Alliances Led to World War

Prior to the First World War, many of the European countries collected into alliances.  France, the UK, and Russia formed the Triple Entente in 1894 while Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy formed the Triple Alliance.  This balancing act of alliance was in order to discourage war.  However, when a Bosnian Serb separatist killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Sarajevo, a domino effect of the alliances saw Germany invade France.  Had the alliances not been triggered, the war might have been between Russia - which viewed itself as a natural ally of the Slavic Serbs - and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Today, we have NATO.  NATO was established in the wake of World War II and was specifically meant to be a bulwark against Soviet expansion into Europe.  The war which had begun with the intent of freeing Poland from the Germany Nazis and the Soviet Communists, ended with the Soviet Communists in control of Poland, half of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Balkan countries.  Western Europe was understandably concerned that the Soviets might keep going.  However, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and all the captured Eastern European countries resumed independence.  West and East Germany reunited.  NATO should have had a party and closed shop.  Instead, it decided to expand.

The once defensive alliance was now marching toward the borders of - not the Soviet Union - Russia.  The anti-Soviet alliance has become the anti-Russia alliance.  The anti-communist alliance is now opposing a country that is no longer communist.  The opportunity for a new balance to be struck has been squandered.  The new Russian state saw that its old enemies from the USSR days remain its enemies.  Worse, they are expanding toward the Russian border.  Oh, but trust us, we will stop once we've added every state except Russia into the anti-Russian alliance.  We continued to treat Russia as the enemy and, predictably, Russia offered resistance to NATO encroachment.  Unsurprisingly, western media has painted Russia as the aggressor in all of this.

Putin is a dictator, a throwback to the czars, but he is not the Soviet Politburo bent on spreading communism around the world.  Europe no longer needs us to protect it from Russia.  Russia has a $5 trillion economy while the EU has a $25 trillion economy.  Russia has 150 million people vs. the EU at 450 million.  Why are we defending Europe when they have the resources to defend themselves?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has outlived its purpose.  It has been over 30 years since the end of the Soviet Union.  Time to close up shop.  As it is, further NATO expansion is going to lead to a war between the West and Russia.  Let's not have that war.

Putin Interview

The interview was mostly a history lecture delivered by Vladimir Putin.  His promised minute of background soon expanded to an hour of Russian history going back to the 9th century and the founding of Kiev (Kyiv) by the Rus.  The Rus were Vikings who raided east and are the titular source for Russia.  He explained how this early Russian state had the two poles of Novgorod and Kiev.  Through the centuries, what is now Ukraine was considered part of Russia, most especially that part east of the Dnieper River.  He blames Stalin for having allocated that region to the administrative authority of Ukraine, not really a country so much as a governmental district.  With the breakup of the Soviet Union, the mostly ethnically Russian eastern Ukraine and Crimea were stuck with the mixed ethnicities of western Ukraine.  That was not so bad.  The West promised not to advance NATO.  However, NATO did advance in waves and, in 2008, said the door was open for Ukraine.  He labeled the 2014 revolution in Ukraine to have been a coup d'etat engineered by the West.  From his perspective, the ethnically Russian east was being attacked by Western-backed neo-Nazis.  How could it be wrong for him to fight Nazis?  He brought up the instance of a former Nazi addressing the Canadian parliament and getting an ovation.  Sadly, that's a true story.

It was interesting but not particularly engaging.  Putin was very repetitive and Tucker mostly just sat listening.  This was not a back and forth conversation since they do not speak a common language.  Tucker did have some good questions.  Who blew up Nord Stream pipeline?  Putin said, "You."  Obviously, he meant the United States but Tucker responded by saying he had an alibi for that day.  Silliness.  Clarifying, Putin pointed the finger at the CIA, saying it required certain abilities to blow up a pipeline that far beneath the surface and that most countries didn't have the capacity.  Later, he asked why Putin didn't just deal with the US - as Ukraine is nothing but an American proxy - in order to secure a peace deal.  Putin stated that America could easily have Zelinsky agree to a peace if America wanted peace.  He announced a willingness to come to an agreement.  Tucker asked if he might invade Poland.  Certainly not.  Such would only happen if Poland attacked Russia.

Part of Putin's argument for annexing those parts of Ukraine that are east of the Dnieper River sounded a lot like Hitler's reasons for taking the Sudetenland in 1938.  Hitler said the region was populated by ethnic Germans, which was true.  However, it was also a natural barrier against German invasion.  Is this a case of history repeating?

