W. Niederhut

Jim, Are you familiar with Donald Trump's enmeshment with Putin's Russian oligarchs during the past 30 years? The fact that the Trump Organization was, basically a Russian money laundry, beginning in the early 90s, after American investors soured on doing business deals with Trump? Putin's People: Belton, Catherine: 9781250787323: Amazon.com: Books How about Trump's longstanding involvement with the Russian mafia, and Trump associate Felix Sater's boast in 2015 that Putin intended to put Trump in the White House? How about the GOP-controlled Senate Intel Committee's findings that Putin interfered in our 2016 election to put Trump in the White House? How about the fact that Trump repeatedly denied that Putin had interfered in our elections-- even on an international stage in Helsinki? How about the fact that Trump and Manafort altered the RNC platform in Cleveland to weaken U.S. support for Ukraine, in their Donbas border war with the Russian Federation? How about the fact that Paul Manafort worked for the Kremlin for years, and lied to the FBI and Mueller prosecutors about his contacts with GRU asset Konstantin Kilimnik-- even after agreeing to cooperate with Mueller's investigation? How about Veselnitskaya's meeting with Trump campaign officials in Trump Tower in the summer of 2016? How about the fact that Dean Baquet put the kibosh on any NYT stories about Trump and Russia in 2016-- while running weekly headline stories about Hillary's Emails before the election? How about Trump lying about his 2016 Moscow Trump Tower business negotiations?

Get a clue, Ben. Did you read Putin's People-- the reference I posted for you in March? Belton goes into considerable detail about Trump's multi-decade ties to Putin's oligarchs. Russ Baker wrote at length in early 2017 about Trump's multi-decade involvement with the Russian mafia, and Felix Sater's 2015 boast that Putin intended to put Trump in the White House. Did you read the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Russian interference in our 2016 election, to benefit Trump? Did you read the Mueller Report? I stopped posting references for you a few weeks ago because you never read any of them. Your modus operandi is to ignore the facts that debunk your "theories," then repeatedly re-post them.

Matt, I, too, am truly surprised by the bunk posted on this page-- especially since it has been repeatedly debunked. A person would have to be living in the MAGA-verse nowadays (or getting money from Kremlin assets) to still deny Russia-gate and Trump's longstanding enmeshment with Putin's oligarchs. They saved his ass from utter financial ruin during the past 30 years, (along with his Apprentice gig.) And it's glaringly obvious that Trump served in the White House as a compromised Russian asset. Who can forget Trump's embarrassing Stinky in Helsinki? On the subject of quality independent journalism and Trump's longstanding ties to the Russian mafia and Putin's KGB/FSB-aligned oligarchs, let's not forget about Russ Baker's groundbreaking investigative journalism in the spring of 2017 on Trump, Felix Sater, and the Russian mafia. Baker's work got some traction in the M$M in March of 2017* but he never really got the credit he deserved for that groundbreaking story. A lot of Baker's findings about Trump and the Russian mafia were later corroborated and expanded upon by others, as in the case of Catherine Belton's outstanding book, Putin's People. * Trump's longstanding business ties to Russian mobsters www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/03/28/trump-business-past-ties-russian-mobsters-organized-crime/98321252/March 28, 2017

