W. Niederhut

John, You wrote: "That’s what I mean by projection. Kotkin’s thesis is essentially the Manichean “evil Russia vs good USA” one that I mentioned previously. It’s a thoroughly perverse perspective because, if anything, the preponderance of morality lies not with the aggressor, the USA, but with the victim of the aggression, Russia." I emphatically disagree. I'm the furthest thing from an apologist for CIA and U.S. military atrocities in the post-WWII era, but let's not forget about the dark side of Russian history since 1917, including Putin's current atrocities in Ukraine. Stalin was one of the most evil, immoral men in the annals of world history. Jared Diamond and other historians consider the Stalinist/Soviet genocide to be the single worst genocide in human history-- resulting in an estimated 20 million Russian deaths caused by the Soviet government, including the Ukrainian Holodomor. Have you read Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago? The Mitrokhin archival material published at Cambridge University as The Sword and the Shield is another important reference about Soviet KGB history. (A less well known eye opener is Professor I.M. Andreeyev's history of Russia's Catacomb Saints, documenting the horrific, largely secretive persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church by the Soviet government after 1917.) As for Putin, his grandfather Spiridon Putin was Stalin's chef, and his father Vladimir worked in Stalin's notorious NKVD Destruction Brigades in WWII. Putin was a KGB agent stationed in Dresden during the collapse of the Soviet Union, before later re-surfacing as an "ex-KGB" apparatchik in the Yeltsin government. After coming to power in the 1990s, Putin gradually transformed Russia's nascent democracy into a totalitarian police state, run by Putin's FSB-aligned oligarchs.. British author, Catherine Belton, has written cogently about this subject in Putin's People. Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West: Belton, Catherine: 9780374238711: Amazon.com: Books Compare the legacy of the U.S. Marshall Plan in Western Europe to the fate of the totalitarian police states of the Soviet Eastern bloc. Is it any wonder that the people of Ukraine, the Baltic states, Poland and the former Warsaw Pact nations want to belong to NATO? What does Putin's oligarchic/police state offer them? So, Kotkin is correct, like most Princetonians.

John, Chris Barnard and I have discussed Mearsheimer's opinions about Ukraine on a few occasions here. I tend to agree with Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin's contrary view (above.)

Ben, Would you prefer Kevin Coup-Denier McCarthy as Speaker? How about Medicare-Slayer Paul Ryan? John Tobacco-Industry Boehner? Pedophile Dennis Hastert? Newt "Freddie Mac" Gingrich? Pelosi is, far and away, the best House Speaker of the past quarter century-- warts and all. And your misogyny is showing again. Consider joining Incels Anonymous. Meanwhile, you're, obviously, still delusional about Trumplicon pseudo-populism-- imagining that Trumplicons are concerned about American workers because they fear monger about immigrants. It's almost as if you never read the rebuttals people posted in response to your repeated claims that Trump is a populist. Can you list anything that Trump has ever done to benefit the American working class? His signature legislation was the December 2017 GOP bill cutting taxes for billionaires and attempting to sabotage the Affordable Care Act.

Jim, Do you think LBJ was consciously striving to cover up his reversal of JFK's Vietnam policy in order to hide an obvious CIA/Joint Chiefs' motive for JFK's murder?

Remarkably eloquent, and poignant-- especially coming from Captain James Kirk of the Starship Enterprise.

Wow. James DiEugenio really knows Vietnam War history. And having Michael Griffith serve as a Devil's advocate for the Vietnam War Rambos has served a useful pedagogical purpose. I think it was Nietzsche who once said that he had learned more from his (intellectual) enemies/adversaries than from his friends.

Good question. The short answer is that Mathew responded to my most recent post about the Hunter Biden tropes, and I responded to his response. Regarding questionable business transactions of Presidential relatives, I wonder what Mathew and Ben have to say about Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, getting a $2 billion dollar loan from Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salman at a time when Kushner was in charge of Trump's Middle East policies. And, speaking of the Saudis, are they cutting oil production right now to sabotage Biden and the Democratic Party?