Putin frequently accused the West of dealing in bad faith.  The advance of NATO and the long history of meddling in Ukraine was mentioned several times.  He suggested that US presidents weren't really in charge of foreign policy.  In a conversation with President Clinton, he asked if Russia could join NATO.  Clinton didn't give an answer at the time but later said not.  Putin viewed this as Clinton being told by the true powers that be what the answer should be.  He mentioned that he had good relations with George W. Bush and Donald Trump.  One supposes that means he didn't have good relations with Obama and Biden.

Clearly, if Putin ever leaves office, he has a bright future as a guest lecturer or even a professor of Russian History.  I took Russian History in college and he sounded spot on from my recollection.  However, the interview is slow and monotonous, only occasionally interesting.  Accusing the West is what you expect him to say, so little of it was a surprise.  The reaction from other media sources is the most surprising thing.  Jealousy that Carlson got the scoop?  Disappointment that Russia's side of the story has an outlet?  If you read to this point, you can skip watching the interview.

Courting War

During the Korean War, American pilots found themselves in dogfights with Soviet MIGs piloted by Russian pilots.  Of course, we pretended that such was not the case, because if it was, that would mean the US and the Soviet Union were at war.  That could get out of hand very quickly.  Likewise, we accepted the Chinese involvement in the war but did not attack China.  The only Chinese targets that were valid were those that crossed the Yalu River into Korea.  As with the Soviets, this was to prevent an escalation.  China was newly converted to the communist cause and viewed as a Soviet satellite.  An expanded war with China might lead to war with the Soviets.

When the US supported Afghanistan in the 1980s, we started by providing Russian weapons, so it wasn't obvious.  Sure, the Soviets knew, but there wasn't a smoking gun of M-16s.  In Reagan's second term, he opened the floodgates and sent clearly American weaponry, most notably the Stinger missile.  As we had shown restraint during Korea, the Soviets did so with Afghanistan.  There were many proxy wars during the Cold War, where the great powers fought for global supremacy in some unfortunate country's backyard.

Now consider Ukraine.  The US is openly sending money and materiel.  President Biden called for the removal of Putin, a statement that was walked back by Jenn Psaki shortly after.  US legislators - including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi - have visited Ukraine and declared support until 'victory.'  The Defense Department has posted a list of military support sent to Ukraine.  Now the news says that US Intel assisted in sinking the Russian cruiser.  The Russians can't pretend we aren't in this war.  Unlike previous clashes, this one is not some proxy war.  Where neither Stalin nor Truman were at threat in Korea, nor Reagan nor the various Soviet premiers at threat in Afghanistan, Putin is clearly in danger in this conflict.  This could be an existential threat to Putin.  And that should guide our actions.

According to the media over the last several years, Putin is a madman.  Worse, he's a madman with nuclear weapons.  We have spent decades appeasing the North Korean dictators lest they do something reckless with their nukes, but now we are undaunted by a dictator with an immense nuclear arsenal.  Putin has threatened nuclear escalation and still we poke the bear.  He's probably bluffing.  However, North Korea was probably bluffing too, but we didn't risk this kind of brinksmanship.

There are several possible explanations.  First, our leaders know that Russia will not escalate, either because we have contact in the Russian government who assure us that Putin would be deposed if he ordered a nuclear strike or we know their nuclear capacity has degraded to uselessness since the collapse of the Soviet Union, or something along these lines.  Second, our leaders have forgotten the risks.  It has been 30 years since the Cold War ended and the Cold Warriors are mostly gone.  This one is hard to swallow as President Biden himself was in Congress throughout the Afghan conflict and should know better.  Then again, Joe isn't all there these days.  Third and most cynical, the administration is in domestic freefall and needs a foreign conflict to dominate the news.  With rampant inflation, a stagnating economy, an uncontrolled border, and cratering poll numbers, there is reason to want the press to look outside the country for something to cover.

Dossier Refuted, Laptop Confirmed

Before Trump was inaugurated, the Steele Dossier was published with many accusations that claimed Trump colluded with Russia to get elected.  He was a puppet of Putin.  Of course, of the last 4 presidents, it was only during Trump's term that Putin didn't invade another country.  Odd that he missed that obvious opportunity.  Of course, it was eventually discovered that Christopher Steele - a British Spy - had gleaned all his information from Russians at the behest of the Clinton Campaign.  None of the supposed kompramat was ever produced.  The Mueller Report offered a variety of 'obstruction of justice' accusations against the president that were so pathetic that the Congress couldn't muster an impeachment for them.  However, the Russian Collusion story lasted the entirety of Trump's term and the walls were forever closing in.  The media could not get enough of it.  In the end, it was a nothingburger.