Paul, It's not good. It's Barr/Durham bunk, amplified by Murdoch's WSJ, and I've already debunked it twice. Perhaps the third time will be the charm. (Red italics mine.) Hillary didn’t do it AuthorKevin DrumPublished onMay 22, 2022 – 8:25 pm44 Commentson Hillary didn’t do it I'm on vacation cruising down the Seine, so my threshold for commenting on dumb stuff is higher than usual. What's more, the proximate cause of my latest annoyance is the Wall Street Journal editorial page—which is sort of like saying I'm annoyed by cancer. I mean, I am annoyed by having cancer, but I'm annoyed by it every day and it's hardly worth bitching about it every time I get an upset stomach or something. That said, I'm awake while Marian is still snoozing and I have nothing special to do. So here's the latest from the Journal's distinguished editorial board: Well, of course Hillary did it. That goes without saying in Journal land. But what was it this time? Did she kill Elon Musk? Steal Joe Biden's stash of Diet Coke? Pull the heist of the century by emptying Fort Knox? Nah. None of that. Apparently she ran for president a few years ago and her campaign manager, Robby Mook tried to interest the press in some dirt about her opponent: Hold the presses! A campaign passed along to the press some potential dirt that they hoped might lead to further digging. It wasn't something they "created," either: it had already been a widespread subject of rumor and investigation on blogs and Twitter for months (I was alive back in 2016 so I know this). Nor did "the press" run with it. A bunch of reporters tried to run down the allegations, but none of them was able to. Finally one person, Frank Foer of Slate, took a flier and decided to publish everything he could dig up. This is a common way of attracting the attention of sources who might be able to add something to a story. And the Clinton campaign's shameful conspiracy to take advantage of Foer's piece? Two whole tweets! All things considered, Foer probably made the wrong call. There were lots of questions about the Alfa Bank activity but not enough to justify a fishing piece. But that's it. A close but wrong call.¹ So in the end this was one of the most common and trivial things imaginable: a campaign trying to get the media interested in digging around a possible bit of mud. It's hard to think of anything more commonplace or basically innocuous in the world of presidential campaigns. ALSO: The Clinton campaign merely passed along some information they hoped was worth checking out. But when it comes to feeding false information to the press and then quoting it back as confirmation when it's published, the all-time king is Dick Cheney during the marketing phase of the Iraq War. Or, more recently, Rudy Giuliani and the Hunter Biden laptop. Oddly, though, I don't remember the fine and honest folks of the Journal editorial page ever getting distressed about either of these things. AND: As long as I'm at it, the Journal also offhandedly claims that this incident and others started the FBI's long Trump-Russia investigation. This is, unsurprisingly, an outright lie. The timeline of the investigation is very well known and it began not with Hillary Clinton but with a Trump advisor telling an Australian diplomat over drinks about alleged Russian emails that were damaging to Clinton. The Australian government passed this along to the FBI after Wikileaks published hacked DNC emails. This happened in July 2016, months before the Alfa Bank allegations. ¹And to Foer's credit, he promptly published a follow-up piece noting objections and new information about the Alfa Bank story.

Paul, Trumplicans discovered the "Deep State" in 2016-- as part of Trump's public relations effort to deny his involvement with the Kremlin. Trumplicans-- including Bannon, Fox, et.al.-- tried to frame the FBI investigation of Michael Flynn and Trump's numerous 2016 campaign contacts with Kremlin assets as persecution of Trump by the "Deep State." This Trumplican "Deep State" ruse has had multiple permutations since 2016-- all nothing burgers. First, it was "Obama-gate." Then "Spy-gate." Then Trump's fraudulently constructed "Nunes Memo." The latest permutation is Bill Barr's Durham investigation. As for the correct definition, it should, certainly, include the CIA and Prouty's concept of the "Secret Team."

Paul, Interesting that you mention 2009-10-- the only brief interval of the past quarter century when the Democrats finally had control of the White House and both branches of Congress. But even that brief interval of constructive Democratic governance was marred by the prolonged delay in the confirmation of Al Franken's Senate seat. At the time of Obama's inauguration in January of 2009, the U.S. economy was in a free fall-- with widespread U.S. bank failures, worsening unemployment, and the onset of the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression. We were also deeply in debt from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the Bush/Cheney tax cuts for the wealthy (in 2001 and 2003.) Cheney had insisted to Paul O'Neill that "deficits don't matter." So, what did Obama and the Democrats accomplish in the brief period? 1) The Stimulus Recovery Act which, by scholarly consensus, (e.g., Alan Blinder/Princeton) played a major role in preventing a second Great Depression. 2) The Dodd/Frank Act-- in response to the Wall Street fraudulence that caused the Great Bush/Cheney Recession of 2008-10. 3) The Affordable Care Act-- the first U.S. legislation to establish a framework for universal healthcare-- one century after Theodore Roosevelt called for universal health insurance in the U.S.. Unfortunately, in 2010, the Koch brothers bought control of the U.S. House of Representatives through their astro-turf "Tea Party" movement. The Tea Party House then obstructed everything Obama tried to do for the next six years-- even turning down his "Mother of all No Brainers" debt-ceiling deal in July of 2011. In 2014, the Kochs bought control of the U.S. Senate. The Koch/GOP Senate has obstructed any and all progressive legislation for the past eight years (with the help of Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema.)