Mathew, Are you truly concerned about broken laws? Let's start with the big ones. We certainly need to investigate Trump's coup attempt and his theft of classified government documents. Do you really think Hunter Biden's personal peccadilloes are of comparable significance? These GOP deflections about Hunter Biden are reminiscent of the GOP's Billy Carter and Roger Clinton propaganda tricks back in the day-- attempts to smear a public official by focusing on the problems of a troubled relative. What public office does Hunter Biden hold? Unlike Trump's family members, Hunter Biden has held no position in the Biden administration. So, Hunter Biden's personal struggles really have nothing to do with U.S. affairs of state, or with the many critically important political issues of our time, such as; 1) dealing with Putin's nuclear threats and war crimes in Ukraine 2) mitigating catastrophic climate change 3) fixing our debt-producing Reaganomic tax policies 4) maintaining affordable healthcare and education 5) bringing Trump and his J6 Willard Hotel accomplices to justice for their coup attempt 6) countering GOP voter suppression As for Ukraine, Trump's impeachable offenses in Ukraine involved Trump undermining U.S. foreign policy objectives in order to extort personal political favors-- i.e., false statements from President Zelensky to defame Joe Biden. Even Ted Cruz, reportedly, told his Senate colleagues that Trump committed impeachable offenses in Ukraine. Did you listen to the testimony of Dr. Fiona Hill and our former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine during Trump's first impeachment hearings?

Or, perhaps Rudy G. is following Hunter Biden's example by getting into rehab?

With all of the critically important issues confronting the U.S. and the world today, it's reassuring to know that we have Mathew Koch around to keep us fully informed about America's Hunter Biden news-- especially during the month before the upcoming election. Mathew seems to be carrying the October Hunter Biden torch for Rudy Giuliani, who has been uncharacteristically silent lately... 🤥

Kirk, There's a fairly detailed report at WaPo this week about Sanibel Island and Hurricane Ian. It will take a while to repair the three mile causeway to the island, which is in ruins. When it comes to current existential crises in the world, I would rank the Ukrainian War (and Putin's nuclear threats) as #1 and catastrophic climate change at #2. The GOP in Florida, and throughout the country, needs to come clean about climate change denial. Koch-funded Republican Rick Scott actually forbade state officials from using the term, "climate change," when he was governor of Florida. And Florida Republicans Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio voted against Federal aid for Hurricane Sandy victims back in the day. Sanibel residents hope for recovery after Hurricane Ian's destruction - The Washington Post

Ron, Unfortunately, there's a counter narrative about Boebert's re-election prospects at Mother Jones today. Boebert is one reason, among many, for my concern and despair about our nation's future. James Carville said it well today. This is what happens when stupid people vote. Lauren Boebert Might Lose In Colorado. But Don’t Bet On It. – Mother Jones

Richard, I'll be truly shocked if Clarence Thomas and the SCOTUS overturn the unanimous 11th Circuit Appeals ruling on the Mar-a-Lago documents. But, then again, I was truly shocked when they overturned Roe v. Wade.

C'mon, Mathew. More Tucker Carlson BS? What about-ism is your Koch/Fox response to Trump sleazeball Herschel Walker's gun-to-the-head/abortion bombshells? How stupid is that? As for your reference to Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs, he happens to be one of my favorite academicians in modern America. I tend to trust Jeffrey Sachs, almost implicitly. He was one of the few people who informed the public about CIA Operation Timber Sycamore back in the day. But he's a strange bedfellow for the Trump cult. When did you guys become enamored of radical leftists? The question I would ask about Sachs' NordStream claim is not whether it is true, but rather, " Would it make strategic sense for NATO and the U.S. to sabotage NordStream, as part of the NATO campaign to protect Europe from Putin's fascist war machine?" The last time I checked, there was a brutal war happening in Ukraine, where Putin is bombing civilian populations and exfiltrating Ukrainian civilians to his Gulag. Are we supposed to pretend this isn't happening?