In the days before the 2020 election, big news appeared in the New York Post: Hunter Biden's laptop showed that he had used his father's connections as Vice-President to secure jobs and financial deals with various foreign companies.  He received $3.5 million from a Russian oligarch, a $50K/month position with Burisma in Ukraine, and a multimillion dollar deal with China.  Then there were the pictures of Hunter with a crackpipe.  In response to this breaking news, NYP was banned from Twitter.  Media outlets across the board announced that it was Russian Disinformation.  During one of the presidential debates, Joe Biden declared that it had been debunked.  Now, 17 months later, the New York Times has admitted that the laptop was Hunter Biden's.  Emails found on it have been confirmed and have been useful in a tax investigation.

The media had the Steele Dossier prior to the 2016 election but could confirm none of it.  No one published it.  However, when James Comey mentioned it to President Trump, now it was valid news.  Buzzfeed rushed to publish and the feeding frenzy began.  By that precedent, one would think a similar attitude would apply to a laptop that had far better provenance than the dossier.  Nope.  The media had a demonstrated animosity toward Trump and a story that might torpedo Biden would lead to a second Trump term.  Better to bury the story until Biden could be elected.

The Space Powers

As of now, only three countries are capable of putting astronauts in space: USA, Russia, and China.  For the last 20 years, the USA and Russia have been more or less allies in space, jointly maintaining the International Space Station (ISS) and providing rides for astronauts of other countries to that station.  Fron the retirement of the Space Shuttle (2011) until the introduction of the SpaceX Crew Dragon (2020), Russia launched all crews to the station.  China is the newcomer in space and has made impressive progress.  While the ISS is nearing retirement (perhaps sooner than expected considering current politics), China has begun assembling a competing space station.

That brings us to Ukraine.  Is it in the best interest of the United States to drive Russia toward an alliance with China?  With both an economy and a population that is ten times the size of Russia's, China is the greater challenge in the future.  Space dominance will be very important sooner than we realize.  If two of the three space powers align against the 3rd, that could be decisive.  This is especially so when one looks at the lack of alternatives the US currently has: SpaceX or Bust.

As noted in an earlier blog, NATO has been pressing Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.  The US has trained Ukrainians and provided weapons.  This constant encroachment signaled that the Cold War was still being fought and NATO was stealing marches on the Russians by annexing more and more of the former Warsaw Pact, ever diminishing the sphere of influence of the once great power.  If the roles were reversed and the Warsaw Pact was training Mexican troops, providing them with arms, and calling for Mexico to join the Pact, it is a certainty that the US would invade and give Mexico a smackdown; we've done it more than once already.

We have pursued a foreign policy that is not in our interests.  Though a nation should have the option of choosing its allies, that doesn't always work in a multipolar world.  Hong Kong would surely have preferred to remain in the British Empire and Cuba wanted to be a Soviet satellite.  Each was denied.  Though we may argue that Ukraine should have the right to join NATO, the result is conflict that could escalate to World War III.  That is certainly not in anyone's interest.

It should be noted that World War II was triggered when Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland.  Britain and France declared war to free Poland.  At the conclusion of the war, Russia retained the whole of Poland.  Everyone was war weary and abandoned Poland - and most of Eastern Europe - to a half century of tyranny.  Yes, it was absolutely unfair to those nations, but the alternative was considered worse.  Is defending Ukraine worth the costs?  We didn't intervene to this degree when Russia invaded Chechnya.  We didn't do much when Russia carved out a chunk of Georgia.  We didn't risk war when Russia claimed Crimea.  Why now?

If we could abandon Ukraine in order to keep Russia out of an alliance with China, would that be a good trade?  Would it be appeasement or realpolitik?  I tend toward the later position.

Turnabout is Fair Play

In 1962, the United States discovered that the Soviet Union was placing missiles in Cuba.  This was viewed as grounds for risking World War III, a nuclear Armagedon.  If not for Vasily Arkhipov, the submarine B-59 would have launched a nuclear strike on October 27, 1962.  It was the Cold War and tensions were high.  Of course, Cuba was an independent country.  What business did we have in denying them missiles, especially considering US involvement in the Bay of Pigs disaster the previous year?

Beginning in 1979, the United States and Russia fought a proxy war in Nicaragua.  The US supported the Contras while the Soviets supported the Sandinistas.  The US Monroe Doctrine had essentially declared the Western Hemisphere to be the domain of the US, foreign powers not welcome.