Not correct. While it is true that a few Progressive Republicans, especially Theodore Roosevelt, played a role in some constructive reforms in the early 20th century, almost all major, progressive legislation of the past century in the U.S. has been initiated by liberal Democrats-- the establishment of Social Security, the SEC, the FDIC, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. One of the few exceptions was Nixon's role in helping to create the EPA. Northern Republicans also deserve credit for supporting the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act-- in the teeth of fierce Southern Dixiecrat opposition. Let's recall that Ronald Reagan was a fierce critic of Medicare in the 1960s, and that the Koch GOP has repeatedly tried to sabotage Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare during the past 11 years. In fact, Paul Ryan passed two budget bills in the Tea Party House, after the 2010 election, that would have ended Medicare as we know it-- converting it into an inadequately-funded Ryan Voucher Care program. And the Trump/GOP Tax Cut & Healthcare Demolition Act of December 2017 included major funding cuts for Medicaid, mandatory Medicare cuts, and elimination of the ACA's individual mandate.

Trump's NRA speech was an abomination, and another shocking example of how the NRA-funded GOP has turned America into a killing field.* The Columbine High School massacre happened here in Denver 23 years ago, and we have now had 288 school shootings in the U.S. * Republicans Have Turned America Into a Killing Field archive.ph/BNXH0 May 26, 2022The Republican Party has turned America into a killing field.Republicans have allowed guns to proliferate while weakening barriers to ownership, lowering the age at which one can purchase a weapon and eliminating laws governing how, when and where guns can be carried.They have done this in part with help from conservatives on the Supreme Court who have upheld a corrupt and bastardized interpretation of the Second Amendment.But Republicans have also done so by promoting fear and paranoia. They tell people that criminals are coming to menace you, immigrants are coming to menace you, a race war (or racial replacement) is coming to menace you and the government itself may one day come to menace you.The only defense you have against the menace is to be armed.If you buy into this line of thinking, owning a gun is not only logical but prudent. It’s like living in a flood plain and buying flood insurance. Of course you should do it. The propaganda has been incredibly, insidiously persuasive. As Vox pointed out last year, “Americans make up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet they own roughly 45 percent of all the world’s privately held firearms,” according to 2018 data.

I saw a horrifying stat today. There have been 288 school shootings in the U.S. No other country in the world is even close. I think #2 on the list is Mexico, with 8 school shootings.

Kevin Drum took time out from his cruise down the Seine this week to expertly debunk Ben and Chris's WSJ propaganda piece about Hillary and the silly Durham/Sussman trial. * Ben never reads references debunking his "theories," but I'll post this one for inquiring minds. As for Ben's ludicrous, ongoing attempts to deny Trump's January 6th coup plot, Trump and his coup co-conspirators probably used SIGNAL to conceal their incriminating texts. For Ben, this is obvious proof of Trump's innocence. 🤥 * Hillary didn’t do it https://jabberwocking.com/hillary-didnt-do-it/

And the deflective right wing propaganda will be widely amplified on social media-- a process that a professor at Stanford has aptly called, "ampliganda."

Yes, Matt, Murdoch's propaganda empire (including WSJ) is going to be broadcasting a lot of shiny objects in the next few weeks to deflect attention from the damning evidence about Trump's January 6th coup attempt. And Ben still hasn't figured out that the FBI investigation of Trump's involvement with the Kremlin was never a Deep State plot-- nor was it ever exposed in our M$M prior to the 2016 election. Some guys are slow learners.

