1. "Trump Told Russia To Get Clinton’s Emails. The Same Day, They Obeyed./A new indictment from Robert Mueller reveals that Russia appeared to be listening to what Trump wanted" in The Huffington Post. My response:
If Trump were colluding, why would he flaunt his involvement? The more apt inference is that the Russians wanted to make it look like they were taking orders from him and chose this moment, because it would be so weird it would agitate media like HuffPo to generate this theory.2. A photojournalist's image of the Trump-as-a-diapered-baby balloon framed alongside a bronze statue of Winston Churchill. My response:
To get a fair comparison, show me how Trump is depicted 75 years in the future. Or recreate Churchill today, have him begin to enter politics, and show me how he would be regarded.I include a link to an article in the UK Independent, "Winston Churchill 'would not become Prime Minister today because his speaking style would be mocked'/Romola Garai, who stars in new ITV drama about the politician, says his eccentricities would rule him out in the modern era." From that article, quoting Garai (who played Churchill's nurse):
“Churchill would not get elected today. His speech was very peculiar, quite mumbled in some ways.... Churchill was very idiosyncratic in the way he spoke. Today public speaking has become so monotone and peculiarity is something that rolling news is very afraid of... It’s easy to pinpoint anybody’s idiosyncracies now, which I think is a terrible shame. Because some of the great orators were very individual in the way they spoke."The article was from February 2016, when — here in the United States — "SNL" hadn't yet brought in Alec Baldwin to do the Trump impersonation. They relied on — do you even remember? — Taram Killam (and Daryl Hammond) and — Trump's victory was so impossible — even let the real Donald Trump host the show and goof around with Killam and Hammond:
Ha ha ha. What a joke. Trump is President now, and I'm just going to guess he'll be a bronze statue in 75 years.
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237 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 237 of 237I'm most curious about how we managed to find evidence (if we actually have evidence) which links specific computer activities to specific Russian agents.
Many experts say it's all bullshit--junk science*. Not only in this case, but in most past cases. But it is delivering answers that large corporations want to hear when the lose their customers valuable information to hackers. Better for the hackers to be government spy agencies from Russia, China, or North Korea then some guy in the basement in London or Kiev that will sell your data. That stops customers' lawsuits. CrowdStrike helped pioneer that attribution technique and a lot of experts claim it's all balloon juice.
Remember the CIA losing that "Hacking Kit" that was reported a few months ago when it came up in some other matter? Well, one of the main features of that kit were programs to hide the identity of the hacker by falsely putting up "fingerprints" of Russian, Chinese, Israeli, North Korean government hackers. It does it automatically, including the bouncing around the connections to the right proxy servers that were used in past hacks by those agencies.
The FBI has gotten convictions on CrowdStrike's testimony alone, so it doesn't matter that they didn't examine the DNC servers.
* The dirty-little-secret is that a lot of the forensic evidence that the FBI and other law enforcement people put up in court is junk science--especially with regards to the claims they make with respect to tool or teeth marks, shoeprints, hair and fibers, etc. "It could only have been made with this one pair of wire cutters!" Nope. That pair of wire cutters MIGHT have made those marks. Or it could have been one of the other million or so pairs of the same model and brand that have been sold in the last fifty years that had a nick on the cutting edge in the exact same spot. The uniqueness claims are what's suspect.
“I do think the Boer War is hard to defend. I have an internet friend in South Africa who lives on a farm she says had been in her family for 350 years. I'll ask her for some sources on that war. We might even go visit her in a year or so.”
If they are white, it may not be that safe. South Africa seems verging on turning into Zimbabwe, seizing all the white owned farms just because they are white owned.
@Bruce, all correct as we know at this point
JML said...
And his statue will have brass balls.
7/14/18, 4:51 PM
________
And a fish mouth.
If they are white, it may not be that safe. South Africa seems verging on turning into Zimbabwe, seizing all the white owned farms just because they are white owned.