In 1983, the US invaded Grenada.  It had been communist-friendly since a 1979 bloodless coup, trading with Cuba and the USSR.  However, when a coup by hardline Marxists murdered the milquetoast Prime Minister, the US sent in the Marines. 

Let us consider the current situation in that light.  During the Cold War, the NATO states were on one side and the Warsaw Pact on the other.  When the Soviet Union crumbled, many Warsaw Pact countries sought membership in NATO.  In much the same way that the US considered Cuba to be encroaching, Russia has reason to view such NATO expansion as an encroachment.  How far have we encroached?  Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Albania, Croatia, and Hungary were all in the Soviet Bloc but are now members of NATO.  That's a lot of encroachment that Russia has tolerated.  Of course, most of these countries had only been 'acquired' during World War II.  Sure, it stings, but it's not like they had been part of Russia for centuries.

In 1991, Ukraine became independent for the first time in centuries.  It had long been swapped among empires: Ottoman, Polish, Russian, Soviet Union.  It had been part of Russia/USSR since the 17th century and still has a large Russian minority (17%).  It is closer to Russia than Cuba is to the United States.  If Russia had something similar to the Monroe Doctrine, offering NATO membership would be a clear violation.  NATO is a military organization created to oppose Soviet expansion, but now it has been expanding toward Russia for 30 years.  Now it proposes to annex a region that has been in the Russian Empire for centuries.

It is argued that World War II was caused by the mismanagement of the peace in the wake of World War I.  The Treaty of Versailles was as much about assigning blame to Germany as to providing for peace.  How likely is it that the current conflict in Ukraine is a direct result of the mishandling of the peace in the aftermath of the Cold War?

Impoverish Russia by Drilling for Oil

The biggest export from Russia is oil and natural gas.  In 2015, that constituted about 60% of exports.  As the price of oil rises, Russia's economic fortunes improve.  The same goes for the Middle East.  Oil producers love when the gas price goes up.   As we know that Russia is enriched by high oil and natural gas prices, it follows that we should try to keep the prices as low as possible.  Heck, if we could drive the price down far enough, we might even make it unprofitable to continue producing oil.  Can we do that?  Yes.  A couple of years ago, the US was a net exporter of energy, for the first time in decades.  Now, we are buying Russian oil!  We are funding Russia.  Why?  Because we canceled the XL Pipeline, we reduced fracking, we're back on the Climate Change bandwagon.  Russia's not on that bandwagon and they are benefiting from our reduced production.  As supply goes down, price goes up.  More profit for Putin.

It has been reported that Russia has funded anti-nuclear and anti-fracking groups in Europe and the US to hamstring competition.  As Europe reduces its ability to provide power for itself, Russia steps in with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.  Wow, look at that.  Russia and the Middle East benefit immensely when the West limits domestic energy production and thus become beholden to these foreign sources who don't give a damn about climate change.

If we are serious about hobbling Russia, we have to stop buying oil from Russia and return to being a net exporter of energy.  We've done it before, very recently, therefore we can do it again.  Drive those oil prices down and Russia won't be able to afford invasions.

The Return of Durham

Special Counsel John Durham has alleged that Hillary Clinton's campaign hired hackers to infiltrate Trump's servers and plant evidence that could then be used to trigger Mueller's investigation.  Essentially, Durham has confirmed Trump's story that his wires were tapped and that the Russian collusion story was a hoax.  Worse, this spying continued after Trump was in office.  Worse still, Obama was aware that Hillary was hacking Trump and basically ignored it.  I would say that is a convenient result for Trump, except that it is over a year too late.  If true and it results in convictions, it means that Democrats are gunning for Hillary and her supporters.  Republicans are spineless cowards and never play hardball like Democrats play hardball.

The insiders were so desperate to prevent an outsider from being elected that they allowed shenanigans that they would abhor in most elections.  Once Trump was in, the shenanigans were at threat of being exposed so Trump had to be vilified so his claims could be dismissed as crazy ravings.  Of course, now that Trump is out, Durham can be allowed to expose some of the shenanigans and take out a slew of Clinton supporters.  Astonishing as it may seem, the Clinton wing of the Democrat party is the moderates.  Bill Clinton's presidency is practically Republican compared to modern Democrat views.