Media FREAKS OUT Over Fake News that Hillary Clinton Approved Trump/Russia Campaign Stories www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/5/21/2099390/-Media-FREAKS-OUT-Over-Fake-News-that-Hillary-Clinton-Approved-Trump-Russia-Campaign-StoriesMay 21, 2022Nothing thrills the press like the stench of a budding scandal involving a prominent public figure. And for thirty years Hillary Clinton has been at the top of the media's hit list, despite never having confirmed a single episode of wrongdoing. And after being out of government service for six years, she remains a prime target of the press.The latest hysterical outrage was triggered by reports of testimony by former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook in a case brought to trial by John Durham, the special counsel appointed by Donald Trump's Attorney General Bill Barr. Durham's mandate was to vindicate Trump by fabricating phony charges of misconduct related to his unsavory connections to Russia and Vladimir Putin.RELATED: Trump Whines that the Media Didn’t Fall for the Durham Nothingburger About Clinton ‘Spying’The news reports covering Mook's testimony were mostly wild distortions of the actual facts. Even CNN played into it with a story headlined "Hillary Clinton personally approved plan to share Trump-Russia allegation with the press in 2016, campaign manager says." However, that is not what Mook's testimony said at all. After repeating the falsehood in the headline, a more accurate description was given in the article's opening paragraphs:"Robby Mook said he attended a meeting with other senior campaign officials where they learned about strange cyberactivity that suggested a relationship between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, which is based in Moscow. The group decided to share the information with a reporter, and Mook subsequently ran that decision by Clinton herself. 'We discussed it with Hillary,' Mook said, later adding that 'she agreed with the decision.'"So what Mook actually said was that the decision was already made and acted upon, and was brought to Clinton after the fact, where she agreed with what had already been done. The stories that say that she "approved the plan" suggest that she was informed in advance and gave it a greenlight. In reality, Clinton merely expressed her agreement after her staff had already executed the plan.What's worse is that many stories are circulating through the conservative media that Clinton not only gave the plan a go-ahead, but that she contrived herself. That could not be farther from the truth. The unexplained cyberactivity connecting Trump to the Russian bank were first observed by independent tech investigators. Reports of those observations were later brought to the attention of the Clinton campaign.All of these deliberate distortions of both the cyberactivity, and the Clinton campaign's role in publicizing it, are part of the right-wing Durham crusade to distract the public from the documented connections between Trump and Russia. They add to prior distortions by Durham and company that Trump used to falsely claim that his campaign had been spied on.For the record, there were numerous documented contacts between the Trump camp and Russian operatives during and after the 2016 presidential election. And Trump himself publicly asked Russia to interfere in the election by hacking into Clinton's emails. Many of these activities were catalogued in the book Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.

Ben, Most people here are "anchored in" a commitment to the facts and an accurate interpretation of historical and contemporary events. They object to falsehoods about issues that matter, like JFK's assassination. You are misinterpreting the forum's commitment to the facts, and criticism of falsehoods, as "personal animus" and/or mere political partisanship. It is neither. You are also confusing moral indignation with "unhappiness."

Paul, I was deeply disappointed by the DNC/Wall Street sabotage of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020 and, frankly, I was never a Joe Biden fan-- even back in 1992, when he ran against Bill Clinton. If Hunter Biden's business deals have impacted affairs of state, that would be problematic. But the alleged Fox/Giuliani/Hunter Biden laptop "scandal" has been fishy from the beginning-- conveniently publicized by Rupert Murdoch's propaganda empire just before the 2020 election. It seemed like an attempted re-play of Giuliani's Weiner laptop/James Comey nothing burger in October 2016. And now the alleged laptop repairman has pointed out that someone added data to the hard drive after the fact. As for alleged corruption, Donald Trump was far and away the most corrupt, unfit President in American history, by several orders of magnitude. Warren G. Harding was a mere puppet. And compared to James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce, Donald Trump is like a villain from a Batman movie. At least Pierce and Buchanan were educated, experienced statesmen who governed in what they viewed as the best interests of the country (and the Jacksonian Democratic coalition.) Both men tried desperately to keep the country from breaking apart, and have been vilified since 1860 for their efforts. George W. Bush probably did more damage to the U.S. than any POTUS, but Trump has been an unmitigated disaster-- and still is.