Well, we can add this Trump cult projection to the list of Mathew Koch's many inaccurate posts during the past few days. Projection is a common defense mechanism of Trump and his delusional cult. They can't own their own crap, so they fling it onto the Democrats. This explains Ben and Mathew's recurrent posts claiming that various Republicans-- Dubya Bush, the Cheneys, Reagan, et.al.-- are alleged "Donk heroes" for rejecting the lies and delusions of the Trump Cult. 1) Trump's Presidency and white nationalist cult was always predicated on xenophobia and bigotry. He was, in a Hegelian sense, the Anti-Obama-- the Birther-in-Chief-- whose popularity surged in the 2016 GOP primaries when he also started vilifying Mexicans as rapists and drug dealers. It was a white nativist sales pitch that worked, and it became Trump's political essence. Trump emerged from the GOP pack in 2016 as a 21st century anti-immigrant Know Nothing who actively promoted paranoia about brown people invading the U.S. borders. (Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis have been playing this card recently.) 2) The policy derivative of Trump's Know Nothing-ism was the hoopla about building a wall, and pretending to be concerned about the impact of immigration on American workers-- Trump's pseudo-populism. (In reality, Trump couldn't have cared less about the plight of the American working class.) But Trump's anti-immigrant demagoguery directly contradicted Ronald Reagan's legacy as a supporter of immigration reform, and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. So, to rationalize Trump's anti-Reaganism on immigration, the Trump Cult is now claiming that Democrats revere Reagan. Thus, they avoid facing the fact that they, themselves, are repudiating Reagan's legacy on immigration. 3) Similarly, to rationalize Trump's Big Lie and January 6th coup attempt, the Trump Cult is claiming that Democrats revere the Cheneys for condemning it! 4) And to rationalize George W. Bush's rejection of Trump's Big Lie about the 2020 election, the Trump Cult is claiming that Democrats revere George W. Bush.

Ditto. I'm not going to engage further with M. Koch's alternate facts and MAGAt hijacking of this thread. As we have witnessed during the past few days, it's too much Koch elephant manure to shovel, and it detracts from our forum's focus on reality. Correcting Ben's repeated "Patriot Purge/J6 scrum" delusions has been onerous enough this year. I did respond to M. Koch's Fox News tropes blaming Biden for our 20 year Afghan War debacle, and Ben's equally absurd notion that George W. Bush is a "Donk hero." No mas.

Mathew, If you have some valid written data about Democratic opinions of George W. Bush, post it with a reference link. As for "liking" George W. Bush, the phrase is somewhat misleading. Compared to Donald Trump, even Bill Maher and I consider Dubya likeable. Dubya has always been affable, and was never the devious mastermind of the Cheney/Rumsfeld/ PNAC War on Terror. He was their public relations guy. Two Dubya quotes illustrate my point. In January of 2001, Dubya called his father and asked, "Dad, who are the Neocons?" GHWB replied, "In a word, son, Israel." At the end of his White House tenure, Dubya said, "The hardest thing about being President was trying to convince people that we needed to go to war in Iraq."

Ben, If you think Dubya Bush is a new "Donk hero," you've been living in the jungles of Thailand for too long. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've been a critic of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/PNAC "War on Terror" since 2003, when I offended some friends and family members by questioning our pretexts for invading Iraq. As for 2016, the only thing I liked about Trump's candidacy was that he openly criticized our involvement in Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria, and also said, "When I'm President the American people are going to learn who really destroyed the World Trade Center on 9/11." I also thought he might de-classify the JFK records. Unfortunately, it was all hot air, like all of Trump's phony sales pitches-- "I have a terrific healthcare plan that will cover everyone and cost less, etc." Trump was a complete sell out. His policy decisions were all based on bribery, kickbacks, and, I suspect, Kremlin blackmail. He was a compromised Russian asset. Naturally, everyone around here has been interested in understanding and reconstructing the hidden history of the CIA and the U.S. Deep State during the past 75 years. I've been almost obsessed with that subject for several years now. Biden is part of the whole complex, no doubt. (Which is why I voted for Bernie in our 2016 and 2020 caucuses.) But Biden was a lesser evil than Trump in 2020, by several orders of magnitude. Trump is a lying con man and a grifter who is uneducated and unfit for any high public office.