I think those farmers are almost as well armed as we are. They learned from Zimbabwe and I don't think that will happen again.
It might get nasty but her place is up north west. Lots of wineries. I don't think they will give up as easy as the Rhodesian farmers did.
Some of them are moving to Australia but the ones in the north, not near Capetown, will fight.
Michael,
It was not just the Mitford sisters supporting Fascism (Italy, Mussolini) and fascism (primarily German National Socialism, Hitler) in Britain.
As you note, many Brits, especially the right thinking kind of the ruling class, felt that fascism was the way of the future. They admired the way that Mussolini was able to take a pretty screwed up country, which had really only been a country for 60 years or so, and, as the expression went, "make the trains run on time". By any objective measure Italy made some impressive progress under Mussolini.
They liked Hitler too and for much the same reasons though he actually had any power to do anything for a far shorter time.
Up to the mid-30s, both were golden and not just in England. Right thinking Americans (progressives) admired the way they got things done. They didn't have to cajole and convince their deplorables to let them do stuff. They just did it.
Much of the new deal was modeled on Mussolini's economics and practices. FDR, with his pen and his phone, kept trying to implement stuff and kept getting slapped down by that pesky Supreme Court. He even tried an end-around by packing the court but that was too much for even Democrat reps and senators to stomach and they slapped him down hard.
Government knows what's best for the people. In the US, the plebs would slap it down. Not in Italy and that was viewed by the New Dealer as a feature not a bug.
Some view it as a real shame that the National Socialists murdered 12mm in the death camps. One of the reasons is that it gave National Socialism/Fascism/Progressivism a bad name. Another is the murders. Some folks, even today, have trouble figuring which if the two is worse.
Suppose Mussolini had not aligned with Germany but stayed neutral. We'd probably be singing his praises today. He was no worse than 90% of the world's national leaders of the time. Maybe 97% of them.
Ditto a Hitler without the death camps and western aggression. Nobody would have given two shits about invading Russia, Poland, Czecho etc.
John Henry
Blogger Leland said...
Like a keylogger was placed on a Russia computer to provide us that information.
I agree that this is highly unlikely. Not necessarily that we would have a keylogger on a Russian computer but that we would have it on just the right computer at just the right time seems hard to picture.
If we did have a keylogger on a Russian computer, it seems that this would have the most highly sensitive classification possible. Is it possible that Rosenstein just let this slip out? I expect there will be discovery, there is just too much potentially juicy stuff there for the Russians not to respond to the indictment and demand everything. When it does, will the fact that there is a keylogger come out? Will the location of the keylogger come out?
Discovery in the current Russian indictment is pretty interesting now. More for the fact that Mueller's team is doing everything possible not to permit the case to come to trial than for anything that has come out yet.
Discovery in this case will be even more interesting.
John Henry
I hadn't noticed this angle
https://mobile.twitter.com/realmattcouch/status/924137387520937984?lang=en
Have I put in another plug for sacred spaces by Burleigh, it sets the stage for interwar and dislocation in the UK France Germany as well Italy and Romania, why pope pius is not entirely ofc the hook with his soft touch 're the latter countries, the backdrop to the to the Spanish civil war
"To get a fair comparison, show me how Trump is depicted 75 years in the future. Or recreate Churchill today, have him begin to enter politics, and show me how he would be regarded."
Churchill was not particularly well-regarded in Britain prior to WWII. The honored status he holds now rests entirely on his leadership of Britain during that time of mass annihilation.
Much of the new deal was modeled on Mussolini's economics and practices.
Yes and the Supremes shut down the NRA (not the rifle association) and FDR tried to pack the Court.
Mussolini even made a movie with Lionel Barrymore.
It was called "The Eternal City" and was silent.
Had Mussolini not gotten involved with Hitler, and it was not a sure thing, he would have died in bed and be a patron saint of the DSA today.
