennsylvania, Trump won by 46,765 votes, Stein got 49,678 votes. In Wisconsin, Trump won by 22,177 votes, Stein got 31,006 votes.

If every Jill Stein vote would have been a Clinton Vote, it is likely that Clinton would have had 49 electoral votes more than she did have.

That alone would have put Clinton in the white house.

We now know that Russian hackers worked hard on getting people to vote for Stein. They spread around the idea that it was “safe” to vote for a third party candidate in states where the outcome was obvious anyway.

I told people this many times. I said, again and again, the logic that you can vote “safely” in a general election for a third party candidate in certain states is flawed for several reasons. One of those reasons, I said, is that you might only think the state is safe, and perhaps it is not.

Using Stein, who is known to have hobnobbed with Putin (which may or may not be relevant here), and I’m sure a few other trick here and there, the Russians may have given their guy Trump the three electoral college wins that put him in the White House.

We’ve learned this as part of the recent expose of Facebook’s blind cooperation with the Russians in the 2016 election. (Or maybe not all blind? We just don’t know yet. How hard might it have been for the Russians to play Zuckerberg?) We are about to find out if Twitter played a similar role.

It is valid, as well as lazy, to argue that, “but but it was other things too you can’t say this etc.” but the truth is that Stein hardly even ran in most states, got overall less than 1% of the vote.

So yes, it is possible to erase the Stein votes in three key states, and manage for Clinton to still lose in those states, but highly unlikely. It is very likely that the Stein vote was a significant contributor to what ultimately happened.

Putin would not be able to control US elections if two things were true. 1) Americans actually showed up to vote and 2) The percentage of gullible special snowflake ignorant voters was about half of what it apparently is.

Watch this:

How to understand the Trump-Russia scandal

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To understand the Trump-Russia scandal, I believe it is necessary to step way back and take the very long view. I’m not talking about going back to early 2016, or even the year before. Much farther.

I’m not going to make a claim in this post as to what happened and who did what. Rather, I’d like to present a hypothesis, a single interpretation of events, that may or may not be correct, but that is based on this long view.

Whatever did actually happen, it did involve, or somehow exclude, Donald Trump and a number of individuals with whom he has had long term relationships, and Vladimir Putin and individuals with whom he has had long term relationships, and of course, an overlapping set of individuals who fit in both categories.

The Trump real estate business, centered mainly on Donald Trump itself, involved Roger Stone, Paul Manafort,and others. There are allegations of connections between Trump and the mob, sufficient to get at least one project denied in 1987. Manafort and Stone had long time connections with Russian interests and individuals, going way back in time, and there were numerous Trump-family-Russian deals over a long period of time, not just recently.

Deutche Bank, which apparently has served as a Russian Oligarch money laundering facility, took on Trump’s business as far back as 1998, when Trump started to run out of places to borrow money. Subsequently, the Russian state owned bank, Putin’s personal facility bailed the troubled Trump enterprise out of at least one financial hole.

Carter Page, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, and several others are relative newcomers to the drama, and because their involvement and possible activities is both recent and confused, it is easy to miss the forest for the trees.

The short version is this. According to this entirely hypothetical model, Trump was involved with a wide range of shady characters doing shady deals for decades. Putin and his Oligarch friends were involved with a wide range of shady characters doing shady deals for decades. There was significant overlap between the two groups.

Somewhere along the way, Putin, with Manafort’s help, started to become increasingly engaged in messing with the politics of other countries, and at some point developed, or came upon, a method of using emerging social media to hack elections. It was probably not difficult for Putin to make the shift from collecting American billionaires to using one of them specifically, Trump, to develop a US presidential campaign, on the off chance that this could disrupt American politics, back around 2015. It was then not too difficult to take the next step, realizing that Trump might actually win, to hack the election and put a man he had worked with, indirectly and possibly directly, and on whom (we hypothesize) he held considerable Kompromat, in the white house.

While these latter moves are perhaps the most important, and most urgent, they are small steps from what seems to have been going on all along, constituting minor adjustments in a larger over-arching program of money making, money laundering, and manipulation oligarch style.

And the engine that drove this process, the methodology by which Putin ultimately came to own several American operatives including, according to this model,Trump, was something out of a movie based on a Tom Clancy novel. In order to understand that engine, I offer a parable.

The Parable of Mark

Imagine an evil drug dealer named Alexey. He has a customer named Mark. Mark doesn’t think he is an addict, but he is, and that gets worse for him over time. Mark likes to buy 10 bags of product, then he marks them up and sells eight to his friends so that he can do two bags and use the profit on the other eight to cover his costs of each buy. Most of the time. Sometimes he parties with friends Nastia and Sasha, and they go through three or four bags. But that’s OK, because his other friend, Dima always loans Mark money when he needs it, so he can get more drugs from Alexey. And Alexey always has product.

Over time, if Mark was more smart and less obsessed with meeting his own desires to party and get stoned, he could have kept himself in drugs and made a steady profit over time. After a few years, Mark did manage to stash away about $500 bucks, but not the few thousand bucks he might have made had he made the right moves.