Well, folks, it looks like Ben's favorite new MAGA-verse propagandist is Jonathan Turley... 🤥 Turley joins Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald in Ben's pantheon of Republicon M$M demi-Gods. (At least Ben has finally refrained from pushing Tucker Carlson's "Patriot Purge" narrative about January 6th, while remaining remarkably silent about Tucker's "Great White Replacement" narratives.) For those who don't recall, Turley is the Republicon pretzel who directly contradicted himself in his opposition to Trump's Ukraine-gate impeachment trial, based on a reversal of his previous arguments in favor of Bill Clinton's impeachment. GOP Impeachment Witness Jonathan Turley Contradicted Own Previous Testimony (businessinsider.com) Not surprising that Turley is aggressively pushing the Durham "investigation" deflections from Russiagate. Ben, obviously, still hasn't figured out that Sussman is a Bill Barr/Fox/GOP strawman.

Addendum: This reference about the Fox/Trumplican White Identity/Replacement Theory ethos got lost in the shuffle this week, which is unfortunate, because it's historically important and directly linked to the tragic Buffalo mass shooting. Tucker Carlson not only promoted the white nationalist “great replacement” theory, but repeatedly called on his audience to take action | Media Matters for America

Well said, Paul. I have mentioned at least twice to Ben that white identity politics (beginning with Nixon's "Southern strategy") has been a Republican game for the past half century. The Dixiecrats migrated en masse to the Republican Party after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Later, GHWB used Lee Atwater's Willie Horton ads to scare up the white fright vote. But Fox News and the Trumplican Party have taken white identity politics to a whole new level since 2016, even directly promoting violence against minorities. The GOP today is a party run by and for the Koch plutocrats, which garners white working class and middle class votes by fear-mongering about blacks, Mexicans, LGBT citizens, and "Great Replacement." Hopefully, Ben will eventually understand what is happening.

Joe, It's not that U.S. and global wealth is disappearing, per se, it's that it has been increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Thomas Piketty has documented this phenomenon in considerable detail, In Capitalism in the 21st Century, and subsequently.* Since 1980, almost all of the marginal increase in U.S. wealth has gone to the wealthiest 1%. Republican "trickle down" economic tax cuts since 1980 not only created our gargantuan national debt, they have played a major role in the gradual destruction of the American middle class. No wonder Ben dislikes the "Donks." 🤥 *

Ron, IMO, this stock market correction is way overdue. Part of the problem has been the large scale, programmatic investing in index funds by companies managing 401Ks-- divorced from traditional asset valuations. A lot of younger investors/day traders/financial planners (including my nephew) have never lost their asses in the market. As with the crypto investors, these guys thought that these asset bubbles would expand indefinitely. Warren Buffet said it well. "Sometimes it's hard to teach a new dog old tricks." I'm no financial expert, but I've been burned a few times, (2000, and 2008) and I haven't trusted these stock markets for a while now.

It's concerning, Ron. At the same time, corporate profit margins have been high-- and not only for Big Oil corporations. From a macro- perspective, the widespread 2022 price gouging of American consumers is evidence of supply shortages resulting partly from the pandemic, but also of the quasi-monopolistic power of the corporations that now own and control the supply of goods and services. Housing costs in the U.S. are also now increasingly influenced by private equity "investors." Rents are increasingly unaffordable here in Denver. Treating American "patients" like ATM machines has also been a serious problem with our for-profit corporate healthcare "system" for many years. In the case of rising food prices, the shortage of immigrant farm labor in the U.S. has been a significant factor. (WSJ. May 7, 2022. pA3.) Obviously, this inflationary corporate profiteering is Biden's fault. 🤥 The American people need to vote out the libs and elect more Republicans who work for Big Oil and corporate CEOs.

You missed the central point again, Ben. (In fairness, Phillip Stahl is a guy who blogs about Fournier equations and astrophysics, so people often have trouble understanding his commentaries at Brane Space.) His central point in his latest blog is the same point that I made earlier in the day yesterday. To wit, the issue isn't whether Sussman lied about his work as an opposition researcher. It's that Sussman's guilt or innocence on that subject is irrelevant to the issue of Trump's involvement with the Kremlin, and the FBI's un-publicized 2016 investigation of Russiagate. The Durham investigation is another Bill Barr/Rupert Murdoch public relations stunt to deflect attention away from Russiagate and Trump's status as a compromised Russian asset. Stahl gets it.