Whether or not this is true or a bombshell, it will probably come to little or nothing in the end.  Little more than a footnote in some future history.  Trump will be cast as a danger to democracy and a threat to republicanism for several decades at least.  He was, and remains, a danger to the status quo.  The status quo has control of most of the media, all the intelligence agencies, most of academia, and more than 90% of the governing bureaucracy.  Trump opposed Leviathan and lost.

Ukraine: Should We Care?

Obviously, we should care about war and strife, but is this our fight?  I would argue not.  Some years ago, I was looking at comparative economies and was astonished to find that Russia was quite unimpressive.  According to 2017 numbers, the USA had a $19 trillion economy, China was at $12 trillion, and Russia was $1.6 trillion.  Canada had a bigger economy in 2017.  Germany has twice the economy of Russia. If just the big names of Europe (France, Germany, UK, & Italy all have bigger economies than Russia) pooled resources, they have an $11 trillion economy.  Hey, what if we added Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, and so on combined resources?  That would be roughly $18 trillion.  Why can't they deal with the comparative pauper of Russia?  It's in their backyard, not ours.  No, let's have the US taxpayer bail us out again, as they have been doing since World War II.  The combined population of France and Germany is 150 million.  Russia is at 145 million and falling.  Europe has more than enough resources to deal with Russia.

Only 6 months ago, the Biden Administration fled a backwater where the opposition was armed with AK-47s and little more.  Too tough.  Oh, but nuclear-armed Russia with tanks, jets, missiles, artillery, and so forth is a fight that we can handle.  Nope.  Europe has spent the last 77 years outsourcing its defense to the United States.  I think it's time they resume control.

Money Not So Decisive

Michael Bloomberg has ended his presidential campaign after having dumped $500 million dollars on his brief run.  For that kingly sum, he won American Samoa.  Yes, he won 49.9% of the votes, which is 175 votes.  No, that isn't a misprint.  Tulsi Gabbard was second with 103 votes.  Wow, what a huge turnout.  Of course, Bloomberg won delegates in states where he didn't carry the state, accumulating 60 delegates.  Meanwhile, Joe Biden's campaign was close to insolvency and yet he won 10 delegates for every one Bloomberg won.  Huh?  Conventional wisdom says Bloomberg should have dominated the field thanks to his money advantage.

Bloomberg spent more on his short-lived primary campaign than Hillary Clinton spent on the primaries and general election combined.  As has been demonstrated time and again, money does not automatically mean victory.  Well-funded incumbents have been trounced by shoe-string campaigns.  For example, Eric Cantor outspent Dave Brat by 40 to 1 and still lost in 2014.  Joe Crowley outspent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by 18 to 1 and lost in 2018.  Jeb Bush started the 2016 campaign with a daunting $100 million war chest but he flopped.  His campaign won 4 delegates.

What Bloomberg needed to do was hire a Russian strategist.  According to Rachel Maddow, the Russians were able to swing the national election in 2016 for the bargain sum of $200,000 to $300,000 in Facebook ads.  Or did they?  If Bloomberg couldn't win even one state with $500 million, how credible is it that Russia swung the election with 0.05% of that amount?  It isn't.

The Secret to Russian Hacking

If Russians are hacking the voting machines, let's return to paper ballots.  Try hacking that from Siberia, comrade.  Problem solved.

More Pointless Indictments

Does anyone think that the American military is not actively hacking networks in Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Turkey, and countless other nations?  If they aren't, I am disappointed in US intelligence.  Should we extradite to these countries if they indict our hackers?  Obviously not.  This is pure idiocy.  Of course they are hacking us and we are hacking them.  These same indictments could be applied to most of our international adversaries and probably many of our allies.  This is what intelligence agencies do.  Just think of James Bond: he crosses borders illegally, breaks into secure locations, steals secret plans, assassinates enemy spies, and so forth.  This is not a court fight.  The only reason these bogus indictments exist is to feed the Russian Collusion narrative.  After all, if we can indict Russian hackers, why not indict the Russian soldiers who shot down an airliner over Ukraine?  Maybe we can indict the North Koreans who hacked Sony and put their extradition on the list of items for the next summit.  Then we can indict the Chinese hackers who stole American technology.  Foreign policy by indictment.

Maybe the Russians went to the equivalent of the FISA court in Moscow and got a warrant to hack US servers in much the same way that the FBI got a warrant to investigate Russian links to Trump's campaign.  Heck, look at what Snowden exposed on how the US government hacks its citizens but I should care about Russian hackers.  Ha.

The End of NATO?

