W. Niederhut

And, this morning, Jennifer Rubin lands the incapacitating groin kick... OUCH, Jeff... Henceforth, you'll be singing soprano. 🤥 www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/19/yes-there-was-collusion/

With all due respect, Jeff, you were just reiterating your "no collusion" Russia-gate spiel on this very thread. As for our debates on the Mark Zaid thread, you claimed that Konstantin Kilimnik was not a GRU agent. The Senate concluded that he is, indeed, GRU. The Manafort-Kilimnik relationship seems to be central to the "collusion" issue, and Manafort stonewalled Mueller to the bitter end on it. As for claiming that this is a "partisan" Report, nonsense. Richard Burr and the GOP controlled the Senate Intel Committee from start to finish. My only suspicion about this Report is that it is being released now, before the election. Not sure why the Republicans did that.

Geez, Jeff, let's see how you spin this one... (I'll get some popcorn.) 🤥 Trump’s 2016 campaign chair was a ‘grave counterintelligence threat,’ had repeated contact with Russian intelligence, Senate panel finds https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senate-intelligence-trump-russia-report/2020/08/18/62a7573e-e093-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-high_intel-11am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

I think it might be Vlad Putin on speaker phone.

Since this old Woody Guthrie slogan has been bandied about on the forum recently I thought this was worth posting. 🤥 (Incidentally, in a tweet today, Trump urged Americans to, "Save the Post Office." That's sort of like Herman Goering urging German citizens to protect the Reichstag from arsonists.)

Ron, I noticed that the University of Texas (and the Big XII Conference) just voted to play football this season-- joining the SEC and ACC Conferences. Trump, himself, has directly tweeted his support for playing college football during the plague. Any thoughts? IMO, this won't end well. The athletes are in a low risk group, but some could still end up with heart, kidney, or brain damage. Money is, obviously, a factor in this. There is a huge amount of T.V. advertising revenue at stake (at least $1 billion) for ESPN and the SEC and ACC. On the other hand, UT hardly needs the money, since they are one of the wealthiest universities in the country.

And let's not lose sight of the last step in the grand, pre-9/11 Neocon/PNAC plan-- taking out Iran... October surprise: Will war with Iran be Trump’s election eve shocker? Could covert war with Iran become overt before November 3rd? https://www.salon.com/2020/08/16/october-surprise-will-war-with-iran-be-trumps-election-eve-shocker_partner/

You must remember this, a piss is still a piss, descending from on high. The elemental things apply, when Trump drops by. And when Don's lovers woo, they still say, "Here's some doo!" On that he must insist. The simple things in life, like piss, He can't resist.

Shrouded secrets from Edessa to Turin, Could such be the case for Trump and urine?

Speaking of Twitter trends, apparently, "Urine Trouble, Trump" is trending now, after Michael Cohen published an excerpt from his new book about Trump's "golden showers." Were Christopher Steele's Russian intel sources correct all along about a Trump "Pee Pee Tape?"

Cliff, The thread of the discussion about Obama in relation to the Iraq War got lost in the flurry of topics here. My critical comments about Obama in relation to Syria and the Bush-Cheney/Neocon establishment were more nuanced than you realize. I've always been an Obama supporter, and I think he was a first rate POTUS. But, to return to my original question, (above) "What was Obama's relationship with the Neocon" strategists behind the Bush/Wolfowitz "War on Terror?" My point is that Obama, clearly, did not end the war in Afghanistan or put the kibosh on the grand Neocon/PNAC plan to destabilize Libya, Syria, and Yemen. It was my only major disappointment with Obama's presidency. Instead, he signed off on many of the ongoing, mostly covert, military ops in the Middle East. (See, for example, Jeremy Scahill's Dirty Wars.) I was surprised. The man was no JFK. I do believe that Obama, at least, tried to drag his feet while participating in the CIA/NATO/Saudi "War on Terror," and he, certainly, tried to minimize civilian casualties, (especially compared to Donald Trump!) But, for example, CIA Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria was launched during Obama's tenure in the White House. To his credit, Obama resisted the more strident proposals of John McCain and others at the time to aggressively arm Sunni proxy militias (Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, et.al.) funded by the Saudis, the CIA, and NATO to overthrow the Assad regime. As I said, (above) there were limits to what Obama could have done, realistically, to stop the CIA/NATO/Saudi/Israeli military interventions in the Middle East. It's a point that Putin made in his interviews with Oliver Stone about the limitations imposed on any POTUS by the U.S. military-industrial complex. JFK got shot for trying to put the kibosh on the CIA and the Joint Chiefs. Here's a good historical review article by Daniel Lazare at Consortium News about U.S. Syrian policy since WWII.* (Italics mine.) Trump Submits to Neocon Orthodoxy * https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/28/trump-submits-to-neocon-orthodoxy/ "Ronald Reagan relied on the Saudis to finance arms to the Nicaraguan Contras and to Jonas Savimbi’s pro-apartheid guerrillas in Angola. George H.W. Bush launched a major war to save the Saudis from the evil Saddam Hussein. George W. Bush and Barack Obama covered up the Saudi role in 9/11, while Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton encouraged them and other Gulf monarchies to fund anti-government rebels in Libya and Syria during the Arab Spring. Both Libya and Syria fell to ruin as a consequence as hundreds of millions of dollars flowed to pro-Al Qaeda forces and the flames of Wahhabist terrorism spread ever wider."

Ah, yes... Bill Barr's latest "Obamagate" nothing burger. Clinesmith correctly confirmed that Carter Page had not been reporting to the CIA after 2013. The FISA warrants were, essentially, kosher. My question. Why is another Trump/Barr "Obamagate" nothing burger getting misleading headlines in the M$M? It reminds me of the incessant, misleading M$M coverage of the "Email-gate" nothing burger from August to November of 2016.