"The Unnecessary War" by Buchanan is outstanding - even if you ultimately disagree with his conclusion.
Basically, he opines that Hitler, mostly, was concerned about moving East, not West, and that the German/Soviet invasion of Poland was, mostly, a localized border war over access thru Polish Corridor, and should not have mestastasized into a General world war. Also, he opines that Germany-Soviet confrontation was inevitable.
That would seen to read the book backwards, his big preoccupation were jews gypsies slabs, all of whom were more present as you moved east. He certainly made it seem that there were common interests with western powers, he enabled the petty Slavic Magyar
Hellenic nationalists as he went eest.
Blogger Bay Area Guy said...
"The Unnecessary War" by Buchanan is outstanding - even if you ultimately disagree with his conclusion.
I disagree with some of his conclusions, especially about Churchill, but it is an outstanding book.
His "Nixon's White House Wars" is also outstanding. I've listened to the audio version twice.
"To get a fair comparison, show me how Trump is depicted 75 years in the future. Or recreate Churchill today, have him begin to enter politics, and show me how he would be regarded."
Churchill was not particularly well-regarded in Britain prior to WWII. The honored status he holds now rests entirely on his leadership of Britain during that time of mass annihilation.
We pretty much agree on this although I don't know what you mean by "mass annihilation." Do you mean the war ?
"We pretty much agree on this although I don't know what you mean by 'mass annihilation.' Do you mean the war ?"
Well...of course!
FTR: Winston Churhill was not elected. He was selected by Parliament leaders to be the villain who would have to sign Halifax's and the King's already negotiated surrender to Hitler, Then he would have been fired as a hated scapegoat.
What he did instead was go to war. That stubborn leadership was the miracle of May, 1940 that preserved England until effectively Hitler lost the war in June, 1941 followed by December,1941.
Winston was not a gentleman by the British standards. He had long told the truth on the Elite Generals and Admirals who owned the place. He was an intensely hated and rather unsophisticated son of a Scots-Irish American courtesan and an insane Marlborough descendant. ( Hence Blenhiem Castle which was awarded to John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough to honor his victory at the Battle of Blenheim.)
But the SOB could write the English language with a power unequaled. His speeches read real good.
https://mobile.twitter.com/PressSec/status/1017798174948413441/photo/1
YoungHegelian said...The French Communists were always some nasty fuckers...
My uncle was a communist in Metz before the war. The Germans put him in a concentration camp in 1941. In any case, the French government honored him after the war, as he was considered a political prisoner.
You have to remember, that the Depression hit Europe hard. Capitalism was a complete failure. Just distributing bread to everyone was about all the government could do. The communists took the money from the coal mine owners and kept the people from starving.
You don't want to pussy foot around, so the communists had to be tougher than the mine owners. You had to hang a few of their enforcers to get their attention.
He was selected by Parliament leaders to be the villain who would have to sign Halifax's and the King's already negotiated surrender to Hitler, Then he would have been fired as a hated scapegoat.
Plausible scenario.
Not everybody was in on the plan, though, Arthur Greenwood said "Speak for England !"
Greenwood was a Labour health minister.
In the debate about Poland, Greenwood became Deputy Leader of the Labour Party under Clement Attlee. Undoubtedly his most famous moment came on 2 September 1939 when, acting for an absent Attlee, he was called to respond to Neville Chamberlain's ambivalent speech on whether Britain would aid Poland. Preparing to respond, he was interrupted by an angry Conservative backbencher and former First Lord of the Admiralty, Leo Amery, who exclaimed "Speak for England, Arthur!"[2]
A flustered Greenwood proceeded to denounce Chamberlain's remarks, to the applause of his colleagues. "> Leo Amery interrupted and said "Speak for England !"
They should never have been having a debate about Poland.
Blogger Etienne said...
Capitalism was a complete failure. Just distributing bread to everyone was about all the government could do.