Yes, and the Trumplican tendency to use "alternate facts" and make things up goes hand in hand with Ben's notion that all opinions are equally welcome, no matter how absurd. A corollary is that we are guilty of "demonizing" someone if we criticize them for making false claims about history or current events. On the contrary, what I have always valued about this forum is that it is a place where people are genuinely interested in identifying disinformation and telling the truth-- especially about the JFK assassination.

Well, it's a shame to see this interesting thread suddenly covered with Fox/GOP elephant dung. Cleaning up the Fox/GOP elephant dung in the U.S. mainstream and social media is an onerous, never-ending job. There's too much to shovel. Not something that I really want to waste time on, although I have spent a lot of time during the past year pointing out the errors and contradictions in Ben's Fox/GOP narratives-- e.g., "Patriot Purge," J6 "scrum," Biden as Neville Chamberlain, etc. Regarding responsibility for our multi-trillion dollar Afghan War debacle, here is my brief take. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR AFGHAN WAR DEBACLE? In Reality Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld: 80% Obama/Gates: 10% Trump: 8% Biden: 2% According to Fox News Biden: 90% Trump: 0% Obama: 10% Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld: 0%

False equivalence. I never dodge relevant, meaningful questions around here. And your silly question about the last few days of our 20 year war in Afghanistan is only damaging to you-- displaying your myopic understanding of that 20 year U.S. foreign policy debacle-- as covered by Fox News at the war's end. The surrender of the Afghan Army began after Trump and Pompeo surrendered to the Taliban at Doha in February of 2020. The writing was on the wall. Then Trump withdrew all but 2,500 troops from a country of 40 million people prior to Biden's Inauguration. Biden shares some of the blame for not realizing that Trump had set the Afghan government and army up for a major collapse, but I would place the lion's share of the blame on the Joint Chiefs and military intelligence-- that perennial oxymoron. And let's not forget that Trump, Tillerson, and Pompeo had gutted the U.S. State Department after 2016. Qualified diplomats left in droves. As for Russia, hopefully, you, Tucker Carlson, and Ben can eventually clarify whether you believe that Biden has been a spineless Neville Chamberlain or an overly belligerent Winston Churchill in responding to Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine this year. Ben has argued both, contrary, positions this year, and I notice that many Trumplicons from the MAGA-verse, including you, now seem to believe that Trump would have been a highly "effective" Neville Chamberlain in this Ukrainian crisis-- presumably giving us "peace in our day" by allowing Putin to invade and annex a sovereign nation without resistance.

Mathew, I found your previous post. No, I'm not a Boulder guy. Never was. I have lived in Denver for 65 years, other than eight years in New England in college and med school (Brown and Harvard.) Graduated from Denver East HS in '75. And, no, I don't think or speak in cliches. Nor do I repeat other people's "talking points." Not my style. I have always been in the habit of formulating and expressing my own thoughts. When I quote other people, I say so. As for Douglas County, your area, I have noticed that it typically votes about 70% Republican 30% Democrat (e.g., Bush, McCain, Romney, Trump, etc.) Denver County is the diametric opposite politically-- 70% Democrat 30% Republican (Gore, Kerry, Obama, Hillary, etc.)

Geez...Way to focus on a minor ignominious footnote about the longest war in U.S. history, Mathew. You're obviously a right wing ampligandist who gets his bogus tropes from the Biden-bashing MAGA-verse. Frankly, you Trumpsters are the last people on the planet who should be lecturing to anyone about "taking responsibility for the person (they) voted for." As for the casualties, do you have any idea how many Afghans we killed since Rumsfeld started carpet bombing that country in 2001?