This question gets at the essence of the largely untold history of the Neocon/PNAC establishment in the Bush-Cheney administration-- Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, and the "Prince of Darkness," Richard Perle. These are the guys who coordinated the 9/11 Black Op-- their "new Pearl Harbor"-- as a pretext for implementing the PNAC "Wolfowitz Doctrine" in the Middle East. What was Obama's relationship with the Neocons? He pilloried John McCain in the 2008 Presidential debates for supporting the Iraq War debacle. But, much to my surprise, Obama retained Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, and largely went along with the PNAC playbook to de-stabilize Libya and Syria, even signing off on the CIA's Operation Timber Sycamore-- arming Sunni proxy militias (Al Qaeda, et.al.) to overthrow Assad, while ostensibly fighting "ISIS." Behind the scenes, Obama and Netanyahu could hardly stand to be in the same room together, but Obama seemed to begrudgingly acquiesce in the phony CIA/Neocon "War on Terror." Nor did he pursue any bona fide investigations of Bush, Cheney, 9/11, or the Iraq WMD scam. If he had, he would have been deep sixed. I read somewhere that Leon Panetta told Obama early on in his presidency that, "You can't just say, 'no,' to these guys"-- i.e., the CIA and Joint Chiefs. The last POTUS who did that was JFK.

I wrote a joke for Rob Wheeler this morning. (It may not be very funny, but writing it was highly therapeutic.) 🤥 A fixer, a niece, and a former NSC Chief walk into a bar. The fixer says, "The President is a racist, a con man, and a cheat who likes golden showers, and had frequent contacts with Russian oligarchs!" The niece says, "My uncle, the President, is a sociopath-- the most dangerous man in the world!" The former NSC Chief says, "My old boss, the President thought Finland was part of Russia!" The bartender says, "I think I need to fix myself a drink."

Not if Fox News and Trump's media goons have anything to say about it. In Trumptopia, only the white descendants of slave owners belong in public offices. (Kanye West is an illusory exception. GOP operators here in Colorado have already arranged to put Kanye on our 2020 Presidential ballots, in order to siphon black votes away from Biden and Harris.)

Now that you mention it, I can picture Trump pursuing Pussy Galore and gassing the troops at Fort Knox in order to heist (or nuke) the bullion reserves. And, like Auric Goldfinger, Trump cheats at golf. I wonder if Bill Barr can throw a lethal derby like Odd Job. 🤥

Does anyone know what percentage of African Americans (including "Americans" from the West Indies) had paternal ancestors who were slave owners? I don't know what the modern genetic studies have shown, but my guess is that it's a fairly high percentage.

It sounds like Trump was not averse to taking Golden Showers, after all. Who'd have thunk?

Kirk, The "Western slope" on the other side of the Continental Divide here in Colorado is a completely different planet than the "Front Range" -- Denver, Boulder, etc.-- along the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. One possible explanation is that the "Western slope" was once located on an entirely different continent, before the tectonic plates collided to form the Rocky Mountains. I don't know if the native hominids over on the Western slope "continent" are marsupials or unusually hairy, but they do own guns, and they tend to vote Republican.

Apologies for this non sequitur, but some memes are simply too good to withhold from Rob Wheeler and the forum. 🤥

I can't recall whether anyone here mentioned the recent Israeli study showing that low Vitamin D levels were correlated with susceptibility to COVID infections and death. If you're not already taking Vitamin D, you should consider taking Vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) 1,000-2,000 IU daily, which you can buy at most drug and grocery stores.

Jim, Are you familiar with Alan Blinder's analysis of the effectiveness of the Obama/Dem Stimulus Recovery Act of 2009? * The reason I ask is that there was a deluge of Republican disinformation in the mainstream media from 2009 onward about the Great Recession and the Great Obama Recovery of 2010-17. Krugman's main criticism at the time was that the Democratic stimulus plan didn't go far enough, but it was, certainly, effective in reversing the economic ship wreck of the Great Recession of 2008-10. It was enacted with ZERO support or cooperation from the Republicans left in Congress after the 2008 debacle. Galbraith & Keynes would have approved of it. People tend to forget about the severity of the economic crash that Obama inherited from Bush and Cheney in January of 2008-- widespread bank failures, plunging GDP, and surging unemployment. Obama deserves an A+ for managing that disaster. Also, the role of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in causing the Great Crash of 2008 is somewhat controversial. The causes of the crash were complex-- mainly having to do with investment banking fraudulence in the ratings and sales of sub-prime mortgage-backed derivatives and lax sub-prime mortgage lending standards-- what Alan Greenspan described as, "the failure of banks to regulate themselves." As Bill Clinton and others pointed out, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, if anything, actually mitigated the Great Crash of 2008 by allowing commercial banks like Bank of America to buy failing investment banking firms like Merrill Lynch. * https://www.cbpp.org/research/economy/the-financial-crisis-lessons-for-the-next-one

Ah, yes, the Durham Report! This could be the biggest pre-election Trump/GOP nothing burger since Rudy Giuliani and James Comey's ballyhooed Anthony Weiner laptop "scandal" in October of 2016...

Perhaps we should re-phrase the question. Why DID Trump use the GHWB executive rider to block the release of the JFKA records? Also, on the subject of Trutherism, whatever happened to Trump's 2016 claim, "When I'm President the American people are going to find out who REALLY destroyed the World Trade Center on 9/11?"

Ron, I wonder if your family doc could recommend that you take a medical leave of absence from work this semester. It sounds very risky for the faculty, especially if the students are not wearing masks or social distancing.