President Trump openly and undiplomatically hammered NATO members for failing to pay the portion of GDP toward defense that the treaty specified.  The US has shouldered the majority of European defense since the end of World War II.  Of course, NATO was formed as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, which collapsed over a quarter of a century ago.  Why not declare victory and go home?

 

With Russia supposedly a rising power, the US needs to stay in Europe to protect the West from Putin.  Failure to do so just proves that Trump is Putin's stooge!  Really?  It might come as a surprise that the German economy is more than 2 1/2 times the size of Russia's.  The UK is 2.1 times as large.  France's economy is double.  Italy is 1.5 times the Russian economy.  As a whole, the European Union has a Gross Domestic Product that is 13 times the size of the Russian economy.  The EU can easily dominate Russia but has instead mostly disarmed to maintain generous nanny states, outsourcing defense to the US taxpayer.  To top it off, we have trade deficits with most of them.  With allies like these...

 

27 years after the Cold War ended, there is no reason for the United States to still be defending Europeans from an economic backwater.  Worse, Europe is funding Russia by getting 40% of its energy from Putin.  Germany's dependence on Russian oil and gas is higher still.  Russia is a vital trade partner to modern Europe but NATO was formed to be anti-Russian.

 

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size.  Government programs, once launched, never disappear.  Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!

Ronald Reagan

 

NATO is an expensive ($946 billion in 2017) relic of the Cold War, a governmental bureaucracy that completed its purpose but failed to close up shop.  Let's stick around for the 'attack on one is an attack on all' but nix the shared funding bit.  It's one thing to agree to come to your neighbor's aid if he is attacked and another to be unpaid security while he has a party.  The EU is a nuclear power (UK and France) and can afford to pay for its defense.  We'll be there if needed but it's time for them to pay the day to day costs.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ronald_reagan_147680

Illegal Special Counsel?

Trump is tweeting that the Special Counsel is illegitimate because it was brought into being by the illegal leak of classified memos by former FBI Director James Comey:

James Comey illegally leaked classified documents to the press in order to generate a Special Council? Therefore, the Special Council was established based on an illegal act? Really, does everybody know what that means?

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

 

Though he has the chain of events right, I think his conclusion is weak.  The whole point of a special counsel is to investigate crimes where the DOJ has conflicts.  In fact, that statutes is stronger case for challenging the Special Counsel investigation.

 

Code of Federal Regulations, Title 28, Chapter VI, Part 600, Section 600.1

The Attorney General... will appoint a Special Counsel when he or she determines that a criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted...

 

What crime was Robert Mueller appointed to investigate?  Collusion?  That makes a great headline but what specific law was broken?  The indictments to date are not related to collusion between Russia and the Trump Campaign and, as such, should have just been handed back to DOJ.  Mannafort lobbied for Ukraine, a country essentially at war with Russia.  His indictments against Russians in Russia for trying to tinker with the US election is just stupid; does he expect Putin to extradite them?  Does anyone think we don't tinker in Russian politics?  If Putin asks, should we extradite our spooks to Russia?  Stupid but it put some numbers on the board, even if pointless.  The whole intent of this investigation - like the Plame Affair during the Bush Administration - is to catch someone lying to the FBI.  Interesting fact: James Comey appointed the Special Counsel in the Plame case even though he knew that Richard Armitage was the source of the leak.  However, Scooter Libby got caught lying to the FBI.  James Comey also sent Martha Stewart to jail for lying to the FBI, not the insider trading that had launched the investigation.  I see a pattern with Comey.

 

Comey is an admitted leaker and, according to recent claims by Andrew McCabe - another fired FBI Director, lied to Congress.  If Martha Stewart went to jail for lying, Comey should get her old cell for lying.  He needs a taste of the 'justice' he has meted out to others. 

Cold War, Part 2?

With the ejection of diplomats/spies in the United States and Russia, there is talk that we are entering a new Cold War.  Unlikely.  Sure, we may not have the best of relations but the US is the world's number 1 economy and Russia ranks about 12th at a paltry 7% of the US economy.  California alone has an economy twice the size of Russia.  Economically, Russia is to the US what Slovakia is to Russia.  South Korea has a bigger economy than Russia!  Embarrassing.  Coal and Petroleum are the big exports for Russia and US fracking has depressed prices.  When ANWR starts producing, the oil market is going to be even more competitive.  We can economically hamstring Russia just by drilling for oil here.  Win-win!  As far as population, Russia is suffering a decline in population and has only 45% as many people as the US.  What about allies?  The US could count on the majority of the EU, Japan, South Korea, India, and probably most of the former Soviet Republics.  Russia can look forward to support from Syria and Iran.  China might adopt Russia as the new North Korea but wouldn't commit itself.  The breakup of the Soviet Union left Russia as a far less formidable country.