Capitalism was a complete failure? Where did they have capitalism? Capitalism implies and requires free markets.
It has probably been 20 years or more since I last read Rose Wilder Lane's book "The Discovery of Freedom" but your comment immediately put me in mind of an anecdote from the book about the joys of owning a car in France in 1930 or so: I could have used her anecdote about purchasing thread in a department store to equal effect:
Having bought this splendid Ford, my friend and I set out to get permission to drive it, and to drive it out of Paris and out of France. We worked separately, to make double use of time. For six weeks we worked, steadily, every day and every hour that Government offices were open. When they closed, we met to rest in the lovely leisure of a cafe and compared notes and considered ways of pulling wires. Exhausted, we rode home second-class in the subway. (Workers, of course, ride third-class in Europe.)
One requirement was twelve passport pictures of that car, taken full-face, without a hat. I exaggerate; regulations said nothing about a hat. But this was a Ford, naked from the factory; not a detail nor a mark distinguished it from the millions of its kind; yet I had to engage a photographer to take a full-radiator-front picture of it, where it still stood in the salesroom, and to make twelve prints, each certified to be a portrait of that identical car. The proper official pasted these, one by one, in my presence, to twelve identical documents, each of which was filled out in ink, signed and counter-signed, stamped, and tax-stamped; and, of course, I paid for them. One was given to me.
After six hard-working weeks, we had all the car's papers. Nearly an inch thick they were, laid flat. Each was correctly signed and stamped, each had in addition the little stamp stuck on, showing that the tax was paid that must be paid on every legal document; this is the Stamp tax that Americans refused to pay. I believe we had license plates besides; I know we had driver's licenses.
Gaily at last we set out in our car, and in the first block two policemen stopped us. European policemen always go in pairs, so that one polices the other. I do not know whether this makes it impossible to bribe either, or necessary to bribe both. I never tried to buy a policeman.
Being stopped by the police was not unusual, of course. The car's papers were in its pocket, and confidently I handed them over, with our personal papers, as requested.
The policemen examined each one, found it in order, and noted it in their little black books. Then courteously they arrested us.
No one had told us about the brass plate. We had never heard of it. The car must have a brass plate, measuring precisely this by that (about 4 x 6 inches) , hand-engraved with the owner's full name and address, and attached to the instrument board by four brass screws of certain dimensions, through four holes of certain dimensions, one hole in each corner of the brass plate.
My friend wilted on the wheel. "It's too much," she said. "Let s chuck it all and go by train."
That capitalism is what you are saying was a failure?
John Henry
Interesting of course the mine owners thought that wasn't terribly equitable and they along with make up magnate like Schuller fundd the cagoule and other militias
Blogger traditionalguy said...
FTR: Winston Churhill was not elected.
As far as I know, no Prime Minister in any parliamentary system is ever elected. Certainly not in England.
The PM is selected by the party that wins the most seats in Parliament. S/He must also be approved by the king or queen. She can, theoretically, withhold that approval. Though she never does, it is more because party leaders would never select a PM who would be unacceptable to her.
If UKIP ever got to choose a PM, I wonder if she would accept Nigel Farage?
John Henry
Capitalism is, of course, a term invented by Marx but it will do.
In the 1920s, of Coolidge, there was an explosion of nw technology that is assumed by the present ill-educated students to have exited forever. Washing machines, the telephone, the automobile, small kitchen appliances like toasters. All these were invented in the 1920s and the period resembled the 1990s in many ways.
Like the 1900s, the capitalists over reached and there was a crash. 1929 and 1999. The difference was that FDR knew no economics and did exactly the wrong thing.
Politics was thought to be scientific. Wilson said so.
The Depression followed.
Rose Wilder Lane was an excellent and prolific writer as well as a staunch liberal. She wrote a great bio of Henry Ford as well as the Little House on the Prairie books that have been in the news of late. (Ghosted for her mother, Laura Ingalls)
Most all her books are available at Internet archive www.archive.org
John Henry
Blogger Michael K said...
FDR knew no economics and did exactly the wrong thing.
Wouldn't that depend on the goal?
If FDR's goal was to increase dependence by the deplorables on govt and increase govt power, one could argue that he did exactly the right thing.
The fascist/progressive thing.
Not the liberal thing that you and I think would be "right".
John Henry
Michael K said...Capitalism is, of course, a term invented by Marx but it will do.
--
Hmm..no merit to:
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the term capitalism was first used by novelist William Makepeace Thackeray in 1854 in The Newcomes, where he meant "having ownership of capital".[38] Also according to the OED, Carl Adolph Douai, a German-American socialist and abolitionist, used the term private capitalism in 1863.
The initial usage of the term capitalism in its modern sense has been attributed to Louis Blanc in 1850 and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1861.[43] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels referred to the capitalistic system (kapitalistisches System)[44][45] and to the capitalist mode of production (kapitalistische Produktionsform) in Das Kapital (1867).[46]
https://www.quora.com/Who-coined-the-word-capitalism-and-what-did-he-she-mean-by-it
I sometimes think that Obama was evil, doing things that he knew would harm the country, and notably here, harm our economy, like his porkulus "stimulus" bill. But, more charitably, I think more often, that he just didn't know any better. Keynesian Economics somewhat said that you could spend your way out of a recession, and so that was what he attempted to do. His innovation was the realization that if you are going to spend trillions of dollars buying your way out of the recessions n, you might as well make your friends rich while doing it. Except, of course, if it works at all, Keynesian stimulus only works very short term (months, not 8 years) when you are in a kiquidity trap in the depth of a recession/depression, and it really does matter where you are spending the money. Making your friends filthy rich doesn't help the rest of the economy. Thus, the eight year Obama Recession.
But FDR was essentially facing a worldwide depression, and Keynesian Economics had not yeti been empirically debunked and discredited, which was the case when Obama tried it. I believe that he really did try to do the right thing, using new fangled scientific economics. Which, of course, was little more than progressive wishful thinking. And, yes, he also had to face the challenge of home grown socialism, both of the Russian communist sort, as well as the Italian/German fascist sort. That was a big reason that he couldn't do as was done with previous recessions, which was, essentially just to ride them out. Which is to say that I have long viewed FDR as a well meaning muddler, who didn't really know what to do, so kept trying different things, to little avail, until we entered the war in late 1941.
Why Leftists Become Thugs
"I believe that he really did try to do the right thing, "
I agree. He just didn't know so he tried everything, Coolidge knew it was coming but thought the stock market could only be reined in by the governor of New York, Roosevelt.
He saw it coming and go out of investments in the stock market.
If he had not been so depressed by the death of his son (He never recovered) he might have run in 1928 and history might have been different.
He and Harding ended the 1920 depression.
PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...That capitalism is what you are saying was a failure?
No. Capitalism by private owners, for profit.
What Rose was describing was government bureaucracy, which is a parallel process, and can exist in any "ism".
Communism in 1930's was public ownership, for sustainability.
Blogger Etienne said...
What Rose was describing was government bureaucracy, which is a parallel process, and can exist in any "ism".
No, it is incompatible with capitalism, which was much of the point of Lane's book. ALong with personal freedom.
Capitalism depends on a free market to allow capital to be freely deployed to its best and highest use. The anecdote was about a private transaction but was pretty much what any business faced on a daily basis. Given that level of regulation and the difficulties of complying with it, how could any business flourish? Of course any system like that is going to fail regardless of what "ism" you want to label it with.
Communism in 1930's was public ownership, for sustainability.
"Public" = state? State = "public"? I would also say that it depends on state control, not necessarily "ownership". Investor owned US power companies, for example, are owned by private individuals but actual control rests mainly in the state.