Meanehile,Mark became deeper and deeper in debt to Dima, and by the way, also to Alexey, who also helped Mark out now and then when he was down on cash. There was also that time when Mark got busted because someone claimed to see him dealing on a street corner, and Alexey provided an alibi for him. That court case was still pending, and Mark was hoping Alexey would remember to show up and give his alibi to the judge next month. Oh, and by the way, Nastia and Sasha also loaned Mark some money now and then. Oh, and the person who dropped the dime on Mark? Mark does not know it, but it was Sasha.

So, after a few years, Mark had that 500 bucks stashed away, had been having plenty of fun, and just barely, stayed out of trouble.

But, he also owes Dima about $42,000, and another 15,000 or so to the others. He is in trouble with the law and reliant on Alexey to help him out, and lately Sasha and Nastia had been snubbing him.

Turns out that Dima, Mark’s banker, was Alexey’s brother. Sasha and Nastia were Alexey’s cousins. The judge in that open court case was Alexey’s father. And, they were all members of the same organized criminal gang with Alexey in charge.

Putting this another way, Mark was in the business of buying and selling a product, and financing the deals, and staying out of trouble, by interacting with the same exact person at every level and in every direction. Over time, with every transaction, instead of Mark having the opportunity to make a little money here, and a little product there, and to develop a reasonable if unsavory business model, at every juncture of events, Alexey turned the screw and brought Mark deeper and deeper into debt and dependency. Everybody was in on it, and Mark was the unwitting mark. As it were.

What is to be learned from this parable?

This is what Vladimir Putin and a handful of his associates, according to this hypothetical model, may have done to Donald Trump. Early on, Paul Manafort developed a relationship with Trump, and not long after, with Putin’s gang. His business with Russia was to develop ways for Putin to influence foreign governments, and eventually, elections. As early as 2000, Trump was being looked at by American conservatives as a potential presidential candidate. Over time Trump engaged in a considerable amount of Obama bashing, which served his white supremacist tendencies. Putin must have seen Trump as a potential asset, with the added bonus that they shared a racist view of life.

During this entire time multiple seemingly independent Russian entities engaged in business with Trump and his family, including a wide range of “Trump Tower” like projects, and other land deals. This also included banking and loaning money. Trump and his family were fully engaged in a money making machine much like the fictional Mark’s, buying and selling and borrowing and having fun, and Putin and his oligarch associates, using Manafort and other Americans as professional manipulators, were behind most of it, possibly all of it. Trump was buying and selling and borrowing, and meeting various prurient needs, all with the same guy, Puppet Master Putin. Or, so the theory goes.

So, when mid 2016 came along, Trump looked like a viable candidate. Republicans started to manage their role in the possible Trump presidency. Putin turned on his machine, manufactured and modeled out by Manafort and others, with the hope of electing Trump as President, and even before the election, manipulated the Republican platform. Members of the Trump Team were generally in contact with Russian agents, and various members of Washington’s Republican political elite, including multiple elected officials, became first transition advisers, then cabinet members or senior white house advisers after the election, and were brought into Club Russia to varying degrees. .

Much of the news that has developed over the last several months has focused on this period, from mid 2016 to the present. It has been difficult to understand what it all means. But if one steps back and starts by examining Trump and his associates in the 1980s, and Putin and his associates, some of which were already long time Trump associates, in the 2000’s, much of that confusion seems to melt away. Putin and Trump have both been playing a sort of long game, but with Putin much more in charge and, I would guess, with the much larger vision.

Trump looks like a chump through much of this, and he probably is. But he has had his own objectives mainly having to do with making money and being a bully, which Putin was able to garner into deep debt and probably blackmail. According to this hypothesis.

So in sum, three elements make up the model:

1) Trump plus American mob plus Russian mob plus Real Estate

2) Putin plus foreign political hacking and eventually election hacking

3) Decades old overlap between these two groups.

And, not entirely by chance but with a little luck for Putin, Trump rides the racist post Obama wave and becomes a viable candidate, then Putin puts him in.

If you want to go into the weeds on this, and you should, aside from watching every edition of the Rachel Maddow show for the last year or so, check out this handy dandy timeline.

Is the Trump-Russia scandal a decade long plan just now unraveling?

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From the Washington Post:

The special counsel investigating Russian election meddling has requested extensive records and email correspondence from the White House, covering everything from the president’s private discussions about firing his FBI director to his White House’s handling of a warning that President Trump’s then-national security adviser was under investigation, according to two people briefed on the requests.

White House lawyers are now working to turn over internal documents that span 13 categories investigators for the special counsel have identified as critical to their probe…

The requests broadly ask for any document or email related to a series of highly publicized incidents since Trump became president, including the firing of national security adviser Michael Flynn and Comey…

…

Mueller also asked for any email or document the White House holds that relates to Manafort…

Mueller has requested that the White House turn over all internal communications and documents related to the FBI interview of Flynn in January, days after he took office, as well as any document that discusses Flynn’s conversations with Russia’s then-ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in December. Mueller has also asked for records about meetings then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates held with White House counsel Don McGahn in late January …

Sources also stated that Mueller is moving very quickly and is vigorously engaging a grand jury to carry out this aggressive phase of the investigation.

Meanwhile, also from the Washington Post, Manafort is said to have offered a Russian Oligarch and Aluminum Magnate Oleg Deripaska, who has been discussed at length before, private briefings pertaining to the 2016 presidential campaign. The Associated Press reported some time ago that prior to

… signing up with Donald Trump, former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly worked for a Russian billionaire with a plan to “greatly benefit the Putin Government,”…

Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin’s government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse.

Manafort pitched the plans to aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work.

“We are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin Government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitment to success,” Manafort wrote in the 2005 memo to Deripaska. The effort, Manafort wrote, “will be offering a great service that can re-focus, both internally and externally, the policies of the Putin government.”

It has been looking for a long time like Manafort is behind much of what we see. It is even conceivable that Trump and his clan have been idiot-puppets either under the threat of extortion or out for the money. One could even suspect that Trump et al would have been essentially broke were it not for Faustian deals organized by the Russians, as prelude to Putin’s bloodless coup. Of sorts.

Looks like this is going to happen any time now:

The Link between Russia and White Supremacy in the White House

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It is very rare that I find myself yelling at the TV when Rachel Maddow is on. She is very good at historically contextualized nuanced well informed analyses. But when I watched a segment of last night’s show (on the Internet, I have no cable) I was shocked to see that she missed something really important. If, that is, it is real.

In the segment below, she makes the point that there are two “clear through lines” in the whole Trump thing. One is the love of Russia and Putin by Trump, his unwavering stance that Russia and Putin can do no wrong. The other is the consistent “vehement antipathy towards immigrants”, clearly part of a white supremacists strategy, with respect to who has been appointed to various positions, the things Trump has said, and the policies attempted. The difference, Rachel notes, between these two separate through lines is the apparent novelty and strangeness of the Russia theme, while the racist trope has deep roots with Trump.

Here, I think, is what she missed: They are not two separate through lines. They are two faces of the same coin. The Russian oligarchs are white supremacists too.

This is underscored by the news that just came out that Russian entities had purchased ads on Facebook during the last election, described this way: “Most of the ads focused on pumping politically divisive issues such as gun rights and immigration fears, as well as gay rights and racial discrimination.”

There are all sorts of reasons Russia wants to control the US presidency and state department. There seem to be some great economic benefits to Trump for selling the government to Putin, something we will be forced to assume happened if even a small number of the accusations emerging are true. But, there is also the potential of the two main actors and their associates having a common philosophy about race. This would not be the first time dictators or would be dictators bonded over such things.

I could be wrong. Am I wrong? I suppose time will tell.

Is Rex Tillerson Going To Save Vladimir Kara-Murza’s Life?

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The State Department has been in the state of chaos over several days, between the Trump Transition Team failing to staff up the Executive Branch, high level officers leaving on their own accord, and so on.

And a mere hours ago, Oil Man Rex Tillerson has been officially sworn in as Security of State.

Given Tillerson’s alleged and real links to Russia and Putin, his inexperience in matters of government and international affairs, his newness, and the state of the State Department, we are moved to ask the following question:

Is anyone in the United States, in the State Department, going to do anything to save Vladimir Kara-Murza’s life?

Who is Vladimir Kara-Murza, you ask?

The Body of Boris Nemtsov, in the bag, at the location of his assassination. The Kremlin is in the background. One wonders if anyone in particular was watching out a window to see it happen.
The Body of Boris Nemtsov, in the bag, at the location of his assassination. The Kremlin is in the background. One wonders if anyone in particular was watching out a window to see it happen.
Boris Nemtsov was a strong and widely respected leader of the opposition against Vladimir Putin. In February, 2015, as he was crossing the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge, a short distance away from the Kremlin, a handful of gunmen jumped out of a car and gunned him down.

Vladimir Kara-Murza was Nemtsov’s long time colleague and advisor, and to a large extent, Kara-Murza was Nemtsov’s heir apparent.

In May 2015, not long after the assassination of Nemtsov, Kara-Murza was poisoned. He nearly died, and his recovery was long and arduous. During his sickest days, while in a Russian hospital, British and American movers and shakers, mainly in the foreign service (so, for the US, that meant the State Department) acted aggressively to get Kara-Murza out of Russia and to the US. He had been living in the US, where he had a green card, and his family lives in Virginia. This worked. Kara-Murza ended up in the US where he has been recovering from his near death.

Meanwhile, a documentary has been made about the Nemtsov, and Kara-Murza decided to go back to Russia to partake in the showing of that documentary. People tried to talk him out of it, but he decided he needed to go to carry out his political activities.

This morning, Kara Murza lies again in intensive care, this time at least as sick as before, in Russia, poisoned.

So, here’s my question.

Is anyone in the United States, in the State Department, going to do anything to save Vladimir Kara-Murza’s life?

Is Rex Tillerson, who in 2013 received the Russian Order of Friendship award, and who now heads a State Department in the state of chaos, going to order immediate action to intervene as needed to save Kara-Murza’s life again? Are state department people already doing this on their own? If so, will Tillerson encourage and support that? Or order it stopped? Or what?

Just asking. I hope they can save his life.

The whole story and more:

There is no way to sugar coat this: Trump is a Russian asset, according to me.

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ADDED: It has been suggested that I clarify an important point about this post.

So, dear reader, please understand that the information provided here is my best attempt at analysis of the information that I have available. There is clearly conjecture here. So, of course, read all this with a grain of salt. The size of that grain of salt can be as small or large as you like. I also amended the title of the post.

-gtl

ADDED Feb 1

I’ll just be putin’ this link here: http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/01/news/fsb-kaspersky-arrests/index.html?sr=twcnni020217fsb-kaspersky-arrests0129AMStoryPhoto&linkId=34031636

The story that I outlined on this blog on November 10th was widely known in the US intelligence community and has been developed and elaborated upon in numerous stages. Pretty much everything we need to know is now known, and we await the appearance of the videos currently in possession of Russian agents, and some other key pieces of information. But the story is credible, outlined in moderate detail, and shocking.

To get up to date, read this.

As I have already noted, I find this story very believable because I already knew the broad outlines and some of the details. I came across this via a contact closer to the famous MI6 spy who put together the dossier than most people are to Kevin Bacon. Over the last several days, more information has been made available, and it would now appear, if these sources are accurate, that Russian intelligence has in its possession multiple copies of videos showing Trump in some sort of sexual activity. Multiple things, multiple occasions, multiple locations in Russia, possibly in both Moscow and St Petersburg, according to a source within the CIA (see link above).

There are also financial dealings worthy of use in blackmail.

Obtaining this kind of information on a person with influence is called “developing an asset” and here, Donald Trump is the asset. So, in just over a week, the executive branch of the United States will be run by a person who is arguabley a Russian FSB asset. We hope it is not true, but if it is, there is no way to sugar coat this: We are screwed. And, personally, I’m convinced this evidence is reliable. (I’ve discussed elsewhere, see link above, why I think it is reliable.)

We know that the US Congress Gang of Eight had all this information weeks ago. People with links into the intelligence community were aware of this report. People like Mad Dog Mattis, who may become our Secretary of Defense, and who have taken an oath to protect and defend the US from all enemies foreign and domestic, knew about this. Let me restate something I’ve mentioned elsewhere. According to my contacts in the intelligence community, a) this information was generally known, b) this information was not unexpected given the usual methods of the intelligence agencies and Trump’s weaknesses, and c) the source, which is now publicly known, is among the most highly regarded agents alive today. It is becoming increasingly fashionable in the media to discredit this source. An MSNBC commenter yesterday morning called it “apocryphal” (tough, when Senator Franken pointed out that this word, “apocryphal,” may not mean what she thinks it means, she seemed to withdraw her statement). Bernie bots are resisting this information because they really want to blame Hillary Clinton for this loss, and if the Russians are in with Trump, that takes it away from them.

But when it comes down to it, the evidence is both unproven and highly likely to be true, in my opinion. And — this is important — I’m taking my cues from the same people the Gang of Eight and the various other leaders are taking their cue from. It looks to me like they are all, to an individual, currently engaged in committing an act of treason. They will either have to convincingly disprove the ever hardening Trump-Russia connection or live up to their decision to stand by.

What would be the consequences? Many and severe. Here is a quick theoretical look at one of the more obvious possibilities: a convenient arrangement whereby the Russians control key US decisions that will have great positive, and personal, consequences to Putin, and very negative consequences to the US and to the entire world.

One of Trump’s most important appointments is his Secretary of State.

The likely appointment of Rex Tillerson is widely seen as an affront to the Earth’s climate, and as a prelude to a period of entrenched denial of climate change. That is probably true. But I strongly suspect, and it is starting to become more generally apparent if you are watching the reporting, that this is not the main reason Tillerson is being placed in this position. Most people also assume that Russia would benefit from a Russia-Friendly Trump administration because Russia wants to weaken NATO, and invade a neighbor here or there. I’m sure that is part of it, but again, there is something more immediate afoot.

Tillerson is being placed in this position because Vladimir Putin, Trump’s handler, wants Exxon-Mobil and possibly other international agencies to get on with the business of exploiting Russian oil using technology that the Russians are a bit thin on. This will involve the US lifting sanctions on Russia. While wary Americans are waiting for a Russian invasion of Syria or the cancellation of the Paris agreement, the sanctions will be first ignored, then given special exemption, then weakened, then lifted. The Republicans in Congress will facilitate this because they have no intellectual or emotional power to govern, having jettisoned those qualities the day the first black man was elected President of the United States, as they vowed to make removal of the uppity negro from office their number one, and in fact, sole, objective.

Eight years is apparently enough time to gut a political party of even the smallest iota of ability to govern.

Then, of course, there will also be the expected weakening of NATO, the invasions into neighboring territory unchecked by American interest, and all that.

The other developing problem is with China. Trump and Tillerson have been waving swords at China all along, the most recent coming in yesterday’s hearings when Tillerson came an inch away from declaring war on China in the South China Sea. We would be prudent to assume, if the worst is true, that this attack on China comes at the request of Trump’s handlers in Moscow. The risk here is a trade war. Or a world war. Or worse.

This Tillerson scenario is increasingly buttressed by the facts and the context. It will be very interesting to see how what Tillerson is saying in hearings holds up with his actions, should he be confirmed.

At the moment, there seems to be only one way to address this problem in the short term, and the corruption of the Republican Party makes this nearly impossible. Impeachment would likely be successful, but the House has to initiate it, and the Senate has to conduct it. As long as both are in Republican hands, we would have to trust the Republican party to do the right thing. That, of course is impossible. They will never, ever do the right thing. Republicans will commit treason before they will stand up as patriots for America. How do we know this? Because they are doing it right now! Everything that is now publicly known about Donald Trump being handled as a Russian asset has been known by those in the know inside the beltway for weeks. For many, some of this was known since the summer. For virtually everyone, most of this was known before the election.

The act of treason being carried out by the Republican Party right now has been going on far longer than one might expect for an entity that would eventually come to its senses. They are not going to change course. They are in it until the end.

So, we are left with Plan B: Impeachment of Donald Trump after the midterms, if the citizens of the United States can get past their deeply held racism and sexism to replace many of the Republican members of the Congress, both houses.

Addendum: Donald Trump Regularly Banged Russian People. It Is Said.

This is interesting, if you can stand listening to it.
Start at about 4:10 for the discussion of Donald Tump banging Russian people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhqUbW35R3Q

Also of note, near the end when “AJ” threatens to date Trump’s daughter, “Anything you have, I can take from you.” An oligarch in the making!

One minor takeaway from this interview, relevant to those of you unfamiliar with New York (The City), is this: Donald Trump talks funny, both his accent and the way he constructs streams of non-sentences. This is, of course, how New Yorkers talk unless they are in polite company. I assume Donald Trump does not regard America as polite company.

Also, all the talk about winning. Trump is a winner. The rest of you are losers, I hope you know that. Amiright?

Wrong.

What Does Rex Tillerson Get Out Of Being Secretary Of State?

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He’s trying, in the hearings, to not let it look this way, but the truth is that he and Exxon Mobile stand to benefit a great deal from a Tillerson SOC. Also, Russia will benefit a great deal.

Putting it a slightly different way, Tillerson’s appointment makes the most sense of you replace “Trump” with “Putin” in sentences that refer to who the leader of the United States is.

The composite graphic above explains this. The context for those graphics is here:

Is Donald Trump A Russian Asset? (Updated after news conference)

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It has been suggested that President Elect Trump has been compromised by Vladimir Putin and/or the Russian Intelligence agency. This allegation suggests that Putin and/or the FSB have information, including video of unsavory sexual activities of some sort (loosely defined) and documentation of inappropriate business activities, that could be used to blackmail the future United States President. Since this is something I have been saying for weeks that we would eventually learn, I’m compelled to make a few comments.

What did we sort of know and when did we sort of know it?

In the weeks after the US presidential election, I learned something that a lot of people inside the beltway had known for months. This was third hand plus. Like, ‘a friend of a friend of a friend says this is widely known.’

There are three parts.

First, a commonly known fact was confirmed for me: major intelligence agencies will spend effort trying to compromise highly influential individuals such as real estate tycoons. This is apparently potentially useful for future manipulation of things.

Most such potential targets are intelligent and have a reasonable sense of risk and humility, to the extent that they know they can be compromised and they bother to seek and follow expert advice covering all their security needs. Also, I assume just because it is generally true of humans, that these highly successful and potentially influential people have at least a modicum of self control over what they do and what they say.

The second part is the simple logical idea that since highly influential individuals are likely to be approached or some attempt made to turn or compromise them, that Donald Trump would have been such a target, and that such an effort would likely have worked.

Since none of the aforementioned self protective attributes seem to pertain to Donald Trump, it stands to reason and is apparently fully expected that he would have long ago been compromised by major intelligence agencies. Since Trump has significant business dealings with Russia and has made the trip to Moscow several times, it is reasonable to assume there is a high probability that Putin had long ago compromised trump. Sexual honey pots, attractive but illegal business dealings, challenges to bravado or ego, etc. could all have been used to obtain film of Trump doing what might be widely regarded as inappropriate sexual things, or documentation of engagement in shady financial dealings, and so on.

So part of this was the basic assumption that someone like Trump would be pretty likely to be in Putin’s pocket.

The third part, which goes beyond assumption and speculation, is the belief among intelligence experts that this sort of thing had in fact occurred. Not just that it was highly likely, but that it was actually true.

Again, that is third hand, and it is third hand rumor. In other words, the third generation out from me is not a person who knows this stuff, but a person who is probably in a position to know what is generally known.

I was hoping at the time that individuals in the intelligence community who knew about this would somehow make it generally known, before the Electoral College voted, so there would be some chance of the Russians not placing a compromised agent at the head of the United State government. Indeed, I was hoping for a particular individual to step forward (see below). But that never happened, and the Electors elected a person many inside the beltway suspected to be a Russian puppet as President.

I once knew an evil librarian, story-book evil, surreally evil. Example: one day an employee asked for one day off a week to receive chemotherapy. The evil librarian grudgingly allowed it. Several weeks later the employee’s cancer got worse, and she needed two days a week for a month or so, to get extra chemotherapy. The evil librarian fired her on the spot, in front of the other employees and library patrons, and did so with a lot of screaming and yelling. That sort of thing happened all the time and she kept her job anyway.

Then, one day, the evil librarian made a reference to a particular woman and used the word “bitch” in so doing. Someone who heard her say that reported it to the woman’s husband. That man happened to be the director of the learned institution of which this library was a part. Within minutes Evil Librarian, who had been in her job for well over 20 years, being all evil and stuff the entire time, was fired.

The straw. For want of a straw, the evil librarian was left alone to make many lives miserable without mitigation or abatement. Then the straw, then the termination.

What makes me recall that event? The intelligence community failing to act in accordance with their oath of office. Until the straw.

When Trump was selected by the electors, the intelligence community, or large parts of it, probably knew all about what is in the recently released (and as yet unconfirmed) report indicating that Donald Trump has been compromised by the Russians, and by Putin in particular. But they stood by and did nothing. I now assume that they did nothing because their individual jobs were more important to them than, you know, civilization. Or their oath.

But then, Trump, who had been acting disrespectfully towards the intelligence community all along, started to make noises about making changes in, downgrading, or otherwise damaging the intelligence community. When I saw him doing that, I predicted that the “widely known” but unspoken of potential control Vladimir Putin would have, though blackmail, over the next United States President, would become rather suddenly known, if in fact those rumors had substance. I saw Trump’s threats to the intelligence community as a straw alighting on the back of a Russian camel. As it were.

PDF File of the reported intelligence information

This will all be confirmed, denied, elaborated, clarified, in coming months. At this moment I choose to assume this is mostly true, and that there is likely more. There is a certain strength of argument when something is fully expected for logical reasons, and with a modicum of confirming evidence available in advance, and then the thing actually happens. Of course, there is also conformation bias, where the expected, when it happens, is given more credence than it deserves. But expecting something to happen, then having it happen, is NOT inherently a case of false belief based on confirmation bias. That is why it is called confirmation bias and not confirmation now we know it can’t be true because it happened. Putting this a somewhat different way, I was pretty sure, based on earlier conversations and logical thinking, that Trump would have been, by now, compromised by Putin and/or the FSG, possibly others. I’m still pretty sure. But now, there are as yet unconfirmed details to potentially fill in some of the blanks.

###Trump and Obama may provide confirming evidence

Until a few days ago, Trump was tweeting as per usual, which for him means, obnoxious and inappropriate missives about things the President Elect should not be concerned with. Then, suddenly, he stopped tweeting and his twitter feed became more corporate and informational, more third person, as though his smart phone had been taken away from him, with the campaign taking over the feed. This has happened before.

The confirmation hearings had just started up, and this produced mounds of Trump Twitter fodder. There was a press conference coming up. And, the story we are talking about here was breaking. So, of course, Trump’s local handlers (and maybe his Russian handlers?) made an effort to separate him from his Twitter.

Then, he got it back.

I always wonder what that looks like. Does Trump have a stash of smart phones hidden around the house? Does he pay, or threaten, a household servant to get him a phone? Does he have a tantrum and hold his breath until Melania gives in? But I digress…

Anyway, he got his Twitter access back and started tweeting denials of the story, and this time, he was screaming in ALL CAPS. Also, he let something slipped. He asked how intelligence services could leak fake news. Leak? Fake news? Leak? This makes it sound like he knew it was a leak. Made up fake news would not be a leak. He also invoked Hitler. So, there you go.

Methinks he doth tweet too much.

President Obama essentially but subtly confirmed the story. This story is thought to have been part of the secret part of earlier intelligence briefings. So, this story is either fake made up news, or part of the inside story that would be known to the President (and Trump). If it was fake made up news, and the press asked President Obama about it, he would say “I never heard anything about that, probably fake made up news, watch out for that, there is too much of that going on, cut it out.” But, if it was part of the inside story, but top secret, there is only one thing he could say. “I don’t comment on top secret stuff” or words to that effect.

So, what did President Obama say about the intelligence indicating that Donald Trump paid Russian women to urinate on the bed President Obama and his wife used in the presidential suit in a famous hotel?

From NBC:

In an interview with NBC News before his farewell address Tuesday night in Chicago, President Barack Obama said he had not seen the news accounts of Trump’s Russian ties but noted that “as a matter of principle and national security, I don’t comment on classified information.”

He had not seen the news accounts (and thus has no first hand, comment-able, response) but he does not comment on classified information. So, there you go.

ADDED:

This from NBC regarding the contents of Trump’s intelligence briefing. I think this conflicts with what Trump said during this press conference, in which I think he said he knew about this “false news” from that briefing.

MOSCOW — President-elect Donald Trump was not told about unverified reports that Russia has compromising information on him during last week’s intelligence briefing, according to a senior intelligence official with knowledge of preparations for the briefing.

A summary of the unverified reports was prepared as background material for the briefing, but not discussed during the meeting, the official said.

Two U.S. officials told NBC News that materials prepared for Trump during last week’s intelligence briefing included damaging allegations — unverified by American intelligence agencies — about his dealings with the Russians.

A special word about Mad Dog Mattis

United States Marine Corps General James “Mad Dog” Mattis was selected by Trump to be his Secretary of Defense. When I heard that, I thought there was hope that any widely known but still underground intelligence about Trump being a compromised puppet of Putin would have to come out. After all, if I more or less knew that Trump was compromised by the FSB (or by some other entity but ultimately, by Putin), then Mad Dog Mattis certainly knew it.

Unlike me, Mad Dog has on several occasions taken the oath. He would have put his hand on the Bible and uttered the words “I, James Mattis, do solemnly sear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” And, he knew that he would be taking the oath again if sworn in to be Secretary of Defense.

I assumed that someone, especially someone like General Mattis, would come forward with this intelligence and put a stop to the takeover of the United States government by a foreign power.

But no one did, not even the General.

UPDATE:

In his remarks at a news conference that happened as I was writing this post, Trump thanks the news organizations that did NOT report the allegations, and suggests that those specific agencies have now “gone up a notch.” He also suggested that intelligence agencies now have a “blot” on their records.

Trump calls his opponents who released the intelligence reports, which he fully denies, “sick people.”

He admits that Russia did the hacking.

He restates the false claim that the DNC did not have defense against hacking but the RNC did, and that the Russians were unable to break into the RNC.

Trump notes that if Putin likes Donald Trump, that’s an asset. OK, then.

Trump continues to refer to the election and deride Hillary Clinton.

Trump claims that he tells people all the time to be careful of hidden cameras in foreign hotel rooms. That he actually told everyone this all the time should be confirmable.

Trump claims that he has very low debt and zero loans with Russia.

(Note: All the questions are about Russia, Hacking, etc. Trump has no control over the message.)

Trump says he was offered 2 billion dollars to do a number of deals in Dubai. He turned down the deal, though he says he didn’t have to turn it down because he is President. He claims he could run his business and run government at the same time, this would be legal. Also, he claims he would be able to do it and would be good at it.

Reporters claims that nobody but the press cares about his tax returns. This got applause. I suspect not from the reporters. So, apparently, Trump has an audience of sycophants in the room. That feels wrong.

Trump shows a pile of papers indicating that he passed business interests off to his sons. Then, he walked off stage and did not take any more questions. (He returned later to answer questions.)

The post-Trump spokesperson claims that emoluments do not include, for example, foreign visitors paying high prices at Trump hotels. That’s going to leave a mark.

Trump is claiming that profits from foreign business will be donated to the US Treasury.

Other notes on the news conference:

<li>Trump, who is probably anti-vax, spoke out against "pharma." </li>

<li>Oddly, this press conference has applause following some of the remarks.  That seems unusual. </li>

<li>Trump indicates that certain states, but not all states, would benefit from his jobs programs, and the veterans in those states would be taken care of.</li>

<li>Trump states that he has lots of news conferences. This is is first news conference in six months. </li>

The End Of America The Free, America The Brave

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Putin probably owns Trump. In the past, Trump has spent enough high profile time traveling in and out of Russia, that any smart intelligence agency would have long ago gotten the goods on such a sloppy self absorbed person. Assume there are movies. Young girls. Whatever. Putin probably owns Trump. The ex KGB officer probably owns a lot of people, a lot of foreign rich or influential individuals. That’s how these things work.

Trump is a man that relies on the image of great personal wealth. But, if he has great personal wealth it is a mere couple of billion or so. Alternatively, he may have mostly debt and a few hundred million handy. Nobody knows, and he’s not releasing that information. The point is, he views himself as righteously rich, but he may not be as rich as he considered his right. There are a lot of hungry people in this world, and he is not one of them. But he probably thinks he is.

Putin is the richest person on the planet now or ever. He beats second place Bill Gates by several billion. Putin has gotten this rich by exploiting his position as the permanent leader of Russia (despite a democracy there).

Did I mention that Putin probably owns Trump?

Trump is going to separate his business interests from his activities as president using the following procedure:

1) Put the offspring in charge of the business.

2) Place the offspring in the room at all important presidential meetings.

3) Claim that he is keeping his business holdings and his job as president separate.

Did I mention that Putin probably owns Trump? And that Trump wants to garner great wealth?

Dots, connect thyselves:

Trump is driven to become more wealthy than he is. This is his personality, and it may even be financially necessary for him. Putin has owned Trump for a long time. One question we have now is this: How long ago did Putin approach Trump with the idea that, with Russian help, Trump could become president, piles of money could flow into the Trump coffers, and all Trump had to do is to allow Putin carry out certain geopolitical acts that, after all, might even be good for business?

Do American intelligence agencies have a record of Trump-Putin communication, direct or indirect, over a long period of time? Have they been talking? For how long? About what?

It would make sense to Trump to help Putin carry out one of Russia’s greatest long term goals, a goal held since the 17th century, assuming Trump comes out of the deal rich, not in debt. Russia has always had a landlocked problem. Sure, Russia has vast coastal regions but they are mostly in the Arctic or nearly so. Russia has always lusted for a route to the Indian Ocean, a route to the Mediterranean, and a better route to the Atlantic. And, breadbaskets and buffer zones and mining resources and all of that. What has kept Russia from doing this?