 

Putin benefits from memories of the Soviet days and makes great use of the memories of the former super power.

Russian Collusion Story Flips on its Head

It is now revealed that the Clinton Campaign and the DNC paid Fusion GPS for the Trump Dossier, the largely discredited 'intelligence' that sparked the story that the Trump Campaign colluded with Russia.  Of particular note, the British spy, Chris Steele, was paying Russians to assemble his dossier.  This brings up an obvious question: If the Russians were trying to get Trump elected, why produce a dossier that would hurt his chances?

 

During the campaign, the dossier made the rounds but none of the stories could be verified so no one jumped on the story.  After all, the polls showed that Hillary was a shoe-in and an unverifiable dossier was likely to hurt the media outlet that published it while not changing the election.  However, when Trump actually won, the Democrats knew they were in dire straits.  If Hillary had won, the surveillance and unmasking of Trump Campaign operatives would never have been revealed.  Now it was inevitable that these shenanigans would be made public and a cover story was needed posthaste!  Well, there was this Trump Dossier.  Bingo!

 

James Comey briefed Trump on the dossier and, amazingly, that briefing was immediately leaked to the media.   The dossier was now newsworthy, regardless of its validity.  Huh, that's convenient.  Comey's later actions in leaking memos of his meetings with President Trump for the specific purpose of getting an Independent Counsel named make this briefing and associated leak much more suspicious.

 

It sure looks like the deep state has gone to great efforts to derail Trump's presidency before his administration could expose this trail of questionable and probably criminal behavior.  Now the 2010 Uranium One deal that saw $145 million dollars 'donated' to the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton getting $500,000 to give a speech in Moscow look a lot more like collusion with Russia than the fiction to be found in the Trump Dossier.  That the US sold 20% of its uranium to Russia during the Obama Administration does not reflect well on President Obama either.  Many of the people in charge of investigating the Trump-Russia collusion are the very people who turned a blind eye when the Clintons were enriched by Russians.  There is a reason that it is called the swamp.

Russian Collusion? I'll Show You Some Russian Collusion

The Russian collusion story has dragged on for months with nothing really to it.  The latest story is that Russia bought adds on Facebook and maybe swung the election.  Um, Russian ad purchases amounted to $100,000 or so.  Hillary's campaign and associated groups spent $1.4 billion.  Either the Russian got the greatest return on investment ever or this is a nonstory.  Besides, how much did the Obama administration spend in an effort to unseat Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel?  Turnabout is fair play.  As interesting as this is, another Russian collusion story is brewing.

 

Back in 2009, Russia was using bribes and kickbacks to influence a nuclear trucking company in the US.  The FBI, under the direction of Robert Mueller (yes, the same Mueller who is investigating Russian involvement in the 2016 election), had evidence of Russian meddling.  Moreover, parties interested in selling Canada's Uranium One to Russia's Rosatom had given generous donations to the Clinton Foundation.  Moreover, Bill Clinton was given double his normal speaking fee - a tidy $500,000 - to give a speech in Russia.  Huh.  What an amazing coincidence.  Uranium One owned 20% of US uranium mines, a clear national security asset.  As such, the sale had to get the approval of the State Department that was headed by... Hillary Clinton.  In her defense, Hillary says that she was not involved in the approval process.  Gee, a suspicious person would think that maybe all the money flowing into the Clinton Foundation from parties interested in the Uranium One sale was obviously a payoff.

 

Mueller is hopelessly conflicted.  The man who let the last administration sell nuclear assets to Russia is now investigating how Russia torpedoed presidential run of the very person who may have greased the skids for that sale?  Not to mention the target of the investigation happened to fire his friend, James Comey.  And James Comey admitted that he leaked memos to a friend with the expectation that the exposure of those memos would force the naming of a special counsel, none other than his buddy Robert Mueller.

 

The deep state will ignore the crimes and misdeeds of establishment elites but seek to destroy outsiders on the flimsiest grounds.  If Trump were guilty of every Russian collusion story leveled at him, it would be small potatoes in comparison to the sale of 20% of US uranium holdings to none other than Russia.