Was anyone claiming to be communist in the 30's? The USSR had a communist party but the country claimed to be socialist on the Marxist theory that socialism was a stage that had to be gone through to get to communism.
Communism, socialism, Marxism whatever you want to call it can never be sustainable. Not even with the massive use of state force as always accompanies it. Marx, unwittingly, tells us why on about page 4 of Capital in which he says that if a quintal of iron exchanges for 2 bushels of wheat they are "equal in value" (his words). quoting from memory.
If that were true, his ideas on objective value, determined by the amount of labor crystalized in a commodity, might make sense and might work as the basis for an economic system.
It's not and it doesn't.
John Henry
The document dump the Friday before last from the DOJ showed that Lreet Barbara and the SDNY office found 700,000 emails on Weiners laptop. Every email ever sent to Hillary’s secret server by Huma. It was such a huge tranche of material that McCabe and Comey freaked out. First they schemed for two months about how to comb through them all them Comey pulled the “nevermind” act just before Election Day without actually reviewing all those new-found documents.
That capitalism is what you are saying was a failure?
John Henry
It's not his fault. He was career Air Force, so he never had to work for a living. Etienne, don't you know all fucking communists must hang? I don't understand why a person like you wouldn't defect.
"all fucking communists must hang"
You are attacking Progressives who's popular vote elected Hillary. You can't hang that many people. The ovens don't work like that.
“The document dump the Friday before last from the DOJ showed that Lreet Barbara and the SDNY office found 700,000 emails on Weiners laptop. Every email ever sent to Hillary’s secret server by Huma. It was such a huge tranche of material that McCabe and Comey freaked out. First they schemed for two months about how to comb through them all them Comey pulled the “nevermind” act just before Election Day without actually reviewing all those new-found documents.”
I think that it was a bit more complicated. The FBI analyst contacted HQ almost immediately after finding the Huma emails on the Weiner laptop in late Sept. for the next month though, it was almost as if that information had fallen into a black hole. He started to panic, ewalizing that it would look like Crooked Hillary’s impending election had been the result of his (NYC) office burying the reality of the missing emails being found. He went to two SDNY AUSAs, and voiced his concerns. Both DoJ and FBI HQs were brought into it on a conference call. That is when Comey panicked, less than two weeks before the election. Turns out that the person behind this whole fiasco was our old friend Peter Strzok, who was in charge of both investigations: Midyear Exam (Clinton email server); and Crossfire Hurricane (Russian collusion with the Trump campaign). When he was later asked why he hadn’t subpoenaed the Weiner laptop, and investigated the emails on it, his reply was that the Trump investigation was a higher priority, and that he only had resources for one or the other (in an agency with >35k employees, roughly half of whom are Special Agents). Never clear if he determined the priority here, or his 2nd level boss, DD Andrew McCabe did. We do know that Comey wasnt in the loop there, by his actions when he was made fully aware of the situation (McCabe claims to have told Comey in Sept, but Comey didn’t remember such, and I suspect that McCabe did it in a way that wouldn’t trigger Comey’s interest).
From most of the reporting on this, you would think that this was almost the end of the story. After panicking that the FBI would be held responsible for electing Crooked Hillary, by sitting on the Weiner/Abedelin laptop for better than a month, Comey came back to Congress a couple days later and told them “sorry”. They hadn’t found any more incriminating emails. And attributed the quick turnaround to the electronic wizards at Quantico. Except no one ever explained how they went through hundreds of thousands of emails over a weekend, looking for classified information, esp when they took months to go through the 30k emails that Clinton’s attys had turned over to them. And, who was it that told Comey that no more incriminating emails had been found? Turns out, apparently, to have been our friend Peter Strzok, at the center of things again. To this day, no one, outside maybe the FBI, apparently knows what sorts of searching was done during those couple critical days. All we really know is that Peter Strzok claimed that Quatico searched, and didn’t find anything.
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