Well, initially, not much, and that is why the Soviet Union was so big. But the expansion of the Soviet Union was hampered by the Americans who, for example, carried out a proxy war with the USSR in Afghanistan. NATO has kept Russia from re-expanding its direct influence across Europe. Various coalitions have kept Russia from invading West Asian territories such as Iran, Iraq, and Syria. The United States is a, if not the, prime mover behind all of that.

And where I say “is” I think we will soon be saying “was.” Why?

Did I mention that Putin probably owns Trump?

With Trump in Putin’s pocket, Russia will take territory in the Middle East and Europe. Russia and the United States together, under Putin and Trump, will try to destabilize the sleeping dragon, China. We may be looking at new places to have proxy wars, but the proxy wars will not be between the US and Russia. They will be between Russia and NATO or others, with the US interfering on Russia’s behalf, maybe pulling out of Nato, and maybe even joining Russian troops in places like the Middle East or Africa. Perhaps they will be between the US as a Russian proxy and China in Africa where China has been exerting influence for a long time now, or Russia and various European forces in West Asia, or between Russia and some combination of powerful South Asian countries in Afghanistan.

(Note to Trump: Do pull out of Afghanistan as soon as possible so Vlad can get in there. Thanks.)

In January the United States is going to be taken over by a coalition of two oligarchs: Putin and Trump (but Putin probably owns Trump).

So, that’s the America the Free part gone. What about the America the Brave part?

Starting in a few days, we will be led by a coalition of cowards and morons. They are known collectively as the Republicans.

The Republican Party has spent the last few decades training itself to be the most ignorant group of know nothings that ever held power anywhere, beyond the level that could be parodied by the most extreme Monty Python script.

The American GOP will be the ironic hobgoblin of the Russian Patriarch, after decades of consolidating power as the “national security” party. The Party of Reagan will be the Party of Putin. We are already seeing Putin love among Republicans in polls. Republicans like Putin more than they like members of the Democratic Party.

This will be achieved mainly because the core of that party consists of angry anti-intellectual anti-liberal anti-environment hippie punchers, and as long as hippies are being punched, and gays bashed, and people of color intimidated through regular state sponsored or allowed executions, they’re fine with this.

America the Brave is now America the Spiteful Idiot.

Monday, the Electors meet. Is it possible that every single one of the Trump Republican Electors is a blind Trump supporter? No. Many electors were actually elevated to that position earlier in the process, and were supporters of other Republican candidates. It it the case that every single Republican is a Putin Pushing no know-nothing? No, not all of them. Just a large majority of them. Among the Electors there must be some who are not. There must be some Republicans among the electors who understand that Russia is a nice country and all, and that we love the Russian people and all, but that the Putin government is not our friend.

Today, Friday, the Obama administration will do what it should have done months ago, but elected not to for what seemed like good reasons at the time. The President will, essentially, give that CIA briefing that some people got on Friday, to the rest of the country, about Putin’s involvement in the US election.

There will be people who become outraged, a lot of them. Some of them may be influential Republicans. A friend of mine pointed out the ideal scenario: One or more members of the presumed Trump cadre of Cabinet appointees walks off the job, forsakes the Trump administration, in outrage. Imagine Marine General James Mattis publicly noting that he has sworn an oath to protect the United States from all enemies domestic and foreign. Indeed, General Mattis has to do this. He is known to be a very smart guy, one of the more intellectual generals. At the same time, he is known to be fiercely patriotic. He must have figured this out by now. He must have figured out by now that he will be dumping his career of patriotic service to America right into the crapper if he serves in the Trump administration. I assume that he initially figured he should be in there doing what needs to be done with competence. But hopefully he will now, and maybe others proposed for the cabinet as well, realize that this day, this weekend, is the only opportunity to ask the electors to not vote for Trump, to do anything but vote for Trump, in order to stop a Russian takeover of the United States.

Only about 10% of the electors have to do this.

If Trump is not elected, and if the highly unlikely event of the electors simply electing Clinton does not happen, then the US House has a shot at deciding who will be President of the United States. They must choose among the top vote getting three names that the Electors consider. Thusly, the Electors can hand the US house a list of three people, including Clinton, Trump, and one other person, probably a Republicans, for them to chose among.

If that third name is a reasonable individual (for a Republican) or, at least, an established Republican, then perhaps the House will have the bravery, and the love of freedom, to chose that person as the next president.

Half this country is ready to go to the mat to keep Trump, and thus the Russians and who knows who or what else, in power. The other half of this country is willing to go to the mat to stop Trump from doing all that he has promised to do for months. The third half seems to have no interest in any of this. No matter what happens, there is going to be a fight.

People in the middle and on the left are brave, and ready to take on whatever happens. People on the Right are Putin loving Russia-symps who just want to punch some hippies and piss in the lake. And now, we get to find out which of those themes best represents our country. Now, this weekend, Monday.

Holy crap America, what have you done?