Just Saying Who's Trumping der Fuhrer?

[Richard Stanley]

It's been a few weeks since I've updated this thread and a LOT has happened in that time. To summarize, Trump has found excuses to tack towards the left and globalism on a number of fronts. There are rumblimgs aplenty on the right, albeit that Trump still seems to have the support of his less ideologically driven populists that are still in thrall with his rhetoric. As such, the following excerpt discusses one reaction to the recent bombings of Syria and Afghanistan. The latter bomb, named MOAB (nicknamed Mother Of All Bombs), seems an apocalyptic OT reference to the conflicts (including against Moab) between the Judge era Israelites and their neighbors, just prior to the establishment of the Judaic Kingdom of David. David is interesting here because he is recorded as having his great-grandmother, Ruth, who was from Moab, and not being a descendant from Jacob. This is counter to the later Jewish tradition that mandated that Jews must have a Jewish mother. But, according to the canon, a Moabite elite would have descended from Lot, who was Abraham's nephew. My inference being that these conflicts have too many elite connections on both sides, even in the Bible.

Also interesting to note is that the term 'reactionary' below used to be, at least, a pejorative term from the left perspective, but maybe some on the right have accepted this?

Read the whole story and note the comment from the former Israeli legislator near the end. There are a lot of links in the rest of the piece.

...
I think I speak for every right-wing, reactionary, America-first conservative in America when I say: Cut out the foreign adventures. Cut our taxes instead.

Later that day I got even angrier when I read a report that was making its way around right-wing websites. The topic was the chemical strike in Syria that led the Donald to order that cruise-missile strike.

The report is titled "Assessment of White House Intelligence Report of April 11, 2017" and it was authored by Theodore Postol, an MIT professor who is among the world's leading experts on chemical weaponry.

In 14 pages, Postol demolishes the Trump administration's extended press release claiming proof that Syrian aircraft delivered that gas strike. Here's the key sentence:

"I have reviewed the document carefully, and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the U.S. government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria at roughly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017."

Postol writes that "the report contains absolutely no evidence that this attack was the result of a munition being dropped from an aircraft. In fact, the report contains absolutely no evidence that would indicate who was the perpetrator of this atrocity."

The central piece of evidence cited in the administration's report is what appears to be the remains of a rocket casing photographed in a crater on a street where the attack occurred. The rocket body showed evidence of an implosion from above rather than an explosion from within, he writes. (see video below)

The most likely explanation, he writes, is that the casing was placed in the crater and a bomb of some sort was detonated above it.

"The explosive placed on top of the pipe would cause it to be suddenly crushed up like a tube of toothpaste hit by a mallet," he writes. "Just as the toothpaste would be sprayed out from the toothpaste tube, so will the sarin be sprayed from the metal tube."

Who could have placed that bomb there? Postol doesn't speculate. His specialty is explosions, not politics. ...
http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/04/donald_trump_is_taxing_my_patience_he_got_taken_in.html
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[Richard Stanley]

New book discussing 'tyranny'. If nothing else, guess I'm now absolved of the PC crime of comparing Trump with Hitler.

Timothy Snyder is the author of "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century" and the Levin professor of history at Yale University. Snyder explains how comparing Trump to Hitler can be useful despite the differences. Following is a transcript of the video.

TIMOTHY SNYDER: So the way to start the discussion about comparisons is to point out that Americans are extremely lazy about history. I mean that's one way in which were definitely number one among major nations. And one of the ways we’re lazy about history is that as soon as anyone suggests that the past might be useful, then we say “but wait it's not exactly the same and therefore I'm just going to discard it.” In that way in two or three seconds we give ourselves an excuse not to think about history. The premise of the book "On Tyranny" is not that Hitler is just like Trump or Trump is just like Hitler. The premise is that democratic republics usually fail and it's useful for us to see how they fail. One of the ways a democratic republic can fail is Germany in 1933. There are plenty of other examples in the book, also from the left wing Czechoslovakia in 1948 becoming communist. The point of the book is that these things really happened over and over again and that intelligent people, no less intelligent than us, experienced them and left a record for us to learn from. So what I'm trying to do in the book is to help us to learn from that record so we don't have events like Germany in 1933 or Czechoslovakia in 1948. Just saying “Hitler's not like Trump" or "Trump is not like Hitler” isn't going to save us. Learning for the past though, could.
http://www.businessinsider.com/yale-professor-shouldnt-afraid-compare-trump-hitler-on-tyranny-comparison-politics-2017-4​

 

[Jerry Russell]

Here, Justin Raimondo notices that just as Trump has finally done something that would rate a comparison with Hitler (namely, launching an unprovoked act of aggressive war), suddenly the comparison is no longer valid.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/04/16/is-our-political-class-mentally-ill/

I write this on Easter Sunday, the day of resurrection and hope in the Christian calendar, but such a bright promise looks a bit thin given what is going on in our world, our country: what looks like a mass outbreak of mental illness among our political class.

I say this because here is a group of people – journalists, politicians, and other Very Serious Persons – who have hated our new President from the get-go. He’s Hitler, he’s Mussolini, he’s Pepe the frog! He’s this, he’s that, he’s Our National Nightmare! And yet the minute he starts bombing foreigners he’s suddenly not so bad after all. Over at the Washington Post, David Ignatius, the CIA’s journalistic front man, says he’s “becoming a credible foreign policy leader.” Ruth Marcus opines that we’re witnessing “the normalization of Donald Trump.” Finally, she enthuses, “rationality is dawning” on the forty-fifth President! Among the liberal elite, the hosannas were well nigh universal. As Ann Coulter noted:

“Cable news hosts gushed, ‘Trump became president of the United States tonight!’ On MSNBC, Brian Williams called the bombing ‘beautiful’ three times in less than a minute. Sen. Lindsey Graham (one of the ‘women of the Senate,’ according to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) compared Trump to Reagan. The New York Times headlined an article, ‘On Syria Attack, Trump’s Heart Came First.’”

Fareed Zakaria’s joy over the bombing seemed to indicate that, for him, it was practically an erotic experience. And this weird bloodlust wasn’t limited to the liberal precincts of the commentariat – far from it. When we dropped the MOAB on Afghanistan, Kimberly Guilfoyle practically had an orgasm over at Fox News. Sitting there in her low cut red dress, her breasts heaving with passion, her lips parted, and an ecstatic smile plastered on her heavily made-up face, she hailed the bombing as if it were the climax – so to speak – of a pornographic movie: “America is back!” Oh, yeeeesssss!!!!
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In the same article, he accuses Democrats and liberals (including Rachel Maddow) of harboring a "paranoid delusion" that Trump is a Russian agent. "A sick mind imputes meaning to unrelated phenomena", he says.

Well, that's the trick, isn't it? To recognize when seemingly parallel phenomena are unrelated, and when the coincidences are just stacked too high to ignore?

 

[Richard Stanley]

Justin's bewilderment bewilders me. The MSM is just playing its role within the system, so what should we expect them to do differently. But, Justin has always placed himself in an ideological box, e.g. there can be no underlying conspiracy 'fact' driven by the globalists. No, for him everything is organic psychosis from the top down, albeit he is correct that the MSM and the fake-alt is sowing such psychosis in the audience.

The whole Trump as a Russian tool seems a deliberate distraction from what and who he is a real Lifetime Actor for. It's bad enough that one can demonstrably see all the dirty Russian and other money being laundered through his real estate branding scheme. And the Russian oligarchs all serve at the pleasure of Putin. So what is Justin talking about, and why?

I don't read Justin much anymore, and as such I wonder if Justin ever talks about globalism versus nationalism and such, or is everything still framed along the lines of war -- no war good versus war bad.

Funny, but I always was taught that libertarianism was the ultimate expression of true 'liberalism', but Justin trashes the concept under the new definitional paradigm. Maybe that's one reason I'm no longer a Libertarian. I once attended a Libertarian activist seminar put on by Justin. Each of us was supposed to come up with an idea that would be good for advancing the cause. My idea was that we should figure out a way to communicate how important words keep getting shifted in meaning, usually to our detriment.

 

[Richard Stanley]

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-foreign-policy-antics-raise-question-stupid-or-nefarious-924117571804 (18 minutes)

I caught this last night on my news feed. It assembles the gamut of seeming Trump insanity and ponders whether we are observing "Stupid or Nefarious"? The latter as in whether there is a common thread, such as the Bannon plan to deconstruct the administrative state. If true, and I think so, this would mean that President Bannon's 'demotion' was just for appearance sake.

It includes coverage of the issue of the 'lost' aircraft carrier, of which the WH's military 'adults' are shown being complicit in the literal misdirection. This individuals were supposedly selected to demonstrate that Trump was going to chart a reasonable course.

And now Jason Chaffetz has announced that he will not run for re-election. Being the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, a Republican pol in his prime years, this is practically unheard of .. unless there is something seriously wrong. Speculation about the reason is wide, but the most likely appears that he cannot stomach having to provide political cover for Trumpism, as this is his main committee job of providing oversight of the administrative branch. For this viewpoint: http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/the-trump-effect-on-republicans-924975171849 (7:40)

Right wing ideologues are extremely concerned, as they should be, while Trump's shallow brown shirts could give a damn. Meanwhile, the 'crooked' MSM has been experiencing a boom in readership and subscriptions.

The result of all this is to be a wrecking ball on Republican nationalism, at least. The question is, will this be sooner or later, perhaps after Bannon's desired apocalyptic war is launched?

 

[Richard Stanley]

In line with the prior post, regarding 'apocalyptic war' aspects:

Back in January Jeremy Scahill, the journalist who literally wrote the book on Blackwater, the notorious mercenary outfit, reported for the Intercept that Erik Prince, the company’s founder, was with Donald Trump and his family at Trump Tower on election night in November. That suggested a degree of intimacy between them that had not been previously revealed. Scahill went on to report that Prince had been advising the Trump team on defense and intelligence matters and had provided input about possible choices to head the Pentagon and the State Department.

To anyone familiar with Prince and his history, this was an ominous sign. Blackwater personnel had been so tarnished by criminal activity during the Iraq War, including convictions for the murders of Iraqi civilians, including children, that Prince had to rename the company more than once and his personal reputation was shredded.

Prince and his family have had a long association with Vice President Mike Pence, however, through mutual religious and political affiliations based on a militant theocratic worldview. Prince and his sister Betsy DeVos, now the secretary of education, were big donors to Trump’s campaign. Considering that Trump’s knowledge of world affairs can barely fill a shot glass, seeing Prince among his inner circle of advisers is unnerving to say the least.

While it has been clear for some time that Trump was not the isolationist that people wanted to believe he was, Prince represents something much more malevolent than simple “realism.” This is a man whose loyalties are anything but clear. In fact, Scahill and Matthew Cole reported last month that Prince is under investigation by the Justice Department and other federal agencies for money laundering and attempts to broker military services to foreign governments.

According to their reporting, the government has had Prince under surveillance for more than a year for suspected criminal activity:

Working with a small cadre of loyalists — including a former South African commando, a former Australian air force pilot, and a lawyer with dual citizenship in the U.S. and Israel — Prince sought to secretly rebuild his private CIA and special operations enterprise by setting up foreign shell companies and offering paramilitary services.

One of their sources told them, “Erik wants to be a real, no-shit mercenary. He’s off the rails exposing many U.S. citizens to criminal liabilities. Erik hides in the shadows.”

The details of this investigation are astonishing. According to Scahill and Cole, as recently as January Prince was working on this mercenary project, which includes alleged money laundering for the Libyan government through a Chinese investment bank. The source with close knowledge of Prince’s activities told the Intercept, “If Erik is fucking around with the Chinese, I don’t even want to imagine what the U.S. government is thinking about.” This is the same time period during which, according to The Washington Post, Prince met with a representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin to establish a secret back channel of communication with President Trump. He’s a busy guy. ...
http://www.salon.com/2017/04/19/how-much-do-we-know-about-blackwater-founder-erik-prince-and-his-secretive-role-in-shaping-trumps-foreign-policy/
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And so what is this relationship with Trump, given that Trump claims to be a non-interventionist? Who launches air strikes - of dubious good no less.

 

[Richard Stanley]

More on the lost armada business:

...
The president himself infamously described the alleged “armada” steaming to the peninsula: “We are sending an armada, very powerful,” the president began. “We have submarines, very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier.” (Trump forgot to include “prudent” in his remarks — a word apparently written into the script used by both McMaster and Mattis.)

It can’t be underscored enough that Mattis and McMaster are supposed to be among the most competent senior staffers in Trump’s West Wing. Yet everyone in the White House and apparently in Mattis’ office in the Pentagon was either engaged in a group lie or truly had no idea where the Carl Vinson was or where it was heading. Because, as it turns out, the carrier group wasn’t steaming for North Korea after all. It turns out the Navy vessels were thousands of miles away, moving into position for exercises in the Indian Ocean.

Before Kim Jong Un’s failed missile test last Sunday, and while the communist dictator observed the April 15 national holiday commemorating his grandfather, the Navy released a photo of the Carl Vinson traveling between the islands of Sumatra and Java, which, according to an atlas, are located about 3,500 miles south of where Trump and his brain trust said the ships were supposed to be.

Defense News reported that Pentagon officials “expressed wonderment” at reports about the group’s alleged movement toward North Korea. This would lead us to believe that the Trump White House, including Mattis, McMaster and the president himself, were co-conspirators in a plot to deliberately release disinformation about our military deployments, effectively misleading the American people and, it goes without saying, family members of all the sailors in that carrier group who thought they were headed into a possible nuclear showdown with echoes of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

There are two basic options to explain all this.

First, there’s the lie. Given Trump’s lengthy track record of flagrant lies, it’s entirely possible that the White House deceived the public as a matter of military policy. After all, how could anyone verify the location of an entire carrier group? It turns out, no one did — other than the Navy itself, debunking the whole thing. But it’s difficult to find precedent for a deception like this in past administrations. Certainly there have been disputed lies like the Gulf of Tonkin incident during the Vietnam conflict, or the attack on the USS Maine that precipitated the Spanish-American War. But it’s almost impossible to find instances of an entire White House fabricating the whereabouts of a carrier group. ...
http://www.salon.com/2017/04/20/trumps-wrong-way-armada-was-it-a-strategic-lie-or-an-idiotic-blunder/​

Unless Mattis and McMaster, and the entire NSC, are being stovepiped by their Pentagon liaisons, it would be impossible that this was a blunder and not not them participating wittingly in the lie. The Navy might lose a plane, or one ship, but not an entire armada, or where it is supposed to be going. And they said so, against what the WH functionaries said.

The highlighted 'disputed lies' can also include Pearl Harbor, with the book Day of Deceit exposing the lies of the FDR administration, this time including the complicity of Naval Intelligence, via such as the McCollum Memorandum, detailing a list of actions designed to goad the Japanese into attacking. After the book came out, the Army and Navy brass (Short and Kimmel) on Pearl Harbor were posthumously unblamed (quietly) for being responsible for an inadequate defense of the port. They fell on their swords for the cause.

 

[Richard Stanley]

In addition to the below 'planned gaff', the South Koreans are freaked out by the Lost Armada incident. So in addition to Trump blowing up the Republican Party, generally, he has been a wrecking ball with our traditional allies. Tillerson announces one day that Iran is complying with the Obama nuclear agreement, then the next day reversing himself.

South Korean officials are stunned after President Donald Trump said last week that “Korea actually used to be a part of China” in an interview.

The incorrect statement of fact has now become an issue in South Korea’ presidential race, according to Bloomberg, and foreign diplomats are trying to clarify how and why Trump made that claim.

Trump told the Wall Street Journal that Chinese President Xi Jinping provided that version of history, infuriating Seoul.

“It’s a clear fact acknowledged by the international community that, for thousands of years in history, Korea has never been part of China,” foreign ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck said at a briefing in Seoul on Thursday, Bloomberg reported.

Presidential candidates for South Korea’s May election have weighed in on Trump’s statement

“This is clearly a distortion of history and an invasion of the Republic of Korea’s sovereignty,” conservative Liberty Korea Party candidate Hong Joon-pyo said through a spokesman. ...
http://www.salon.com/2017/04/20/south-korea-disturbed-by-president-trumps-grasp-of-cartography-history/​

 

[Richard Stanley]

More kvetching from Justin Raimondo. At least he's moving up in the world, the following Chicago Tribune op-ed was originally placed in the related LA Times. His piece also covers Trump's massive reversals on policies and opinions of supposed enemies during the campaign. Poor Justin needs to learn the meaning of the word 'rhetoric'.

I voted for Donald Trump because he promised to pursue a new foreign policy. As he said in December, “We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments. Our goal is stability, not chaos, because we want to rebuild our country.” He vowed to appoint those with “new approaches, and practical ideas, rather than surrounding myself with those who have perfect résumés but very little to brag about except responsibility for a long history of failed policies.”

After decades of disastrous interventions, Trump inspired me. But less than 100 days into his administration, I’m feeling the sting of betrayal. In recent weeks, Trump and his surrogates have abandoned virtually every foreign policy stance he took during the campaign.

...
I’m not alone in feeling betrayed.

Ann Coulter, author of “In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome,” wrote recently that “Trump’s Syrian misadventure is immoral, violates every promise he ran on, and could sink his presidency.” At Breitbart News, the online headquarters of the Trump insurgency, a piece about the Syria attacks attracted more than 50,000 ferociously negative comments. Pat Buchanan, the ideological godfather of Trumpism, despaired that “the promise of a Trump presidency … appears, not 100 days in, to have been a mirage. Will more wars make America great again?” A baffled Laura Ingraham tweeted, "Missiles flying. Rubio's happy. McCain ecstatic. Hillary's on board. A complete policy change in 48 hrs." Talk radio host Michael Savage complains that “People in Trump’s own sphere are turning him toward the beating war drums.” Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit forces in Britain who campaigned for Trump in the U.S., opined that the president’s supporters “will be scratching their heads” at these foreign policy reversals. ...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-donald-trump-voter-regrets-20170424-story.html​

 

[Richard Stanley]

Obviously, most people are not putting the same spin on this as I do, but I see this all rather ominously. It appears to me that he is sending up trial balloons that he is going to declare a dictatorship, and his recent demand that the entire Senate go for a visit to the WH, regarding North Korea, appears as more of the same. His entire shtick seems designed to promote the very opposition that he needs to use as a pretext to "consolidate his powers". For example, his two attempts at a Travel Ban and the lame attempt to Repeal and Replace the ACA were so completely incompetent that failure seems the intent from the get go. Now he is talking of eliminating the Senate filibuster altogether and thus making the process there a simple majority rule. Having the Senate slow things down used to be considered a strength of our system, forcing more deliberation and more consensus from the minority.

President Trump has suggested that the judiciary doesn't have the authority to question him. He was a very early proponent of nuking the filibuster for Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch. And he recently raised eyebrows by congratulating Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the expansion of his presidential powers — echoing his previous admiration for strongman leaders.

Now Trump is talking about consolidating his own power.

In an interview with Fox News that aired Friday night, Trump dismissed the “archaic” rules of the House and Senate — using that word four times — and suggested they needed to be streamlined for the good of the country. ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/04/29/trump-is-now-talking-about-consolidating-his-own-power/
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Prior to the election the Senate and House oversight committees were chomping at the bit to investigate Clinton and Obama scandals, but now the respective Republican chairmen are scared crapless. Chaffetz has decided not to run in the next election, first because he wanted to spend more time with his family, then he figured out that having a medical problem with his foot sounds better.

The normally bombastic Trump becomes apoplectic whenever anyone asks him about the Flynn matter, which is getting worse almost daily, drip, drip, drip. Trump even stormed out of an executive order signing session when asked about it, without signing the orders. With existential crisis looming like Damocles' Sword, Trump will have to make his move fairly soon, and cross the Rubicon. But, importantly, all of this controversy and chaos does little but fire up his base of Brown Shirts, convinced that he can do no wrong.

http://www.sltrib.com/home/5166377-155/utah-brothers-launch-billboard-campaign-to

 

[Richard Stanley]

With the bizarre circumstances surrounding the firing of FBI Director Comey, now emerging from the swampy whirlpool swirling around Trump is what appears to be a Constitutional crisis somewhat comparable to Watergate. One question is whether or not the outcome will be the same as was for Nixon, his having to flee the Presidency in disgrace?

With Trump he sent his personal (not Secret Service) head of (Trumpco) security to FBI headquarters to hand deliver the termination letter. Was this some kind of public message being sent? Like his prior loading of Senators on buses to come have a meeting at the WH, when it is always done the other way around for such National Security meetings. Is Trump saying he has his Praetorian Guard that can trump 'law enforcement' at his pleasure?

With Comey, one can argue that it was his unusual action to make public that the Clinton email issue was being extended, just a week before the election, while he also remained mum on the investigation into various Russian connections to Trump personally, and his campaign. Trump lauded Comey during the campaign, but now one wonders if Trump feels he must insulate himself a bit by throwing Comey under the bus, the excuse appearing like that Comey treated Hillary too harshly - by breaking FBI protocols. Comey seems rather blasé about his termination according to some reports.

The justifications for the firing are shifting, as is par for Trump, from that the Assistant AG was personally inspired to write a derogatory letter about Comey, and that the 'recused' AG, Sessions, piled on, to that now Trump had wanted to fire Comey for much longer for being a "showboat".

The strange process rush to repeal ObamaCare are being accompanied with Republican explanations that Medicaid service will actually be improved by granting states more flexibility while at the same time removing over 600 billion dollars over ten years. Combined with other 'savings' from doing so, they will be able to use this budgetary savings to fill the revenue gap from the Trump tax cuts, which means that they can pass the tax plan with only a simple majority rather than the normal two thirds needed in the Senate. Emergency rooms will, once again, be flooded across the nation .. unless Czar (Caesar) Trump eliminates that long standing law that ER's cannot refuse treatment to the poor.

Medical care is currently 1/6 of the USA economy, where Americans pay over twice as much for worse aggregate outcomes as do other advanced coutries. Shortly after the repeal Trump sardonically threw this in our face, by telling the Australians that they have better health care than we do, as does most all of Europe and Canada. They do not have to feed the profit hungry stomachs of the for-profit insurance companies ... that once used to be mostly not-for-profits corporations. Ironically the patchwork system Obama gave us was modeled upon the conservative Heritage Foundation plan, and also known as RomneyCare in Massachusetts. This model provides for for-profit insurance companies to play in the game, as does TrumpCare, and those swimming in the so-called high risk pools are the equivalent of the grannies being placed under the pervue of Obama's so-called death panels. Of course, many wont even make it into a pool, as is the case even now. But if we spend half as much money on health care .. and got better results. Nope, as Trump explains, Americans don't like such things.

Conservatives are correct that lowering the corporate tax rates will do some spurring of the economy, but not enough to make up for the loss of tax revenues, hence the need to radically trim Medicaid. Furthermore, the personal rate structure will be significantly altered, further lowing tax revenues, especially from the top income layer. And a tidal wave of individuals will be incentivized to declare themselves LLCs and get to reduce their rate to 15%.

With high end individuals being relatively inefficient at being "job producers" using their excess profits, we will only have a furtherance of growing social inequality, especially with more people denied health care. Denied because they can't pay for all the extra access the Republicans are providing.

Perhaps this is yet another reason, besides Trump's religious holy war team (Bannon, Pence, et al.), for Trump abandoning his pledge to de-escalate our military involvements in such as the Middle East. Instead he is fanning the flames everywhere with his actions and bizarre statements and behavior.

He is a fine Beast from the Sea.

 

[Richard Stanley]

If the following is true then former FBI Director Comey is not so blasé after all. And in addition to all Trump's other contradictory assertions, apparently most everyone else seems to agree that morale at the FBI has been pretty high under Comey. Of course, we are always left to wonder just how far the FBI has changed, if any, from its foundational days under J. Edgar Hoover as a domestic political intel and suppression tool, e.g. Cointelpro, under the guise of a crime suppression function. Are we watching Kabuki theater on a showboat?

Former FBI Director James Comey was furious at the lack of respect the White House showed him in the way he was fired, sources have told ABC News.

Associates say he is simmering at some of the comments directed at him by White House staffers, who have used words like "atrocities" to describe his actions as director.

One person close to the former director said that President Trump calling Comey a "showboat" and suggesting he is not "competent" has required Comey to show considerable restraint.

"Look, he's a showboat. He's a grandstander," Trump said about Comey in an interview with NBC's Lester Holt on Thursday. "The FBI has been in turmoil. You know that. I know that. Everybody knows that."...
http://abcnews.go.com/US/comey-furious-lack-respect-white-house-showed-sources/story?id=47367073​

 

[Richard Stanley]

Reported elsewhere than the following excerpt the financial beagles from the Treasury Department covering terrorist and other international money laundering are being unleashed to assist the FBI investigation. Can Steve Mnuchin shut them down?

Both of Trump's sons have made statements that the Trump business has received bigly money to invest in Trump branded properties. Meanwhile Trump has carefully phrased his words such that he says he has no investments with Russia. It's their money invested in him.

It should also be noted that, if I remember correctly, the 2005 timeframe is approximately when Trump began his massive global real estate branding enterprise in earnest.

The lawyers who wrote a letter saying President Trump had no significant business ties to Russia work for a law firm that has extensive ties to Russia and received a “Russia Law Firm of the Year” award in 2016.

Sheri Dillon and William Nelson, tax partners at the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, which has served as tax counsel to Trump and the Trump Organization since 2005, wrote a letter in March released by the White House on Friday stating that a review of the last 10 years of Trump’s tax returns “do not reflect” ties to Russia “with a few exceptions.”

In 2016, however, Chambers & Partners, a London-based legal research publication, named the firm “Russia Law Firm of the Year” at its annual awards dinner. The firm celebrated the “prestigious honor” in a press release on its website, noting that the award is “the latest honor for the high-profile work performed by the lawyers in Morgan Lewis’ Moscow office.”

According to the firm’s website, its Moscow office includes more than 40 lawyers and staff who are “well known in the Russian market, and have a deep familiarity with the local legislation, practices, and key players.” The firm boasts of being “particularly adept” at advising clients on “sanction matters."

...
Jack Blum, a Washington tax lawyer who is an expert on white-collar financial crime and international tax evasion, called the Dillon letter “meaningless.”

Blum told ABC News that real estate projects, in particular, can be structured with partners and subsidiaries so that it would be easy to shield the identity of all involved. Trump’s tax returns would not show where all the money came from to finance these projects, he said. ...
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trumps-tax-law-firm-deep-ties-russia/story?id=47376041​

 

[Richard Stanley]

From Maureen Dowd's imagined dinner conversation between Trump and Comey:

...
COMEY Mr. President, I cannot let politics affect my decisions because if I ever start considering who might be affected, and in what way, by what we do, we’re done.
TRUMP Let me press my cool red button. Vlad gave it to me. It’s a reset button and it works a lot better than the one Hillary gave to Lavrov. I use it to ring my butler for Diet Cokes. You know, it’s funny, I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke.
COMEY Have you thought about Weight Watchers?
TRUMP I love Oprah but I think I look phenomenal.
I am really, really good looking. You look good, too. You’re a tall drink of water. Like a giraffe crossed with Eliot Ness. What are you, 6-foot-8, 6-foot-9? Central casting. But don’t let your head get too big. Don’t be a showboat. Don’t be a grandstander. That’s my shtick. Do you play golf? How far do you drive? Trump hits it strong and long — 285 yards. Have some salad. We got you creamy vinaigrette. I always do Thousand Island.
COMEY Isn’t Thousand Island the same as Russian dressing?
TRUMP I’m glad you brought that up. I would like you to pledge your ever-ending loyalty, in the immortal words of Luca Brasi. You know, I used to be called The Don and compared to John Gotti, but with more bling. I would like you to tell me three times, before the cock crows, that I am not under investigation for working with Russia to defeat Hillary. Because I certainly did not need help defeating Crooked Hillary. I have to know you’re my guy.
COMEY I am not your guy, Mr. President. I’m America’s guy. I can pledge my honesty to you.
TRUMP You should try truthful hyperbole or just make stuff up. Look how well that worked for me. Did it ever occur to you that your wacky, neurotic, dopey bouts of piety and vanity during the campaign broke F.B.I. rules and ruined your reputation? You’ll be lucky if I decide to let you stay.
COMEY I worry that you don’t have the slightest understanding of how our democracy works. Everyone thinks you’re off your rocker.
TRUMP That’s funny, because I think there’s something off about you.
COMEY It makes me mildly nauseous to think I could have helped make you president.
TRUMP You didn’t. I made myself president. Did you see the 1.5 million people at my inauguration? I have a picture of the crowd on the wall here. The dishonest press would never admit it. Now, James, I need you to eat your meatloaf and forget about this Russia thing with Trump. Russia is a made-up story — with a few exceptions. I need you to drop that goofy investigation and start priming the pump on investigating the leaks in your shop and in the C.I.A. that hurt Trump. You could also check the files on Ted Cruz’s dad and Lee Harvey Oswald while you’re at it.
COMEY But no one leaks more than you. You are your own Deep Throat. There have been rumors that you have been taping people since the ’80s. Are you taping this conversation?
TRUMP I have nothing further to add on that. Ah, here’s dessert. The most beautiful chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen. I get two scoops of ice cream and you only get one. Because I’m the president. Can you believe it? ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/opinion/sunday/trump-sticks-a-fork-in-comey.html​

The irony of Trump calling another human being a "grandstander" or a "showboat" is just too much.

 

[Richard Stanley]

With Trump's seeming baboonery in office appearing to spiral out of kontrol, can an EMP event against the USA be the Reichstag Fire that saves him, thus demonstrating him to be prescient in his posture against North Korea? This as opposed to the previous administrations' passive ones.

Try these search terms: North Korea EMP bomb

Internet scuttlebutt is pondering an NK attack on Hawaii, as an EMP warning shot, as discussed in the excerpted article below. Theoretically, NK is on the margins of being able to reach Hawaii to do such, but if not really capable, perhaps a false flag launch could be arranged from below the sea. This would also be consonant with my assertion that Trump is the Futurist apocalypse scenario's Beast of the Sea.

When one reads the history of the foundations of the Kim Jong -- dynasty it certainly reads like a typical controlled opposition operation.

...
An EMP attack would be the most militarily effective use of one or a few nuclear weapons, while also being the most acceptable nuclear option in world opinion, the option most likely to be construed in the U.S. and internationally as "restrained" and a "warning shot."

Because EMP destroys electronics instead of blasting cities, even some analysts in Germany and Japan, among the most anti-nuclear nations, regard EMP attacks as an acceptable use for nuclear weapons. High-altitude EMP attack entails detonating a nuclear weapon at 30-400 kilometers altitude—above the atmosphere, in outer space, so high that no nuclear effects, not even the sound of the explosion, would be experienced on the ground, except EMP.

An EMP attack will kill far more people than nuclear blasting a city through indirect effects—by blacking out electric grids and destroying life-sustaining critical infrastructures like communications, transportation, food and water—in the long run. But the millions of fatalities likely to eventually result from EMP will take months to develop, as slow as starvation.

Thus, a nation hit with an EMP attack will have powerful incentives to cease hostilities, focus on repairing their critical infrastructures while there is still time and opportunity to recover, and avert national extinction.

Indeed, an EMP attack or demonstration made to "de-escalate" a crisis or conflict is very likely to raise a chorus of voices in the West against nuclear escalation and send Western leaders in a panicked search for the first "off ramp."

Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran in their military doctrines and training regard EMP attack as part of all-out cyber warfare, not necessarily as nuclear warfare.

Our proximity to a nuclear war may be suggested by the simple fact that analysts can now imagine many more possible pathways to a nuclear conflict today than was the case during the Cold War, then dominated by a more or less stable relationship between two nuclear superpowers, the U.S. and USSR.

Today, simply reading the newspapers reveals another possible nuclear confrontation regularly, for those with eyes to see.

For example, it was reported this week that the U.S. will deploy Patriot missiles to the Baltic states for a NATO exercise in July—just before Russia’s big annual military exercise ZAPAD-17 (WEST-17) that usually employs 100,000 troops to practice an invasion of NATO. What could possibly go wrong?

My book "The Long Sunday" explores a dozen possible nuclear EMP attack scenarios that could plausibly happen in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and against North America—tomorrow.
Some analysts think the world is on the threshold of a "new nuclear age" where Cold War rules and assumptions about deterrence no longer apply and the likelihood of nuclear use is greatly increasing. The first nation to use nuclear weapons today—even a rogue state like North Korea or Iran—will immediately become the most feared and most credible nuclear power in the world, a formidable force to be reckoned with, and perhaps the dominant actor in a new world order.

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission. He served on the staff of the House Armed Services Committee and at the CIA.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/defense/333377-is-the-us-prepared-for-a-nuclear-emp-to-shut-down-new-york-city​

 

[Jerry Russell]

a nation hit with an EMP attack will have powerful incentives to cease hostilities, focus on repairing their critical infrastructures while there is still time and opportunity to recover, and avert national extinction.

This quote denies everything we've learned from public responses to partial and indecisive attacks. An EMP attack on Hawaii would certainly be viewed as yet another "New Pearl Harbor" and a justification for a potent military response against the perpetrator.

Notice that the discussion of military doctrines above states "Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran in their military doctrines and training regard EMP attack as part of all-out cyber warfare". In other words, I presume, they would be preparing other means of cyber-warfare as well, in hopes of delivering a devastating attack that would prevent, or at least seriously cripple, any US military response. "If you're going to try to shoot the king, don't miss."

I have no idea whether such an attack is theoretically possible, with or without an EMP component. Fry's op-ed fails to correctly analyze that a single EMP attack with a small fission nuke such as the ones in North Korea's arsenal, by itself with no follow-up, would be a suicidal gesture on the part of the attacker -- but a perfect scenario for a false flag attack. It would be virtually impossible for anyone to conclusively prove where such an attack came from.

Most likely, such an EMP attack would be much less devastating than advertised. So much the better for the next "New Pearl Harbor". See:

http://www.alternet.org/story/25738/the_next_fake_threat

Quote:

Perhaps the most controversial of the EMP Commission's claims is their insistence that a Hiroshima-sized nuclear detonation (10-20 kilotons) could produce enough EMP to fry circuits across a continent. The EMP Commission points to one of the few case studies available -- the Starfish Prime atmospheric nuclear test of 1962. A 1.4 megaton thermonuclear weapon detonated 250 miles above Johnston Island in the Pacific affected street lamps, circuit breakers, cars and radio stations in Hawaiian, 800 miles to the north. Still, even there the effect was far from comprehensive. Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Michael P. Bernardin said that "the 30 strings of failed streetlights [from Starfish Prime's EMP] represented only about one percent of the streetlamps on Oahu at the time." And noted physicist Richard Garwin said the Starfish detonation "had barely noticeable effects on military systems."​

 

[Richard Stanley]

I think we can agree on one point, at least, that everybody should be wearing their tin foil hats and accessories for the next few years.

And, yes, what you quoted from Pry does seem rather dubious, for a number of reasons. The number of variables at work is quite high as to effectivity, and the military has supposedly been hardening its protection against EMP for quite a while. A false flag event would probably attempt to maximize superficial damage and minimize substantive damage. A parallel to Pearl Harbor was the military sending the Pacific Fleet carriers out of harm's way while leaving the old battleships in port.

The USA military does have the ability to pinpoint missile launches, but if they are told to 'blink' then ... Imagine if the tracking software has a backdoor that another trajectory could be substituted. Or, ... one of those odd German-made Israeli subs is used?

 

[Richard Stanley]

Roger Stone is supposedly the close friend of Trumps who convinced him to run for President. Trump has been trying to appear to distance himself from Stone because Stone has Russian connection problems. Stone is supposedly a political campaign genius, who began organizing professional politician's campaigns at the age of 14.

A claim of Alzheimers might give Trump some separation from criminal liability, and thus Stone is laying the groundwork via Alex Jones, while denying it is true. It would also save apocalyptic Mike Pence to become President.

It appears that the rats are starting to jump from the Trump ship now. Republicans of all varieties are heading for the doors, even Ann Coulter.

Roger Stone, one of President Donald Trump’s oldest and closest advisers outside the White House believes the Trump presidency is in great danger from within.

Appearing in a bizarre outdoor YouTube video with InfoWars founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Stone said that Trump enemies were going to claim that his recent leaking of classified information to senior Russian officials was evidence of Alzheimer’s. In that vein, Stone also said that his cabinet might even seek to remove him.

“They are going to claim that Donald Trump has Alzheimer’s … and that is the source of his insanity,” said Stone, who added that he spoke to Trump “fairly recently” and that there was “no evidence” of any mental deterioration.

“This is completely bogus,” he said.

Stone warned that if the Alzheimer’s narrative took hold, it would provide a pretext for Trump’s cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution and remove him from office. ...
http://www.mediaite.com/online/roger-stone-trump-critics-preparing-to-pounce-on-president-with-charges-of-alzheimers/​

Similarly, Jones and Stone make bizarre claims about Trump's military staff :
https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2017/05/16/trump-ally-alex-jones-lashes-out-hr-mcmaster-suggests-hes-gay-and-leather-daddy/216487

 

[Richard Stanley]

The following is regarding General HR McMaster's pathetic attempt to shill for Trump's leaking the intel data to Russia, during the odd Russian WH visit. Now we have the irony of Putin offering to vouch for Trump by providing a transcript of the meeting in the Oval Office. Our Oval Office ... supposedly. Maybe Putin has even more motive than the Israelis (the source of the leaked intel) to provide the EMP false flag to save agent Trump.

Of course, to Alex Jones and Roger Stone, McMaster is a Leather Daddy. Well now he is, at least figuratively.

And now, combined with the nature of Comey's memo, a standard FBI investigative procedure, provides proof that Comey did not make up his claim much later, but right after his WH meeting with Trump. Jeff Sessions wanted to stay with Trump and Comey, from the prior intel meeting, but Trump kicked Sessions, Comey's boss, out.

...
Had anybody but McMaster tried to make the ridiculous case that Trump had done nothing wrong, the press corps would have pilloried him. The next installment of Saturday Night Live would parody him. Instead, the press has been filled with more than sorrow than anger for the bald-pated lieutenant general, writing as if they had just witnessed a scene from a Shakespeare tragedy where a military leader has chosen duty over honor.

Everybody expected more of him. McMaster, after all, was the one who wrote the book—Dereliction of Duty—on how a senior officer should not bend in serving the truth to the powerful. President Lyndon Johnson “was lying, and he expected the [Joint Chiefs of Staff] to lie as well or, at least, to withhold the whole truth,” he wrote critically. He had garnered respect from troops and pressies alike for his independent mind. Now here he was, the most prominent officer of his generation giving up his soul, playing the role of apologist, if you want to be polite about it, or the liar, if you don’t, for the scoundrel Trump. In the Atlantic, former State Department Counselor Eliot A. Cohen wrote in sorrow of how McMaster (as well as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Deputy National Security Adviser Dina Powell) were advancing “the kind of parsed half truths that are as bad, and in some cases worse” than lies, predicting that the moment may come soon that “these high officials can no longer recognize their own characters for what they once were.”

...
The tragedy of McMaster began when he answered Trump’s call and came to Washington, a place where he didn’t have much experience and whose internal politics dwarf those observed on the battlefield. As a man of duty, he probably thought he had an obligation to serve the commander in chief of the armed forces if summoned. To his credit, McMaster iced Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarlane, soon to be sent to Singapore as ambassador, and added trustworthy staff. And according to press reports, he’s not been Trump’s lackey prior to the current blow-up, earning the president’s enmity for confronting him on the issues and even lecturing him on occasion.

Why then, did the soldier who boxes squander his reputation by taking a dive for Trump, get up from the mat all bloodied, and pretend the match was not rigged? As the Atlantic’s Rosie Gray wrote, it’s dilemma time for McMaster. If he follows the lessons he taught in Dereliction of Duty and resigns on principle, he’ll only be replaced by a sycophant. That brown-noser will likely do Trump’s complete bidding, the way Michael Flynn was, who briefly preceded him as national security advisor. Stay, and he’ll be asked to further soil himself. McMaster must have thought: Which is worse—the nation’s ruination or mine?—before he jumped on the Trump grenade.

An honorable act or the last gasp of a broken man? McMaster goes on today, diminished when measured by his own standards. He can also expect to be rejected by his fraternity. “The essential ingredient in combat leadership is trust, which he may have lost,” Ricks tells me. “The [military] may never welcome him back in.”

Colin Powell never recovered from being reduced to George W. Bush’s Iraq War water-carrier. The same fate probably awaits plain-spoken, virtuous warrior McMaster. He’s broken hearts aplenty with his shilling for Trump. And probably his own.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/17/hr-mcmaster-trump-leak-russian-classified-intel-215149?lo=ap_c1​

 

[Jerry Russell]

In another thread, Richard Stanley wrote:

Here we might want to pause briefly to reflect on whether this character profile might cause of to think of a contemporary political figure, ... one with some odd hair, and woman problems of his own.

This Trump-Samson connection has been noticed elsewhere...

https://grrrgraphics.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/modern-day-samson-donald-trump/

tarpley.net...

And on youtube, this commentator says "In Samson's time, Israel was being oppressed by some bad people. So God raised up Samson as a tough champion. American Christians are being persecuted, so we prayed, and it looks like God raised Trump."