What a Difference 4 Years Make

During the 2012 Presidential Campaign, Obama ripped into Romney's views on foreign policy.  Here's the clip.  Obama mocks Romney for identifying Russia as the number one geopolitical rival.  He also gives him grief for making a nuclear treaty with Russia.  To read the news since the 2016 election, it looks like Romney was a seer!  He then attacks Romney for wanting more troops in Iraq.  As it turned out, ISIS exploded on the scene in 2014 and there was virtually no US presence to oppose it and the Iraqi army collapsed.  Gee, Romney is an oracle!  Then he hammers Romney for dithering on Afghanistan, apparently not having a mirror on hand to examine his own record on that account. 

Asked two years later - in light of troubles in Ukraine and Syria - if Romney was right on Russia being our primary geopolitical foe, Obama dodged a direct response to the question and offered vague analysis instead.

Though I'm certainly no Romney fan, he demonstrably had the clearer view on foreign affairs in general and Russia in particular.  Even Democrats would have a hard time justifying Obama's 2012 statements in light of current events.  If Russia has had as much influence as many Democrats are now saying, those above clips will eventually be cited like Neville Chamberlain's 'peace for our time' proclamation.  According to some accounts, Obama sat on his hands while Russian operatives rigged the election for Trump.  Thus, the effort to delegitimize Trump's election must simultaneously paint Obama as hopelessly clueless and incompetent with regard to Russia.

Stupid, but Not Treason

Donald Trump Jr. is the latest target of the ever elusive Russian collusion story.  In June of last year, he received an email from a British publicist who was going to hook him up with a Russian attorney who had some dirt on Hillary.  Perhaps the best summation was from Kyle Smith: "Don Jr. is why Nigerian e-mail scammers keep trying their luck."  Burn!  The Russian attorney had nothing on Hillary and instead tried to lobby regarding adoption policies between the US and Russia.  It sounds like the meeting was arranged under false pretenses, a bait and switch operation.  If anything, this meeting demonstrates that the Trump campaign failed in a collusion attempt.

As for treason, that's just nonsense.  As discussed here, treason can only be committed by giving aid to, or fighting alongside, the enemies of the United States.  Enemies is narrowly defined as those with whom the US is at war.  As we are not at war with Russia, it is impossible to commit treason on their behalf.  Now, if it had been ISIS or Al Qaeda...  Just because treason is off the table does not mean that espionage or some other crime wasn't committed.

 

Was it treason when Senator Ted Kennedy sought Soviet assistance in derailing President Reagan's re-election in 1984?  Was it treason when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approved the sale of a Canadian uranium mining company (which controlled a quarter of US uranium mines) to the Russian Rusatom, especially after her husband had been paid handsomely for multiple speeches in Russia and the Clinton Foundation had received millions from parties interested in the sale?  Was it treason when the Clinton Administration approved a technology transfer to China after his re-election that was funded in part by illegal donations from the People's Republic of China?  If you hold that Don Jr. is a traitor, then so was Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton.  In fact, none of them are traitors though that doesn't mean they aren't reprobates and criminals.

Master of Distraction

Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!

Donald Trump, Twitter

 

I do not believe for a second that 'everyone' is talking about that.  I suspect you could count the number of people talking about it on one hand and still have four fingers remaining.  This is a silly claim.  However, it puts Podesta and the DNC back in the news.  The President has tweeted and that is automatically newsworthy.  Looking at it from that perspective, it's plain wrong.  Podesta had no role over the DNC server; he was Hillary's campaign manager and not in any way in charge of the DNC server.  Debbie Wasserman Schultz was in charge of the DNC when it was hacked by Russians or others.  The released emails showed that the DNC had put a thumb on the scale for Hillary in the primaries, not the sort of news that pleased Bernie supporters.  The DNC did not allow the FBI to examine the server but instead hired a company with no discernible biases:

 

The Russian expat leading the fight to protect America: In a war against hackers, Dmitri Alperovitch and CrowdStrike are our special forces (and Putin's worst nightmare).

Esquire

 

Why have US law enforcement investigate a crime at taxpayer expense when we can spend donor money to have a private company reach a convenient conclusion for us?  What happened with Podesta is that he fell for a phishing scheme and accidentally granted access to his email to another hacker, perhaps Russia.  Those emails exposed collusion between various media sources and the Clinton Campaign.  The CIA has nothing to do with all this and it is baffling why he mentions it.

 

And there you have the crazy like a fox brilliance of the tweet.  In exposing Trump's apparent ignorance of the issue, the DNC and John Podesta are again painted in a negative light.  While the left keeps the Russian collusion story alive, Trump keeps the DNC and Podesta email story alive.

 

Meanwhile, while the media gape at his latest tweet, Trump is meeting with Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit!