One reason it is so hard to follow the Washington/FBI/Intel/Congress/Trump administration scandals is that there are
- So many players,
- Several separate scandals, and
- Very little public information.
The opposing parties emphasize different scandals
American citizens should be interested in all three as they unfold.
- Russian interference in 2016 election
- Team Trump’s Connections to Russians Before and After the Election
- Obama White House spying on Team Trump and “unmasking†secret name(s)
He goes on to analyze and discuss all three. Read the whole thing.
I haven’t remarked on any of these recently because I’m content to let the investigation work its way through. I would prefer a non-partisan investigation, by either a blue ribbon panel or a special prosecutor, and I suspect we’ll get their eventually.
Trump is doing what he was elected to do, overwhelming the established order with political chaos.
If I weren’t an American, this would all be fantastically amusing. The Republicans and Democrats both seem to think that Trump is a Republican. They’re both wrong.
Right now there’s a lot of handwringing about the fate of the Democratic Party. After four years of Trump or, heavens forfend, eight, neither national political party may exist.
Trumpism is the product of the Republican’s embrace and normalization of the hard right — he’s as Republican as most of the Republicans in congress.
He’s not a traditional Republican of the late 20th century, when you probably got your notion of what a Republican is, but he’s an early 21st century Republican.
Also, this would be a good time to learn to be amused and appalled at the same time. It’s a skill that will do nothing to lessen the disgust and horror, but at least you’ll be amused, and that’s something.
Ben Wolf is perhaps alluding to the premise that the Euro-American working class believes the established order has irrevocably betrayed it and understands there must be an interregnum of anarchy prior to a course correction.
I’m rather amused by it all. I pointed out perhaps as early as last summer that Trump was simply a disrupter. And oh how we need it.
The hysteria from a number of corners, most particularly the Democrats and journalists, but I repeat myself, can be summed up at its core as “I disagree with his policies………..and dammit, he’s disrupting everything.”
He has completed one policy/personnel decision of extreme importance: the Supreme Court justice nomination. He picked a stellar candidate. One wHo has previously received almost unanimous accolades.
I’m disappointed in the Obamacare reform execution, but that’s a work in progress. Obamacare was broken and ineffective in cost control. A Trojan Horse for single payer. Trump and the current congress could hardly do worse.
He’s rolled back umpteen executive orders. He’s putting the regulatory Goliath on its heals. Read the LA Times piece if you want an example of the only thing the left has – a hysterical laundry list of what are supposed to be self evident horrors, but which really are just, as I say, “I disagree with your policies, so you are the worst man in the world.”
Like Dave, I’m satisfied to wait and see how the scandal roster comes out. I’m less sanguine, based on the bizarre rhetoric so far, that it will illuminate. But since I’m a guy who, for a living, makes predictions based on imperfect and incomplete information, I will make a gentlemens bet. The Trump colluding with the Russians in the election narrative goes nowhere. The Russians attempt to meddle all the time. So do we. It’s a recycled, well worn and known story. If there was something there it would have been outed already. No smoke, no fire. No nothing. On the other hand “unmasking” is a fact. And now we have this foolish woman laying it out that surveillance was gathered, and the rules changed late in the Obama Administration to disseminate with sources difficult to ascertain. That’s where this is going.
There are two more scandals — although they haven’t been blasted over the news.
1. The publicly available technical evidence is not definitive and suffered a hit last week when the only party to have studied the DNC hack Crowdstrike, had to publicly admit and retract part of its investigative report about similar Russian hacks on Ukraine because it didn’t happen. The FBI really messed up by purely relying on third parties to do technical investigation of the actual crime – they may have compromised the ability to get convictions of the actual hack itself.
Its beyond weird it was Voice of America that found this out.
2. Then there is the more general scandal of how the past administration let the situation occur in the first place. i.e. you can either choose to not poke the bear (Ukraine) or if you are going to provoke it, be ready for the aggressive counter-response. The fact that no one in congress is asking how we can improve cyber-hacking defenses is weird, as far as I know, hacking is solely done by Russians – being the superpower there are a lot of countries that would like to steer American elections.
I think that everyone with the capability is doing it. In addition to the Russians the Chinese are most definitely hacking, so are the Israelis and we are, too.
Thanks Dave! Yes, I meant not solely done by Russians.
There seems to be a certain lack of memory here in the United States. I have a clear recollection, for example, of Bill Clinton bragging about U. S. involvement in the Russian elections 20 years ago.
“Trumpism is the product of the Republican’s embrace and normalization of the hard right — he’s as Republican as most of the Republicans in congress.”
I think if that were true we wouldn’t see Trump attacking the freedom caucus and saying they should be primaried. Trump would also be much better than he is at building a coalition within the party. In fact, he’s done the opposite by attacking both the moderate “nevertrump” wing of the party as well as the Tea Party faction in the freedom caucus.
” He picked a stellar candidate. One wHo has previously received almost unanimous accolades.”
Merrick Garland?
Steve
Well that didn’t take long. When will Susan Rice start blaming a YouTube video for making her request surveillance information on US citizens……..and “unmasking” them?
You mean articles like this about the 1996 Russian election?
In the hypothetical world where the Russians got Trump elected, it was President Clinton who got Yeltsin elected, which led to Putin, who got Trump elected. So it was President Clinton who got Trump elected — combine this with Bill’s infamous visit with Loretta Lynch, which meant Hillary couldn’t be cleared by the DOJ. Why does Bill have it in for Hillary??
On a more serious analogy, there was another government 100 years ago who meddled in Russian politics for its own advantage at a time when Russia was weak and in chaos. Germany suffered blowback from that decision for 70 years. They have a saying: “Rule 1, on page 1 of the book of war, is: ‘Do not march on Moscow’.” My contribution: “Rule 1, on page 1 of the book of intelligence, is ‘Do not mess with Russian leadership politics”.
All I have to say on yesterday’s developments is that Mike Flynn and Susan Rice have surprisingly a lot in common. They were willing to say anything, including lies, for their patrons benefit, which got them their NSA job and finally have landed in a hot hot soup.
Who would have thought that the NSA would interested in contact between campaign advisers and a foreign government?
Steve
Of course they were interested. However, there are two different things at work here. One is monitoring the actions of foreign actors; the other is “unmasking” Americans. The first was just doing their job. The second was, at the very least, abuse of power.
We have found the 21st century’s presidential scumbag. This is beginning to make that scumbag Nixon look like a girl scout.
What did Obama know, and when did he know about it.
Hard to say the unmasking is an abuse of power until you know the contents of the intel.
Regardless of what Obama might have known, nothing was public until after he left office. The administration turned over the numbers of what it considered pertinent transcripts to the congressional committees responsible for oversight.
The leaking is a separate issue.
So I’m withholding judgment until more is known.
Well, the ‘unmasking’–if it took place–was apparently legal. Also Flynn is so nuts he was mixed up in a plot to kidnap somebody on American soil. Who knows what these idiot psychos were saying?
Overall, I think Obama is going to be the black guy the white morons distract themselves with as the complete catastrophe of his orange impotence rolls on.
Nunes already said many of the requested reports had nothing to do with Russia or had any intelligence value altogether. If people keep trying to defend Rice by saying she was investigating Trump and Russia, the next story will be summaries of things Rice requested that will discredit her defenders. That’s not to say she has no defense – there are some other good ones.
Another problem is Rice denying knowledge of the things it seemed she did on TV. Getting caught telling lies cost Flynn his job and brings Flynn legal jeopardy. Rice will have at least the hassassment of a legal investigation.
That Rice denial looks lousy:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/susan-rice-world-wonders-worries-white-house-can-trusted/
… the black guy the white morons …
Racism, that’s the answer.
… the complete catastrophe …
Yep, that wascally wabbit is in for it this time.
… his orange impotence …
You forgot poopie-head, meanie, stinky-pants, blah, blah, blah.
It looks Susan Rice is going with the Clinton defense. “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
I am waiting to see Obama on television saying, “I am not a crook.”
Who needs Netflix when you have this shit show to watch. The next three years, nine months are going to be quite amusing. (It seems like it has been at least six months, but President Trump has been in office a little over two.)
The Left’s worst nightmare is President of the US, and he is oblivious to the usual takedown methods. Like everything else, you all think you are Lucy with the football but somehow end up on your back like Charlie Brown.
This whole situation is extremely troubling for a number of reasons:
– You have an incoming/new administration with what appear to be at least uncomfortably close ties to one of America’s primary strategic adversaries. The extent and consequence of these ties isn’t yet known.
– You have the outgoing administration possibly using the quite powerful tools of the intelligence community in order to damage a domestic political opponent. We don’t know the extent and consequences of that either.
– In all this, we have factions in the government and especially the always anonymous government officials who will gladly compromise US intelligence collection of foreign adversaries through selective leaks of information, sources and methods for partisan purposes. The vast majority of these leaks clearly come from upper tier political appointees.
– We have the legions of myopic, blinkered partisans with their selective outrage based solely on partisan scorekeeping and not first principles.
– We have a completely ineffective Congress, a powerful Executive that is only held back by the courts which are under increasing political pressure.
– Finally, we have a public that is divided, is ignorant on the details of most of these issues and is kept ignorant by media outlets that selectively filter and spin information to serve various agendas. Amid all this are the various weekly “outrages” that are either manufactured or lack any importance, but serve as distractions or useful political tools for purposes like character assassination. These outrages are quickly forgotten as others rise to replace them in the great circle of life called social media and the 24/7 news cycle.
None of this, on it’s face, is good. It’s evidence we are either in a political crisis or on the cusp of one. We can monitor the building pressure but we cannot predict the spark. In the thread on Venezuela I thought about taking issue with Michael’s comment about how we aren’t in a position to sneer about other countries, but on second thought I think he’s right.
A crisis is often necessary to bring needed change in the face of sclerotic governance, but there’s no guarantee that we won’t auger in like Venezuela is doing.